Associated Press, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Smoky Haze Blanketing US And Canada Could Last Into The Weekend

With weather systems expected to hardly budge, the smoky blanket billowing across the U.S. and Canada from wildfires in Quebec and Nova Scotia should persist into Thursday and possibly the weekend.

NEW YORK (AP) — On air quality maps, purple signifies the worst of it. In reality, it’s a thick, hazardous haze that’s disrupting daily life for millions of people across the U.S. and Canada, blotting out skylines and turning skies orange.

And with weather systems expected to hardly budge, the smoky blanket billowing from wildfires in Quebec and Nova Scotia and sending plumes of fine particulate matter as far away as North Carolina and northern Europe should persist into Thursday and possibly the weekend.

That means at least another day, or more, of a dystopian-style detour that’s chased players from ballfields, actors from Broadway stages, delayed thousands of flights and sparked a resurgence in mask wearing and remote work — all while raising concerns about the health effects of prolonged exposure to such bad air.

The weather system that’s driving the great Canadian-American smoke out — a low-pressure system over Maine and Nova Scotia — “will probably be hanging around at least for the next few days,” U.S. National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Ramsey said.

“Conditions are likely to remain unhealthy, at least until the wind direction changes or the fires get put out,” Ramsey said. “Since the fires are raging — they’re really large — they’re probably going to continue for weeks. But it’s really just going be all about the wind shift.”

Across the eastern U.S., officials warned residents to stay inside and limit or avoid outdoor activities again Thursday, extending “Code Red” air quality alerts in some places for a third-straight day as forecasts showed winds continuing to push smoke-filled air south.

The smoke has moved over Greenland and Iceland since June 1, and was expected to reach Norway on Thursday, the Norwegian Climate and Environmental Research Institute said, but wasn’t expected to be a health concern.

In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered schools to cancel outdoor recess, sports and field trips Thursday. In suburban Philadelphia, officials set up an emergency shelter so people living outside can take refuge from the haze.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state was making a million N95 masks — the kind prevalent at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — available at state facilities, including 400,000 in New York City. She also urged residents to stay put.

“You don’t need to go out and take a walk. You don’t need to push the baby in the stroller,” Hochul said Wednesday night. “This is not a safe time to do that.”

The message may be getting through. So far, officials said Wednesday, New York City has yet to see an uptick in 911 calls related to respiratory issues and cardiac arrests.

More than 400 blazes burning across Canada have left 20,000 people displaced. The U.S. has sent more than 600 firefighters and equipment to Canada. Other countries are also helping.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to President Joe Biden by phone on Wednesday. Trudeau’s office said he thanked Biden for his support and that both leaders “acknowledged the need to work together to address the devastating impacts of climate change.”

Canadian officials say this is shaping up to be the country’s worst wildfire season ever. It started early on drier-than-usual ground and accelerated quickly. Smoke from the blazes has been lapping into the U.S. since last month but intensified with recent fires in Quebec, where about 100 were considered out of control Wednesday.

“I can taste the air,” Dr. Ken Strumpf said in a Facebook post from Syracuse, New York, where the sky took on the colorful nickname of the local university: Orange.

The smoke was so thick in Canada’s capital, Ottawa, that office towers just across the Ottawa River were barely visible. In Toronto, Yili Ma said her hiking group canceled a planned hike this week, and she was forgoing the restaurant patios that are a beloved summer tradition in a nation known for hard winters.

“I put my mask away for over a year, and now I’m putting on my mask since yesterday,” Ma lamented.

Eastern Quebec got some rain Wednesday, but Montreal-based Environment Canada meteorologist Simon Legault said no significant rain is expected for days in the remote areas of central Quebec where the wildfires are more intense.

In the U.S., federal officials paused some flights bound Wednesday for New York’s LaGuardia Airport and slowed planes to Newark and Philadelphia because smoke was limiting visibility.

Major League Baseball’s Yankees and Phillies had their games postponed. On Broadway, “Hamilton” and “Camelot” canceled Wednesday performances and “Prima Facie” star Jodie Comer left a matinee after 10 minutes because of difficulty breathing. The show restarted with an understudy, show publicists said.

It was not to be at Central Park’s outdoor stage, either. Shakespeare in the Park canceled its Thursday and Friday performances of “Hamlet,” saying ’tis not nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of wretched air.

___

Gillies reported from Toronto.

W.Va. Man Arraigned In Fatal Shooting Of State Trooper

A suspect in the fatal shooting of a West Virginia state police officer was arraigned Saturday on a first-degree murder charge.

Timothy Kennedy, 29, was arraigned by video in Mingo County Magistrate Court. Kennedy of the Mingo County community of Beech Creek, near Matewan, was being held without bond in the Southwestern Regional Jail. Jail records didn’t indicate whether Kennedy had an attorney who could comment on the charge.

Dozens of police officers had searched for Kennedy for hours. He was arrested in a stolen vehicle Friday night at a law enforcement checkpoint, news outlets reported.

Earlier Friday, Sgt. Cory Maynard and two troopers had responded to a complaint of a shooting at a home and were fired at when they arrived, state police said in a statement. Maynard was shot and taken to a hospital in Logan.

Gov. Jim Justice announced Maynard’s death in a statement Friday night and said he was “absolutely heartbroken.”

“The brave men and women of law enforcement, and all first responders who put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe, are an inspiration to us all,” Justice said.

Maynard earned a state police award in 2015 after he administered first aid to a man was had been involved in a pursuit, crashed his vehicle and stabbed himself in the neck in the Eastern Panhandle, according to state police.

During the initial shooting Friday, Benjamin Adam Baldwin, 39, of Matewan, was shot with a rifle. He was in serious but stable condition Saturday at a hospital in Charleston, state police said. The motive for the shooting is unknown and remains under investigation.

Nearby residents were advised to stay indoors during the search for Kennedy, and a Friday night graduation ceremony at Mingo Central High School was postponed.

The shooting happened in the same county where Sheriff Eugene Crum was shot to death in April 2013 in a spot in Williamson where he usually parked his car for lunch. A suspect later was found incompetent to stand trial and was ordered to be committed to a state mental health facility for life.

New Maryland Provider Opening In Post-Roe ‘Abortion Desert’

A new abortion provider is opening this year in Democratic-controlled Maryland — just across from deeply conservative West Virginia, where state lawmakers recently passed a near-total abortion ban.

The Women’s Health Center of Maryland in Cumberland, roughly 5 miles (8 kilometers) from West Virginia, will open its doors in June — a year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal abortion protections — to provide abortions to patients across central Appalachia, a region clinic operators say is an “abortion desert.”

“Hours in any direction, there are no other abortion providers here — it’s smack dab in the middle of an absolute abortion desert, and that’s by design,” said Katie Quiñonez, executive director of the Charleston-based Women’s Health Center of West Virginia, the state’s lone abortion clinic until it was forced to stop the procedures after legislators in September passed a ban with narrow exemptions.

The Cumberland clinic will be the only independent reproductive health care center in the area and the western-most provider of surgical and medical abortion and gender-affirming hormone therapy in Maryland. Quiñonez, who will also serve as the Maryland clinic’s executive director, said the facility will be a more accessible option for patients in northern West Virginia, western Maryland, south central Pennsylvania and Ohio, where an abortion ban is under injunction.

Independent abortion clinics provide most abortions in the U.S. — especially for people with low-incomes who live in isolated, rural states hostile to abortion access. The clinics are more likely to offer abortion after the first trimester and to provide both surgical and medication abortion options, according to the Abortion Care Network, the national association for independent abortion care providers.

Dozens of independent clinics across the country have been forced to close their doors since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and in 14 states, there are no abortion clinics at all.

At least 66 clinics in 15 states have stopped providing abortions since the decision, according the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. The number of clinics providing abortions in those 15 states dropped from 79 to 13 by October of last year, with the remaining clinics in Georgia.

When West Virginia lawmakers passed their sweeping abortion ban, several members of the Republican majority said they hoped it would force the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia to shut down. Republican Sen. Robert Karnes said he believed shuttering the center was “going to save a lot of babies.” Brandon Steele, a Republican in the state’s House of Delegates, called abortion access “a scar” and “a curse” lawmakers had to “remove from this land.”

West Virginia patients seeking an abortion now have to take time off work, travel hundreds of miles and pay for lodging and other accommodations, “all to get basic health care,” Quiñonez said.

“Our communities deserve better — people should be able to access abortion care without delay or barriers,” she said.

The Women’s Health Center of Maryland will provide abortion services into the second trimester and will accept Maryland Medicaid, which covers abortion. It will also offer annual exams, contraception, testing and treatment for sexually-transmitted diseases, as well as breast and cervical cancer screenings.

Although no abortions can be provided there, West Virginia’s clinic is still open and offers other reproductive health care and hard-to-find services, like gender-affirming hormone therapy. But Quiñonez said they still get calls from anxious patients who don’t know where to go for an abortion. Until the Maryland clinic opens and can take referrals, her staff has no other option but to send callers to a website to find out-of-state services.

Since January 2022, the clinic’s abortion fund has distributed $150,000 for more than 800 people, mostly West Virginia residents.

Maryland has a Democratic governor and a Democratic-controlled General Assembly that has shown commitment to preserving abortion access. Abortion is legal in Maryland until about 24 weeks into pregnancy.

The nearest independent reproductive health clinic to Cumberland that provides abortion and gender-affirming hormone therapy is a Planned Parenthood 90 miles (145 kilometers) away in Frederick. That facility provides medication abortion only.

A closer clinic in Hagerstown is open for abortions during limited hours a few times a month. It provides first-trimester abortions only and doesn’t accept Maryland Medicaid — a barrier to low-income patients, Quiñonez said. Otherwise, patients must travel more than 100 miles (161 kilometers) to Pittsburgh or even further, to Baltimore or Washington, D.C.

Renovations started last week on the Cumberland clinic — crews were installing new medical equipment and signage, deep cleaning, applying fresh paint, replacing floors and patching drywall.

The cost for the facility, licensing and renovations is roughly $1.17 million. First-year operating costs — to include payroll, building operations — are projected to be around $763,000. Both the West Virginia and Maryland clinics are funded by donations, foundations and organizations in support of expanding abortion access in the U.S.

The Women’s Health Center of Maryland will have its own finances and, eventually, state-based board of directors. The Women’s Health Center of West Virginia’s directors will act as the board while the organization recruits new, locally-based members.

“Folks have always needed abortions — since the beginning of time,” Quiñonez said. “And they will always need abortions until the end of time. We are going to keep fighting to get every patient the care they need.”

Feds Announce Major Drug Bust, Arrests In West Virginia

A federal drug trafficking investigation in West Virginia has resulted in charges against 54 people and the seizure of more than 200 pounds (91 kilograms) of methamphetamine, authorities said Wednesday.

U.S. Attorney Will Thompson said law enforcement also seized lesser amounts of cocaine and fentanyl along with 18 firearms and $747,000 in cash.

“The takedown of this drug trafficking organization stopped a record amount of methamphetamine, as well as other dangerous drugs, from reaching our communities and causing harm,” Thompson said. “This investigation demonstrates that we will use all of our resources, including new and innovative investigative techniques, against those who target our communities with this poison. Our law enforcement partners worked tirelessly to dismantle this organization and obtain these indictments, and I commend their outstanding work and dedication.”

Thompson said 30 of the suspects were indicted by a federal grand jury and the others are charged in state criminal complaints. Most of the suspects in the federal cases are Charleston residents. Two are from Detroit and one is from Waynesboro, Virginia.

Thompson called it the largest seizure of methamphetamine ever in West Virginia.

The investigation was part of the Department of Justice’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF). The program was established in 1982 to conduct comprehensive, multilevel attacks on major drug trafficking and money laundering organizations and is the keystone of the Department of Justice’s drug reduction strategy. OCDETF combines the resources and expertise of its member federal agencies in cooperation with state and local law enforcement. The principal mission of the OCDETF program is to identify, disrupt and dismantle the most serious drug trafficking organizations, transnational criminal organizations and money laundering organizations that present a significant threat to the public safety, economic, or national security of the United States.

Speakers Clash Over Religious Freedom Bill At Hearing

Some people said West Virginia needs a law to codify the right of residents to challenge government regulations that interfere with their religious beliefs because of growing threats to their constitutional freedoms.

Others who spoke during a public hearing at the state Capitol Friday said they are worried the proposal advancing in the Legislature will be used as a tool to discriminate against LGBTQ people and other marginalized groups.

“Exercising your religion does not mean discriminating or condemning people because they do not have same beliefs as you,” said Jessica Eplin, who said she is worried about how the proposed law could affect her as an atheist and her child, who is transgender.

The bill, which passed the House Judiciary Committee earlier this week and is now before the full House of Delegates, would require a government entity to have a compelling reason to burden someone’s constitutional right to freedom of religion and to meet its goals in the least restrictive way possible.

A similar bill failed in 2016 after lawmakers voiced concerns about how it could affect LGBTQ residents. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael wiped away tears on the Senate floor as he spoke in support of Democratic-proposed amendment that would bar the legislation from being used to discriminate against LGBTQ people.

The bill also dictates that the proposed law could not be used to permit access to abortion, which was banned by West Virginia lawmakers last year. The provision was included as abortion rights groups are challenging abortion bans in some states by arguing the bans — supported by certain religious principles — violate the religious rights of people with different beliefs.

Republican sponsors say the bill has good intentions. Del. Chris Pritt of Kanawha County, who is a Christian, said the bill would make West Virginia attractive to economic development. He said it’s not just about protecting Christians, but religious minorities in the state, too.

But Catherine Jones, a gay woman, said the bill would do nothing but “legalize discrimination against already marginalized communities.” She said she fears the bill could allow businesses to challenge city ordinances prohibiting discrimination in housing or employment based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

“I should not be afraid of not being served at a restaurant because I have a different relationship than you do,” she told lawmakers. “This bill will do nothing but spread hate and violence across our state.”

At least 23 other states have religious freedom restoration acts. The laws are similar to the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, signed in 1993 by President Bill Clinton, which allows federal regulations that interfere with religious beliefs to be challenged.

Eli Baumwell, advocacy director and the Interim executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia, said the 1993 federal law was designed to designed to protect people, especially religious minorities, from laws that affected their ability to engage in personal practices of their faith.

“Unfortunately, people have seized upon a good idea and turn it a shield into a sword,” said Baumwell, who spoke in opposition to the bill. “RFRAs today are promoted by organizations and ideologies and aren’t concerned about individual religious observances. They’re focused on circumventing laws that require fair and equal treatment.”

People who spoke in support of the bill said they were concerned about the government imposing vaccination requirements against people’s religious beliefs and restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic that limited in-person worship in states across the U.S.

Monica Ballard Booth said she supports the bill because she wants to see equal protection for people of all faiths. “Since some have questioned why this was necessary, I’ll tell you why it’s necessary: Christians are the most persecuted group in the world,” she said.

Pastor Bo Burgess of West Virginia Baptists for Biblical Values said he doesn’t believe the bill could be used to discriminate against anyone — it’s about protecting people from discrimination, she said.

“This legislation doesn’t allow me or a business to go around and attack other people groups,” he said. “There’s no people group language in the bill.”

Baptist Pastor Dan Stevens of Wood County said people like him want the same benefits of equal protection as people who oppose the bill.

“We live out our firmly held religious beliefs and convictions about marriage, the family, human sexuality, the value of human life from conception to the grave without fear,” he said. “This bill designed not as a tool of discrimination used by people of faith but to protect the people of faith against discrimination for those who are opposed to our beliefs and our lifestyle.”

Blue Collar Tour Brings Welding Rockstar To W.Va.

Blue collar jobs could see a mass worker shortage soon, but a group from Wyoming hopes to spur interest in the profession. Tyler Sasse, founder and CEO of the Western Welding Academy based in Gillette, Wyoming, brought his tour to the Marion County Technical Center on Monday.

Blue collar jobs could see a mass worker shortage soon, but a group from Wyoming hopes to spur interest in the profession.

“It’s been really painful because the Baby Boomers have started retiring out of the blue-collar workforce,” Tyler Sasse said. “We as a society have been preaching college for the last three generations, and these trades have been suffering.”

Sasse, founder and CEO of the Western Welding Academy based in Gillette, Wyoming, brought his tour to the Marion County Technical Center on Monday. His school was voted the top welding academy in the country in 2022, and the school has garnered a significant social media following in the last few years.

He’s witnessed the dip in the workforce firsthand, and he wants to make an impact beyond the borders of Wyoming.

“We get probably 300 applicants each class and we only accept 13,” Sasse said. “I wanted to do with something high school kids across the country.”

From that desire was born the Blue Collar Tour, a state-to-state bus tour where Sasse and other welders travel in a bus across the country, visiting one high school in 30 different states.

The schools are chosen by a vote of interest from the students at the schools, and Marion County Technical Center won the slot to be the only school in West Virginia to earn a visit.

Monday morning the bus pulled in to the school parking lot where the welding students were met by Sasse and his team. His visit involved giveaways, lessons, Q&As and a workshop where the students could show their skills.

Within the lessons, Sasse hammers home the importance of work ethic, accountability and integrity — tenets he appears to stress ahead of welding skills.

MCTC Welding Instructor Jeremy Sakacsi was grateful for the opportunity for his students to meet Sasse. The fact that his students garnered the excitement to win the votes to bring the tour to Marion County is proof they are a passionate group of kids.

“(Sasse) is a huge influencer on social media, and a lot of my students have followed him and watched his welding and his school. So for a lot of these students they get to meet an idol,” Sakacsi said. “But not only is he an icon in the field — he’s a role model for these kids, and they can learn a lot about the industry.

“Hopefully this shows the students that there really are other options besides high school and college.”

Providing alternatives to college pathways has been a major push in the last few years by the Marion County Board of Education. School Superintendent Donna Heston has said on multiple occasions that college isn’t for everyone.

Sasse remarked that it’s apparent the students in Marion County have a lot of support behind them when it comes to technical education.

At the forefront of that support system is Marion County Technical Center Principal Jay Michael. Monday, he was standing next to the students watching and listening to Sasse talk about the intricacies of welding.

A teacher or counselor telling a student they can make it in the welding world is one thing, but hearing about the demand for welders from someone in the workforce can be invaluable.

“Being able to bring folks from the industries in, that’s the critical piece we’ve added to the tech center,” Michael said. “There’s no better person to tell a student about the industry than someone who’s living it every day. That’s the kind of opportunity we look for, and that’s what (Sasse) and his tour is providing.”

For information about the Blue Collar Tour, visit www.ApplyToWeld.com.