But rather than the much-needed drizzle that residents and officials had hoped could end a disastrous fire season and dampen dried landscapes, the state got a deluge.ĭrenching rain and strong winds accompanied the arrival of an “atmospheric river” – a long and wide plume of moisture pulled in from the Pacific Ocean that was predicted to move south over the next few days. After months of drought, the darkened clouds collecting over the state this weekend were a welcome sight to some. Photograph: Jose Carlos Fajardo/APĪ powerful storm has roared ashore in California, flooding cities, toppling trees and causing mud flows in areas burned bare by recent fires. Powerful storm hits California amid warnings of ‘potentially historic rain’Ī vehicle slams into a flooded offramp at Gregory Lane on southbound I-680 in Pleasant Hill, California, as a powerful storm barreled toward the area. What does the future hold? William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said the US could “move from pandemic to endemic”, meaning the virus would stay in the community but is not a big strain on public health. That’s because parts of the US population and much of the world remain unvaccinated, which could allow for outbreaks and dangerous new variants of the virus to emerge.ĭoes that mean Covid measures have been working? While there’s been some controversy around mask mandates, it seems vaccines have been working and the drugs used to treat Covid have got considerably better, improving survival rates. It looks like the US may have turned a corner as the number of new Covid cases and deaths has been in a steady decline since early September, prompting many experts to conclude that the worst effects of the pandemic in America are probably in the past.īut in the same breath those experts also caution that it’s not yet safe to abandon safeguards.
Photograph: Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images Worst of US pandemic likely behind us but we can’t drop our guard, experts sayĬharles Muro, 13, celebrates being inoculated by nurse Karen Pagliaro in Hartford, Connecticut. The last time anyone was fatally shot on set in the US was in 1993. For scenes with more than one firearm, sets normally use an armourer who is responsible for the safety and security of any guns. Were there problems on set beforehand? Just six hours before that, half a dozen crew members had walked off the Rust set to protest against poor conditions and safety concerns, including gun safety amid reports of incidents of a prop gun being accidentally misfired earlier in filming.Īre prop guns safe? Propmasters say when rules are followed correctly, prop guns are “truly very safe”. But it was, unknown to Halls, loaded with live rounds, according to the records.
How did the shooting happen? The exact circumstances are not yet clear but a court filing describes how Halls grabbed a gun off a cart and handed it to Baldwin, indicating that the weapon was safe by yelling “cold gun”.
Goll alleged in an interview that Halls had previously not followed safety protocols for weapons and pyrotechnics when she worked alongside him on the TV series in 2019. Maggie Goll, a prop maker and licensed pyrotechnician, said she filed an internal complaint with the executive producers of Hulu’s Into the Dark TV series over concerns about the assistant director Dave Halls’ conduct on set.
A TV crew member has disclosed that she raised safety concerns in the past about the assistant director who authorities say unwittingly handed Alec Baldwin the prop gun that killed the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on a film set in New Mexico last week.