(Reuters) -Former President Donald Trump has raised nearly $20 million in the past three weeks, a period that roughly coincides with his indictment in federal and state cases connected to his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, Trump’s campaign spokesman said on Saturday.

Since appearing Thursday to have his mug shot taken in a racketeering and fraud case in Atlanta, Georgia, the former president brought in $7.1 million, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

On Friday alone, Trump brought in $4.18 million, making it the highest-grossing day of his campaign so far, Cheung said.

His mug shot, posted by a Georgia courthouse on Thursday evening, has been turned into T-shirts, shot glasses, mugs, posters and even bobblehead dolls by friends and foes alike.

The shot of Trump with a red tie, glistening hair, and an icy scowl was taken as the Republican presidential front-runner was arrested on more than a dozen felony charges, part of a criminal case stemming from his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump, who was elected president in 2016 but defeated by Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, is again seeking the Republican Party’s nomination for president.

Trump is currently facing four indictments, including two related to his false claims that the election was stolen and the Jan. 6, 2021 attack by his followers on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

He has denied all charges.

On Aug. 15, Trump was indicted by a Georgia grand jury after an investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis into his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden in the state.

On Aug. 3, he pleaded not guilty to charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith in federal court in Washington that he conspired to defraud the United States by preventing Congress from certifying Biden’s 2020 election victory over him and to deprive voters of their right to a fair election.

He has also pleaded not guilty to charges of unlawfully keeping classified documents after leaving office, and of falsifying business records in a case in New York related to the payment of so-called hush money to [censored] star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

By Tom Hals

(Reuters) – Efforts by Donald Trump allies to move Georgia’s criminal case charging the former U.S. president with trying to overturn an election to federal court is raising legal questions that could delay a trial, which may be a key part of their strategy.

On Aug. 28, Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who was charged alongside the former president with trying to subvert the results of the 2020 election, will argue his case should be heard in federal court rather than in Fulton County Superior Court, where it was filed.

If Meadows succeeds, he would be tried before a broader jury pool that includes the Congressional district of conservative firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene, rather than jurors solely from Fulton County, which voted for Joe Biden in 2020 by nearly a 3-1 margin.

Two other defendants, former Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark and David Shafer, who was a Republican presidential elector nominee, have also filed papers citing a law known as the Federal Officer Removal Statute in a bid to transfer their cases.

Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, is likely to do so as well, legal experts said.

A spokesperson for the Fulton County district attorney declined to comment and attorneys for Meadows, Shafer and Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

The removal cases will be heard by a federal judge in the Northern District of Georgia and could tie up the case in appeals if denied, legal experts said.

“The request for removal is definitely going to delay this trial and be complicated and messy,” said Eric Segall, a professor at Georgia State College of Law.

The removal question is just one of many that are likely to be litigated before a trial, adding to uncertainty about prosecutors’ request for a trial date as soon as Oct. 23.

DELAY AS A TACTIC

Trump, who has a history of using delay as a legal tactic, is also trying to move upcoming criminal trials in New York and Washington to other courts. He is also defending a criminal indictment in Miami.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged Trump and 18 others with racketeering in a scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, which was won by President Joe Biden. No defendants have entered a plea in the Georgia case.

Willis accused Meadows of furthering a conspiracy by, among other things, joining Trump in urging Georgia’s secretary of state to change vote totals.

The federal officer removal law protects people from state prosecution for carrying out official federal duties.

The statute requires a defendant to prove they were an officer of the United States or acting at an officer’s direction, that the alleged acts were part of their official duties and that they have a federal legal defense.

Meadows argued in federal court papers filed last week that the acts described in the indictment fall squarely within the duties of a chief of staff: assisting the president by arranging meetings and making phone calls.

Prosecutors countered that Meadows was carrying out political activities – which U.S. government employees are barred from doing under a federal law known as the Hatch Act. Meadows in his court papers also said his political activity was protected speech under the U.S. Constitution.

“NOT RELATED” TO OFFICIAL ACTS

The removal issue has come up before in a Trump criminal case.

The former president failed to remove a case by Manhattan’s district attorney that accused Trump of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal on the eve of the 2016 election.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in July found that “hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a president’s official acts” and sent the case back to state court. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges and appealed the ruling to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Legal experts said the accused acts in the Georgia case are more plausibly related to official duties than the hush money payments in the New York case. If U.S. District Judge Steve Jones in Atlanta agrees, he would next examine if Meadows has a federal defense.

Meadows argued as a defense that he is immune under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which is similar to the removal law. It says that if a person were carrying out duties placed on them by federal law, they cannot be prosecuted for committing a state crime.

“In other words, if you actually successfully remove the case, then it probably gets dismissed,” said Josh Blackman, a law professor at the South Texas College of Law.

However, just because Meadows has a defense, that does not mean it would necessarily apply to the specific actions cited in the indictment.

Legal experts said Jones could allow the case to proceed in federal court and address immunity at a later hearing. If he determines immunity did not apply to the accused actions, the jury trial would take place in federal court, with the broader jury pool.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; editing by Noeleen Walder, Amy Stevens and Stephen Coates)

By Anna Mehler Paperny

TORONTO (Reuters) – For Tagreed Elhassan it’s the feeling of the wind in her face.

Cycling gives her a sense of independence and a way to exercise. She learned the basics growing up in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and now a program in her new home of Toronto has taught the 24-year-old Eritrean refugee how to steer and basic bike mechanics, giving her the confidence to teach others.

“I learned it here,” she said, sitting in a park in Toronto’s east end. “Small things that grow into something big.”

Hijabs and Helmets aims to provide education and a welcoming environment toward people new to cycling and the city – especially to Muslim women who may come from backgrounds where cycling was not the norm.

The program was created three years ago to meet a community need, said Menna Badawi, a community health worker at Access Alliance Multicultural Health & Community Services and program lead for Hijabs and Helmets.

It gets most of its funding from Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which owns Toronto sports teams including the Maple Leafs ice hockey team and the Raptors basketball team.

The group realized “there was a gap in services for Muslim women in the community … who are interested in cycling and kind of don’t know where to go,” Badawi said.

Badawi, who has been part of an all-women Muslim running club, said she understood the feeling.

“As a Muslim hijabi I did find there was a gap in recreational sports for women who look like me,” she said.

The group serves Toronto’s Taylor Creek area, which has a high proportion of newcomers, Badawi said.

Elhassan said she got involved in the program last year with her sisters. Soon she felt comfortable enough to bike to the supermarket, bags balanced on handlebars.

The deliberate inclusion of hijab-wearing women “means a lot,” Elhassan said. “I felt like, oh, we are recognized.”

(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

MADRID (Reuters) -Soccer’s world governing body FIFA suspended Spanish federation chief Luis Rubiales from all football-related activities for three months on Saturday as it investigates allegations he gave a player an unwanted kiss on the lips after Spain’s women won the World Cup.

FIFA had opened disciplinary proceedings against Rubiales two days ago over the incident with player Jenni Hermoso last Sunday in Sydney that has caused an uproar among players and fans. Rubiales’ suspension from national and international activities takes immediate effect, it said on Saturday.

Rubiales said he would use the probe to show his innocence.

The Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) issued a statement for him, saying Rubiales “will defend himself legally in the competent bodies, has full confidence in the FIFA bodies and reiterates that, in this way, he is being given the opportunity to begin his defence so that the truth prevails and his complete innocence is proven”.

Jorge Vilda, the coach of the Spanish Women’s soccer team, said on Saturday that he regretted the “inappropriate behaviour” of Rubiales.

Victor Francos, head of Spain’s state-run National Sports Council, said the government supported FIFA’s decision.

Rubiales, 46, has been defiant over the kiss – which has been condemned as unwanted by Hermoso, her team mates and the Spanish government – arguing it was consensual.

Earlier on Saturday the RFEF had said it would stick by Rubiales as he sought to stay on, but a federation spokesperson said after the FIFA announcement: “We respect all the pronouncements of FIFA.”

Gary Lineker, a former England and Barcelona player, summed up much of the public reaction to the FIFA move, posting in Spanish on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Por fin! (At last).”

Rubiales played mainly in Spain’s second division in a career spanning 12 years. When he was elected to lead the RFEF in 2018, he promised to modernise its structure, increase turnover and make the federation more transparent.

Feminist groups staged demonstrations in Madrid, Santander and Logrono on Saturday calling for his resignation.

At a federation meeting on Friday where he had been widely expected to step down, Rubiales instead refused to quit, seeking to defend his behaviour and calling the kiss “spontaneous, mutual, euphoric and consensual”.

Hermoso said she did not consent to the kiss and felt “vulnerable and the victim of an aggression”.

In a statement hours before FIFA’s move on Saturday, the federation said it would show there had been lies told about what happened by Hermoso or people speaking for her and that it would “initiate the corresponding legal actions” to defend Rubiales’ honour, without specifying what that would entail.

The Spanish government cannot fire Rubiales but has strongly denounced his actions and said on Friday it was seeking to get him suspended using a legal procedure before a sports tribunal.

“Impunity for macho actions is over. Rubiales cannot continue in office,” acting Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz wrote on social media on Friday.

Gender issues have become a prominent topic in Spain in recent years. Tens of thousands of women have taken part in street marches protesting against sexual abuse and violence, and the Socialist-led coalition government has presided over legal reforms including around equal pay or abortion rights.

PLAYERS’ REVOLT

It was not clear how the FIFA action would affect a players’ revolt against Rubiales that expanded to include coaching staff on Saturday.

In a joint statement sent via their FUTPRO union on Friday evening, all 23 of Spain’s cup-winning squad including Hermoso, as well as dozens of other squad members, said they would not play internationals while Rubiales remained head of the federation.

In the same statement, Hermoso denied Rubiales’ contention that the kiss was consensual, writing: “I want to clarify that, as was seen in the images, at no time did I consent to the kiss he gave me and, of course, in no case did I seek to lift the president.”

On Saturday evening, Vilda said in a statement to the Spanish news agency EFE: “I am deeply sorry that the victory of Spanish women’s football team has been harmed by the inappropriate behavior that our until now top manager, Luis Rubiales.”

Earlier on Saturday, 11 members of the national women’s team’s coaching staff offered their resignations to the RFEF in a statement where they supported Hermoso and condemned Rubiales.

They complained of “the discomfort” of having been required to attend the federation assembly on Friday and said “several female members of the technical staff were forced to sit in the front row … to create the impression that they shared the RFEF president’s line”.

The RFEF statement early on Saturday was accompanied by four photos of the event last Sunday that it said illustrated Rubiales’ contention that Hermoso had lifted him in the air before the kiss.

Reuters could not immediately reach an official from FUTPRO for comment.

At the federation’s emergency meeting on Friday, Rubiales repeatedly said he would not quit and complained that “false feminists” were “trying to kill me”, drawing applause for the predominantly male audience.

Luis de La Fuente, the men’s national team manager who could be seen applauding Rubiales on Friday, issued a statement on Saturday condemning “the actions of Luis Rubiales that did not respect the minimum protocol for such (World Cup) celebrations and are not constructive nor appropriate for someone representing all of Spanish soccer”.

(Reporting by Graham KeeleyAdditional reporting by Rohith Nair and Andrei KhalipEditing by Alison Williams, Frances Kerry and Daniel Wallis)

By Gerauds Wilfried Obangome

LIBREVILLE (Reuters) -Gabon’s government blocked internet access and imposed a curfew on Saturday after an election marked by major voting delays, as the opposition cried foul over a poll they hoped would halt President Ali Bongo’s bid to extend his family’s 56-year grip on power.

The Central African nation was holding presidential, legislative, and local polls simultaneously for the first time, with tensions running high amid fears electoral system changes could sow doubt about the legitimacy of the result and provoke unrest.

Bongo, 64, who succeeded his father Omar in 2009, is seeking a third term against 18 challengers, six of whom backed a joint nominee in an effort to narrow the race. Bongo’s team rejected allegations of fraud.

Voting was due to start at 0700 GMT, but at least five polling stations in the capital Libreville saw voters waiting hours for polls to open, a Reuters reporter said.

“This election is very tense because I don’t think a vote in our country has ever started so late,” said voter Jeff Mbou at a polling station in Libreville’s Martine Oulabou school, where voting started nearly four hours late.

It was not immediately clear how many areas were affected by the delays or if all voters were able to cast their votes. The election commission did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Any irregularities will add to concerns about the post-electoral period, which in Gabon has previously seen violent protests linked to the opposition disputing the result.

There is no fixed deadline for the announcement of results, but joint opposition candidate Albert Ondo Ossa, 69, and his alliance on Saturday were already questioning the legitimacy of the outcome.

Citing the threat of online disinformation, the Gabonese government cut the internet until further notice and imposed a night-time curfew from Sunday “in order to prevent any misbehaviour and to preserve the security of the entire population”, according to a statement read on national television on Saturday evening.

The Netblocks internet observatory confirmed that a nation-scale internet shutdown was in effect across Gabon – a move it said was “likely to severely limit the public’s ability to communicate during the election period”.

Gabon shut down internet access for several days in 2016 when violent street protests erupted against Bongo’s contested re-election for his second term that saw the parliament building torched.

FRAUD ALLEGATION

The vote is a much-anticipated test of support for Bongo, whose detractors say has done too little to funnel Gabon’s oil wealth towards the third of its 2.3 million population living in poverty and question his fitness to govern after a stroke in 2018.

Bongo has sought to disprove this image on a wide-ranging campaign trail. He has promised to create more jobs, boost micro-loan programmes and cut public school fees.

“We are voting and we are winning,” he said in an online post on Saturday, sharing a video of his supporters wearing T-shirts with his campaign slogan “Ali for Everyone”.

The run-up to the election has been smooth, but many fear the post-election period could see turmoil like the 2016 protests. The opposition has disputed both his previous election wins, saying he won fraudulently.

“I am perfectly informed about the fraud orchestrated by Ali Bongo and his supporters,” Ondo Ossa told reporters at the polling station at Ba Oumar High School, in Libreville, without detailing the exact allegations.

“Ali Bongo still has time to negotiate. The only negotiation that is necessary is his departure; 60 years in power is too much,” he said.

In online posts, his opposition alliance Alternance 2023 and Bongo’s spokesperson said some polling stations had not received ballot slips for their respective candidates. Reuters could not independently verify the comments.

“The vote hasn’t even finished yet, and already the opposition is losing its nerve and its composure. This attempt to sow discord, because defeat is near, will not work,” Bongo’s campaign spokesperson Freddhy Koula said in an online post.

Recent changes to the voting system could further complicate the aftermath, said Remadji Hoinathy, a researcher at the Africa-focused Institute for Security Studies. These include the introduction of a ballot that requires voters to pick a presidential candidate and lawmaker from the same party.

The opposition has also voiced concern about a recent constitutional change to abolish two rounds of voting for the president.

Bongo’s camp has positioned him as the firm favourite to win the race, although there has been no reliable polling.

His main threat comes from Ondo Ossa, an economics and management professor who has campaigned on the need for change and better economic opportunities.

The pitch could resonate in a country where one in three young people are unemployed and the vast majority of the population has only known Bongo’s rule.

(Additional reporting and writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by David Gregorio, David Holmes and Mike Harrison)

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin has ordered Wagner fighters to sign an oath of allegiance to the Russian state after a deadly plane crash believed to have killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, the volatile chief of the mercenary group.

Putin signed the decree bringing in the change with immediate effect on Friday after the Kremlin said that Western suggestions that Prigozhin had been killed on its orders were an “absolute lie”. The Kremlin declined to definitively confirm his death, citing the need to wait for test results.

Russia’s aviation authority has said that Prigozhin was on board a private jet which crashed on Wednesday evening northwest of Moscow with no survivors exactly two months after he led a failed mutiny against army chiefs.

President Vladimir Putin sent his condolences to the families of those killed in the crash on Thursday and spoke of Prigozhin in the past tense.

He cited “preliminary information” as indicating that Prigozhin and his top Wagner associates had all been killed and, while praising Prigozhin, said he had also made some “serious mistakes.”

Putin’s introduction of a mandatory oath for employees of Wagner and other private military contractors was a clear move to bring such groups under tighter state control.

The decree, published on the Kremlin website, obliges anyone carrying out work on behalf of the military or supporting what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine to swear a formal oath of allegiance to Russia.

Described in the decree as a step to forge the spiritual and moral foundations of the defence of Russia, the wording of the oath includes a line in which those who take it promise to strictly follow the orders of commanders and senior leaders.

Western politicians and commentators have suggested, without presenting evidence, that Putin ordered Prigozhin to be killed to punish him for launching the June 23-34 mutiny against the army’s leadership which also represented the biggest challenge to Putin’s own rule since he came to power in 1999.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that the accusation and many others like it were false.

“There is now a great deal of speculation surrounding this plane crash and the tragic deaths of the plane’s passengers, including Yevgeny Prigozhin. Of course, in the West, all this speculation is presented from a well-known angle,” Peskov told reporters.

“All of this is an absolute lie, and here, when covering this issue, it is necessary to base yourself on facts. There are not many facts yet. They need to be established in the course of investigative actions,” he said.

‘WAIT FOR TEST RESULTS’

Russian investigators have opened a probe into what happened, but have not yet said what they suspect caused the plane to suddenly fall from the sky.

Nor have they officially confirmed the identities of the 10 bodies recovered from the wreckage.

Asked if the Kremlin had received official confirmation of Prigozhin’s death, Peskov said on Friday: “If you listened carefully to the Russian president’s statement, he said that all the necessary tests, including genetic tests, will now be carried out. The official results – as soon as they are ready to be published, will be published.”

Peskov, who said Putin had not met Prigozhin recently, also said it was unclear how long the tests and investigative work would take.

It was therefore impossible to start talking about whether Putin would attend Prigozhin’s funeral, Peskov said in answer to a question on the subject.

“There are no dates for the funeral yet, it is impossible to talk about it at all. The only thing I can say is that the president has a rather busy schedule at the moment.”

Nigel Gould-Davies, a former British ambassador to Belarus who is now a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), said the funeral would be significant.

“If Putin wishes to emphasise that Prigozhin died as a traitor, he will ignore it,” said Gould-Davies.

“(While) Prigozhin’s supporters may use it as an opportunity to eulogise him and his critique of the Kremlin’s conduct of the war — and could strengthen the hostility of a core of Wagner loyalists towards the Kremlin,” he said.

British military intelligence said on Friday there was not yet definitive proof that Prigozhin had been onboard but that it was “highly likely” he was dead.

The Pentagon has said its own initial assessment is that Prigozhin was killed.

Russia’s Baza news outlet, which has good sources among law enforcement agencies, has reported that investigators are focusing on a theory that one or two bombs may have been planted on board the plane.

Asked about the future of the Wagner Group, which has a series of lucrative contracts across Africa and a contingent in Belarus training the army there but now appears leaderless, Kremlin spokesman Peskov was concise.

“I can’t tell you anything now, I don’t know,” he said.

(Reporting by ReutersWriting by Andrew Osborn Editing by Guy Faulconbridge, Kirsten Donovan)

By Nelson Banya and Nyasha Chingono

HARARE (Reuters) -Partial results from Zimbabwe’s parliamentary election suggested the ruling party’s lead was growing on Friday, but election observers said the vote did not meet international standards and was conducted in a “climate of fear”.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s ZANU-PF party was widely expected to maintain its 43-year grip on power after Zimbabweans voted in a parliamentary and presidential poll on Wednesday.

A tally by state broadcaster ZBC showed ZANU-PF winning 101 parliamentary constituencies and the main opposition party Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) winning 59, out of a total of 210.

The result of the presidential vote has not been announced yet. It is expected within five days of voting.

Mnangagwa, 80, is seeking re-election at a time when the southern African country is grappling with soaring inflation and high unemployment, with many Zimbabweans reliant on dollar remittances from relatives abroad to make ends meet.

His main challenger is 45-year-old lawyer and pastor Nelson Chamisa.

Zimbabwe’s chances of resolving a debt crisis and obtaining World Bank and International Monetary Fund loans are at stake, as foreign lenders have said a free and fair vote is a pre-condition for any meaningful talks.

The government and electoral commission promised a clean election. But some political analysts said it was likely to be heavily skewed in Mnangagwa’s favour given his party’s history of using state institutions to manipulate results.

“Curtailed rights and lack of level playing field led to an environment that was not always conducive to voters making a free and informed choice,” the head of the European Union’s observer mission, Fabio Massimo Castaldo, said.

“Acts of violence and intimidation resulted in a climate of fear,” he told a news conference in the capital Harare, adding that the election did not meet international standards for transparency.

Police violently arrested members of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network and the Election Resource Centre (ERC) on Wednesday, both civil society groups that had said they were monitoring the vote in the interests of democracy, Castaldo said.

The ERC later posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that 16 of its staff together with Zimbabwe Election Support Network members had been released on $200 bail each by a magistrate.

An observer team from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) said voting was peaceful but noted issues including voting delays, the banning of rallies, biased state media coverage and the failure of the electoral commission to give candidates access to the voters’ role.

“Some aspects of the harmonised elections fell short of the requirements of the constitution of Zimbabwe, the Electoral Act and the SADC principles and guidelines governing democratic elections,” the head of the team, Nevers Mumba, said.

ZANU-PF secretary for finance Patrick Chinamasa told reporters late on Thursday the ruling party was on course to achieve a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, while he predicted Mnangagwa was “on target” for 60%-65% of the vote.

He dismissed Chamisa’s claim that he was leading in the polls as “day-dreaming”.

Eldred Masunungure, a politics lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, said there were fears that if ZANU-PF got a two-thirds majority it would try to pass laws to cement its hold on power, for example by removing the two-term limit on presidential terms.

Mnangagwa last week told state media that if he got a second term, it would be his last.

He took over from longtime strongman Robert Mugabe after a 2017 coup and won a disputed election in 2018.

As in previous elections, the parliamentary results appeared to show ZANU-PF retaining its rural base, while the CCC captured the urban vote.

(Reporting by Nelson Banya and Nyasha Chingono; Writing by Bhargav Acharya and Nellie Peyton; Editing by Alexander Winning, Devika Syamnath and Andrew Heavens)

By Brad Brooks and Julia Harte

(Reuters) – A fire suddenly swallows a Hawaiian town, killing scores. Wildfire smoke from Canada unexpectedly drifts across the U.S. Northeast, choking millions. Record rains surprise Vermont, triggering landslides.

This summer has been one of weather extremes across the United States, a season of intense heat waves, torrential storms and runaway wildfires that have tested how well prepared public safety officials and the emergency warning systems they oversee are for the changing climate.

Nowhere has that played out more visibly than on the Hawaiian island of Maui, where a small brushfire transformed into a fast-moving blaze that burned the historic town of Lahaina to the ground on Aug. 8. So unexpected and intense were the fires that some residents jumped into the ocean to avoid them because there was nowhere else to go. At least 115 people died.

Emergency sirens on Maui, part of Hawaii’s decades-old early warning system, never sounded.

As climate change increases the ferocity and frequency of extreme weather events, quickly warning the public of their arrival is more important than ever. But authorities are finding existing emergency alert systems insufficient for these new threats – sometimes with deadly results.

“We’re all living in the same state that Maui was in a month ago,” said Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University’s Climate School. “We’re all living in an environment that is exposed to increased hazards that we don’t fully understand.”

Hawaii’s emergency siren system was developed in 1940 to warn of military invasions, but officials began using it to alert the public about tsunamis after one struck the Big Island in 1946, killing 159 people.

When wildfires ravaged Maui this month, authorities said they decided against activating the sirens for fear residents would assume a tsunami was coming and flee from the shore – into the fire’s path.

Official websites had touted the sirens as an “all-hazard” system, suitable for various events including wildfires. Yet Maui residents said they associated them with tsunamis, according to Chris Gregg, a geology professor at East Tennessee State University who previously surveyed Hawaii residents about the sirens.

Any decision on sounding the sirens had to be made quickly. Fueled by strong winds, one fire went from “100% contained” to an inferno that devoured Lahaina in hours, a sharply compressed period for authorities more accustomed to tracking incoming hurricanes, for instance.

“A lot of our systems were built for a different climate and a different set of hazards that moved a little slower,” said Hawaii Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Adam Weintraub.

He said the state is examining “other and more resilient ways that we can deal with these emerging threats.”

NEW CHALLENGES

Across much of the world, warning systems for natural disasters have not evolved in response to climate change, according to Schlegelmilch.

Fires, storms, and other extreme weather events “aren’t behaving the same way,” he said. They not only are bigger and faster moving, but are cropping up in new places.

That can be especially dangerous in areas with emergency alert systems narrowly tailored to the types of disaster that have historically occurred there.

While each locality faces a distinctive threat landscape and needs a unique warning system, disaster management experts see some solutions that can be applied everywhere.

Instead of using “one-size-fits-all” warning systems, officials should only use sirens when their meaning is clearly understood by the public, in conjunction with notifications via TV, radio, phone call, and text message, according to Schlegelmilch.

They can also lean more heavily on experts like those in the U.S. National Weather Service to help track and predict fast-developing natural disasters.

Since a new director took over last summer, the weather service has started deploying its personnel directly into the offices of emergency responders to hasten the sharing of their expertise during “severe weather events,” according to Bill Parker, the agency’s meteorologist in charge in Jackson, Mississippi.

Meteorologists can help officials decide how and when to warn the public of potential disasters, according to Parker, by using metrics such as wind speeds to calculate when a wildfire might reach a residential area.

Equally important is preparing the public to anticipate the types of weather events that climate change might bring and make evacuation plans before they occur, he said.

TRIAL BY FIRE

Working out of his office in Colorado’s foothills, some 3,200 miles (5,150 km) away from Maui, Boulder Office of Disaster Management Director Mike Chard knows how quickly things can go wrong when natural disasters strike.

Chard was at his post the morning of Dec. 30, 2021, when a wildfire driven by hurricane-force winds broke out in a densely populated area south of Boulder.

Boulder County had a network of sirens, but they were not used to warn of wildfires where the fire erupted. Evacuation orders were slowed because different officials had to approve them depending on the area.

Chard realized the system had to evolve “because of the type of hazards we now have – they’re ‘no-notice’ fast-developing disasters with a lot of complexity and escalation to them and they cross jurisdictional lines.”

Afterwards, he worked with other agencies to eliminate bureaucratic choke points. Now any first responder on scene can demand that alerts be sounded and evacuations ordered.

Officials also divided the eastern half of the county into numbered zones so first responders can quickly tell dispatchers which areas to be evacuated; the western part of Boulder County, where wildfires were historically more common, had already been mapped out that way.

Boulder County’s sirens can now be used for wildfires. They issue both tones and spoken commands. The county also acquired a warning system that can send alerts to cellphones, fixed phone lines, emails – and even fax machines.

Without such advance planning, “you’re not going to be positioned to do the things you need to do when the devil comes to your door,” Chard said.

Hawaiian officials have vowed to review the Maui fire response. Experts say the state’s quest for more resilient responses to climate change-fueled disasters is one every government should pursue.

“We are in a paradigm shift point with disasters everywhere, not just in the Pacific, not just in the United States,” said Laura Brewington, co-director of a Hawaii-based climate adaptation research program.

(Reporting by Julia Harte and Brad Brooks; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Jonathan Oatis)