Full-time staff numbers are down, too; as of June, the parks service had 12,600 full-time employees, which is 24% fewer staff than they had at the beginning of the year.
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That’s the lowest staffing level in over 20 years, according to Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association.
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Some parks, including Yellowstone, have increased their staff this year. But with low staffing levels at other parks unlikely to meaningfully improve this year, Kym Hall, a former NPS regional director and park superintendent, told CNN she worries park rangers and other staff could hit a breaking point later this summer.
“By mid-August, you’re going to have staff that is so burned out,” Hall said. “Somebody is going to make a mistake, somebody is going to get hurt. Or you’re going to see visitors engaging with wildlife in a way that they shouldn’t, because there aren’t enough people out in the parks to say, ‘do not get that close to a grizzly bear that’s on the side of the road; that’s a terrible idea.’”

The National Park Service did not respond to CNN’s request for comment on its staffing levels.

Meanwhile, visitors are arriving in droves. Last year set a new record for recreation visits at nearly 332 million, smashing the previous record set in 2016.

Hall said the process of hiring thousands of seasonal workers for the summer takes months, typically starting in the previous fall or winter to fully staff up.

“Even if the parks had permission, and even if they had some funding, it takes months and months to get a crew of seasonal (workers) recruited, vetted, hired, boarded into their duty stations, trained and ready to serve the public by Memorial Day,” Hall said.

Compounding the staffing issue is the fact that many park superintendents, some of whom oversee the most iconic parks like Yosemite, have retired or taken the Trump administration’s deferred resignation offers. That leaves over 100 parks without their chief supervisor, Brengel said.

And amid the staff losses, staffers normally assigned to park programming, construction, and trail maintenance, as well as a cadre of park scientists, have been reassigned to visitor services to keep up with the summer season.

The study’s focus on 12 cities makes it just a snapshot of the true heat wave death toll across the continent, which researchers estimate could be up to tens of thousands of people.
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“Heatwaves don’t leave a trail of destruction like wildfires or storms,” said Ben Clarke, a study author and a researcher at Imperial College London. “Their impacts are mostly invisible but quietly devastating — a change of just 2 or 3 degrees Celsius can mean the difference between life and death for thousands of people.”
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The world must stop burning fossil fuels to stop heat waves becoming hotter and deadlier and cities need to urgently adapt, said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London. “Shifting to renewable energy, building cities that can withstand extreme heat, and protecting the poorest and most vulnerable is absolutely essential,” she said.

Akshay Deoras, a research scientist at the University of Reading who was not involved in the analysis, said “robust techniques used in this study leave no doubt that climate change is already a deadly force in Europe.”

Richard Allan, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading who was also not involved in the report, said the study added to huge amounts of evidence that climate change is making heat waves more intense, “meaning that moderate heat becomes dangerous and record heat becomes unprecedented.”

It’s not just heat that’s being supercharged in out hotter world, Allan added. “As one part of the globe bakes and burns, another region can suffer intense rainfall and catastrophic flooding.”

Santa Fe, New Mexico
AP — At least three people were missing in a mountain village in southern New Mexico that is a popular summer retreat after monsoon rains triggered flash flooding Tuesday that was so intense an entire house was swept downstream.
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Emergency crews carried out at least 85 swift water rescues in the Ruidoso area, including of people who were trapped in their homes and cars, said Danielle Silva of the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

No deaths were immediately reported, but Silva said the extent of the destruction wouldn’t be known until the water recedes.
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“We knew that we were going to have floods   and this one hit us harder than what we were expecting,” Ruidoso Mayor Lynn D. Crawford said during a radio address Tuesday night.

Crawford said that some people were taken to the hospital, although the exact number was not immediately clear. He encouraged residents to call an emergency line if their loved ones or neighbors were missing.
The floods came just days after flash floods in Texas killed over 100 people and left more than 160 people missing.

In New Mexico, officials urged residents to seek higher ground Tuesday afternoon as the waters of the Rio Ruidoso rose nearly 19 feet in a matter of minutes amid heavy rainfall. The National Weather Service issued flood warnings in the area, which was stripped of vegetation by recent wildfires.

A weather service flood gauge and companion video camera showed churning waters of the Rio Ruidoso surge over the river’s banks into surrounding forest. Streets and bridges were closed in response.

Kaitlyn Carpenter, an artist in Ruidoso, was riding her motorcycle through town Tuesday afternoon when the storm started to pick up, and she sought shelter at the riverside Downshift Brewing Company with about 50 other people. She started to film debris rushing down the Rio Ruidoso when she spotted a house float by with a familiar turquoise door. It belonged to the family of one of her best friends.

Her friend’s family was not in the house and is safe, she said.

“I’ve been in that house and have memories in that house, so seeing it come down the river was just pretty heartbreaking,” Carpenter said. “I just couldn’t believe it.”

There were also reports of dead horses near the town’s horse racing track, the mayor said.

Two National Guard rescue teams and several local teams already were in the area when the flooding began, Silva said, and more Guard teams were expected.

The area has been especially vulnerable to flooding since the summer of 2024, when the South Fork and Salt fires raced across tinder-dry forest and destroyed an estimated 1,400 homes and structures. Residents were forced to flee a wall of flames, only to grapple with intense flooding later that summer.

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More than 200 firefighters are struggling to tackle an out-of-control wildfire on Crete — Greece’s largest island and a tourist hotspot — as authorities order mass evacuations.
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The fire broke out Wednesday afternoon near Ierapetra, a town on the island’s southeast coast, amid unusually high temperatures, 3 to 5 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 9 Fahrenheit) above average, and gale-force winds of around 50 miles an hour.

The conditions are creating “new outbreaks, making firefighting work very difficult,” the Fire Department’s press spokesperson, Chief Vasilios Vathrakoyannis, said in a statement Thursday.
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More than 230 firefighters, along with 46 vehicles and 10 helicopters have been deployed to fight the blaze, according to fire officials.

The flames have spread rapidly, reaching homes as well as hotels and other tourist accommodations.

Authorities asked residents of four settlements to evacuate and move toward Ierapetra. About 1,500 people have been evacuated so far, according to the Greek public broadcaster ERT.

The Ierapetra municipality has converted an indoor training center facility into a makeshift camp, where hundreds of tourists and residents who abandoned their homes spent the night Wednesday.
The police, medical services and the coast guard have all been called to the area.

“We are entering the third and most difficult month of the fire season,” Vathrakoyannis said. July is typically the hottest month in Greece and is often accompanied by strong winds. “These conditions favor the spread of fires and increase their danger,” he said.
Wildfires have ripped through other European countries this week as the continent endures a brutal heat wave.

Tens of thousands were evacuated in Turkey as blazes ripped through the western Izmir and Manisa provinces and southern Hatay province, damaging nearly 200 homes.

Blazes also broke out in France and in Spain, where two people died.

Europe experiences wildfires every year, but they are becoming more intense and frequent due to human-caused climate change, which fuels heat and drought, both helping set the stage for fierce, destructive fires.