Tag Archives: fort

8,000 oil workers evacuated from Fort McMurray fire. Again.

by DonnaDunagan Posted on May 17, 2016

8,000 oil workers evacuated from Fort McMurray fire. Again.

By on May 17, 2016Share

Two weeks after it began, the Fort McMurray wildfire is continuing to burn out of control. On Monday, winds shifted and sent the fire in the direction of oil sands facilities.

As many as 8,000 of the oil workers who’d been working to restart oil production were evacuated after the wildfire — which the media has nicknamed “the Beast” — jumped a critical firebreak late on Monday, moving at a rate of more than 100 feet per minute. The evacuations will prolong a shutdown of oil sands operations, which is costing about 1 million barrels of crude oil per day.

Initial reports of the Fort McMurray wildfire speculated that the blaze could continue for months. Now it’s looking like those speculations may come true. Meanwhile, a second, smaller blaze in the province prompted more mandatory evacuations, including a gas facility, northwest of the city of Edmonton.

And the fire season is just getting started.

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8,000 oil workers evacuated from Fort McMurray fire. Again.

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In Fort Benning, US Army Shuts Down Misogynist Trolls

by ShannonGarner Posted on August 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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This coming Friday, two female lieutenants will become the first women to graduate from the US Army’s grueling Ranger program—an honor that requires all candidates to complete an intense, 62-day training course at Fort Benning in Georgia.

Training includes running at least five miles several times a week, swimming for miles in a combat uniform, finishing a 15-mile march carrying a 65-pound pack, and doing an astonishing number of push-ups in two minutes. Women had been historically excluded from Ranger school because it was thought they lacked the strength and stamina to complete the program.

Like clockwork, Kristen Griest and Shaye Haver’s history-making achievements have prompted skeptics to question whether their training might have been tweaked to defer to their feminine frailties. Did Griest and Hayer receive favorable treatment? Is the whole thing just some politically correct publicity stunt?

Thankfully, the individual behind the US Army Fort Benning’s Facebook account is proving to be quite the dauntless social media staffer, expertly shutting down the misogynist trolls who have been commenting on the page.

(h/t @nycsouthpaw)

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In Fort Benning, US Army Shuts Down Misogynist Trolls

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One More Time: No, the Fort Lee Lane Closures Were Not Part of a Traffic Study

by ShadWeiland Posted on February 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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From Chris Christie’s radio interview about Bridgegate yesterday:

You still don’t know at this point whether there was a traffic study?

Well, what I’m saying, Eric, did this start as a traffic study that morphed into some political shenanigans, or did it start as political shenanigans that became a traffic study?

Oh come on. If this started as a legitimate traffic study, there would be two pieces of routine evidence for it. First, there would be some kind of planning document from the Port Authority engineering department. Second, there would be some kind of report on the results of the study. This is the absolute bare minimum that would accompany a genuine traffic study, especially one that involved a major lane closure.

If either of these documents exists, Christie would have produced it long ago. He hasn’t, and it’s simply not plausible for him to continue pretending that we don’t know if there was a real traffic study that prompted this affair. There wasn’t.

POSTSCRIPT: Robert Durando, general manager of the George Washington Bridge, has testified that data was collected during the days when the Fort Lee access lanes were closed. This is meaningless. It was tolls data, which is collected routinely every day. The fact that this is the only data that was collected is evidence against the the notion that there was a real traffic study being conducted, not evidence for it.

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One More Time: No, the Fort Lee Lane Closures Were Not Part of a Traffic Study

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Was Bridgegate Really About the Mayor of Fort Lee?

by Rolland89L Posted on January 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Why did Chris Christie’s staff shut down several lanes of the George Washington Bridge in August? The working theory is that it was retaliation against the mayor of Fort Lee, who had declined to endorse Christie for reelection. This has never really made sense, though. The guy was a Democrat and Christie was cruising to victory. As both the mayor and Christie himself have pointed out, no one would care if he decided not to endorse Christie.

So Rachel Maddow and Steve Benen offer up another theory today. Last year Christie was in a long-running battle with Democrats over his appointees to the state Supreme Court, and in August Christie decided to remove a justice from the court rather than submit her to renomination to Senate Democrats:

The governor, enraged, held a press conference to tell reporters, “I was not going to let her loose to the animals.”

The “animals,” in this case, were the Democrats in the state Senate.

Christie said that on the afternoon of Aug. 12, 2013.

On the morning of Aug. 13, 2013, Christie’s deputy chief of staff told the governor’s guy at the Port Authority, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”

The leader of the Senate Democrats at the time was a senator from … Fort Lee.

This is just speculation, of course, so take it for what it’s worth. Dave Weigel, for example, points out that the Democratic leader of the state Senate was “utterly safe at re-election,” so retaliating against her seems kind of pointless too. Maybe so. But for now, speculation is all we have. The whole story about retaliation against the mayor of Fort Lee has always been pretty whacky, so now that we know for sure that retaliation of some sort really did take place, it’s only natural to scratch our heads and start trying to figure out if maybe something else was going on. This is as good a guess as any.

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Was Bridgegate Really About the Mayor of Fort Lee?

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Christie Administration’s Bridge Lane Closure Slowed Search for Missing 4-Year-Old, Says Official

by EdWampleriipwu Posted on January 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Private messages released on Wednesday strongly suggest that a top adviser to Republican Gov. Chris Christie orchestrated a massive traffic jam in Fort Lee, New Jersey, as political retaliation against the city’s Democratic mayor.

READ MORE: Gov. Christie’s bridge scandal, explained. Future-Image/ZUMA

Calling the messages “astonishing” and “unconscionable,” members of the Fort Lee borough council described the mid-September traffic disaster, caused when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey unexpectedly closed two of the town’s access lanes to the George Washington Bridge, as having dire consequences.

“There was a missing child that day. The police had trouble conducting that search because they were tied up directing traffic,” says Jan Goldberg, a Fort Lee councilman who works with local emergency personnel. Police found the missing child, a four-year-old. “But with the streets in the condition they were, I would venture to say that the search took longer,” Goldberg says.

Ila Kasofsky, a Fort Lee councilwoman, tells Mother Jones that ambulances and other emergency vehicles could not get through the gridlock. In the aftermath of the lane closures, Kasofsky says she spoke with a Fort Lee resident who couldn’t get over the bridge to support her husband through major surgery. Another Fort Lee woman was unable to pick up her son after his dialysis session.

Police Chief Keith Bendul cited these problems when he spoke to New Jersey press in September. “On Monday, while all this was going on, we had to contend with a missing four-year-old, a cardiac arrest requiring an ambulance, and a car running up against a building,” he said. “What would happen if there was a very serious accident?”

Christie aides appear to have considered the potential public safety ramifications of the traffic jam. In one exchange released on Wednesday, Port Authority appointee David Wildstein waved away complaints from the Fort Lee mayor that school buses filled with children were stuck in traffic. “Bottom line is he didn’t say safety,” Wildstein wrote.

Goldberg called the messages revealed on Wednesday “outrageous,” saying, “It’s unimaginable that they could stoop to that level.”

“I was furious,” adds Kasofsky. “To affect the lives of thousands and thousands of people, their safety, their basic quality of life—how could anybody do such a horrible thing?”

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Christie Administration’s Bridge Lane Closure Slowed Search for Missing 4-Year-Old, Says Official

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Dot Earth Blog: A Google Duo and Media Maven Explore a Hyper-Connected Planet

by Myrna Posted on May 1, 2013

A brisk chat between Googlers and a media maven about the emerging Knowosphere. Continued:  Dot Earth Blog: A Google Duo and Media Maven Explore a Hyper-Connected Planet ; ;Related ArticlesDot Earth Blog: Extreme Weather in a Warming World, and the American MindDot Earth Blog: Observed Earth: A New View of the SkyA Google Duo and a Media Maven Explore a Hyper-Connected Planet ;

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Dot Earth Blog: A Google Duo and Media Maven Explore a Hyper-Connected Planet

Posted in eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, Monterey, ONA, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Dot Earth Blog: A Google Duo and Media Maven Explore a Hyper-Connected Planet