NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-12-2025 12PM EST

Episode Date: January 12, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Noor Rahm. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office says it's investigating at least 16 deaths related to the fires that have raged in Southern California since Tuesday. The largest of the blazes is the Palisades Fire. It's burned more than 23,000 acres. It's now about 11% contained. President Biden has declared a disaster area in the region, releasing money from the Federal Emergency Management

Administration. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell has been on the ground there for several days. She says fires are especially devastating. When you come to one of these fires, people have lost everything. When you look at a hurricane and a tornado, people have something that they can come sift through and try to find their memories. But here they've lost the physical

structure, but they've also lost so many of their memories, which makes this journey that they're going to have to go through that much more difficult in the coming weeks and months. She says more than 24,000 people have applied for financial assistance so far. Criswell says it's absolutely false that FEMA has run out of money, as President-elect Trump said last week. One way people living near wildfires are getting information to stay safe is by using a mobile app. From member station KQED, Alexander Gonzalez reports.

The app is called WatchDuty. It gives real-time alerts and brings together other key information like evacuation warnings and power outages. Monitoring all this is a nonprofit made up of former emergency personnel. John Mills is the CEO of WatchDuty. We are actually listening in real time to first responder radio traffic. And that's how we get such granular intelligence that is not normally found anywhere else on the internet.

Mills says in the first 48 hours since the LA fires began, the app got more than one million downloads. For NPR News, I'm Alexander Gonzalez in San Francisco. South Korean President Yoon Sang-yeol will not attend the first hearing of his own impeachment trial, according to his attorney. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from Seoul the first formal hearing is scheduled to be held Tuesday. South Korea's parliament voted to impeach Yoon for his brief declaration of martial

law last month. Now it's up to the constitutional Court to uphold or overturn the impeachment. But Yoon's lawyers say that because Yoon is wanted on separate criminal charges of insurrection, attending the impeachment hearing could jeopardize his safety, implying that he could be arrested. Yoon remains holed up in his residence, protected by the presidential security detail, which blocked police and investigators from executing an arrest warrant. If Yoon is absent on Tuesday, the hearing will be rescheduled for Thursday, and if he

doesn't show up then, the proceedings can go ahead without him. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Seoul. This is NPR News in Washington. Among the many structures destroyed by wildfires in the Los Angeles area, houses of worship, NPR's Jason DeRose reports on how the loss of these buildings is affecting the congregations that worship there. Jason DeRose, NPR's Jason DeRose, NPR The campus of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Pacific Palisades lost 13 of 21 buildings.

Reverend Bruce Freeman says the congregation of about 500 families also is home to an elementary and middle school. We will get through this with each other. Even if all the buildings go, we're still St. Matthews because we are the church. We are the community. Also lost in the Palisades Fire, Calvary Church, an evangelical Christian congregation, the Corpus Christi Catholic Church, and the Chabad Jewish Congregations building. The Jewish Federation of L.A. says the Chabad Jewish Congregations building. The Jewish Federation of LA says the Chabad was able to save its Torah scroll from the fire.

Jason DeRose, NPR News. The French territory of Mayotte is preparing for another major storm. Residents are urged to stay indoors and store food and water in anticipation of heavy rain and strong winds. The archipelago in the Indian Ocean was hit by a cyclone last month, which destroyed entire neighborhoods and villages. That was described as the worst storm to hit the islands in nearly a hundred years. An emergency task force arrived today at the scene of a growing oil spill in southern Russia. Two tankers damaged in a storm in the Kerch Strait

began leaking oil on December 15th. Russian President Vladimir Putin calls it one of the most serious environmental challenges in Russia in years. I'm Nora Rahm, NPR News in Washington.