Just one house left unscathed on land scorched by California’s largest single forest fire
It is the completeness of the destruction in this small town that hits you first.
We’d seen the images and we’d spoken to some of the evacuees, but only by being here is it possible to absorb the enormity of it all. There is almost nothing left.
Greenville, California: population 1,000; swept away in the largest single forest fire this state has ever seen.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Wildfire leaves US town burned to ashes
The people whose town this was were almost all evacuated. They have their lives but have lost everything else.
Businesses and livelihoods are gone and with them, memories and dreams.
The local restaurant is only recognisable by the tables and chairs still set. The town’s offices are marked just by their metal filing cabinets. And dotted chimney stacks are all that’s left of the town’s homes.
Beyond the starkness of all this, it is the silence that hits you. It’s beyond eerie.
How different it must have sounded as the fire swept through late last Wednesday night.
With this all around, you look for hope. And down the road, by some miracle, there was some.
Greenville in California has been devastated by wildfires
One house survived unscathed; not a scratch, while all around the land is scorched.
It belongs to Sheri and Terry Wert.
The residents are not allowed back yet, and honestly, most won’t want to see it. But it’s a boost certainly for these two.
The wonders of technology allowed us, via video call, to show them their little miracle.
Terry and Sheri Wert
“Oh my gosh. Terry, you gotta come…” Sheri says. “Oh, it looks perfect….”
She asks us to walk around the side of the house. Their son’s van is undamaged. So too is the chicken coop. The wind vane still turns.
Driving down the mountain, the smoke is thick for miles. The fire is still raging not far away.
The state governor, Gavin Newsom, has said it is the largest single fire in Californian history. More than 8,000 firefighters are working round the clock to contain it and at the moment they are not winning.
It’s an hour down to the town where the evacuees now wait. Terry and Sheri among them.
“Our home is still there and we are one of the very few lucky people and our heart just goes out to our community,” Sheri tells me.
We talk about what caused all this. It’s clear there are serious local concerns about forest management. Managed, controlled fires were stopped years ago and locals have long argued that a misguided fire suppression policy for almost a century has caused huge build-up on the forest bed.
It’s become a tinderbox and a warming climate is the catalyst for the fires.
“Now it’s an annual thing. It ruins every summer. It takes people’s homes away. It’s taken people’s lives,” Sheri says.
She explains that the summers are definitely getting warmer and the winters are less cold.
“We are not getting anywhere near the amount of rain, precipitation that we used to get, nor the snowpack, even up high,” she says.
Thousands of firefighters were drafted to Greenville, which has a population of just 1,000
What about the sustainability of places like Greenville, I ask. In the years ahead can it remain a viable place to live?
“This is our home,” Terry tells me. “We’ll rebuild Greenville.”
They have done it before. Way back in 1881, a fire destroyed the town. But still, the viability of communities like this feels ever more precarious and dependent on our relationship with the environment, both local and global.
The severity cannot be overstated, if an additional 50% tariffs are levied on all Chinese goods it will decimate trade between the world’s two biggest economies.
Remember, 50% would sit on top of what is already on the table: 34% announced last week, 20% announced at the start of US President Donald Trump’s term, and some additional tariffs left over from his first term in office.
In total, it means all Chinese goods would face tariffs of over 100%, some as high as 120%.
It’s a price that makes any trade almost impossible.
China is really the only nation in the world at the moment that is choosing to take a stand.
While others are publicly making concessions and sending delegations to negotiate, China has clearly calculated that not being seen to be bullied is worth the cost that retaliation will bring.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Tariffs: Xi hits back at Trump
The real question, though, is if the US does indeed impose this extra 50% tomorrow, what could or would China do next?
It has said it will “fight to the end”, but what does that mean?
In reality, there are few good options.
There are some obvious measures that China will almost certainly enact.
👉 Follow Trump 100 on your podcast app 👈
Further export controls on rare earth minerals (crucial for the development of high-tech products) are one example. China controls a huge proportion of the world’s supply, but the US would likely find workarounds in time.
Hiking tariffs on high-impact US products such as agricultural goods is another option, but there is only so far this could go.
The potentially more impactful options have significant drawbacks for Beijing.
It could, for instance, target high-profile American companies such as Apple and Tesla, but this isn’t ideal at a time when China is trying to attract more foreign investment, and some devaluation of the currency is possible, but it would also come with adverse effects.
Other options are more political and come with the risk of escalation beyond the economic arena.
In an opinion piece this morning, the editor of Xinhua, China’s state news agency, speculated that China could cease all cooperation with the US on the war against fentanyl.
Read more from Sky News:
Baby girl becomes first child in UK to be born from womb transplant
March hottest on record in Europe and by some margin
This has been a major political issue for Mr Trump, and it’s hard to see it would not constitute some sort of red line for him.
Other options touted include banning the import of American films, or perhaps calling for the Chinese public to boycott all American products.
Anything like this comes with a sense that the world’s two most powerful superpowers might be teetering on the edge of not just a total economic decoupling, but cultural separation too.
There is understandably serious nervousness about how that could spiral and the precedent it sets.
US
Donald Trump’s 104% tariffs on China – and other levies on ‘worst offenders’ – in effect this mornong
Donald Trump’s trade tariffs on what he calls “the worst offenders” come into effect at 5am UK time, with China facing by far the biggest levy.
The US will hit Chinese imports with 104% tariffs, marking a significant trade escalation between the world’s two largest superpowers.
At a briefing on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Donald Trump “believes that China wants to make a deal with the US,” before saying: “It was a mistake for China to retaliate.
“When America is punched, he punches back harder.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
White House announces 104% tariff on China
After Mr Trump announced sweeping levies last week – hitting some imported goods from China with 34% tariffs – Beijing officials responded with like-for-like measures.
The US president then piled on an extra 50% levy on China, taking the total to 104% unless it withdrew its retaliatory 34% tariff.
China’s commerce ministry said in turn that it would “fight to the end”, and its foreign ministry accused the US of “economic bullying” and “destabilising” the world’s economies.
‘Worst offender’ tariffs also in effect
Alongside China’s 104% tariff, roughly 60 countries – dubbed by the US president as the “worst offenders” – will also see levies come into effect today.
The EU will be hit with 20% tariffs, while countries like Vietnam and Cambodia see a 46% levy and 49% rate respectively.
The UK was not included on this list, and instead saw a “baseline”, worldwide 10% tariff on imported goods in effect from last Saturday.
At the weekend, Sir Keir Starmer promised the government was ready to “shelter British businesses from the storm”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
What’s going on with the US and China?
Since the tariffs were announced last Wednesday, global stock markets have plummeted, with four days of steep losses for all three of the US’ major indexes.
As trading closed on Tuesday evening, the S&P 500 lost 1.49%, the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.15%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.84%.
According to LSEG data, S&P 500 companies have lost $5.8tn (£4.5tn) in stock market value since last Wednesday, the deepest four-day loss since the benchmark was created in the 1950s.
Global stock markets have been reeling since Trump’s tariff announcement last week. Pic: AP
Read more:
What China could do next as Trump’s tariff war ramps up
Chancellor to hold tariff crisis talks with top City executives
Trump signs coal orders
Meanwhile, the US president signed four executive orders to boost American coal mining and production.
The directives order:
• keeping some coal plants that were set for retirement open;
• directing the interior secretary to “acknowledge the end” of an Obama-era moratorium that paused coal leasing on federal lands;
• requiring federal agencies to rescind policies transitioning the US away from coal production, and;
• directing the Department of Energy and other federal agencies to assess how coal energy can meet rising demand from artificial intelligence.
Read more:
The good, the bad and the ugly in Trump’s coal plans
At a White House ceremony, Mr Trump said the orders end his predecessor Joe Biden’s “war on beautiful clean coal,” and miners “will be put back to work”.
The severity cannot be overstated, if an additional 50% tariffs are levied on all Chinese goods it will decimate trade between the world’s two biggest economies.
Remember, 50% would sit on top of what is already on the table: 34% announced last week, 20% announced at the start of US President Donald Trump’s term, and some additional tariffs left over from his first term in office.
In total, it means all Chinese goods would face tariffs of over 100%, some as high as 120%.
It’s a price that makes any trade almost impossible.
China is really the only nation in the world at the moment that is choosing to take a stand.
While others are publicly making concessions and sending delegations to negotiate, China has clearly calculated that not being seen to be bullied is worth the cost that retaliation will bring.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Tariffs: Xi hits back at Trump
The real question, though, is if the US does indeed impose this extra 50% tomorrow, what could or would China do next?
It has said it will “fight to the end”, but what does that mean?
In reality, there are few good options.
There are some obvious measures that China will almost certainly enact.
👉 Follow Trump 100 on your podcast app 👈
Further export controls on rare earth minerals (crucial for the development of high-tech products) are one example. China controls a huge proportion of the world’s supply, but the US would likely find workarounds in time.
Hiking tariffs on high-impact US products such as agricultural goods is another option, but there is only so far this could go.
The potentially more impactful options have significant drawbacks for Beijing.
It could, for instance, target high-profile American companies such as Apple and Tesla, but this isn’t ideal at a time when China is trying to attract more foreign investment, and some devaluation of the currency is possible, but it would also come with adverse effects.
Other options are more political and come with the risk of escalation beyond the economic arena.
In an opinion piece this morning, the editor of Xinhua, China’s state news agency, speculated that China could cease all cooperation with the US on the war against fentanyl.
Read more from Sky News:
Baby girl becomes first child in UK to be born from womb transplant
March hottest on record in Europe and by some margin
This has been a major political issue for Mr Trump, and it’s hard to see it would not constitute some sort of red line for him.
Other options touted include banning the import of American films, or perhaps calling for the Chinese public to boycott all American products.
Anything like this comes with a sense that the world’s two most powerful superpowers might be teetering on the edge of not just a total economic decoupling, but cultural separation too.
There is understandably serious nervousness about how that could spiral and the precedent it sets.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway