“After deadly floods killed more than 100 people in Texas’ Hill Country last July, officials vowed major changes in hopes of preventing the failures that contributed to the high death toll. They promised better flood warning systems, tighter safety rules for children’s camps and improvements to the state’s water infrastructure.

That work was far from done when a new round of storms began pummeling the state this week, triggering catastrophic flash floods in some of the same areas devastated in 2025. At least two people died. Hundreds needed rescue.

But residents in some hard-hit areas said a year of preparation did make a difference. Newly installed flood sirens sounded in the darkness, warning people to get out. Phones buzzed with alerts that weren’t sent out in last year’s disaster…

Unlike last summer, when local officials in Kerr County said they had been reluctant to 'cry wolf' and order evacuations and failed to send out wireless alerts to warn of flash floods, Kerr County issued four alerts and the city of Kerrville issued one early on Thursday as the risk for flooding became apparent…

'Last year, we got no alarms. We had no idea what was going on,' said Suzanne Sutphin Gschwind, of Kerrville.

'This year, very different,' she said, with multiple texts and calls coming in from local authorities, a weather channel and her doorbell camera. One night the warnings arrived 'about every two hours.'

'I think we would all like to err on the side of too much,' she said.”

From Associated Press.

“After twin earthquakes struck northern Venezuela last month, thousands of people took to social media, pleading for help locating friends and family. The interim government was slow to act, but help came quickly from an unexpected source: developers and programmers…

The earthquakes killed more than 3,800 people, and destroyed homes and hospitals. Telecommunications infrastructure, including a submarine fiber-optic cable and mobile network towers, was severely damaged. Power outages added to the challenge of accessing the internet.

With a near-total absence of state support, Venezuelan citizens and diaspora members like Bastidas stepped in. Within hours of the quakes, volunteer developers in Miami, San Francisco, Chile, Argentina, and elsewhere used AI to quickly build websites to report missing persons, coordinate donation drives, assess structural damage to buildings, map hospital capacity, locate shelters, and reunite pets with owners…

'Everything the state should be doing is being done by civil society,” Hernández said. 'People could have been putting their efforts somewhere else, but what we did was fill the state’s role however we could, with what we had.'”

From Rest of World.

“Forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon fell to a historic low in 2025 after peaking the previous year, according to a report published Tuesday…

Flames engulfed the world's largest tropical rainforest in 2024, when an unprecedented drought triggered the spread of fires, the majority of which were man-made.

Using satellite images, MapBiomas found that last year saw a reversal of the critical situation, with 3.1 million hectares (7.7 million acres) burned—the smallest area since records began in 1985.

Fires eased off across the country as well, with burned areas nationwide at their smallest since 2018.”

From Phys.org.

“Drones capable of spraying water and fire retardants have been practicing how to snuff out wildfires early in California and Alaska this summer—demonstrating a possible rapid-response tool for firefighting as climate change transforms wildfire season into a nearly year-round risk for much of the United States.

Most drones are significantly smaller than crewed aircraft and have shorter flight ranges, meaning they cannot replace large airtankers in delivering massive payloads of water or other fire-suppressing payloads to remote wildfires. But companies and fire agencies—along with organizers of the $11 million XPRIZE competition—are testing whether drones can help firefighting crews respond more quickly to small fires and put them out before they become more destructive.”

From Ars Technica.