(LOS ANGELES) — A quick-moving brush fire in Southern California has prompted evacuations for those living along Interstate 5.
The Tumbleweed Fire sparked shortly before 2 p.m. near Gorman, California, about 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles, according to the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
By 8 p.m., the fire had exploded to nearly 1,000 acres along the I-5 corridor. It is currently only 10% contained.
The fire was fueled by high winds, gusting between 18 and 25 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
Evacuations were ordered near the Hungry Valley Recreation Area, and two firefighters suffered minor injuries in the blaze, according to the fire department.
No structures have been damaged or destroyed in the fire.
A decades-long mega-drought and scorching temperatures driven by climate change have created tinderbox conditions for wildfires on the West Coast.
The exact cause of the fire is unknown.
Another brush fire that sparked nearby on Sunday, the Dulce Fire near Agua Dulce, about 45 miles north of Los Angeles, was 100% contained at 12 acres.
At least three other fires sparked elsewhere in the state Sunday, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
(NEW YORK) — While some tech companies, such as Twitter and DropBox, have said that employees may work remotely forever, many companies are planning a partial or full return to the office this summer or fall.
For other workforces, that transition is already in swing. Among adults who are employed at least part-time, 61% say they currently work from a location outside their home, 19% are exclusively remote and 21% work partially from home and partially from another location, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey published in June.
For those making the switch from fully remote to in-person or hybrid work, the key to a successful re-entry is staying true to the spirit of the word “transition,” experts say.
“What transition really means is that we need to ease into it,” said Dr. Victor Carrión, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. “There’s going to be this impetus to completely return back to normal, but the reality is that life is different now,” he said. “We not only want to be resilient, but we want to be adaptive.”
Instead, workers and bosses should approach the transition period as a different animal than either working from home or pre-pandemic office work. It’s a chance incorporate the best parts of each and synthesize them into a better model of work, as well as process trauma from the pandemic that led to remote work in the first place. Workforces that skip the synthesis and processing steps may do so at their peril.
“There’s a human impulse right now to suppress and move on and return to normality,” said Ezra Bookman, a New York-based ritual designer who consults for companies and communities. “I think that that’s part of the energy that we’re receiving from leadership. That’s the very American way of dealing with trauma: suppress and move on.”
One tool for processing that trauma and creating a tangible transition back to the office could be creating a ritual around it, Bookman explained, but cautioned against a topdown approach that doesn’t engage with why employees might be hesitant to return to work in the first place. Rituals aren’t likely to have much effect if leaders aren’t modeling vulnerability, treating workers as individuals and engaging with their concerns. “I think that what leadership does in this moment is going to be super, super important,” he said. “No ritual is going to magically change the imbalance of power and the fact that employers are not listening to their employees,” he said.
With all that in mind, there are practical steps workers and bosses can take to make the process easier for everyone, as well as a guide to creating a personal or collective back-to-office ritual.
Step 1: Go slow
“People who jump too fast may find themselves feeling exhausted very quickly,” Carrión warned. He recommended gradual re-entry as opposed to heading back to the office five, or even three days a week.
“If your goal is to be in the office four days a week and you’re unsure about the delta variant and only feel good going one day a week, go one day a week,” he said. “Once you’ve dealt with that, you can work toward your goal.” During that transition period, self-care is equally as important as it was during the height of the pandemic. Get a good night’s sleep. Eat well. Exercise. Avoid leaning on alcohol or drugs as coping mechanisms. Remember that everyone had different pandemic experiences and it’s okay to go at your own pace.
“It’s going to be different for different people,” Carrión said.
Step: 2: Acknowledge the pandemic
Part of returning to the office should include reflecting on why we left in the first place, experts say. Holding a moment of silence for those who died of COVID-19 is one potential place to start. Depending on the size of your organization that moment of silence could be with the whole company or just with your team. Bookman suggested pausing and reflecting for 3.9 minutes, in honor of the 3.9 million people who have died worldwide from the virus.
“That gives people permission to say we’ve acknowledged, we’ve made space, we’ve recognized the loss of life,” Bookman said.
Step 3: Create a ritual
Acknowledging COVID as a group is a good springboard for a ritual Bookman calls a “litany of losses.”
Either as group, or individually, people can write down everything they’ve lost over the past year. It can be helpful to read that list aloud or have someone witness it, Bookman said, but you could also do this exercise alone.
“Write down every single thing that you’ve lost and then hold onto that paper until you don’t want it anymore. Until you’re ready to let go.” Then Bookman recommends getting rid of the paper in an intentional and symbolic way. You could burn it, bury it, put it out to sea or use any other method that speaks to you and isn’t part of your regular routine. “Something more than putting it in the recycling bin,” Bookman advised. “It doesn’t mean that the all those things magically go away and suddenly you’re fine with it, but it does give you a different point in your psychological map.”
Carrión recommended a different twist on a litany of losses: writing down your experiences over the past year to incorporate them into your memory and build a personal narrative around them. “If we don’t, some experiences may not be processed and they may continue to be in our brain, nagging us and getting in the way of our functioning,” he said.
“It is very important as we transition we don’t forget the year that has passed.”
Tips for managers and team leaders: One size does not fit all
Making Carrión and Bookman’s advice a reality requires a flexible and empathetic employer, they both acknowledged.
“People feel very differently about returning to work, and they’re all occupying the same space again,” Bookman explained. Some may have had the best year of their lives and spent more time with their kids, he noted. Others, who lost family members or friends or had their marriages fall apart, are still grieving. Still others may have been totally isolated and crave socialization.
Carrión seemed to agree.
“I think managers need to be very sensitive about the differences between individuals. They can not think that there is one solution or formula for everyone,” Carrión said. “They may have to tailor approaches to different individuals and create environments in the workplace that are supportive and promote coping and self-care.”
As for employees, if you can do so safely, speak up about your concerns and needs. “I really want to encourage people to not be chill,” Bookman said. “This moment to be direct, to be brave. Chances are everyone else in the room is feeling similarly and will feel relieved that someone is stepping up to advocate for a smarter, healthier, more real, honest and authentic return to work.”
(SURFSIDE, Fla.) — Search and rescue teams have recovered three additional bodies in the pile of rubble from a collapsed building in Surfside, Florida, following the demolition of the remaining building, according to officials.
First responders were able to search in areas previously inaccessible due to the instability of the portion of Champlain Towers South that still stood following the partial collapse on June 24, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters at a press conference Monday morning.
The death toll now stands at 27, with 118 still unaccounted for, Levine Cava said. The newly accessible areas were likely where a lot of the master bedrooms were located, where people were sleeping, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters.
While the demolition was critical to expanding the search for bodies closer to the standing building, it was also necessary as Tropical Storm Elsa approached the U.S. with winds that “could have brought it down in a matter that could not have been as controlled or predicted,” the mayor said.
The demolition went “exactly as planned,” and the building fell away from the pile that collapsed, Levine Cava said.
“Only dust landed on the existing part,” she said.
Crews received the “all-clear” about an hour after the demolition started around 10:30 p.m. Sunday, and first responders resumed the search by 1 a.m.
Levine Cava emphasized that search and rescue crews “took every action we possibly could” to search for pets that remained in the building prior to the demolition. Multiple full sweeps of the building, which included searches in hiding places such as closets and under beds, were conducted “at great risk to first responders,” the mayor said.
In areas of the building that were not accessible, ladders were used to place live animal traps on balconies, and doorways were opened to give pets the means to escape if they were able to, Levine Cava said. Drones with thermal imaging were also used.
“We went to truly great lengths to take every step that we could,” she said.
Levine Cava described the decision to collapse the entire apartment building as “devastating,” acknowledging the “great tragedy” for the surviving residents of the building, in addition to those who lost loved ones.
“To lose your home and all your belongings in this manner is a great loss as well,” she said.
Officials said it was too dangerous for survivors to enter the building to retrieve their belongings, DeSantis said.
“Obviously it wasn’t worth that risk,” he said. “We can not lose any more people.”
FEMA has been successful in signing families up for assistance, and the city has raised millions of dollars from donations around the world to assist survivors as well, Levine Cava said.
Although the forecast for Tropical Storm Elsa has the center of the storm on the west coast of Florida, there will still be intermittent heavy rain and localized flooding as well as strong gusty winds and the possibility of tornadoes in the region, which could still affect search efforts, said Robert Molleda, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service South Florida.
(NEW YORK) — While COVID-19’s surge has ebbed, violence is on the rise across the United States.
There has been a rash of gun violence in what President Joe Biden called an “epidemic,” including several public mass shootings, increases in incidents in major metropolitan areas and an uptick in road rage clashes.
While dramatic declines in levels of coronavirus have engendered new hope and optimism for some, the effects of the pandemic and the measures taken to combat it linger, simmering tensions brought to a boil and manifesting themselves in anger, and in some cases, violence, experts say.
Federal authorities saw that swell in violence spurred on by COVID’s hardships coming — before the pandemic even got into full swing.
An internal Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by ABC News from spring of 2020 warned that the emotional, mental and financial strain exacerbated by the new coronavirus pandemic combined with social isolation — especially if prolonged — may “increase the vulnerability of some citizens to mobilize to violence.”
“The outbreak of Covid-19, and government’s response to it, have intensified concerns that could accelerate mobilization to violence with extended periods of social distancing,” the memo reads, noting such isolation is a “known risk factor” in inciting violent extremism, along with “financial stress and work disruptions, including unexpected unemployment and layoffs” also “increasing.”
Even as the nation and globe was locking down, the memo, which has not been previously reported, urged agency partners to develop an “action plan” for when communities begin to return to “normal” activities, predicting “the increase in mass gatherings, combined with the lengthy social isolation and other life stressors,” may create environs churned up by COVID, and ripe for violent upheaval.
When reached by ABC News regarding these early warnings, DHS declined comment.
As a tentative reopening got underway in May, DHS Secretary Mayorkas established the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, and a domestic terrorism branch in the Department’s Office of Intelligence & Analysis, aimed at shoring up the Department’s “whole-of-society approach” to thwarting extremisim and other targeted violent acts in the U.S.
Attorney General Merick Garland announced a ‘renewed commitmen’t and multi-pronged Justice Department effort to reduce violent crime through community engagement, targeted enforcement, and interagency collaboration.
Violent crime has “spiked since the start of the pandemic over a year ago,” President Biden said in late June, announcing a range of actions and federal support towards targeting gun violence.
“And as we emerge from this pandemic with the country opening back up again, the traditional summer spike may even be more pronounced than it usually would be,” Biden said.
Pandemic a ‘tipping point’
It wasn’t just federal officials sounding the alarm last year. Doctors — including psychologists — say the pressure of the pandemic may be exacerbating acts of violence and aggression.
“COVID has been a tipping point,” Dr. Aimee Harris-Newon a clinical psychologist in Chicago who focuses on wellness and preventive care. “On top of too much chronic stress, the impact of all this trauma… now everything is starting to leak out.”
And some experts say psychological stressors were already mounting prior to the pandemic.
“We were already in a weakened condition when the pandemic hit — class divisions, overt racism, partisanship, a really poor social support infrastructure — so if you think about the effect of the pandemic on an ‘epidemic’ of shootings — it’s like the immune system of the United States was already suppressed,” Jeffrey Butts, director of the research and evaluation center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told ABC News.
“The social, psychological and economic distress in our country has surpassed people’s ability to cope, and there hasn’t been enough support,” added Dr. Marni Chanoff, a psychiatrist and founder of the integrative wellness group at McLean Hospital. “There is no road map on how to navigate this time.”
‘COVID turned up the volume’
When Mohammed Abdelmagied heard loud bangs near his Times Square kebab and hot dog stand the last Sunday in June, he thought it was firecrackers — someone celebrating an early Fourth of July, or maybe freedom from COVID-19.
It wasn’t: it was gunfire: something he never expected in the area where he’s worked for 13 years — a heavily policed place where shootings have been relatively rare.
“I turn my face to the square, I heard everything but I didn’t see nothing,” Abdelmagied, 46, told ABC News.
Two shootings in two months at the Crossroads of the World have brought a flood of police to the area, in a city that until recently had become a model of safety in major metropolitan areas. These flares of gunfire aren’t only in New York, nor have they remained only within city limits across the country.
Major U.S. cities have been rocked by spates of gun violence over the past few months, part of an already rising trend which did not stop during lockdown, but has become more visible as the country reopens.
“Shortly after a resumption of ‘normal’ life,” the memo from spring of 2020 says, tensions already brewing, then exacerbated during the pandemic, may provide an opportune moment for violent extremism, and violent attacks.
Not including suicides, more than 19,400 people died by gun violence in 2020, up from roughly 15,440 in 2019, and far past the rates in years prior, according to Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group.
In 2021, there have already been more than 10,000 gun violence deaths — with nearly six months left to go.
“Covid turned up the volume,” and has fomented a disintegration of social connections and norms, Butts said.
“Then we see some of these horrible shootings — the actual magnitude of the increase is undeniable,” Butts added.
It’s not just gun violence on the rise: acts of aggression on airplanes have also hit new highs — and not only more flight disruptions, but more violent ones as well.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a record number of potential violations of federal law in unruly passenger cases — identifying more than 490 cases this year so far where passengers potentially broke the law by “interfering with the duties of a crew member.” That’s more than double the amount of cases investigated in 2020; and more than two and a half times the amount in 2019.
Airlines have now reported more than 3,200 reports of disruptive passengers to the FAA this year; the vast majority — more than 2,400 — involve people who refused to wear a mask.
In a Homeland Security Threat Assessment released in October 2020, authorities also underscored concerns arising from COVID-19’s impact, where “anti-government and anti-authority violent extremists could be motivated to conduct attacks in response to perceived infringement of liberties and government overreach as all levels of government seek to limit the spread of the coronavirus that has caused a worldwide pandemic.”
Isolation effect
While social media helped maintain personal connections during quarantine, it can also be quite alienating, experts say — and present an opportunity for online radicalization.
In addition, pandemic job loss can be both heavy financial and psychological burdens.
And the unprecedented loss of life and loved ones to the virus, with more than 600,000 deaths in the U.S. alone, has taken an unspeakable toll, experts say.
Isolating factors like these can increase the risk of engaging — or attempting to engage — in violent extremism, according to the DHS memo.
“These risks are likely to become more widespread as public health measures are expanded — or the timeframe for maintaining social distancing increases,” the memo warned, underscoring the research-backed “need to build social links and bridges to prevent social isolation, which in turn, reduces the risk of radicalization to violence.”
Social distancing has been key to stopping the virus’ spread — but after more than a year of being fearful of anyone near potentially being infected, experts point out that self-preservation may have amplified feelings of mistrust in our communities.
“Someone who’s coming towards you on the sidewalk, and you’d think, you’re spraying your droplets at me!” Butts said. “People were afraid. More so than before, we had to see other people as a potential deadly threat.”
Americans are also still reeling from the economic and emotional blow dealt by COVID-19, despite the ebb of infection, and signs of improvement in the labor market, according to Pew polling this spring; those most vulnerable to the virus have also borne the brunt of its financial fallout.
Breaking the cycle
Tensions boiling over across the U.S. have fed what’s becoming a vicious cycle difficult to break; experts worry, that residual anxiety and collective trauma may outlast the pandemic itself.
“That kind of mental and emotional wear and tear doesn’t go away,” Butts continued. “All the harm that results will be festering for some time. That’s a huge concern.”
As some Americans’ anger about the state of the nation abates from where it was during the summer 2020 COVID surge — experts urge vigilance about what that receding rage might leave in its wake.
Even as the nation prepares to celebrate the Fourth of July and some measure of freedom from COVID, federal authorities are raising concerns about the possibility of domestic terror and violence, including mass shootings, as the 2021 summer season gets into full swing.
Whatever the new normal might be, Chanoff notes getting there will take time.
“The human spirit is resilient and the human capacity to heal is enormous,” Chanoff said. “But without support, I think that these things will likely continue to rise.”
Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton have officially tied the knot, People confirms.
The two reportedly got hitched at Blake’s ranch in Oklahoma on Saturday, after they were spotted applying for a marriage license earlier in the week.
Page Six posted photos of what appears to be the wedding festivities taking place at a chapel built on the sprawling estate.
Earlier this month, Gwen shared snaps from her bridal shower on Instagram. “I got kidnapped by family to celebrate that I’m getting married!” she said in a post on her Instagram Story. She captioned another post, “Feeling loved, feeling blessed.”
Gwen and Blake got engaged last October after dating for five years. They first met on the set of The Voice, where they both served as coaches. Their relationship began in the wake of Gwen’s split from rocker husband Gavin Rossdale and Blake’s very public divorce from another country superstar, Miranda Lambert.
Since announcing their relationship, the two have released a handful of high-powered duets, including a Christmas song for a holiday album of Gwen’s as well as two hit country singles, “Nobody but You” and “Happy Anywhere.”
(SURFSIDE, Fla.) — The remains of the partially collapsed condo building in Surfside, Florida, were demolished at around 10:30 p.m. Sunday night.
Earlier Sunday, police had urged citizens who live within the designated shelter-in-place area, between 86th Street and 89th Street and Abbott Avenue and the shoreline, to remain indoors “effective immediately,” warning about dust from the demolition.
Some residents and animal welfare advocates had expressed concerned about the fate of pets left behind in the partially collapsed tower and the demolishing of the structure. But there are no animals remaning in the building, mayor of Miami-Dade County Daniella Levine Cava said during a news conference Sunday evening.
“As an animal lover and a pet owner myself my entire life, I have made it a priority since day one to do absolutely everything possible to search for any animals that may still in the building. And in the days since the collapse, the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Team has conducted three full sweeps of the place, including searching in closets, under beds, and all the other places that they could to see an animal that might have been in hiding … The latest information we have is that there are no animals, remaining in the building,” Levine Cava said.
The mayor also advised residents of nearby buildings to “close your windows, put your air conditioning on recirculation” in the case of dust of other fallout from the demolition. However, she said: “It is not expected anything other than some light debris would potentially affect all those buildings.”
Mayor of Surfside, Charles Burkett, called Tropical Storm Elsa predicted to hit the area, a “blessing in disguise ” because it inititated the discussion to demolish the remaining part of the building.
“That discussion has accomplished several things. It’s eliminated a looming threat, a dangerous threat for our rescue workers. It will potentially open up probably a third of the pile so we can all, you know, so the teams can focus not just on two thirds of the pile, but on the whole thing, which is important. And, you know, we want to make sure that we control which way the building falls and not, not a hurricane,” Burkett said.
Miami-Dade Fire Chief, Alan Cominsky said that once the building comes down, “there’ll be several different features that we’ll have to address obviously with the demolition and that’ll be the priority and securing the scene in that sense.” Afterward, the rescue mission will continiue, Cominsky said.
The partial collapse occurred around 1:15 a.m. on June 24 at the Champlain Towers South condominium in the small, beachside town of Surfside, about 6 miles north of Miami Beach.
Approximately 55 of the oceanfront complex’s 136 units were destroyed, according to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Assistant Chief Raide Jadallah. Since then, hundreds of first responders have been carefully combing through debris in hopes of finding survivors.
As of Sunday, the death toll has risen to 24 people. Rescuers were still searching for 121 people as of Sunday afternoon.
A letter from the board of directors of Champlain Towers East, obtained by ABC News, told residents on Sunday that they didn’t know when the other building would come down but “the most common estimate is sometime early evening today.”
The board advised residents to evacuate as soon as possible to avoid traffic.
Levine Cava said other residents nearby wouldn’t need to evacuate but were urged to stay indoors, close their windows and turn off their air conditioners to keep out dust from the demolition.
She said the demolition will be in the form of an “energetic felling,” which “uses small, strategically placed detonations and relies on the force of gravity to bring the building down in place, right on this footprint.”
Search and rescue teams will continue with their operations, “very shortly after the demolition,” Levine Cava added.
The mayor also noted that the all of the crews are working to get as much work done before Tropical Storm Elsa arrives.
Preparations are now being made for Elsa, which weakened from a hurricane in the morning and is expected to come near southern Florida on Monday, into Tuesday. A cover has been placed on the part of the debris field that is closest to the building, Cava said.
On Saturday, Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for several counties in anticipation of Elsa. Heat, humidity, heavy rain, strong winds and lightning storms also have made the conditions difficult for rescuers, periodically forcing them to pause their round-the-clock efforts in recent days.
On Friday, two more bodies were found in the wreckage as crews search the area of the collapse, officials said. Two more bodies were recovered overnight, officials announced Saturday.
Two bodies were discovered Thursday evening, including that of a 7-year-old daughter of a Miami firefighter, according to Levine Cava. The firefighter was not part of the crew that discovered the girl’s body.
“It goes without saying that every night since this last Wednesday has been immensely difficult,” Levine Cava said during a press briefing in Surfside on Friday morning. “But last night was uniquely different. It was truly different and more difficult for our first responders.”
Meanwhile, 191 people who were living or staying in the condominium at the time of the disaster have been accounted for and are safe, according to Levine Cava, who has stressed that the figures are “very fluid” and “continue to change.”
The number of those accounted for has gone up as detectives continue to audit the list of people reported missing, a development that Levine Cava called “very good news.”
However, no survivors have been discovered in the rubble of the building since the morning it partially collapsed, and the hope that more people would be found alive appeared to be fading Friday.
Miami-Dade County Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said rescue workers are “emotional” after the discovery of a first responder’s own daughter, which “takes a toll.” But he said that won’t stop them from continuing to search for those who are still missing.
“I just was hoping that we would have some survivors,” Cominsky said at a press briefing on Friday morning.
Speaking on the signing the emergency order to demolish the remainder of the building earlier this week, Levine Cava said the move will “help us move quickly.”
The structure was cleared by crews last week, and all search and rescue resources have since been shifted to focusing on the pile of rubble. But the two sites are side-by-side and the remaining building has posed challenges for the rescuers trying to locate any survivors or human remains in the wreckage.
“Given our ongoing safety concerns about the integrity of the building, we’re continuing to restrict access to the collapse zone,” Levine Cava said during a press briefing in Surfside on Thursday evening.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden traveled to Surfside on Thursday to meet with officials, first responders, search and rescue teams, as well as families of the victims. Recalling the 1972 car accident that killed his first wife and 1-year-old daughter as well as badly injuring his two sons, the president told reporters: “It’s bad enough to lose somebody but the hard part, the really hard part, is to not know whether they’ll survive or not.”
The cause of the partial collapse to a building that has withstood decades of hurricanes remains unknown and is under investigation.
Built in the 1980s, the Champlain Towers South was up for its 40-year recertification and had been undergoing roof work — with more renovations planned — when it partially collapsed, according to officials.
A structural field survey report from October 2018, which was among hundreds of pages of public documents released by the town of Surfside late Sunday, said the waterproofing below the condominium’s pool deck and entrance drive was failing and causing “major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas.”
A slew of lawsuits against the Champlain Towers South Condo Association have already been filed on behalf of survivors and victims, alleging the partial collapse could have been avoided and that the association knew or should have known about the structural damage. A spokesperson for the association told ABC News they cannot comment on pending litigation but that their “focus remains on caring for our friends and neighbors during this difficult time.”
The association’s board released a statement Friday saying its surviving members “have concluded that, in the best interest of all concerned parties, an independent Receiver should be appointed to oversee the legal and claims process.”
“We know that answers will take time as part of a comprehensive investigation,” the statement continued, “and we will continue to work with city, state, local, and federal officials in their rescue efforts, and to understand the causes of this tragedy.”
In the wake of the Surfside building collapse, the city of North Miami Beach ordered that another condominium close immediately amid safety concerns connected to the 40-year recertification process, officials said.
The Crestview Towers Condominium is “structurally and electrically unsafe,” based on the review of a recertification report submitted Friday, city officials said in a statement.
“The city of North Miami Beach has taken the steps that we recommended to review to make sure that the recertification process was being done in a timely basis. And as I understand it, as a result of that audit, they found a building that had not been recertified, and when the information came in, they took some steps,” Levine Cava said Friday evening.
Some 300 residents have to evacuate, according to ABC Miami affiliate WPLG, while a full structural assessment is conducted.
Yandy Smith is celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Love & Hip Hop, the VH1 reality series franchise that helped launch the careers of many personalities we see today, including Grammy Award winner Cardi B.
Smith, who recently joined the Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta cast after starting on Love & Hip Hop: New York in 2011, says she’s still amazed by her journey as one of the original members.
“It’s so crazy looking back, because literally my whole entire adult life has happened with all of you,” Smith tells ABC Audio. “Every single thing from being a dating woman, to being an engaged woman, to a married woman — well a mom first — then a married woman. Then a single mom… every single step of the way you guys have endured with me.”
Smith says having that endurance over the years wasn’t an easy feat. That’s until she learned one of her biggest lessons: “You got to get thick skin.”
“And you also have to really figure out who your protective village is because you will get torn down,” she says. “Everyone once in their life deals with a breakup. Everyone once in their lives makes a stupid decision. Everyone once in a while says something that just is like, ‘Why did I say that? Why did I do that?'”
Unfortunately, Smith says, having those stupid decisions “in front of a million people or more” will lead to some really harsh feedback.
“You get a lot of judgment,” she says. “And if you don’t have thick skin, it will break you down to the core of the white meat.”
The new season of Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta, also starring Rasheeda Frost, Spice and Erica Mena, premieres Monday, July 5, at 8 p.m. ET on VH1.
(NEW YORK) — Tropical Storm Elsa has set its sights for the U.S. after it wreaked havoc on islands in the Caribbean.
The system, which was downgraded to a tropical storm over the weekend after becoming the first hurricane in the 2021 Atlantic season, was about 50 miles southeast of Cayo Largo, Cuba, Monday morning as it headed northwest at 14 mph. Maximum sustained winds were clocking in at 65 mph.
Elsa destroyed several structures in Barbados, when it hit as a Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds at 74 mph on Friday.
The heavy rainfall also damaged homes in Haiti on Saturday and flooded parts of Jamaica on Sunday.
Elsa is expected to bring gusty winds and rain across central and western Cuba through Monday and pass near the Florida Keys with heavier rain and tropical force winds early Tuesday.
The storm will then move near or over the west coast of Florida on Tuesday and Wednesday, possible sparing recovery efforts at the site of the collapsed condo building in Surfside, Florida, near Miami Beach on the east coast of the state.
What remained of the Champlain Towers condominium was demolished Sunday night ahead of the storm.
Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett described Tropical Storm Elsa as a “blessing in disguise” because it fueled discussions to demolish the building left standing after the partial collapse on June 24.
Tropical storm watches and warmings have been issued in parts of Cuba and the Florida Keys, while a storm surge watch is in effect for the west coast of Florida.
By Wednesday morning, the storm will move inland inland into North Florida and parts of Georgia.
The Florida peninsula, coastal Georgia and the Carolinas should monitor the progress of the storm, as additional watches and warnings will likely be issued Monday afternoon.
(NEW YORK) — Let’s face it, a lot of Americans who love the Olympics don’t sit glued to our seats watching swimming, track and field or cycling in the years between each games. But when the flame is lit in Tokyo on July 23, we still want to sound like we did.
So, if you’re going to watch the Tokyo Summer Games, it’s good to know who you should be paying attention to over the course of the two weeks.
The U.S. has led the overall medal count in six straight summer games, essentially every year since Soviet athletes competed together, but China has put the pressure on recently and even bested them in golds at the 2008 Beijing Games.
So who are the Americans who will be charged with keeping the medal streak alive?
ABC News takes a look at some of the best:
Simone Biles — 24 — Gymnastics
OK, so this is the name you probably do know. Biles, unquestionably the most successful gymnast in history, will likely be a bigger favorite than any athlete at the games. After winning three individual golds, including the all-around, and a team gold in Rio, she may actually be expected to do better in 2021. After all, the bronze she won in beam in 2016 simply won’t cut it for one of the most determined athletes ever.
No woman has won back-to-back individual all-around titles since Czech gymnast Vera Caslavska in 1964 and ’68. But Biles has never lost an all-around competition in the Olympics or World Championships, winning all six times she competed. Presuming she does hang up her leotard after Tokyo, fans should enjoy watching the greatest of all time while they still can.
Trayvon Bromell — 26 — Track
Like Michael Phelps in the pool, Usain Bolt will be missed on the track in 2021. The greatest sprinter of all time swept the 100- and 200-meter sprints in each of the last three Olympics. His exit opens up a spot on the podium for a new fastest man on the planet — just maybe the United States’ Bromell. Coming off a world championship in the 100 meters in 2019, Christian Coleman was expected to be the top sprinter on the American team, and the gold medal favorite. Instead, Coleman missed three drug tests over a 12-month period in 2018 and 2019 and was banned from competition for two years.
Bromell has starred this year in Coleman’s absence. He was a junior sensation, predicted to ascend to the fastest in the world, but injuries waylaid that promise — until now. He blew out his Achilles tendon at the Rio Olympics during the 4×100-meter relay and spent most of the last few years sitting out from the sport. Back to full health, he has the fastest time in the world in 2021 (9.77 seconds) and cruised to victory at the U.S. Olympic trials (9.8 seconds).
Ryan Crouser — 28 — Shot put
Everything about Crouser is big — including, of course, his 6-foot-7, 320-pound frame. But most importantly, his throws in shot put competition are very, very big. He came out firing in 2021 after a largely lost pandemic season. Crouser threw for an indoor world record (22.82 meters) on literally his first competitive throw of 2021. After he moved outdoors, he broke a near-mythic 31-year-old world record at the U.S. Olympic Trials in June by throwing 23.37 meters. In fact, all five of his qualifying throws at the trials would have won the competition.
Crouser won the gold in 2016 and set an Olympic record at the same time. Look for him to be gunning for the gold and another world record in Tokyo. There’s a chance the U.S. could sweep the podium with Joe Kovacs (who edged out Crouser at the 2019 World Championships and took silver in Rio) and Payton Otterdahl finishing second and third at U.S. trials. Kovacs has the second-longest throw in the world this season by someone not named Crouser.
Caeleb Dressel — 24 — Swimming
For the first time since 1996, Phelps will not be competing at the Summer Olympics. Dressel is no Phelps, but he will be the biggest name on the U.S. team in Tokyo. Dressel already owns two gold medals from Rio (he can thank Phelps, in part, as he won two relay golds with the legend). All he’s done since 2016 is keep improving. He won seven golds in an unbelievable performance at the 2017 World Championships and then six more at the 2019 World Championships (along with two silvers).
The freestyle and butterfly, both at short distances, are Dressel’s two specialties. He’s the favorite in the 100-meter butterfly in 2021 as the current world record holder. But he will be tested in several events by Australian star Kyle Chalmers, who won the gold in Rio in the 100-meter freestyle at just 17.
Adeline Gray — 30 — Wrestling
Gray may be the greatest women’s freestyle wrestler of all time. There’s just one problem: In her only Olympic appearance, in Rio, she suffered a shocking upset in the quarterfinals coming off back-to-back world championships at 75kg. Gray didn’t let the disappointment hold her down. The Denver native bounced back with two more world titles in 2018 and 2019. She’s taken the one-year delay in stride and is in good form this year, coming off a gold at the Pan American Championships in late May.
She’ll be the favorite at 76kg in Tokyo against a strong contingent of Japanese women, but you can bet she won’t take that for granted.
Nyjah Huston — 26 — Skateboarding
Biles may be the most well-known athlete in Tokyo, but she will not be the athlete with the most Instagram followers. That designation goes to Huston — with his 4.6 million followers — as skateboarding makes its debut at the Olympics. After all, there’s a reason the sport is making its first appearance — its popularity with young fans. Huston, who will be competing in street skateboarding — one of two skating competitions in Tokyo — has had more competition success than anyone in history. He’s won 12 X Games gold medals and four world championships.
Huston has literally been ripping up the ramps and rails of street competitions since he was a child. He lost his signature dreadlocks some years back, but it was only this year that he was knocked off the world title podium’s top step after three straight wins. In June, he was upset at the world championships by Yuto Horigome, who will have the strength of an entire nation behind him in Tokyo.
Katie Ledecky — 24 — Swimming
Ledecky is quite simply the best freestyle distance swimmer ever. She already holds five gold medals (one from 2012 and four from 2016) and owns the world record in the 400-, 800- and 1,500-meter freestyle. It kinda feels like Ledecky has been on swimming’s global stage forever, but that may be because she burst on the scene as a 15-year-old prodigy in 2012 when she won the 800-meter freestyle in London. In Rio, she beat the silver medalist by over 11 seconds in the 800 meters.
She is a big favorite, especially in the 800 meters and 1,500 meters (being contested for the first time by women), but it’s been a while since she swam against top competition globally after an illness forced her to pull out of several events at the 2019 World Championships. She won the 800 meters, but only barely after years of dominating the race. She took silver in the 400 and 4×200, but dropped out of her two other races.
With a performance like 2016, Ledecky could become the record holder for most gold medals by any woman in Olympics history (summer or winter). Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina currently holds the record with nine, so wins in the 200, 400, 800, 1,500 and 4×200 would give her the solo record with 10 golds.
Sydney McLaughlin — 21 — Track
The biggest head-to-head showdown on the track in Tokyo will likely be won by an American — the question is just which one. Dalilah Muhammad stood atop the podium in Rio for the women’s 400-meter hurdles, and she spent most of the last four years ascending to the same spot in competitions around the globe. She won gold in the 2019 world championships in world record time (52.16 seconds) and would’ve been a heavy favorite to win if the Olympics had taken place in 2020. But McLaughlin, the youngest track athlete on the Olympic team in 2016, hit her peak at the perfect time.
Muhammad has struggled in 2021 at the same time McLaughlin has exploded onto the scene. The rivalry came to a head at the U.S. Olympic trials in June when the two faced off in the 400 hurdles final. Not only did McLaughlin dust her, she set a new world record at 51.90 seconds. Stunned, McLaughlin crouched to the track after the win and covered her mouth. Muhammad finished second, more than a half second back, but she’ll be in Tokyo, too. And the rivalry will be back on.
Carissa Moore — 28 — Surfing
Life is pretty good when you’re 28 years old and already in the Hall of Fame. Oh, and you get to spend your life at the beach. For all the success Moore has had in surfing — and it’s a lot — winning a gold medal in the sport’s Olympic debut would be especially sweet. Moore, unsurprisingly, was born and raised in Hawaii and began surfing as a toddler. Now, she’s a four-time world champion, including in 2019.
Moore is currently leading the World Surf League point standings, but she’s being hunted by the same Aussies who will be her main competition in Tokyo: Sally Fitzgibbons and Stephanie Gilmore. Gilmore is the winningest woman in surfing history with seven world championships (in a tie with countrywoman Layne Beachley).
Hannah Roberts — 19 — Freestyle BMX
The teenager from South Bend, Indiana, is the favorite to win gold in freestyle BMX as it debuts at the Tokyo Games. But even if she does, it’ll probably only rank second in biggest moments in 2021. Roberts married her fiancee, Kelsey Miller, in January, writing on Instagram, “With everything going on and everything coming up we decided to have a small ceremony.” Nothing like downplaying a trip to the biggest competition of your life.
Women have long been fighting for a spot in major competitions for freestyle BMX, which features athletes flipping, spinning and tricking their way across a ramp-filled course. The X Games, the largest action sports competition for decades, relegated women’s BMX to a non-medal, demonstration sport in 2019 — the last time the games were held due to COVID — which brought protests and a holdout from athletes. On the global scene, however, world championships have been held in 2017, 2019 and 2021. All Roberts has done is win gold all three times.
Kyle Snyder — 25 — Wrestling
Snyder leads a U.S. freestyle wrestling team that is expected to have plenty of success in Tokyo. The 2016 gold medalist at 97kg — at just 20 years old and fresh off his sophomore season at Ohio State — will be looking to repeat after cruising through the 2021 U.S. Olympic trials in April. After winning in Rio, he defeated legend Abdulrashid Sadulaev to win gold at the 2017 World Championships to break a four-year undefeated streak for the Russian. But he lost the rematch in 2018 and won only bronze in 2019.
Two-time world champion Kyle Dake, Gable Steveson — who just won an NCAA title in March — and David Taylor, the 2018 world champion at 86kg, are all expected to contend for gold in freestyle wrestling in Tokyo.
Jordan Windle — 22 — Diving
Windle is not expected to medal in Tokyo, but he might have the best story of any American athlete. The University of Texas diver was born in Cambodia and his parents died when he was an infant. He was adopted at 2 from an orphanage in Phnom Penh by an American father and grew up in the U.S. Five years ago, he was featured in a TD Ameritrade commercial pegging him as a future Olympian. After a strong performance on the 10-meter platform at the 2021 Olympic trials in early June, it’s come true.
He has an impressive college resume, winning the NCAA 1-meter title this spring as well as the 2019 NCAA title on the platform in 2019. China has largely dominated Olympic diving in recent years, but American David Boudia did break through for a gold on the platform in 2012 and bronze in 2016. And we know Windle has overcome bigger odds before.
(NEW YORK) — It’s been a school year like no other in recent memory — combining the challenge of remote and hybrid learning for millions with the agony and strain of a pandemic that has killed more than 600,000.
Mental health has taken a toll on many students and staff alike.
So as districts prepare for the fall after the first full year during the coronavirus pandemic, many are looking at ways to help best address the mental health needs of students, especially those who may have experienced trauma, anxiety or social isolation.
One Ohio school district will welcome back students with more counselors and social workers on hand. Hilliard City Schools in Columbus has added seven new school counselors, up to 42, and 10 more social workers, for 15 total, Director of Student Well-Being Mike Abraham told ABC News.
“Anxiety has always been high with this generation,” Abraham said. “With the pandemic, some students have become very comfortable with isolation, not having to deal with the anxiety that school might bring or their peers bring. That’s what all districts are dealing with coming back now that these kids are together — giving them strategies to be able to deal with their anxiety, to deal with whatever mental health issues that they’re struggling with.”
The school district, which has nearly 17,000 students, is tapping into federal relief money earmarked for K-12 public schools to pay for the new positions.
Last month, Iowa officials announced the state is launching a new pre-K-12 school mental health center that would expand training and resources that support mental health needs in schools.
The Iowa Department of Education is putting $20 million in federal pandemic relief toward the center, which aims to “address the impact pandemic-related disruptions have had on students and will focus on strengthening mental health support moving forward,” Iowa Department of Education Director Ann Lebo said in a statement.
And the Miami-Dade County school district is exploring using federal relief funds to hire more mental health clinicians as most of the district’s 334,000 students are expected to return to in-person learning this fall, the Miami Herald reported last month.
Other initiatives targeting school culture include adding mental health as an excused absence. That will be the case for Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland’s largest school district, starting in the fall, Board of Education member Patricia O’Neill told ABC News Washington, D.C., affiliate WJLA-TV.
“I think coming off the pandemic this year, adults and students recognize the challenges that mental health has brought about,” O’Neill told the station. “We had to figure out how to make this change and elevate the importance of mental health, as it may be a barrier to learning.”
Range of mental health concerns
The full impact of the pandemic on students will take time to understand, Kelly Vaillancourt Strobach, director of policy and advocacy for the National Association of School Psychologists and a school psychologist, told ABC News. One area of concern is emergency department visits for attempted suicide or suicide ideation, she said.
In 2020, mental health-related emergency department visits among those aged 12 to 17 increased 31% compared to 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Visits for suspected suicide attempts in girls that age from Feb. 21 to March 20, 2021, were 50.6% higher than the same period in 2019, the agency reported.
A report published in Pediatrics also found “significant increases” in the number of emergency department visits for suicide ideation and attempts in youth for certain months in 2020 when compared to the previous year.
Isolation due to remote learning is another concern. A recent report from a team of researchers at the Graduate Center, City University of New York found that 91% of New York City parents surveyed agreed there should be “increased mental health supports for students due to social isolation from COVID-19.”
Meanwhile, some students may not have experienced any toll on their mental health, and may have even thrived virtually, Vaillancourt Strobach said.
“We don’t know the level of trauma that individual students have had. We don’t know their family situation, if they lost somebody, if parents have lost jobs,” she said. “So what we are encouraging schools to do is really in those first couple of weeks, just infuse a lot of social-emotional learning, give kids the opportunity to talk about what’s happened over the last year.”
“There’s a lot of focus and attention on learning loss, or lost instructional time. Certainly it’s important that we address student’s academic needs, but if we don’t have a handle on their social-emotional learning and their mental health needs, the academics are never going to come,” she added.
‘All about adjustment’
Summer to fall can often be a tough transition for students in general, Janine Domingues, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute and the manager of curriculum development and professional training for its school and community programs, noted.
“That first month of school is all about adjustment,” she told ABC News. “Now, even more so, it’s a whole different ball game.”
Students may experience anxiety and stress while getting acclimated to the classroom and a new routine, she said.
When Centennial High School in Corona, California, welcomed back students on campus for their last quarter this past school year, it was an adjustment for some students returning for in-person learning, Josh Godinez, a counselor at the school and chair of the board of the California Association of School Counselors, told ABC News.
“It was almost like the isolation allowed them to create almost somewhat of a fantasy of what they remembered about school. And then showing up to the social distancing partitions, only half their class being there, everybody in masks, it wasn’t that picture that they had created,” he said. “Things start to get back to normal, but aren’t really back to normal.”
As a counselor, Godinez said he worked with students on an individual level to address any anxiety, apprehension, grief or fears students had.
“There was no one response when they came back to school,” he said.
A call for lasting change
Come the fall, Centennial High School, which has about 3,300 students, will have brought on a new counselor, focusing on English learners, bringing them to nine total, Godinez said.
The pandemic has helped bring more attention to the importance of mental health support in school, particularly as districts have an infusion of federal funding that could be put toward more staffing or training, and how schools can foster a healing-centered environment “focusing on social-emotional well-being,” Domingues said.
“This year has kind of really helped propel that mission forward,” she said.
The attention and funding come as schools nationally are largely understaffed when it comes to support staff like social workers and psychologists, experts said.
The National Association of School Psychologists recommends a ratio of no more than 500 students per school psychologist. In the 2019-2020 school year, the national ratio was estimated to be more than double, and only one state met the recommended ratio, the organization said.
The National Association of Social Workers and American School Counselor Association both recommend a ratio of 250 students per social worker and counselor, which most states also fail to meet, according to a 2019 ACLU report.
“We’ve had 100,000 traumatized school communities in this country,” Robert Boyd, president of the School-Based Health Alliance, which promotes school-based health centers in the U.S., told ABC News. “We’re coming into this with not enough school behavioral health specialists. … We didn’t have it before the pandemic.”
The pandemic relief funds could help bring those ratios down, the experts ABC News spoke with said, though noted more rural areas often face a staffing shortage. Boyd’s organization is also focused on diversifying school support staff, which tends to be white women, he said.
Some schools may need to lean on community providers, Vaillancourt Strobach said. Trained grief counselors, for instance, may include pastors and morticians, Boyd noted.
Beyond dealing with staffing shortages, districts may build up their programs, only to not be able to sustain them in the long term.
“Are we going to make a lot of really good progress because there’s been so much attention paid to the importance of school mental health, and then with the American Rescue Plan dollars hit their limit, are we going to be back at square one?” Vaillancourt Strobach said.
Mental health professionals hope this spotlight leads to lasting change and funding support, beyond the pandemic.
“We don’t need to focus on student mental health just because of COVID,” Vaillancourt Strobach said. “The need has always been there; as a nation, we are finally paying attention to it.”
