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(BALTIMORE) — At least 30 people were injured, two fatally, when a mass shooting erupted early Sunday in Baltimore, turning what had been a festive neighborhood block party into what one witness described as a “war zone.”

An 18-year-old girl was found dead at the scene from a gunshot wound and a 20-year-old man was taken to a hospital, where he died, authorities said. Three of the injured people were in critical condition, officials said.

“It was a war zone. It was definitively a warzone,” one witness, who only wanted to be identified by her initials L.N. because she feels unsafe in Baltimore, told ABC News.

The mass shooting unfolded around 12:30 a.m. in the Brooklyn Homes neighborhood in the southern district of the city. Acting Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley said police officers rushed to the scene when numerous 911 callers reported shots being fired.

Worley said the barrage of gunfire broke out during a large block party at a housing development in the 800 block of Gretna Court.

“When officers got here, we located multiple victims suffering from gunshot wounds,” Worley said.

No suspects have been arrested in the violence Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott described as “a reckless, cowardly act.”

“This morning, all of Baltimore is grieving the lives that were lost here, and our hearts are with those who are recovering as a result of this mass shooting,” Scott said at a news conference near the crime scene. “We will not stop until we find those cowards who decided to just shoot dozens of people, causing people to lose their lives.”

Worley said investigators are combing through security video in an attempt to identify suspects. He said a motive also remains under investigation.

Directing his comments to the assailants, Scott said, “I want those responsible to hear me clearly, we will not stop until we find you. And, we will find you.”

BPD is on scene of a masa shooting incident in the 800 blk of Gretna Court in our Southern District. Acting Commissioner Worley and PIO are on scene. Media Staging Area will be located at the intersection of 6th Street and Audrey Avenue. pic.twitter.com/2JK5F09WMB

— Baltimore Police (@BaltimorePolice) July 2, 2023

“Until then, I hope that with every single breath you take, you think about the lives that you took and you think about the lives that you impacted here tonight.”

Both the mayor and Worley asked for the community’s help in finding the perpetrators.

“If you saw anything or know anything, please call 911,” Worley said.

Scott added, “Treat this as if it were your family, how you would want to be treated if you were mourning, if this was your neighborhood, if this was an event in your community.”

The names of the slain victims were not immediately identified.

The witness, L.N., told ABC News that she was leaving the annual “Brooklyn Day” neighborhood block party and as she was walking to her car, she heard what she immediately recognized as gunfire.

“I mean, it was it was loud,” said L.N. “It was messy, all these people were running around the building running everywhere. It was just … oh my god, all these young people running.”

L.N. said two young women who had been shot approached her and asked for help. She said she put both shooting victims in her car and drove to MedStar Harbor Hospital, running red lights along the way. She said one of the wounded women in her car “kept screaming every time I hit a bump.”

“I wanted them babies to be OK. They are babies. These are young people, very young people, that were out there,” L.N. said.

Worley said nine people, including the young man who died, were taken to area hospitals by ambulance. Additionally, 20 other victims walked into hospital emergency rooms throughout the region seeking treatment for gunshot wounds, he said.

“This is an extensive crime scene,” Worley said. “Our detectives will be here quite a while.”

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore released a statement Sunday, condemning “yet another mass shooting (to) strike our community where a celebratory gathering turned deadly.”

“Maryland has had enough of watching gun violence continue to ravage our state and our nation,” Moore said. “The fact that these horrific shootings continue to take place is abominable. We as a state will continue to do everything we can to prevent senseless acts of violence like the one we saw last night.”

ABC News’ Deena Zaru contributed to this report.

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(WICHITA, Kan.) — Seven people were shot and two others were trampled when a gunfight involving multiple patrons erupted early Sunday inside a Wichita, Kansas, nightclub, sparking a chaotic stampede for the exit door, according to police.

At least four guns were fired during the wild shootout that erupted at 12:58 a.m. inside the City Nightz nightclub in the Old Town section of Wichita, Lt. Aaron Moses, executive officer of the Wichita Police Department, said at a news conference on Sunday.

Moses said an individual suspected of being one of the gunmen who opened fire inside the nightclub was taken into custody, and investigators are working to identify others involved in the shooting.

“Our investigation has shown us that at least four firearms were discharged inside the establishment during this incident,” Moses said.

The shooting came despite an increased police presence in the Old Town area due to previous problems, including a shooting in May that killed a 19-year-old woman, officials said.

Officers were on patrol outside City Nightz when “they heard a disturbance and screams from inside the business and then a large number of people exited the business,” Moses said.

“Through that chaos … we ended up identifying, at this point, seven shooting victims and two traumatic injury victims,” Moses said. “We believe all of the injuries occurred inside the business.”

He said the two people who suffered traumatic injuries, a 30-year-old woman and a 31-year-old man, were trampled in the mass scramble to escape the gunfire.

He said a motive for the shooting is under investigation.

At least four guns were seized from inside the nightclub and police were analyzing them to determine if any of them were used in the shooting, Moses said.

He said the shooting victims included two women and five men ranging in age from 21 to 34.

Five of the victims were taken to hospitals by ambulance, while the others showed up at emergency rooms on their own. One of the people injured was in critical condition, while the others are expected to survive non-life-threatening injuries, Moses said.

“As the mayor of the city of Wichita, we have to take actions to push back against this increase in gun violence that we have been seeing,” Mayor Brandon Whipple said at a news conference Sunday. “We have to come together as a community and talk with our young people, in particular, that resorting to gun violence is not a way to resolve any of the problems or issues.”

Witchita Police Chief Joe Joe Sullivan said he was disturbed to learn so many guns were either used or seized inside the nightclub.

“There’s going to be an extensive investigation to find out how firearms got into this club and who’s responsible for bringing them in there,” Sullivan said.

Detective Chris Merceau of the Wichita Police Department said at Sunday’s news conference that police have responded to 12 incidents associated with City Nightz in the past year, including investigating aggravated battery cases and a May 21 drive-by shooting.

Owners of City Nightz could not be reached for comment. A phone message left at the club was not immediately returned.

Merceau said the past problems at the nightclub prompted an investigation by the police department’s Special Investigations Bureau. He said officers met with the club owners on May 25 to discuss security concerns.

“We discussed the importance of wanding people using metal detectors, having working video cameras, maintaining the parking lot and other best practices,” Merceau said. “Whether or not those practices and recommendations were followed here will be determined by this investigation.”

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(NEW YORK) — With the Fourth of July right around the corner, many cities are gearing up for their traditional fireworks displays with many locations opting for innovative alternatives.

Pallavi Pant, head of global health at the Health Effects Institute, told ABC News that the use of fireworks releases metallic particles into the air that can have harmful consequences.

“These fireworks, you know, what gives them their color — the blues, the greens, the vibrant reds — are essentially metals, like copper. Copper gives you blue, or strontium, which gives you the bright red we see in the fireworks,” Pant explained. “When we use these fireworks, either in our homes and our backyards or with our friends or the family, or in a professional sort of setup, which tends to be in many cases in the US, we are emitting all of these particles in the air.”

Studies have shown that the particles released by fireworks can have negative impacts on human health, especially for people with respiratory conditions like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Pant explained that researchers have been noting these effects since as far back as the 1970s and that people with existing heart conditions may also be affected.

“You may experience aggravation of symptoms,” she said. “Shortness of breath is a common one. Sometimes you have a sort of irritation in your eyes.”

Effects on air quality can also be compounded by fires started by fireworks. The National Fire Protection Association reports that, “fireworks started an estimated 12,264 fires in 2021, including 2,082 structure fires, 316 vehicle fires, and 9,866 outside and other fires. These fires caused 29 civilian injuries and $59 million in direct property damage.”

That year, a group of 150 fire scientists released a warning against using fireworks in the West due to increased fire risks associated with drought. Many western cities, like Flagstaff, Arizona, have banned or limited firework use for those reasons.

Flagstaff is one of the cities embracing alternative celebrations for the Fourth of July, due to the fire risk. They’ve been celebrating with a free laser light show for a few years now, which, according to a press release, “[replaces] the standard fireworks with a stunning display of multicolored lights and lasers in sync to fun music.”

“The shift from traditional fireworks to a laser light show was the responsible action to take due to extreme fire risk with the dry and hot conditions in the northland. It is extremely important to have a safe celebration and be fire aware,” Flagstaff City Manager Greg Clifton said in a press release. “And it is also important to have a yearly celebration that we can all anticipate and plan on.”

Some others, like Boulder, Colorado, are choosing to use drones for their festive displays. The city of Boulder explained in a press release that prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, its annual fireworks display had been a tradition dating back to 1941.

“The shift from traditional fireworks to drones was not an easy decision and based on a number of factors,” the release said. “Including increased fire danger fueled by climate change.”

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(NEW YORK) — Between the damaging storm threat from the Midwest to the East and dangerous heat in the West and South, more than 110 million Americans are on alert for dangerous weather over the holiday weekend.

On Saturday, excessively hot temperatures extending from the West Coast to the South could affect 66 million Americans.

Temperatures in the West will reach the 100s in many locations and even the 110s in places like Redding, California, and Fresno, California, along with Phoenix, Arizona. A whopping 116 degrees is expected in Palm Springs.

In the South, heat index temperatures (how temperatures feel) will range from 105 to 115 degrees on Saturday in at least 8 southern states from Texas to Georgia. The entire state of Mississippi is under an excessive heat warning.

On Saturday, the highest risk area is centered over St. Louis, Louisville and Indianapolis stretching across portions of I-70, I-55, I-65 and I-64.

More than 50 million Americans are in the storm zone this holiday weekend. From Missouri to the East Coast, Americans will need to stay alert for storms with damaging winds along with chances for large hail and a few tornadoes.

On Sunday, the threat for damaging wind and large hail will extend from Tennessee to New Jersey.

Temperatures are expected to remain hot through the July 4th holiday.

Fifteen states remain under air quality alerts on Saturday. Overall, the smoke in America is weakening but those with asthma and other respiratory issues should continue to use caution, health officials warn.

Health officials say its important to remember to reduce outdoor exertion and listen to your body – sitting in the shade with plenty of adequate hydration is of the utmost importance if you’re outside. Better yet, stay indoors with air conditioning.

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(NEW YORK) — Kelsey Hoskin charges students $675 for an hour-long, private college admissions strategy Zoom session. And students are paying.

Unlike many traditional private college admissions consultants, Hoskin hasn’t served as an admissions officer before. She’s a recent alumna of Harvard University and a current medical student at the University of Michigan.

Hoskin, who has 127.7k TikTok followers under her account @harvardhoneyyy as of writing, says that during the past admissions cycle, at least two of her students were accepted into each of the eight Ivy Leagues.

As acceptance rates at selective universities seemingly hit record lows each year, anxiety over the college admissions process only continues to increase, inspiring students to turn to fellow students for advice. For the Class of 2027, Yale University reported it’s largest-ever pool of applicants, with only a 4.35% acceptance rate, the lowest in its history.

The college admissions landscape is also constantly changing, with the Supreme Court setting new limits on affirmative action on Thursday.

The prices charged by student college admissions consultants vary, though many of them are cheaper than private consultants with decades of experience. Influencers like Hoskin, who have access to hundreds of thousands of social media followers, can charge more than students promoting services just within their local communities.

Hoskin frequently posts screenshots of her acceptance letters from elite universities on TikTok. However, she doesn’t believe that any student attending these universities should necessarily be selling consulting services.

“THANK YOU SO SO SO SO MUCH FOR ALL OF YOUR HELP, I SERIOUSLY COULDNT HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOUR HELP!!!” reads one text posted by Hoskin.

According to Hoskin, her unique credibility comes from getting into every Ivy she applied to, serving as an alumni interviewer for Harvard and partnering with her high school back during her Harvard days to present a webinar on college admissions.

“I think I have more credibility possibly than an admissions officer,” Hoskin said. “A past admissions officer from Brown [University] can tell you what Brown’s looking for. But I figured out what Harvard, Cornell [University], Dartmouth [College], all these schools I applied to, were looking for.”

Becky Munsterer Sabky is a former admissions director at Dartmouth and the author of “Valedictorians at the Gate,” shares she’s witnessed a lot of people from various ages and backgrounds sell college consulting services, including students.

“When we worked in college admissions, when we read applications, we really approached it as every person should have their individual stamp on this application,” Sabky said. “I think if anyone figures out how to secure a person’s place into a college, that’s amazing, because college is a business, and these are difficult business decisions.”

Andrew Liu, a rising sophomore at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, purchased an essay editing service from a company run by current MIT students and recent alumni. After the consultant read over one of his required short answer essays, Liu felt the feedback was “not that helpful” and didn’t purchase more services.

Liu, who was a part of the USA Astronomy and Astrophysics Team in high school, credits his eventual acceptance largely to his academic performance and extracurriculars, not his essays.

“If I had to go back and do it again, I don’t think I would have needed to purchase any extraneous essay help,” Liu said.

And even though his sister, a Northwestern University alumna, started an essay editing business with her friends during college, Liu hasn’t done the same. He says he doesn’t feel qualified to be giving essay advice. According to Liu, receiving an acceptance letter isn’t enough; instead, he thinks consultants should have experience in writing, like his sister did.

Liu has also witnessed his peers present online webinars to their local communities where they share their college admission processes. He finds the practice “slimy,” “very weird” and that students end up “basically just flexing in front of a bunch of parents.”

What Liu learned from his admissions cycle was that the most important thing was to stay true to himself and his passions, an idea that Sabky agrees with.

“I think it’s okay to ask for help,” Sabky said. “But I don’t think anyone offering services because they feel like they could package you better in an inauthentic way is moral.”

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(NEW YORK) — The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) agreed Friday to an extension of the 2020 TV/Theatrical contracts in a move that averts a possible strike .

The current SAG-AFTRA contract was set to expire Friday at midnight but has now been extended to July 12, at 11:59 pm PT.

SAG-AFTRA released an open letter Friday to its members stating that negotiations have been ongoing for three weeks for a comprehensive and inclusive contract.

“No one should mistake this extension for weakness. We see you. We hear you. We are you,” the letter states.

SAG-AFTRA voted last month to authorize a strike if a deal had not been reached between the studios, production companies and streamers by June 30. Nearly 98% of the 65,000 members cast their vote in favor of the strike.

Rolling Stone reported earlier this week that Hollywood superstars such as Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence and Ben Stiller were among 300 members that urged the union to stand strong to ensure better compensation and addressed concerns about artificial intelligence in a letter.

“We want you to know that we would rather go on strike than compromise on these fundamental points, and we believe that, if we settle for a less than transformative deal, the future of our union and our craft will be undermined, and SAG-AFTRA will enter the next negotiation with drastically reduced leverage,” the letter states.

The Writers Guild of America went on strike in May after a failure to reach an agreement with studios.

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(NEW YORK) — As LGBTQ+ spaces continue to face threats across the country, a growing crop of lesbian bars look to chart a new path.

In 2020, the Lesbian Bar Project sounded the alarm on the slow disappearance of lesbian bars in the United States.

In the years since, new lesbian-led venues and events have opened up around the country, offering safe spaces that hosts say are sorely needed for the queer community.

Dave’s Lesbian Bar – a Queens, New York-based pop-up venue – is evidence of that, according to host Dave Dausch.

The pop-up has garnered hundreds to thousands of attendees at their events, said Dausch. Their events are part-concert, part-market, and part-party – combining the things Dausch loves the most as a bartender and performer.

But they weren’t sure of its potential for success: “I was looking around at my comrades and saying, like, ‘Should I do this? Is this insane?’ They are like, ‘No, we need this.'”

“I just think that femme space in general has never been prioritized,” Dausch said. “Men have the money and have been using it for their desires for a really long time. So it makes sense that a marginalized community … have not been prioritized.”

In the 1980s, there were roughly 200 lesbian bars in the United States. Today, there are fewer than 30.

Erica Rose, one of the filmmakers behind the Lesbian Bar Project, said many reasons have been cited for the decline in bars, including gentrification and economic inequality between men and women.

Several of these bars have opened in recent years, igniting hope that the community will continue to have inclusive spaces to gather, even as the country sees a rise in anti-LGBTQ legislation and political rhetoric.

“We’re going through a pattern that we’ve all seen before, where queer people are weaponized and marginalized, especially the trans community and trans children,” said Rose.

She continued, “I think that the evil forces in our society literally want us to disappear. They want to erase us, many of them want to kill us. And I think that what we can do is just keep showing up and being loud and being present.”

The creation and evolution of Dave’s Lesbian Bar has led to Dausch’s “own trans coming out story.”

Dausch said that even though queer rights are being targeted by legislators, their safe spaces where people can celebrate their community have kept them going.

“I have very much been feeling the effect of feeling like the nation is against who I am,” Dausch said. “But I’m relentless, and so are all the other queers around me. And I see what beautiful things – the web of beauty that’s spreading out. And how big that is.”

Stacy Lentz, CEO of The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative, says that queer bars “are more important now more than ever.”

“Our movement started in a bar – Stonewall was a bar,” Lentz said. “Our activism was born in these queer spaces and in these bars, because that’s all we had … We really need folks to come out and support these places that cannot survive if you don’t show up.”

Learn more about the growing movement to establish lesbian safe spaces on ABC News’ “Perspective” podcast:

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(WASHINGTON) — FBI director Chris Wray was deposed under oath this week by lawyers for former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who are separately suing the federal government over their departures from the FBI, which came after months of public ridicule by then-president Donald Trump and his allies.

The closed-door deposition on Tuesday, confirmed by two people familiar with the matter, could pave the way for the sworn deposition of Trump himself in the coming weeks.

Many of Trump’s attacks were based on private text messages between Strzok and Page, discovered by internal investigators, that reflected strong anti-Trump sentiment.

“There is ample evidence that President Trump has long been fixated on — and in some instances personally involved in — matters relating to Ms. Page and Mr. Strzok,” lawyers for Page said in court.

In 2016, Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence agent, helped launched the FBI’s investigation into alleged ties between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia — a probe Trump has derided as a “hoax.”

Strzok initially joined special counsel Robert Mueller’s team when Mueller took over the probe, but Strzok was reassigned after internal investigators discovered the private text messages.

Page resigned from the FBI in May 2018, and Strzok was fired from the agency three months later. Though they filed separate lawsuits, their legal teams are working together to gather evidence and conduct depositions.

In her lawsuit, Page claims the Justice Department and FBI violated the Privacy Act by publicly releasing her private text messages, which she says were used “to promote the false narrative that [she] and others at the FBI were biased against President Trump, had conspired to undermine him, and otherwise had engaged in allegedly criminal acts, including treason.”

In his own lawsuit, Strzok claims wrongful termination, alleging the FBI and Justice Department violated his First Amendment rights, and that his firing “was the result of a long and public campaign by President Trump and his allies to vilify Strzok and pressure the agency to terminate him.”

The Justice Department has defended its actions, saying in court that the text messages were lawfully made public, that the text messages “risked serious harm to the FBI’s mission by undermining its perception of professionalism and impartiality,” and that any First Amendment rights were consequently outweighed by “the FBI’s interests in … protecting its reputation as a trusted, non-partisan investigative institution.”

Both lawsuits cite an array of tweets and public statements from Trump in the run-up to Page’s resignation and Strzok’s firing from the FBI.

“I am amazed that Peter Strzok is still at the FBI, and so is everybody else … Peter Strzok should have been fired a long time ago,” Trump said at the White House in June 2018, two months before Strzok was fired.

Ahead of Strzok’s termination, Trump and Wray both attended meetings that included discussions of Strzok and Page’s employment status. Those meetings were the focus of Wray’s deposition on Tuesday, which lasted two hours, according to court records and one person involved in the matter.

At least one of the former FBI employees was inside the room with Wray during the deposition this week, ABC News was told.

The judge overseeing both cases, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, said that any deposition of Trump would have to be limited to two hours.

The former president’s legal team has not asserted executive privilege over conversations that related to Strzok’s employment status, per court filings.

Judge Jackson has called Trump “a key witness to what took place.”

Page and Strzok had wanted to depose Trump before deposing Wray, but — after much legal wrangling — Berman Jackson denied that request, waiting to see if Trump’s deposition would still be necessary after hearing testimony from Wray.

Other former senior FBI and Justice Department officials have already been deposed.

In suing the Justice Department and FBI, Strzok is seeking reinstatement, backpay and unspecified monetary damages. Page is also seeking unspecified monetary damages, saying continued attacks from Trump and his allies have caused her “permanent loss of earning capacity due to reputational damage” and forced her to pay for therapy “to cope with unwanted national media exposure and harassment.”

Though a review of the broader Russia-related probe by the Justice Department’s inspector general found no evidence “that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions” made by Strzok and others, a more recent report by special counsel John Durham said “confirmation bias” led FBI officials to take unnecessarily intrusive steps. Still, according to Durham’s report, the evidence gathered did not support charges against Strzok or any other senior FBI official.

The FBI declined to comment on the matter to ABC News.

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(NEW YORK) — Prosecutors urged a federal appeals court to uphold the conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was found guilty of trafficking women and girls for Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse.

“The Government’s evidence at trial established that over the course of a decade, Maxwell facilitated and participated in the sexual abuse of multiple young girls,” prosecutors wrote in their reply brief.

Maxwell was convicted in December 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. From 1994 to 2004, Maxwell and Epstein worked together to identify girls, groom them and then entice them to travel and transport them to Epstein’s properties in New York, Florida, New Mexico and elsewhere, prosecutors said. The girls — some of whom were as young as 14 years old — were then sexually abused, often under the guise of a “massage.”

Maxwell argued she was only prosecuted “as a proxy for Jeffrey Epstein” after he died by suicide in jail. She said prosecutors brought a criminal case against her “to satisfy public outrage over an unpopular non-prosecution agreement and the death of the person responsible for the crimes.”

Maxwell said she was inoculated by a 2007 non-prosecution agreement federal prosecutors in Florida arranged with Epstein that allowed him to plead guilty to state charges and serve 13 months in a work-release program.

“In its zeal to pin the blame for its own incompetence and for Epstein’s crimes on Maxwell, the Government breached its promise not to prosecute Maxwell, charged her with time-barred offenses, resurrected and recast decades-old allegations for conduct previously ascribed to Epstein and other named assistants, and joined forces with complainants’ civil attorneys, whose interests were financial, to develop new allegations that would support charges against Maxwell,” her defense attorneys argued in their appeal.

Prosecutors said the district court correctly ruled Maxwell was not covered by the non-prosecution agreement.

“The NPA also provided that, if Epstein complied with the agreement, ‘the United States also agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein, including but not limited to’ four named individuals, none of whom was Maxwell. Indeed, Maxwell was neither a party to the agreement nor involved in negotiating its terms,” prosecutors said in their reply brief.

The defense also appealed based on a juror’s omission on a pre-trial questionnaire that he was a victim of child sexual abuse. After the verdict, Juror 50 spoke publicly about the effect of his sexual abuse on his jury service.

“Irrespective of whether the juror’s false statements were intentional, which they clearly were, the similarities between the traumatic experiences described by the juror and the victims in the case, together with the juror’s public statements, established the juror’s bias,” the defense said.

Prosecutors argued the judge was right to conclude Juror 50, who said he made an inadvertent mistake, was able to be fair and impartial.

“This case is not within one of the rare, extreme circumstances where a mandatory presumption of bias applies,” prosecutors said.

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(NEW YORK) — Farmers in one of the most prominent agricultural communities in the country will likely be living an underwater nightmare for the foreseeable future.

Central California’s Tulare Lake is filled past the brim, but with the blessings of an ample water supply also comes a curse: spillage that experts say could continue to drown fields and roadways for years to come. The flooding has left farmland, streets and properties under several feet of water.

Visual evidence of the decades-long megadrought that plagued the West and left reservoirs nearly depleted has nearly disappeared. An onslaught of moisture from dozens of atmospheric rivers that pummeled the West over the winter season has insured available water supply for the first time in several years, but it has also wreaked havoc in a region of California that yields a vast amount of the country’s produce.

The flooding that began in the Tulare Lake Basin in March, and then increased rapidly in the months that followed, is so vast it extends up to 24 miles past the lake’s rim, measuring at about 600,000 acre-feet of water with depths up to 15 feet, Kings County Sheriff David Robinson told ABC News, adding that an ecosystem unique to the floodwaters has even appeared.

About 90,000 acres of farmland in Kings County, California, is currently serving as the lake bottom for Tulare, Dusty Ference, executive director for the King’s County Farm Bureau, told ABC News. The water not only destroyed cropland but forced the evacuations of cattle and poultry, Ference said.

The flooding has also overtaken roadways, shops and homes around the region, displacing many residents in Tulare and Kings Counties. The water is expected to take up to two years to recede, Robinson said.

“The water’s going to be here for a while,” he said, adding that the California Department of Emergency Management has approved funding to purchase airboats in anticipation of the long-term flooding.

The regions within the Tulare Lake Basin are known for producing much of the country’s cotton, tomatoes, pistachios, almonds, walnuts, alfalfa, wheat, barley and cow milk. So far this year, the industry has seen $140 million in losses, Ference said.

The cost for these products will soon soar as attainability diminishes — not just in the U.S., but around the world, Ference said.

“Price will be affected because availability will be affected — the number of products on a store shelf,” he said.

The precipitation that fell as rain filled up the reservoirs first. As the weather began to warm in the spring, more and more of the record snowpack that fell in the Sierra Nevada mountains melted, causing several of the largest lakes around the state to replenish — some to capacity.

Lake Oroville, one of the many important reservoirs in the West that reached critically low levels during the height of the megadrought, reached full pool earlier this month.

Several other large reservoirs in the state are also close to full pool, including Lake Shasta, its largest, and San Luis Reservoir in Merced County, the fourth-largest, according to the California Department of Water Resources.

The images of floodwaters in the Tulare Lake Basin are in stark contrast to the nearly bone-dry reservoir that subsisted off minimal precipitation for several years on end, and the change happened fast. While satellite images from Feb. 1 show a lake bed barely filled with water, images taken just three months later show water spilling over the edges of the lake.

But this isn’t the first time the lake has flooded.

Tulare Lake, which is fed by the rivers and streams running down from the Sierra Nevada, was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River. But in the 1880s, the water was diverted for agricultural use, and the lake dried up.

Farmers began to cultivate the dried-up land for crops and cattle, and the region grew into the largest dairy-producing county in the nation. Now, much of that valuable farmland is currently underwater, with similar events documented in the 1940s and again in 1983.

The Tachi Yokut indigenous tribe, native to the San Joaquin Valley, is hoping that water remains in Tulare Lake in order to heal the local ecosystem, tribe members told the Los Angeles Times. The lake is considered sacred by the Tachi Yokut and is considered part of the tribe’s origin story.

Water levels in Tulare Lake have now peaked and begun to recede. So far, 66,692 acre-feet of water has been diverted away from Tulare Lake and will be used to recharge groundwater and replenish storage, the office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Wednesday. The governor has also pledged more than $500 million in the 2023 to 2024 state budget to support flood response and projects to protect communities from future floods.

The mere inches of receding floodwaters do not negate the losses the billion-dollar agricultural industry in the region has suffered, Ference said.

“The river conditions have settled and given everybody a reprieve, but everybody is affected right now,” he said. “There’s not a farmer that’s not affected somehow.”

The influx of water may not be over. There is still snow melting in the Sierra Nevadas, and an El Nino event is expected to bring additional moisture to Southern and Central California, forecasts show.

But water management officials in the Tulare Lake Basin are confident that those events should not produce a massive increase in water flow to the lake, Ference said, perhaps saving the region from further inundation.

“We’ve got to get the lake dry,” Ference said. “That’s kind of our number one goal for stabilization right now.”

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