Southern California Mudslides: Death Toll Rises to 15, With Dozens More Missing

Rescue crews waded through thick mud in Southern California on Wednesday to extricate stranded residents and clear roads made impassable by mudslides that have left at least 15 people dead and destroyed around 100 homes.

Emergency workers carrying a woman rescued in Montecito, Calif., on Tuesday.

Two dozen people were missing and 28 people were injured after the mudslides struck on Tuesday in an area northwest of Los Angeles that was recently scorched in the state’s largest wildfire on record. The authorities were working to reach 300 people stuck in their homes Wednesday and declared a “public safety exclusion zone,” barring all but emergency crews from the area.

Amber Anderson, a spokeswoman for the joint recovery effort, which involves helicopters, firefighters and emergency workers from several counties, said the affected area was nearly 20,000 acres.

Read the New York Times story - “Southern California Mudslides: Death Toll Rises to 15, With Dozens More Missing.”

Australia's future renewable energy boundless, but limited by backward looking governments

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ustralia has it all, particularly when it comes to renewable energy.

Sadly, those with the decision making power and with the capacity to change the country’s direction are deeply embedded in and unable to extricate themselves from 20^th Century ideas.

In its story - “The heat is on, as Australia plumbs the depths” – Fairfax Media reports that our governments are virtually ignoring the renewable energy just waiting to the accessed.

The story says: “On the face of it, Australia's future is rosy: renewable energy, a World Wildlife Fund report claims, could meet all our electricity needs by the middle of the century – and at a cost little more than 0.1 to 0.2 per cent of gross domestic product.

“Sad to say, none of this deterred the government and opposition from reaching a so-called "compromise deal" last week that slashes the nation's original target of 41,000 gigawatt-hours of annual renewable energy production by 2020 to 33,000 gigawatt-hours.”