Currently in Portland — August 11, 2023: Heat wave ahead

The weather, currently.

Whelp, I hope you’ve enjoyed the breezes and cool mornings as much as I have, because we’re about to see triple digits. Friday will still be pretty mellow, with highs in the mid-80s, but it’s getting worse from there. By Sunday we may break 100 and we’re looking at severe heat warnings from Sunday through Thursday, at least.

So now’s the time to make a plan. Do you have what you need to stay cool and safe? Are there friends, family, or neighbors you can check on? Be sure to stay hydrated and keep the people and critters in your life hydrated, too. Overnight temps aren’t going to cool down much during this stretch so we’ll be short on relief for a while. Stay safe out there.

— Stella Harris

What you need to know, currently.

This week’s firestorm on Maui is the latest climate disaster to utterly transform a place and its people in a matter of hours. It’s also now one of the deadliest wildfires in US history, with potentially worse news to come in the days ahead as rescuers continue to work in burned areas.

As more survivor footage emerges, it’s clear that what happened in Maui was absolutely hellish.

The fires are a “scorching warning” says Kaniela Ing, a seventh-generation Native Hawaiian, politician, and community organizer. “People hit first and worse by the climate crisis tend to be Black, indigenous and low income. Yet we’re the keepers of the knowledge of how to build a society that wouldn’t cause ecological collapse and societal doom.”

Hawaiian youth are leading a lawsuit against their state government for its role in accelerating the climate emergency in violation of their constitutional rights, and recently found out they will be the second constitutional climate case in US history to go to trial. (The first was earlier this year in Montana, which Currently covered here.)

We all have the ability and duty to demand a better world. If you’re feeling motivated to help Hawaii in this moment of crisis, please lend your support to youth-led and Native-led movements.

—Eric Holthaus

What you can do, currently.

The fires in Maui have struck at the heart of Hawaiian heritage, and if you’d like to support survivors, here are good places to start:

The fires burned through the capital town of the Kingdom of Hawaii, the ancestral and present home to native Hawaiians on their original unceded lands. One of the buildings destroyed was the Na ‘Aikane o Maui cultural center, a gathering place for the Hawaiian community to organize and celebrate.

If you’d like to help the community rebuild and restore the cultural center, a fund has been established that is accepting donations — specify “donation for Na ‘Aikane” on this Venmo link.