Kyle Richards appears to be in good spirits after being hospitalized over the weekend for bee stings.
On Sunday, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star took to Instagram Stories to update fans on her current health status, as well as issue an important reminder about epi pens.
“So this happened yesterday… I walked into a hive of bees and was stung multiple times,” Kyle wrote ona picture of herself lying in a hospital bed and wearing an oxygen mask. She also shared security camera footage of the incident, which shows her flailing around before jumping into her pool.
“I can laugh at this now, but what you can’t see is that they were in my hair and were literally chasing me,” she wrote. “My family wasn’t home and for whatever reason the people that work for me couldn’t hear me screaming for help.”
“My landline wouldn’t dial 911 and my epi pen was defective and wouldn’t open,” Kyle added.
Sharing another selfie of herself in the hospital, Richards — who’s allergic to insect stings — encouraged people to make sure they know how to use their epi pen, writing, “I share this story with you because I sometimes don’t bother to take my epi pen with me. I also don’t know why I couldn’t get mine to work.”
“There are different types of epi pens and they each work differently. But also always call 911 even if you are able to use your epi pen as they have to use other medications to help breathing etc,” she explained.
The RHOBH star then thanked the Los Angeles Fire Department and the Encino Hospital Medical Center for responding quickly, aiding her through a panic attack and “repeatedly having to convince me there were no more bees in my hair.”
Taylor Swift’s Grammy-winning album folklore celebrated its one-year anniversary on Saturday, and to mark the occasion, she gave fans a gift: the original version of the album’s bonus track, “The Lakes,” which producer Jack Antonoff had revealed the existence of in a recent interview with Billboard.
Jack, who co-wrote and co-produced “The Lakes” with Taylor, told Billboard, “There was this big orchestral version [of ‘The Lakes’], and Taylor was like, ‘Eh, make it small.’ I had gotten lost in the string arrangements and all this stuff, and I took everything out. I was just like, ‘Oh, my God!…this is so perfect.’”
After the interview, fans took to social media to ask for the original version, and Taylor delivered. On her socials, she wrote, “It’s been one year since we escaped the real world together and imagined ourselves someplace simpler. With tall tall trees and salt air. Where you’re allowed to wear lace nightgowns that make you look like a Victorian ghost every day & no one will side-eye you cause no one is around. It’s just you and your imaginary cabin and the stories you make up to pass the time.”
“To say thank you for all you have done to make this album what it was, I wanted to give you the original version of ‘The Lakes,'” Taylor added. Then, referring to the characters who appear in the album’s songs, she wrote, “Happy 1 year anniversary to Rebekah, Betty, Inez, James, Augustine, and the lives we all created around them. Happy Anniversary, folklore.”
“The Lakes” was inspired by the Lake District of England, where Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge found inspiration in the 1800s.
Journey‘s Neal Schon is selling 112 of his valuable and historic guitars via an online auction hosted by Heritage Auctions, with bidding open until this Saturday, July 31.
Among the guitars being auctioned is a 1977 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe Black Solid Body model that Neal used to record “Don’t Stop Believin'” and other songs on Journey’s chart-topping 1981 album Escape, the opening bid for which is $200,000.
“It’s on many famous songs,” Schon tells ABC Audio. “I used it on…’Who’s Crying Now’ [and] ‘Stone in Love’…I used it a bunch on Escape…And many, many albums after that.”
Other pricey guitars Schon is selling include two 1959 Gibson Les Paul Sunburst models with respective opening bids of $175,000 and $150,000, and two late-1950s Gibson Les Paul Goldtop models with $75,000 opening bids.
Schon, who estimates that he owns about 800 guitars in total, says he has no apprehensions about selling the ones he’s put up for bid, because he actually doesn’t play them that much.
“I’m looking to whittle [my collection] down,” he notes, “[and] put ’em in the hands of somebody that will really appreciate them, so they don’t sit in a case.”
Explaining why he decided to sell off part of his guitar collection, Schon admits, “I simply don’t have any more space…I’ve been collecting my whole life, you know, guitars and equipment, amps, all kinds of gear. We have a huge warehouse that Journey’s had for years, and that is packed.”
The auction ends on the same day that Journey plays Lollapalooza in Chicago, and Schon reveals that if there’s “a high-bidding buyer that wants to know about a guitar [that day], I’m gonna [Skype or FaceTime] with them and…tell them all about it.”
(SEATTLE) — Two people were arrested after a Washington state sheriff’s deputy was fatally shot in the line of duty Friday night.
After an “exhaustive search,” a 28-year-old man, Abran Raya-Leon, and a 35-year-old woman, Misty M. Raya, were arrested on unrelated felony warrants, Vancouver, Washington, police said in a press release on Saturday night.
Another man, Guillermo O. Raya, 26, is still being sought, police said.
The deputy involved in the shooting that unfolded around 7 p.m. has been identified as Clark County Sheriff’s Office Detective Sergeant Jeremy Brown.
Brown was in his vehicle conducting surveillance at 3508 NE 109th Avenue, according to police. Other units in the area on the same detail were unable to reach Brown on radio, and around the same time, a citizen reported hearing gunshots, saw a man bleeding inside a vehicle and called 911, police said.
Two men and a woman fled the area by vehicle and were pursued by police, officials said. Their vehicle crashed near Padden Parkway and Interstate 205. Police said the three then fled on foot.
Police said Guillermo O. Raya is considered armed and dangerous, and a warrant has been issued for his arrest in connection with the shooting.
“This is a difficult time for the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, law enforcement agencies in Clark County and the surrounding Clark County, Portland metro area. Clark County law enforcement appreciates the support and understanding of the community in these tough times,” the department said in a news release.
The investigation is continuing and nothing further is releasable at this time, police said.
(PHOENIX) — Arizona Cardinals defensive end Chandler Jones requested a trade from the team this offseason, according to ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler.
Fowler says Jones has not been happy with his contract and future with the team. Jones is coming into his final year of his deal and will make $15.5 million this season.
In his first four season’s with the Cardinals, Jones had 60 sacks. Last season, the 31-year old only played in five games because of a season-ending torn bicep and had 1 sack.
Fowler reports the team does not want to trade Jones and except him to report to training camp.
(DETROIT) — Nearly 140,000 customers in Michigan are without power this morning after storms hit the Detroit area Saturday night.
Poweroutage.us reports 138,990 customers in the state lack power.
Ferocious storms whipped through the Detroit metro area and led to a tornado watch for other areas including Armada, ABC News affiliate, WXYZ reported.
In the storm’s wake, trees, houses and businesses sustained major damage.
“It appears there might have been a tornado, we have to wait for officials to make that determination, Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel told WXYZ. “There’s a substantial amount of damage to businesses, houses, power lines down.”
The Detroit Police Department issued an alert for area residents, cautioning them roadways are flooded and not to drive through standing water.
The storm comes amid a tumultuous weather season in the United States as wildfires and drought ravage the West, and unprecedented rainfall and floods plague the Northeast as well as other areas of the country.
Wildfllife is also feeling the effects of the severe weather. Baby birds have been jumping out of their nests to escape the heat and falling to the ground, on the West Coast. A bear and her cubs jumped into a home’s pool to cool off from the recent scorching temperatures in the Pacific Northwest.
ABC News’ Ben Stein and Will McDuffie contributed to this report.
(TOKYO) — Up until last year, the Olympic games had never been postponed for any other reason than a world war. Then the coronavirus pandemic swept across the world, putting the dreams of over 10,000 Olympic hopefuls on pause.
The Summer Olympics in Tokyo are now set to begin in less than two weeks, nearly 500 days after the International Olympics Committee announced the postponement of the Games on March 24, 2020.
After a year of extraordinary planning, the Tokyo Olympics will be different than any other Olympics Games before it: As the worldwide vaccination effort against COVID-19 continues, all spectators will be banned from attending the Games, the athletes will be isolated from one another, and all coaches, trainers and participants will be tested rigorously for COVID-19.
After going through what they called unprecedented training, three athletes spoke to ABC News about what it took for them to get to the Olympic stage while a global pandemic ravaged the world.
LILLY KING, USA SWIMMING
Two-time Olympic gold medalist Lilly King was a breakout star at the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics in 2016 when she won first place in the 100-meter and 200-meter breaststroke. When she heard the postponement news, King said she was at home training in Evansville, Indiana — it was just one of many training sessions she’d had over the previous months. Yet still, she said the reality of the situation didn’t sink in until some time later.
“I heard the Olympics were postponed and I didn’t really know what to think. I’m kind of … a serial under-reactor,” King told ABC News. “[Five months later], my mom actually got my Olympic flag framed from 2016… I saw the flag and that was kind of the moment, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, we’re not going right now. This is not fun.’”
“[I had] my little meltdown that I had been waiting to have for five months… I got it out eventually and I think that was good,” she added.
In April 2020, King was forced to adapt her training routine to a world in which pools were closed due to COVID-19.
“I was sitting at home one day and my coach called me and said, ’Do you have a wetsuit?’” King said. She told him she didn’t. “He said, ‘Well, you better get one because we’re gonna swim in a pond.’ It was probably mid-April, but we started swimming in the pond in Indiana. It was freezing.”
King said she and her teammates bonded over the brutally cold days in the pond and the long drives across the state to access the few pools that had begun to reopen.
“If one of us came to practice with a bad attitude one day, it would ruin the rest of it for the other nine of us. … You had to be really conscious about what you were saying out loud, or what you were thinking, because it was very noticeable to the people we were training with since we are a small group,” said King.
King said that with her previous Olympics experience, she has looked forward to the Tokyo Games as a chance to step into a role as a leader and mentor to her teammates, many of whom are young.
“Having a long career in this sport is just having a good outlook and a good attitude about things and that’s what I tried to do,” said King. “It is the Olympics, but in the end it’s just another swim meet. Hopefully that’ll be helpful to those younger athletes and I know that would have been very helpful advice to me whenI was in their shoes.”
Hungry to compete, King said that the yearlong wait will only make competing at the Olympic Games that much sweeter.
“We still have an incredible team here and they’re ready to compete and ready to go,” said King. “Hopefully I can be that mentor that I had to those younger kids on the team and just come out and swim fast and have fun.”
MARIAH DURAN, USA SKATEBOARDING
In March 2019, professional skateboarder Mariah Duran was named one of 16 inaugural members comprising the USA Skateboarding National Team in the first Olympics Games to ever feature the sport.
Two years later, she is the leading female skateboarder in the U.S. and will compete against 26 nations in her Olympic debut.
“It was big to just be a part of [the Olympics] and work towards something and to have that extra goal set in front of me as a skater,” said Duran.
“It’s going to make the conversation for younger girls who want to pick up a board, their parents might be more down to let them do it,” she added.
After a whirlwind 2019 during which she competed in qualification rounds and traveled, Duran said she used the extra time from postponement to reconnect with her love for skating.
“[This year], I would have to say I really fell in love with skateboarding even more, and that aspect of when all this other noise is canceled, I still love skating and I would do it regardless of whether the Olympics happened or not,” Duran told ABC News. “I’ve been skating for about 14 years. So all those other years, I was just doing it because I love doing it.”
Duran, who is from Albuquerque, New Mexico, said she used the city as a training ground by finding outdoor parks, stairs, ledges and other obstacles in town.
“I just want longevity in the sport. So what can I do to create that? I was able to get two trainers [to focus my training] and we would do Zoom calls. … I would have [the weekend] just to myself and skate all day if I wanted to,” she said.
Along with practicing yoga regularly to help with her flexibility, Duran said she also used the postponement to slow down and focus on mental training, including being present in the moment.
“When you’re competing at such a high level, or you’re pushing yourself to do such an extreme [trick]… getting in tune with your mental space is so important because once you can control that. You can control the outcome if you know the position you put yourself in.”
Duran said she hopes that the game’s global spotlight on skateboarding will inspire other people, especially women, to get involved in the sport and continue to push their limits.
“Skating is so empowering and amazing that, when you step on a board, you don’t feel like a girl or a boy. At that point, you’re just a skater,” said Duran. “I really hope that people just look into the sport a little bit more and it sheds a light and it helps grow the sport.”
DAVID BROWN, USA PARALYMPIC TRACK & FIELD
Two-time Paralympian David Brown runs in the 100-meter and 200-meter sprint alongside a sighted guide in the T11 sports class, which includes all athletes who have a visual field of less than 10 degrees diameter. Brown said the past year has helped him to grow more in tune with his own body as an individual runner — one who doesn’t necessarily need help.
“What inspired me to actually start running was me starting to go blind when I was 6-years-old. … I started being able to just run fast,” Brown told ABC News. “Even though I am blind, I’m not going to let you take advantage of me. If you’re going to beat me, you’re going to have to work for it and it doesn’t matter if I can see or not.”
Since 2014, Brown has held the world record as the fastest totally blind athlete in the world.
Brown, who began competing in the Paralympics in 2012 and secured a gold medal in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro games, said that the extra time that he spent training last year gave him the chance to better understand his muscles, timing and pace.
Brown said that training by himself allowed him to focus inward and find his own step rather than sync his stride to another person’s.
“I’ve been running for some years now, but I never knew the technicality of sprinting. … Especially when it comes to running with someone else,” said Brown. “Sometimes, not knowing what to do or how to do certain things, you end up molding yourself to the runner that you’re running with.”
“I don’t know how to walk in a straight line or let alone run in a straight line, but I was able to learn,” he added.
The extra time also allowed Brown to realize his athletic potential.
“It’s odd for me to say this but for the postponement … It was a blessing overall for me because I was able to find myself as an athlete [after] being tethered to somebody all the time,” said Brown. “I was able to train as an individual, I was able to pretty much untether myself from my guide and find myself as an individual runner.”
The Paralympic games begin on Aug. 24, 2021 in Tokyo. In a year filled with novel protocols and critical improvisions, Brown said he’s ready for whatever happens.
“At the end of the day, we’re not going to leave anything on the table,” he said. “The fact of the matter is, I made it here, I made it this far, which is a huge blessing and a huge accomplishment in itself.”
Brown said his goal is to inspire future athletes to test the limits of their own abilities.
“That’s what it’s all about, giving inspiration to the future athletes,” he said. “And then showing the ones that come after us what is possible.”
(WASHINGTON) — When Amazon founder Jeff Bezos took what some viewed as a joyride to the edge of space earlier this week and then thanked the employees of his e-commerce empire for paying for it, the backlash against the richest man in the world was swift.
The anguish left behind from an economic shock induced by a global pandemic compounded animosity towards Bezos, whose fortune — now topping $200 billion — multiplied during the crisis. As millions of Americans struggled to pay rent, reports emerged that he had avoided paying income taxes. One lawmaker blasted his spaceflight on Twitter as “a monument to tax evasion and inequality.” Tens of thousands signed a Change.org petition calling for Bezos not to return.
Bezos has argued his mission is “not about escaping earth” but building a “road to space” for the benefit of future generations. “We need to do that to solve the problems here on Earth,” he said after the launch, which was also lauded for sending pioneering female pilot Wally Funk into space after her astronaut dreams were deferred in the ’60s because she is a woman.
The Amazon chairman’s trip came just nine days after a similar suborbital jaunt from fellow billionaire Richard Branson, which seemed to cement the idea that spacefaring — once revered by many as the pinnacle of human prowess and American ingenuity — was just another playground for the ultra-wealthy and a reminder of the deep-rooted inequities that persist down on Earth.
But intrigue in what lies beyond our planet is indiscriminate, despite the vast wealth and racial disparities that have plagued space programs for decades. As a new commercial space industry officially launches with Bezos’ and Branson’s spaceflights, here is what some experts say may be left behind if equity in the cosmos is not considered.
‘I represented a lot of hope’: Space exploration ‘for the people’
First-generation Mexican American Jose Hernandez grew up toiling alongside his migrant farmworker parents from a young age but, like Bezos, had lifelong dreams of visiting outer space.
“When I was 10-years-old, I was lucky enough to watch the very last Apollo mission on our black-and-white TV console with rabbit ear antennas,” he told ABC News, recalling how he clung to the antennas “for dear life, trying to improve reception.”
As he watched NASA’s Gene Cernan step on the surface of the moon, Hernandez said he felt a “calling.” He decided right then that he wanted to become an astronaut, saying, “Lucky enough, my parents were very supportive.” He was rejected by NASA eleven times before on the 12th attempt, he was selected to be a part of the space agency’s 19th class of astronauts.
In 2009, he launched aboard the second-to-last Space Shuttle mission and spent 14 days in orbit on the International Space Station. He sent the first Spanish-language tweet from the ISS.
Upon arriving back to Earth, Hernandez said he was surprised to find out he had become a hero in his community and one of the most-requested astronauts for speaking engagements at the time.
“The response, especially from the Hispanic community and Hispanic news media, was tremendous,” he said. “I quickly realized that I, overnight, became a role model to a lot of kids.”
Hernandez said he tried to embrace this role, and showed up at every event and school that he could, urging students of color to quite literally reach for the stars.
“I represented a lot of hope for a lot of people because it’s one thing seeing an astronaut, it’s another seeing someone that looks like you, that talks like you, that came from the same socio-economic background you’re from,” he said. “And yet, you see them with the flight suit. And so then they begin to visualize themselves in that flight suit.”
“That’s what my dad did when he empowered me, he said, ‘I believe in you,'” Hernandez added. “That’s what I tried to do with these kids, I said look at my story, I could trade poor stories with the rest of you, and I was able to make it and so can you.”
Kate Howell, of the space exploration nonprofit Planetary Society, told ABC News that agencies like NASA sending humans on scientific and exploratory missions is “closest that we’re going to get to space travel being for the people.”
“If an astronauts sets foot on Mars, for example, that’s kind of being done on behalf of all humankind,” she said. “It’s not just about that individual astronaut’s experience, they’re there on a mission to learn things, to discover things.”
Howell said she thinks it is important to distinguish “space tourism” from “space science and exploration.”
While Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are selling tickets for the first space tourists, both companies have expressed interest in assisting space agencies on science missions as well.
“A lot of people lump sort of all things space into the same category, or see this tourism industry as sort of the evolution of humanity’s activities in space, but I really see them as separate endeavors,” she said. “Space tourism, I think the criticisms that are being levied against that industry are fair, but humanity is still going to continue to explore space in scientific ways that do benefit everybody.”
MORE: What to know about Richard Branson’s spaceflight, as billionaires race to the cosmos
Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX are some of the well-known names in the budding commercial space industry, but a slew of smaller firms are also emerging. In 2020, investors poured almost $9 billion into private space companies, according to a report earlier this year from consulting firm McKinsey.
While Howell says she doesn’t see a near future where ordinary people who wants to experience space can easily go due to its cost — despite the promises of democratizing space from Bezos and Branson — others are attempting to find a way.
In what is being dubbed “the World’s first sponsored Citizen Astronaut Program,” the nonprofit Space for Humanity is inviting all to apply for its “Humanity-1” program.
“What we’re working to do is sponsor people from all over the world to go to space, so they can go and see and experience our planet as a planet floating in the universe,” Rachel Lyons, the group’s executive, told ABC News.
The initiative foots the bill for the spaceflight ticket, astronaut training, travel and accommodations for those it sends to space.
“When astronauts go to space and they see and experience our planet, they come back down very often transformed human beings — with a new care for what’s happening on our planet,” she said, referring to what researchers dub the “Overview Effect.”
“Basically, we will be covering people to go and have this overview effect experience so they can come back down and then be like seeds of people around the world to go and share this perspective far and wide, because we believe that this is a perspective that we need to take on collectively in order to solve these challenges that we now face,” Lyons said.
Humanity-1 participants will launch when the technology is ready via whatever flight provider that may be, she added, such as buying tickets from Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin.
“Space is not about a specific gender or specific race,” Lyons said. “It’s important to us to have everyone feel included in it, as everyone feel like a stakeholder in it.”
The Planetary Society’s Howell added that in the current state of the space tourism industry, where tickets have sold for millions of dollars, “You are going to see the racial disparities of wealth play into that.”
“Most people who are going to be able to afford to go on these trips into space for fun, are going to be the people who have benefited from racial privilege,” Howell said.
‘Whitey on the moon’
Chris Smalls, an activist and former Amazon fulfillment center worker who was fired under contentious circumstances last March, said he was handing out water bottles to his former colleagues at a warehouse in Staten Island, New York, when Bezos was taking his trip to space. Smalls has spent the past year protesting pandemic working conditions at Amazon warehouses, and is currently organizing a union drive at the same facility where he used to work.
Smalls said Bezos’ thanking Amazon employees and customers for funding his space jaunt was “a slap in the face” to workers.
“We take it as disrespect, and all the money he was donating, giving out, and the fact that I’m outside of his facility in 90-degree weather handing out waters … we honestly don’t even care about it,” Smalls said.
Smalls said that he did not even watch the live event, saying, “I’m in the middle of a union drive right now.”
“We’re focused on our mission, and our mission is to get organized to unionize and protect ourselves,” he said.
Smalls, who is Black, called the billionaire space race “whitewashed.”
Racial disparities in all aspects of the space sector have persisted since its inception. As the nation rushed to put a man on the moon during the original U.S.-Soviet space race in the ’60s, Black Americans were still fighting for equal freedoms back on Earth with the simultaneous eruption of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated just one year before the moon landing.
The 1970 spoken word poem “Whitey on the Moon” by Gil Scott-Heron became a rallying cry criticizing government spending on the space program while basic needs for Black Americans were left unmet. “I can’t pay no doctor bill, but Whitey’s on the Moon,” the poem — which started trending on social media soon after Bezos took flight — states.
“That’s always been an issue, and it’s going to continue to be an issue until we fix these root causes,” Smalls said of the racial disparities in space.
Smalls says this is why his focus remains on unionizing Amazon, with the goal of providing better wages for all, and addressing the “massive wealth inequality at play” in the commercial space race.
“If we fixed the root causes, instead of everything trickling down you will see a trickle up, and hopefully that will also encourage more African Americans to explore options in space,” he said. “We should also have the option to join when we want to.”
‘Every world leader should take a trip’
Hernandez said he sees the commercial space race as ultimately a positive, bringing high-paying engineering jobs to the U.S. and carrying potential spin-off technological developments could benefit everyone on earth. He also says every dollar spent on space exploration by a private company is “one dollar less the taxpayer pays to NASA to explore space.”
“We now have three companies that that can give access to humans into space without being involved with NASA for the first time,” Hernandez said. “I think that that is a great achievement.”
What he would like to see is more efforts to include diverse backgrounds at the top levels of management in these emerging commercial space firms, and in the cosmos. He called on Bezos, Branson and SpaceX’s Elon Musk to “in each flight, designate one seat to go so that it could fulfill a purpose.” This could be as simple as sending artists, poets, regular people who meet the general physical requirements and “more than just geeky engineers” to experience space.
Virgin Galactic states on its website that its mission is to “open space to everybody” and has emphasized that its future astronauts come from “diverse backgrounds” but are united by “a shared passion for the democratization of space travel.” Still, its tickets cost some $250,000. Branson has also said he hopes their work encourages and inspires the future generation.
“I really hope that there will be millions of kids all over the world who will be captivated and inspired about the possibility of them going to space one day,” he stated.
Blue Origin has launched a charitable foundation, Club for the Future, which distributed $1 million grants to 19 space-based charities from the funds raised through the sale of Blue Origin’s first commercial ticket to space. Club for the Future has the goal of inspiring young people to pursue careers in STEM fields and help invent the future of life in space.
Like many astronauts have reported, Hernandez said seeing the “the sun’s rays hit the Earth’s atmosphere, clearly delineated from space” scared and awed him — and made him appreciate the planet with a new urgency.
In addition, the farmworker-turned-astronaut also said that he was hit with an inexplicable awe almost immediately after arriving in space, as he flew over North America and saw the continent out his window.
“What struck me in awe is that you can see Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, but you can’t see where Canada ended and the U.S. began, you can’t see where the U.S. ended and Mexico began,” he said. “I said, ‘Wow, borders are human-made concepts designed to separate us and how sad, because from this perspective, we’re just one down there.'”
“Now that we have this space tourism industry going, I think it should be a requirement that every world leader take a trip so they can see what I saw,” he said. “And I’ll guarantee you that our world would be a much better place than it is today.”
(SAN FRANCISCO) — More than 100 people were forced out of their homes overnight as California’s largest wildfire continues to spread at a rapid pace.
The Dixie Fire has now expanded to more than 190,000 acres — increasing by 20,000 acres in just 24 hours — prompting new mandatory evacuations near the Feather River Canyon as firefighters struggle to increase the 21% containment. Officials are still investigating the cause.
More than 8,300 people in Northern California are currently under evacuation orders, according to the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
Over the weekend, the Dixie Fire surpassed the Beckwourth Complex Fire in Doyle, California, as the state’s largest wildfire. The Beckwourth Complex Fire, which was sparked by lightning on July 3, is now 98% contained after it scorched through 105,670 acres.
The Tamarack Fire near Gardnerville, Nevada, had burned through nearly 67,000 acres by Sunday morning, destroying at least 13 structures, and was just 27% contained. It sparked on July 4 in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.
In Oregon, the Bootleg Fire, currently the largest in the country and the third-largest in state history, is so hot it’s creating its own weather pattern. Pyrocumulus clouds, or fire-driven thunderstorm clouds, are created as large pockets of heat and smoke from the Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon rise and meet a relatively cool atmosphere.
The Medford National Weather Service has also confirmed that a tornado occurred on July 18 near the eastern side of the Bootleg Fire due to extreme fire behavior, dry fuels, and an unstable atmosphere.
The Bootleg Fire, approximately 11 miles northeast of the town of Sprague River in southern Oregon, had scorched through nearly 409,000 acres by Sunday morning and was 46% contained.
The Long Draw Fire in 2012 at 557,028 acres and the Biscuit Fire in 2002 at 500,000 acres were the top two largest fires in the state.
Nearly 90 large wildfires are burning in 13 states, with more than 2.5 million acres burned so far this year. More hot and dry conditions are expected in the West today, enhancing the fire risk for the already blaze-ridden region.
More than 3 million people in the West are under heat and fire alerts through Monday, and several states also have air quality alerts due to the wildfires.
Four states from Nevada to Montana will experience triple-digit temperatures on Sunday, while relative humidity is expected to remain at just 11%, with wind gusts up to 35 mph.
ABC News’ Jenna Harrison, Sarah Hermina, and Hope Osemwenkhae contributed to this report.
(HOUSTON) — Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson will attend training camp on Sunday to avoid paying a $50,000 fine, according to a report from ESPN’s Ed Werner.
Watson would have been fined $50,000 for each day he missed training camp.
In January, Watson asked for a trade from the team and he still wants to be traded, according to Werner.
In March, the first of 23 lawsuits were filed against Watson alleging sexual assault and other inappropriate conduct. There are currently 22 active lawsuits against Watson.
