Mattapan MBTA line back to normal after flooding prompts raft rescues
The MBTA Mattapan line has returned to normal service after flooding prompted several ice rescues on Tuesday morning.
According to the Milton Fire Department, crews got a call around 8 a.m. about flooding in the area. Upon arrival, crews found a trolley trapped in the water up to four feet up in some places.
'You'd never thought you'd have to make an ice rescue off of a trolley before,' said Milton Fire Chief Chris Madden.
Seven people were rescued from the trolley and the flooding came from the Neponset River after an ice dam caused water to overflow its banks.
North Station commuters were also seeing delays and cancellations on Tuesday. Keolis warned of slowdowns on the Commuter Rail routes out of North Station due to equipment shortages.
Mike O'Brien, like many, is looking forward to spring. That's when his job as a Duckboat tour guide starts up again.
'I'm done with this,' he said. 'This is the coldest it's been in, I would say, three years.'
The cold weather is set to last through the end of the week, for the full forecast, visit the link here.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Miami Herald
Separated from kids in Cuba and Haiti by Trump travel ban, parents plead for help
As Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits come to terms with what a new U.S. travel ban means for their families' hopes to reunite, many have flocked to social media in anguish — including children — seeking help. 'President Trump, I ask you to please reconsider family reunification for residents,' said a 10-year-old in a Hello Kitty T-shirt in a video she recorded in Havana. The video was published by her mother, Lia Llanes, a U.S. permanent resident living in Miami, in one of the several Facebook groups where Cubans are discussing the new prohibitions. 'I am a child who, like many others, is waiting for an interview to reunite with our parents so we can grow up in this beautiful country and become a citizen,' the child says in the video. 'With great pride, I ask you again, please reconsider. And I ask God to enlighten you. Thank you.' The child had been taking English lessons, preparing for a new life in the United States, which she thought was just days away, Llanes told the Herald. The petition to bring her daughter to the U.S. had just been approved in late May, and the family was just waiting for the visa interview at the U.S. embassy in Havana, the final step in a lengthy process to legally emigrate to the United States. Then President Donald Trump announced last week a travel ban suspending the issuing of immigrant visas to Cuban relatives of U.S. permanent residents, upending the plans of many families to reunite. 'It's very heartbreaking to know that your claim is approved and this happens,' said Llanes, who runs a small business and obtained a green card after being paroled at the U.S. border in 2022. She said her daughter spent two days 'without talking to anyone' after learning the bad news. 'It's hard to explain,' she said. 'It's strange because you have your daughter there, and you're here, and one minute, you have good news, and then the next, everything changes.' Trump's new ban restricts travel for most citizens of Cuba, Venezuela and five other countries while also placing Haiti and 11 other nations on a full ban. It's a distressing blow to families who had already been waiting years to reunite in the United States. Standing in a room full of boxes with the beds she hoped her children would sleep on when they join her in the United States, Clara Yoa, a U.S. permanent resident, could barely contain her tears as she recounted how she felt after learning about the travel ban. 'I no longer have a life,' she said in a video she published on Facebook. Yoa came to the United States in 2019 from Cuba, and has her own small cleaning company in Tampa, she told the Herald. Like Llanes' daughter, her children, now 16, 17, and 19, were also waiting for the visa interview at the U.S. Embassy in Havana. But their arrival had become an urgent matter because her own mother, who has been caring for Yoa's three children in Granma, a province in eastern Cuba, has metastatic cancer. Adding to her desperation is that a Cuban doctor told her that due to the stress caused by their separation, her eldest now has a heart condition. 'I hope that the people at the top, those who sign and pass the laws, also take into account that we, permanent residents, also have our children in a prison country, and we want to have them here with us,' she said, her voice breaking in the video. 'At least they should take into account that there are children who aren't going to come here to commit terrorism or harm this country.' The ban, announced last Wednesday, suspends immigration visas for adult children of U.S. citizens and relatives of U.S. permanent residents from the 19 countries included in the executive order. Only the immediate relatives of U.S. citizens–parents, spouses, parents and minor children will be allowed to enter the United States under a directive the White House said will 'protect the United States from foreign terrorists and other national security and public safety threats.' Cubans, Haitians and Venezuelans with visas issued before June 8 will still be able to travel to the United States. But on Monday, some relatives of U.S. permanent residents who attended scheduled visa interviews at the U.S. embassy in Havana were issued a document in Spanish stating they were not 'eligible for an immigrant visa' under the new directive, a decision they could not appeal. The document also stated that their cases did not merit an exception, citing U.S. national security interests. The State Department did not say if applicants whose immigration visas were denied solely based on the new travel restrictions would have a chance down the line to present their case again. It also did not say if cases involving young children would fall under exceptions the Secretary of State can make on a case-by-case basis. But an agency spokesperson said, 'Urgent humanitarian medical travel may be considered a basis for such an exception. Only applicants otherwise qualified for a visa will be considered.' On Wednesday, a mother with a Miami cellphone number joined a WhatsApp chat group for Cubans with pending immigration cases, wanting to know if anyone had heard of a child being denied an immigration visa at the U.S. embassy in Havana. Her child has a scheduled interview later this week. 'I am just talking to him, and he is so innocent, so oblivious about all this, and he will be very happy tomorrow at his appointment,' she said, crying in a voice message. One of the group's most active commenters replied: 'God is great. Perhaps when they see that little boy in there, they would approve it.' A historic exodus Many families left separated by the ban were part of a historic exodus from Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela in recent years. In introducing the travel ban, Trump partly blamed the Biden administration for allowing more than a half million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans into the United States under a humanitarian parole program that allowed nationals of the four nations to migrate to the U.S. for two years as long as they had a financial sponsor, passed background checks and arrived through an airport. But part of the reason so many people from the four countries took advantage of the program, known as CHNV, stems from legal immigration hurdles and restrictive policies introduced by Trump during his first term. Among other things, his administration suspended the Cuba Family Reunification Program and a similar one for Haitians. During those years, U.S. embassies in the three countries either suspended visa processing or scaled back appointments, preventing people from immigrating legally while their populations faced political and humanitarian crises, which contributed to the historic exodus Trump is now citing. Anguish and uncertainty Since Trump signed his proclamation last Wednesday, Cubans in the U.S. and on the island have been debating and sharing information about the new immigration restrictions on several groups on WhatsApp and Facebook. Many are praying for a 'miracle' as they share their stories and give each other hope that the ban might be temporary. The directive states that after three months of its enactment, the President will review the recommendations by the Secretary of State regarding whether to continue the restrictions on nationals of the targeted countries. A review will be conducted every six months thereafter. But the lifting of restrictions relies on the foreign governments improving 'their information-sharing and identity-management protocols and practices.' So far, the Cuban government has not signaled it is interested in improving its cooperation with the U.S. and instead attacked Secretary of State Marco Rubio. After the travel ban was announced, Cuba's foreign minister said the measure 'aims to deceive the American people, blaming and violating the rights of migrants. Anti-Cuban politicians, including the Secretary of State, are the main proponents of this measure, betraying the communities that elected them.' Trump's proclamation also notes Cuba remains on the U.S. list of countries that sponsor terrorism. The ban also comes at especially difficult time for Haitians in a country wracked by gang violence. In a statement, Haiti's U.S.-backed Transitional Presidential Council said it plans to 'initiate negotiations and technical discussions' with the Trump administration in order to remove Haiti from the targeted countries. This is likely a tall order considering that more than 1.3 million Haitians remain displaced and armed gangs, now in control of most of Port-au-Prince, have made it difficult to circulate, raising questions about authorities' ability to improve vetting procedures and information sharing with the U.S. For Haiti, the ban prohibits the entry of all of its nationals unless they fall under the few exceptions contemplated in the new directive. Like many Haitians who arrived back in the U.S. on the first day of the travel ban, Eraus Alzime, 71, didn't fully understand its impact. The father of 10 was in Haiti visiting his children when he received a call urging him to get back to the U.S. To get out, he had to travel by bus and went through three gang checkpoints, he said. 'Of course you feel panicked,' Alzime said. 'The bandits make you get off so that they check your suitcases and see what you are carrying. You don't have a choice, you have to do it, if you don't you can end up dead.' Alzime, a U.S. citizen, said he applied for six of his children to emigrate to the U.S legally. The oldest is 43 years-old while the youngest is 14. His adult children won't be able to travel to the United States under the current ban. 'I filed for my kids and they've yet to give them to me,' he said. A victim of the country's incessant violence, Alizme says he has no choice but to travel to Haiti for his kids. 'I have to go see how they are doing,' he said. 'We live depressed' As the news about the travel ban sinks in, parents worry about the psychological toll the prolonged separation will have on their children, especially those who are too young to grasp immigration policy. Gleydys Sarda, 26, and her husband took the difficult decision to flee Cuba and left their 3-year-old son under the care of his grandparents in 2022. They didn't want to expose him to what they knew could be a dangerous land journey to the U.S. Southern border, she said. Now, he is 6 years-old, under the care of a grandparent and increasingly anxious to be with his parents. 'We live depressed because of the long wait; we ran out of excuses to tell him when he asks why he cannot be with us,' said Sardá, who is a U.S. permanent resident and works for Amazon at a warehouse in Coral Springs. 'Lately, he has been repeating more than ever that he wants to be here, that he is tired of waiting, and now this restriction broke our hearts. We have no other way.' Sardá's visa petition to bring him to the United States has yet to be approved. The couple tried to bring him using the special parole program created by the Biden administration, but they never heard back from U.S. immigration authorities. Sardá, who is currently pregnant, frets at the idea of traveling to Cuba to see her child, which currently seems to be her only choice to spend time with him, if only for a short time. The last time she visited in January, 'the goodbye was too hard. When we are there, the three of us are very happy, but after we leave,I feel I leave him worse,' she said. Sarda said the boy got depressed after they left, 'and so do we. I was in bed and didn´t want to go to work or leave the house.' 'Now I am also expecting my second child, and it would break my heart to go to Cuba with one child, return with one and leave the other in Cuba.'
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Mobile food drops set for June 17 in Blackduck, Kelliher
Jun. 11—BLACKDUCK — North Country Food Bank is is partnering with the United Way of Bemidji Area to offer two mobile food distributions in Blackduck and Kelliher on Tuesday, June 17. The Blackduck drive will run from 10 to 11 a.m. at the Evangelical Free Church, 241 Oscar Ave. The drive in Kelliher will run from 11 a.m. to noon at the Kelliher Community Center, 220 Main St. East. At the events, people can drive up and receive food. Those receiving food will be asked to identify themselves and answer a few simple household questions by North Country Food Bank staff. The Food Bank is collecting this information to allow access to more food items for these mobiles, the release said. To find out about weather cancellations, visit North Country Food Bank on Facebook. For more information about the mobile food distributions, contact Scott Johnson at (218) 399-7367.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
Rowena Fire closes I-84 eastbound; over 700 homes on level 3 'Go Now' evacuation orders
(This story has been updated to include new information) Eastbound I-84 closed June 11 between mileposts 64 and 82 due to the Rowena Fire, according to the Oregon Department of Transportation and the Wasco County Sheriff's Office. The closure is between Mosier and The Dalles. I-84 and Highway 30 were also closed from Rowena to milepost 82. ODOT advised drivers to find an alternative route. ODOT spokesperson Kacey Davey said there are fires burning on both the Oregon and Washington state sides of the Columbia River Gorge. Davey urged travelers to not drive to the highway closure spots and to check for updates and closure information. "Wildfires are unpredictable and we have no timeline for when I-84 or U.S. 30 may open," Davey said. The sheriff's office said in a Facebook post 733 homes were under level 3 "Go Now" evacuation orders, 1,195 homes were under level 2 "Be Set" and 157 homes were under level 1 "Be Ready." A map for areas under evacuation can be found at: The fire was at least 500 acres as of 5:45 p.m. June 11, according to WatchDuty. It was not immediately clear what caused the fire. Gov. Tina Kotek invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act in response to the fire, allowing the Oregon state fire marshal to mobilize resources. The state fire marshal is mobilizing structural firefighters and an incident management team for the fire, according to a news release. Three task forces were set to respond June 11 and three more are set to arrive the morning of June 12. According to the release, the Oregon State Fire Marshal Green Team will work with the Central Oregon Fire Management Service Type 3 team. Areas under level 3 "Go Now" evacuation orders included: Rowena Ferry Road east to River Road; Seven Mile Hill Road to Mountain View Drive, south to Chenowith Creek Road and Browns Creek Road east to West Seventh Street. Areas under level 2 "Be Ready" included: Evacuation Snipes, west to Chenoweth Loop Road, Chenowith Creek Road to Browns Creek Road. Areas under level 1 "Be Set" included: Port area of The Dalles. A temporary shelter is available at The Dalles Middle School, 1100 E 12th St., The Dalles, OR., 97058. The Wasco County Fairgrounds is open for livestock and horses and is located at 81849 Fairgrounds Road, Tygh Valley, OR., 97063. 'This early season conflagration should come as a reminder to Oregonians to be ready for wildfire,' State Fire Marshal Mariana Ruiz-Temple said in a news release. 'The predictions for this summer are extremely concerning. I am asking everyone to take that extra minute to mindful of the conditions and remember it takes a single spark to ignite a disaster.' Jonathan Williams is the news editor of the Statesman Journal. Reach him at jcwilliams1@ This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Oregon wildfires: Rowena Fire closes part of I-84, evacuations ordered
