Up First from NPR - Migrant Boat Sinks, Wildfire Smoke Returns, Deadly Street Drug

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

Hundreds are feared dead after a boat carrying hundreds of migrants sank in the Mediterranean Sea. Wildfire smoke is again drifting South from Canada impacting air quality in several states. A deadly chemical is being mixed with street drugs all over the country, why do we know so little about it?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The hope of finding more survivors after a boat carrying migrants that sank Wednesday off the coast of Greece is fading. Dozens are dead, more than a hundred rescued. The fear now is hundreds more are gone. Is Europe's crackdown on migration making this journey more dangerous? I'm Leila Faldin, that's A. Martinez, and this is Up First from NPR News. Firefighters in Canada are stretched thin as they fight hundreds of fires in nearly every Canadian province. This week, they're getting help from other countries as the smoke from the blazes drifts south again.

How long will this very early and very intense season of wildfires last? And a deadly chemical found in street drugs is devastating communities across the country. We only find out about what's in the street drug supply when it's too late. We'll hear why so little is known about this deadly horse tranquilizer. Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.

Now, our change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to our change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. At least 79 people are dead after a boat carrying hundreds of migrants capsized early Wednesday off the coast of Greece. Yeah, I mean, just over 100 survivors were initially found. And while search operations continue, there's little hope that more survivors will be rescued. And thousands are protesting in Greece over the handling of this capsized boat and over European immigration policies.

We're joined now from Athens by Associated Press journalist Derek Gatopoulos. He just returned from the Greek port city of Kalamata, where many of the survivors were taken. Derek, do they know or does anyone know what caused the boat to sink? They don't know. It's the subject of an investigation. was being tracked before it sank is that the large number of people in the vessel, on the deck and below the deck, possibly moved to one side and caused the vessel to capsize. I think maybe as many as 700 people were on board, which would imply that 500 or so could be dead.

Wow. What are the people that survived, what are they saying about what happened? Well, what we only have at the moment is secondary information from people, from aid workers and politicians and others who have been speaking to the migrants because they have not they're confirming that women and children were below deck mostly, and most of the men were above deck, well, many of the men were above deck, and they're among the survivors and the bodies recovered. So the assumption is, and the belief is, that these people have gone to the bottom with the ship. Well, and Leila mentioned earlier thousands of people protesting in Greece

over how this was handled. What is their main concern? Well, there are several reasons why people are protesting. Sometimes Greece has a general election coming up on June 25, so that's part of the reason for the protest. But the other reason is that people fear, and not just people, but also aid organizations and sometimes political parties fear that the crackdown on migration is causing smugglers to take more risks, essentially, so that they take long journeys on unseaworthy

boats, as is in this case. It was traveling from Libya to Italy, which is a long journey, three days, and two-thirds of the way through its journey as it passed through Greece, it capsized mainly because it was an unseaworthy boat. And in this kind of tragedy, I mean, you mentioned it, we're going to politics. How have the changing politics of migration in Europe affected the types of journeys these people try to make? Well, it does have a direct effect because the European Union hasn't been able to finalize a

deal on how to share the burden, if you like, of migrants coming in because they all come across the Mediterranean to Southern European countries. And then they try to get to Central European countries. So the crackdown, the inability to figure out how to deal with this has just led to additional policing and building walls and patrols. So that has made the journeys across the Mediterranean more dangerous. And quickly, that additional policing, that cracking down, is that reducing the numbers of migrants? It is, but it's making the journeys more dangerous. Those are the two main things. That's the Associated Press's Derek Gattopoulos in Athens. Derek, thank you. Thank you. Another round of smoke from Canadian wildfires is drifting south,

blanketing parts of the Midwest and headed for the East Coast. Millions of Americans will wake up this morning to hazy and in some places hazardous skies. Around 450 wildfires are currently burning across Canada, which is experiencing a particularly early and intense fire season. NPR's Nathan Brott is in Quebec. Nate, how close are you to some of those wildfires? Well, A, I am learning that close is a relative term in the province of Quebec. I'm in a city called Val d'Or, which is in the western part of the province, about a six-hour drive north of Montreal. And there is a cluster of major wildfires burning a ways north from here, like a couple more hours, but only

firefighting personnel are being allowed into those areas right now currently. And despite some rain over the last couple of days, it's kind of unclear when that's going to change and when those roads will open up. And considering the amount of smoke that's drifting across the border, the wildfires have got to be intense and got to be massive. Yeah, they are huge. I mean, here in Quebec, the amount of land that's burnt is already 10 times what they would normally see an entire year. And, you know, as you said, we're still really early in the season, only in mid-June. I was talking to a fire information officer, Melanie Moraine, here yesterday at one of their bases, and she said that the scale of this is really complicating things nationally

is because there are so many fires burning in so many provinces at the exact same time. And that's what's not common. And it has limited us being able to help each other within provinces. And that is one of the reasons why many of the agencies have had to go internationally for help. So typically a Canadian wildfire land firefighter has moved around from region to region in the summer to help out when a place pops off, pretty similar to how we do it in the U.S. But right now with so much fire, they're spread really thin. And Melanie mentioned international help, but where are the firefighters coming from? All over the place. I mean, New Zealand, South Africa, France, a bunch of teams came in earlier

this week from Portugal, Spain, and the U.S. I actually went to meet two U.S.-based hotshot crews at the airport here in Val d'Or yesterday, you know, hotshots being the creme de la creme of U.S. ground crews. And for one of the 20-person teams from Helena, Montana, this was already their second Canadian deployment this year. I asked their acting superintendent, Tyg Stoyanov, what the biggest difference was fighting fires here versus the U.S., you know, besides the obvious language barrier, which he said they've been using apps to address. And he said access in these dense, remote boreal forests has been a real issue. It's challenging to move ground in and challenging to see where the fire is. It's challenging to see a quarter

mile sometimes. So they use aviation assets pretty heavily, scoopers and helicopters. Helicopters are almost like pickup trucks up here. And scoopers, if you're wondering, are fixed wing aircraft airplanes that literally scoop water from lakes or big bodies of water and then dump them on the fires. Yeah, regrettably, Nate, I'm not wondering. I watch them work close. I live in Southern California, so I see them all the time. Given, though, the remoteness of these fires, is it safe to say that they're going to be burning for a while?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're still early in the summer. I've heard some people say that they expect these fires to burn until it starts snowing, which, to be clear, as you know, being in California, that's not necessarily bad. Fire is a part of a lot of these landscapes. snowing, which to be clear, as you know, being in California, that's not necessarily bad. Fire is a part of a lot of these landscapes. The concern, though, is that this has happened so intensely so early in the season and that it's going to continue here for a while.

All right, that's NPR's Nathan Rott in Quebec. Wear a mask, Nate. Yeah, I appreciate it, eh? How is a dangerous chemical called xylosine ending up in America's street drugs? The chemical, often mixed with fentanyl, is turning up all over the country, wreaking havoc on people with addiction. Jessica lives in Newcastle, Delaware. It just eats your skin away and you just have a hole and then it leaves a scar. But experts say it's unclear how and why xylosine is spreading so fast. NPR addiction correspondent Brian Mann found this lack of information is part of a wider problem. Brian, how can it be that public health officials and law enforcement don't seem to know where xylosine is coming from?

Yeah, this really is remarkable. And it points to one of the dilemmas of America's addiction overdose epidemic. Everyone agrees that there's a public health crisis underway, 110,000 deaths last year. But from the start, the U.S. hasn't done the most basic thing during an epidemic, which is gather good data, you know, fast, accurate information. Intel on what drugs are on the streets when it's gathered at all tends to be siloed in law enforcement agencies and disseminated really slowly. I spoke about this with Navarone Descoupes, who runs a lab at the University of North Carolina that samples street drugs collected all over the U.S. We only find out about what's in the street drug supply when

it's too late, when people are either dead or arrested. And experts say this lack of information slowed the public health response when fentanyl began to spread. Now xylosine is spreading fast and many communities still aren't even testing for the drug. Why don't government agencies track street drugs and overdoses more accurately? Yeah, the experts I've spoken to say this is a legacy of decades of public policy that leaned more toward the drug war, you know, police and law enforcement rather than public health. And this angers people grappling with this overdose crisis. Levi Wardell is in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction himself, and he works now as a funeral home director in Cheyenne, Wyoming. And in that role, he helps families who've

lost loved ones to drugs. And he says it's just crazy that officials don't track dangerous drugs and overdoses the way we track other public health threats. Do you remember when COVID started happening on the news? It was nonstop and you saw the map and you saw where places getting red, where hotspots were, all of this stuff, like why would that not be available for this? The Biden administration has tried to improve drug data collection, but government officials acknowledge the system's still slow and primitive. Big national solutions like monitoring wastewater for illicit drugs or requiring law enforcement agencies to report new substances that they're detecting. Those ideas just haven't gained traction. So many people are dying. How are people on the front lines dealing with this lack of information? Yeah, people are trying to get

creative. Cities in some states are improving their local tracking and their information sharing systems. And nonprofit groups are doing the best they can. I spoke about this with Sam Rivera, who's with On Point. It's a group that runs a harm reduction clinic in New York City. The way, you know, we have national harm reduction calls once a month or so, and we're always checking in with each other. What's there? What are you finding here? What are you finding there? And people I talk to say this kind of communication is helping, but it's a far cry from the kind of real-time national public health data the experts say is needed.

That's NPR addiction correspondent Brian Mann. Brian, thanks. Thank you. The Massachusetts Air National Guard's been accused of leaking top-secret government documents has been indicted by a federal grand jury. 21-year-old Jack Teixeira is charged with six counts that each carry up to a decade in prison. He was arrested in April after being accused of sharing classified information on Ukraine and other U.S. intelligence in an online chat. Teixeira is in jail while he waits for the start of his trial. And that's Up First for Friday, June 16th. I'm A. Martinez. And I'm Laila Faldel. Up First is produced by David West, Milton Gavada, and Lindsay Taddy. Our editors are Adam Biern,

Didi Skanky, Andrea DeLeon, and Alice Wolfley. Our technical director is Zach Coleman, with engineering support from Carly Strange. And our executive producer is Erika Aguilar. And don't forget, Up First airs on Saturday, too. Ayesha Roscoe and Scott Simon have all the news. It'll be right here in this feed or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.