The town lost to the Dixie Fire

Post Reports

The Washington Post

Daily News, Politics, News

4.4 • 5.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2021

⏱️ ? minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How some states are trying to make students and staffers feel safe in school. Why more moms may leave the workforce as the delta variant spreads. And what it’s like to lose your town to a wildfire and to have to start again.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced Wednesday that the state will require all teachers and school staffers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or to submit to weekly testing. It’s the first state to impose such a rule. The governor is citing the surge of the delta variant as the reason –– and the fact that more and more children are being hospitalized by infection.

As the pace of coronavirus cases rises nationwide and children’s camps and day cares shut back down, working mothers’ lives and livelihoods are taking another massive hit. Heather Long reports on the panic setting in among America’s millions of mothers with children under the age of 12 and the potential economic cost of a second mass resignation of moms.

The Dixie Fire in California has been burning since mid-July. It now covers more than 500,000 acres in four counties and has forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes. Marisa Iati reports on the state’s containment efforts, the emotional toll of evacuation and why rebuilding may not be an option in Greenville, Calif.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports.
0:08.5	I'm Martin Powers.
0:10.5	It's Thursday, August 12.
0:15.3	So this week, a lot of kids in this country went back to school, even as the COVID surge
0:20.3	continues to get worse.
0:22.4	Hospital systems and several states are on the brink of failure.
0:25.4	In Mississippi, they're putting ICU beds into a parking garage, in Florida, hospitals
0:30.3	are scrambling to hire hundreds of travel nurses, and lots of people are working to try
0:35.3	to turn the surge around.
0:36.9	A big part of that, of course, is vaccinations.
0:39.6	At any moment, the FDA is expected to authorize a booster for immunocompromised people.
0:45.7	And in California, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that his state will mandate vaccinations
0:50.4	or weekly testing for all school staff.
0:57.1	Not just teachers, credential staff, parent educators, custodial staff, the bus drivers,
1:04.7	folks that are critical to supporting the entire school ecosystem, also submit a verification
1:12.6	of vaccination and or submit to weekly testing.
1:16.6	We think this is the right thing to do, and we think this is a sustainable way to keeping
1:22.0	our schools open and to address the number one anxiety that parents like myself have,
1:27.9	I have four young children, and that is knowing that the schools are doing everything in
1:33.1	their power to keep our kids safe, to keep our kids healthy.
1:38.8	But what's happening in California is not happening everywhere.
1:41.9	Some states aren't even mandating masks for students and teachers.
	...

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