Deadly weather: 6 dead in Montana dust storm pile-up; 2 dead in Colorado flooding

Friday night brought severe weather that turned deadly in parts of the country, including a dust storm that led to a massive pileup on a Montana interstate and rushing floodwaters in Colorado.

A dust storm on Interstate 90 in Montana caused a pileup of 21 vehicles Friday evening, Montana Highway Patrol Sgt. Jay M. Nelson told USA TODAY. Six people, including two juveniles, died in the crashes, and eight others were hospitalized for their injuries.

Severe flooding Friday night in northern Colorado's Buckthorn Canyon swept away a home and killed a woman and child inside, authorities said.

Meanwhile, the National Weather Service also issued flood advisories Friday in Arizona's Yavapai and Coconino Counties as monsoon rain hit the area. Water carried mud to people's homes in Flagstaff in Coconino County, filling up yards and streets, local news outlets reported.

Weekend forecast: The Plains and the Midwest now face a threat of thunderstorms through the weekend, according to AccuWeather. The storms are expected to target parts of the northern Plains on Saturday before shifting south and east Saturday night.

Deadly Montana pileup blamed on dust storm

There was "zero visibility" during the dust storm on Interstate 90 in Montana, which witnesses said stretched for over a mile long, Nelson said. Video from the scene showed scores of tractor-trailers and cars backed up for miles along two eastbound lanes.

Authorities did not immediately provide additional details on the conditions of the people who were injured.

Nelson said the nearest hospital to the pileup, which took place three miles west of the small southern Montana city of Hardin, was "quickly overwhelmed with the number of injuries."

This was sort of an unseen extreme weather event that came up," Nelson said. "In Montana, we don't usually have dust storms storms to the extent that there's zero visibility."

The National Weather Service had issued severe thunderstorm warnings across parts of southern Montana on Friday, including a severe thunderstorm watch in Hardin as meteorologists forecast hail and scattered wind gusts of up to 75 mph.

A surge of wind produced by the storms flew east-southeast Friday, causing wind gusts recorded at up to 64 mph near the time of the pileup, said Nick Vertz, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Billings, Montana. As the wind picked up dust, Vertz said visibility was reduced to less than 1/4 mile.

Nelson said responding to the crashes took an emotional toll on troopers as they "battled chaos on the scene," as well as severe weather.

"With 24 years on the Montana Highway Patrol, I can't recall a crash of this significance," he said."…Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of people who tragically lost their lives."

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/deadly-weather-6-dead-montana-150425765.html

*Someone playing with smart sand again?

Pilot arrested after landing plane on Missouri interstateGrain Valley, Mo. — An intoxicated pilot was arrested after landing a small aircraft early Friday on Interstate 70 southeast of Kansas City, Missouri, after radioing that he had run out of fuel, authorities said.

The landing about 2:30 a.m. east of Grain Valley, roughly 20 miles (32 kilometers) southeast of Kansas City, closed westbound lanes of the highway for more than 2 1/2 hours, KCTV reported.

The plane had a "minor collision" with a guardrail but otherwise didn't hit anything, the Missouri State Highway Patrol tweeted.

The pilot was the only person on board. He suffered minor injuries and was taken to a hospital for treatment after his arrest, the patrol said.

Online records showed that the single-engine plane was 19 minutes into its flight from Warrensburg, which is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) southeast of the landing site.

The patrol said the pilot radioed that he had run out of fuel and had to make an emergency landing on the highway.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pilot-arrested-after-landing-plane-on-missouri-interstate/

California Bullet Train Gets $4.2 Billion Green Light For First Phase While Bigger Challenges LoomState legislators agreed last month to release $4.2 billion earmarked for the train’s first phase, between midsize cities Bakersfield, Fresno and Merced. The project may also benefit from more than $2 billion of federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funds set aside for passenger rail. Extending service to the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles would boost the amount of track to 500 miles and the train’s total price tag to as much as $105 billion. That’s far above an initial estimate of about $40 billion when California voters approved a $10 billion bond measure to help build it in 2008.

It’s a big shift from a few years ago when then President Donald Trump withheld $929 million of federal funds awarded years earlier and threatened to claw back $2.5 billion doled out by the Obama Administration. Longtime train commuter President Joe Biden restored those funds in 2021 and wants more bullet-train projects, both for the jobs they’ll generate and to help cut climate-warming emissions from cars.

The California project, which estimates travel time between San Francisco and Los Angeles will be less than three hours, also receives about $1 billion annually from the state’s Cap and Trade program, a de facto carbon tax on major emitters of greenhouse gasses. While the Build Back Better infrastructure money was never approved, there’s a pool of other new federal money California can tap for future needs. “We identified out of the infrastructure bill six different programs that we can compete in for different project elements,” Kelly told Forbes. “Those six different pots total about $70 billion over the next five years.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2022/07/16/california-bullet-train-gets-42-billion-green-light-for-first-phase-while-bigger-challenges-loom/?sh=1a14927a25b1

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>>16745170

Wonder how dat homeless housing is going.

>>16745232

Elderly woman killed by two alligatorsafter falling into Florida pond

At approximately 7:47 p.m., the woman was seen falling into a pond along the course at the Boca Royale Golf and Country Club in Englewood, according to a statement from the Sarasota County Sheriff's office. The woman "struggled to stay afloat" before two nearby alligators grabbed her, authorities said.

The woman, who has not been identified, was pronounced dead at the scene. Authorities have since captured the alligators and have removed them from the pond.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/aliigator-attack-elderly-woman-killed-florida/

FCC needs additional $3 billion to help US carriers replace Huawei and ZTE equipmentthan anticipated. The agency originally allocated for $1.9 billion for"rip and replace"measures.

On Friday, Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel told Congress the agency needs an additional $3 billion to reimburse carriers that “rip and replace” their Huawei and ZTE infrastructure, reports Reuters.

In 2020, former President Donald Trump signed the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act, mandating that US telecoms replace any “suspect foreign network equipment” from their networks. The bill also required the FCC to create a program for compensating affected carriers. That same year, the agency estimated it would cost telecoms more than $1.8 billion to comply with the order, though it eventually set aside $1.9 billion for reimbursements.

After receiving 181 applications at the start of 2022, the FCC said US carriers had collectively asked for $5.6 billion to replace all their Huawei and ZTE equipment. On Friday, Rosenworcel said that funding “all reasonable and supported cost estimates” would cost a total of $4.98 billion, indicating the FCC found merit in the majority of claims it received at the start of the year.

"Absent an additional appropriation, the Commission will apply the prioritization scheme Congress specified," Rosenworcel said in a letter to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. She added the FCC would begin processing reimbursements “as allocations are issued in the coming days.” Without additional funding from Congress, the FCC only has enough to reimburse companies about 40 percent of their costs.

https://www.engadget.com/fcc-huawei-zte-rip-replace-funding-congress-155908354.html

>>16745307

o7