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California’s Devastating Wildfire Season: First Fatality Reported, Already 5x More Acres Burned Than Average

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20 Jul, 2024

This post was originally published on Eco Watch

California officials discovered human remains in a burned Mendocino County home on July 8, reporting the state’s first death of an unusually devastating 2024 wildfire season.

The woman is believed to be 66-year-old Dagmar Stankova, who was last seen using a garden hose to try to extinguish flames outside of her home, as The New York Times reported.

California’s approximately 3,500 wildfires have already burned nearly 220,000 acres this year, said Joe Tyler, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire,) at a news conference last week.

While the total number of wildfires is slightly below the state’s five-year average, they have already burned more than five times the average area, which follows a larger trend of worsening natural disasters amid rising temperatures.

“The hots, we say it all the time, are getting a lot hotter,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom at a news conference last week. “We’re experiencing unprecedented record heat — these heat domes over the entire western United States — over and over and over and over and over again: record-breaking temperatures. Record-breaking heat.”

As of Thursday, the fire, dubbed the Mina Fire, was 97% contained, according to Cal Fire.

California experienced a wet winter in 2023, pulling it out of a drought, but led to a significant amount of grass growth that since dried out, which, along with high winds and record-breaking temperatures, contributed to the fire spread.

The June heat wave came during the 12th consecutive month that Earth’s global average temperature was more than 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial average, the hottest 12-month stretch on record.

“We are not just in a fire season, we are in a fire year,” Tyler said at the conference, urging caution in dry, hot and windy conditions.

The Thompson Fire in Butte County, California on July 2, 2024. CAL FIRE

Tyler advised California residents and families to prepare for wildfires. “Please create a wildfire action plan that addresses escape routes, meeting points, animal arrangements and a communication plan with your family,” he said. “Listen to the guidance of law enforcement and our firefighters for evacuation warnings and orders, prepare your home to defend from an advancing wildfire.”

The post California’s Devastating Wildfire Season: First Fatality Reported, Already 5x More Acres Burned Than Average appeared first on EcoWatch.

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ABB receives EPD status for gearless mill drive ring motor

ABB receives EPD status for gearless mill drive ring motor

ABB has gained Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) status for its Gearless Mill Drive (GMD) ring motor — technology used to drive large grinding mills in the mining industry.

An EPD is a standardised document that provides detailed information about the environmental impact of a product throughout its life cycle. Based on a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study, the EPD highlights ABB’s commitment to transparency, environmental responsibility and supporting customers in making informed decisions on sustainability in their supply chains.

ABB analysed the environmental impact of a ring motor across its entire life cycle from supply chain and production to usage and end-of-life disposal. The study was conducted for a ring motor of a semi-autogenous grinding (SAG) mill with an installed power of 24 MW and was based on a reference service life of 25 years.

“Sustainability is at the core of our purpose at ABB, influencing how we operate and innovate for customers,” said Andrea Quinta, Sustainability Specialist at ABB. “By earning the Environmental Product Declaration for our ring motor, we emphasise our environmental stewardship and industry leadership for this technology. We adhered to the highest standards throughout this process, as we do in the ABB Ring Motor factory every day. This recognition highlights to the mining industry what they are bringing into their own operations when they work with ABB.”

The comprehensive LCA was conducted at ABB’s factory in Bilbao, Spain, and was externally verified and published in accordance with international standards ISO 14025 and ISO 14040/14044. It will remain valid for five years.

The ring motor, a key component of the GMD, is a drive system without any gears where the transmission of the torque between the motor and the mill is done through the magnetic field in the air gap between the motor stator and the motor rotor. It optimises grinding applications in the minerals and mining industries by enabling variable-speed operation, leading to energy and cost savings.

The full EPD for the ABB GMD Ring Motor can be viewed on EPD International.

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