Latest news with #Flood
Business Post
19 hours ago
- Business
- Business Post
Giving credit where it's due
In times of uncertainty, the credit control function in a business should be front and centre at all times. Rather than looking at the credit function as simply the 'debt collectors,' the potential for profitable growth in a business is greatly enhanced by a profit-focused, customer-friendly, commercially aware team of credit professionals who deliver excellence by ensuring customers stay buying and paying in full, on time every time. 'However, this does not happen by accident,' said Declan Flood, CEO at Irish Credit Management Training (ICMT). 'This is the result of hard work, cross departmental understanding, and business process development, coupled with an understanding of the risks and rewards in doing business.' The stellar work of credit teams, which often goes unnoticed and unacknowledged, is the subject of the Irish Credit Team Awards, organised by ICMT, which seeks to celebrate hard-working credit teams across the island of Ireland. This year's ceremony takes place at a gala luncheon in The Royal Marine Hotel, Dun Laoghaire, on Friday 14 November 2025 at 12.30pm. Applications are now open for and forms are available from Closing date for receipt of applications is 5pm, Friday 12 September 2025. There is no charge for entry, and applicants will get access to best practice and helpful tips on how to deliver excellence in credit. The ceremony starts with a drinks reception followed by a four-course lunch and the presentation of the awards in each category – as well as some fun elements such as the legendary quiz. The event has been getting bigger and better every time, and this year is shaping up to break all records. 'This year is the eight year of the awards, and there are a number of categories, so no matter the size of the team, the industry, or working nationally or internationally, there is a category for everyone,' said Flood. 'We also take the opportunity to recognise the top credit managers and credit controllers in the industry, as well as the service providers who support the profession through their products, systems and services.' Winning an award is only part of the story too, says Flood. 'Applying for the award motivates the team to work together to achieve greater results; if they are shortlisted in their category, this is a bonus that recognises all the work that they have done, while winning a category is national recognition of superior performance. On the day, one of the category winners will be selected as the Overall Credit Team of the Year and join the prestigious company of previous winners, who include Grifols, Power NI and Waterwipes. 'In short, your participation will have a positive effect on your business and give your credit team the recognition they deserve.'
Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
FireAid's concerts raised $100 million for recovery. Six months later, 'there's still such significant need'
When the wildfires ripped through the Pacific Palisades and Altadena in January, Michael Flood, chief executive of the L.A. Regional Food Bank, knew the demand for aid would explode. 'It was especially high in January through March as so many people were displaced and lost power and water,' Flood said. He saw demand for food relief rise 30%. 'It is still high,' he said. 'People had to move in with family and friends around the county. We did a food bank in Inglewood in February and we saw just how many had been displaced by both fires.' His organization, which provides food assistance to hundreds of thousands of Angelenos every month, got significant help from the FireAid benefit concert in January. That show, produced by Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and music mogul Irving Azoff, featured dozens of A-list musicians like Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish and the Red Hot Chili Peppers performing at the Kia Forum and Intuit Dome. The event — along with matching donations from Ballmer and his wife Connie — raised $100 million for wildfire relief. Six months after the fires, The Times individually contacted over a hundred organizations that received FireAid funds, nonprofits in food aid, housing, mental health, childcare and ecological resilience. A review of the beneficiaries' grants and work showed how FireAid was an urgent lifeline in the worst of the disaster and beyond. 'We want people to understand that there's been a thoughtful process behind this, and our top priority was trying to do what people needed, and do what's best for fire survivors,' said Lisa Cleri Reale, a member of FireAid's grant advisory committee. Yet the grant recipients are still grappling with the deep, intertwined needs of a scarred Los Angeles. That work will require investment for years to come. 'The high cost of rent, and food prices being 25% higher, it all puts pressure on people already struggling to meet basic needs,' Flood said. 'Even though we're six months from the fires, there's still such a significant need.' In between sets, FireAid highlighted individual stories of incalculable tragedy. One family, the Williams of Altadena, recalled onstage that 'At 3:30 in the morning, the warning hit our phones. We grabbed what we could — our grandmother's special clock, our father's ashes, our 47-year-old parrot Hank. Among the five of us standing here, we lost four homes and we're struggling to find places to live.' For music fans calling in donations during Stevie Nicks' and Sting's sets though, it was fair to ask how those specific groups were chosen, and how they were making a difference to families like the Williams. In late May, the Palisades Community Council sent a letter to the Annenberg Foundation and FireAid organizers. The critical letter asked for a full accounting of the grants, and clarity on the decision-making process behind them. The FireAid organization responded with the full timeline and the grant amounts they'd dispersed, along with plans for future rounds and applications for small groups to apply. 'This is very different from other philanthropy. We have a different magnifying glass looking at us,' Reale said. 'There are people who bought tickets to these concerts, who donated on the website, the musicians who gave their time, these people want to know that their contributions are doing what's best. We have fire survivors as our top priority, but we're also asking — can we look at the FireAid donors and explain our decisions in a tangible way?' In breaking down the group's grant-making process, FireAid representatives showed how its earliest priorities were organizations providing direct cash, food and shelter to survivors. In February, $1 million went to the L.A. Regional Food Bank, followed by a second grant of $250,000. The money went to pay extra drivers, forklift operators and warehouse workers to help process and distribute donations after the fires. 'We're a year-round program, so when disaster strikes, that gets laid on top of it,' Flood said. With its February grant, the group Inclusive Action distributed $500 cash grants to landscapers, street vendors and other outdoor workers who lost jobs or homes in the fires. The Change Reaction, a direct-aid group, got $2 million from the first round of FireAid grants. Change Reaction's president, Wade Trimmer, said that the funds provided 2,500 recipients with grants up to $15,000 for immediate rent and transportation needs. 'The strategy was to stabilize as many households as we could because when you have stability, you make better decisions,' Trimmer said. 'Even for wealthy people in the Palisades, it was still a full-time job and an absolute nightmare dealing with it all. But in Altadena, there was an older population with multigenerational households, so for every house that burned, that affected two or three households.' That money helped sustain Elizabeth Jackson, the owner of White Lotus, a workout studio in the Palisades that employed 14 fitness instructors. Jackson lost both her home and business in the fires. 'We lost every single client at the studio because our clients lost their homes,' Jackson said. 'They're all starting their lives over.' Through a White Lotus regular, Jackson got in touch with Change Reaction, which used some of its FireAid funds to give $1,000 to each White Lotus staffer and replace fire-damaged equipment so Jackson could reopen in a smaller space nearby. She hopes to return to her old property once it is rebuilt. 'That support was a bright light in all the ugliness that happened,' she said. 'It's awful to lose the studio, but being on the receiving side of that beauty, it's even more powerful than the negative. It keeps me going.' The physical devastation in the burn zones was incomprehensible. For the immediate work of debris removal, flood prevention and vegetation clearing, Team Rubicon got a $250,000 grant. 'FireAid demonstrated a clear understanding of the unpredictable nature of wildfire response, and they recognized the importance of flexibility and agility during both the immediate relief and long-term recovery phases,' the group's spokesperson Thomas Brown said. 'They invested in our work at a critical moment.' Wounded and displaced pets received free veterinary care through groups like the Pasadena Humane Society and Community Animal Medicine Project. Yet many people tasked with helping others were also suffering. Many local nonprofit workers lost homes and workplaces, and needed aid to stay afloat while serving others. 'A lot of our staff were in crisis too, where they lost homes or were the only house left on their street in Altadena,' said Stacey Roth of Hillsides, a Pasadena foster care and youth mental health facility near the Eaton fire zone. One of Hillsides' main residential buildings suffered significant smoke damage, and the FireAid grant allowed the facility to move its vulnerable population to hotels nearby. Michael Sidman of Jewish Family Service lost his own home in the Eaton fire in Altadena. 'I'm very lucky to have a strong support system, but it's been a nightmare navigating this,' he said. 'When you think about people navigating this alone with no family, and unsure how to connect with services, I don't know what they'd do.' His organization used its $250,000 grant from FireAid largely for comprehensive disaster case management work, particularly for survivors to manage the FEMA bureaucracy. Other early grants went to groups like Legal Aid, Bet Tzedek Legal and Public Counsel to help with insurance claims, as documents lost in the fires made proving residence and home ownership challenging. 'At first, people didn't know where they'd spend the night, didn't know where to get food and were all grieving for their mental health,' Sidman said. 'Now we see the need shifting to long-term effects and recovery plans, providing step-by-step facilitation of how to get their lives back on track.' As the weeks of recovery continued, FireAid's priorities for its second $25-million grant round expanded to longer-term efforts like insurance and government case management, mental health services, navigating home rebuilding permits and environmental recovery. 'It's one thing to get people cash aid, but it's another to help them navigate the future,' Reale said. 'Even though rebuilding seemed far away back in January, we knew that people needed to figure out their finances. Some of the fire victims our grantees were working with were on precarious ground financially even before the fires. Our job was to get them into a strong position so when they were ready to rebuild their lives, they wouldn't be floundering.' The fires significantly disrupted school and childcare for young families, many of whom are now homeless or miles away from family and resources. Victor Dominguez, president and chief executive of YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles, said its FireAid grant provided emergency childcare for a thousand displaced children, along with mental health resources and camp activities for children to reconnect with their fire-scarred neighborhoods. 'Young kids experienced so many traumatic things in their local communities,' Dominguez said. 'After the fires, kids and families had an opportunity to go somewhere safe where they trust. Now we are seeing the shock, the reality of this being a long-term experience. We were able to hire more licensed social workers, and the money we received from FireAid helped support that.' Mental health services remained a complex and ongoing need, especially for youth and children. 'I went to the Sears building a couple of months ago, where Pali High is temporally housed, to look at this big wall where kids had posted notes about how they felt post-fires,' Reale said. 'You could see that the trauma is still alive and well. Nobody's healing overnight.' Much of the aid dispersed was less visible to the public, if lifesaving for its recipients. Yet two marquee FireAid projects involved rebuilding and revamping damaged public green space, including Loma Alta Park, near Altadena. A second site, Palisades Park, will open this summer. As residents in the burned areas explore rebuilding homes, issues like soil testing, remediation and permitting have emerged as new bureaucratic challenges for future FireAid grants to help navigate. Questions around how to support rebuilding — or where it should happen at all — are complex. FireAid's third round of grants are likely to focus on longer-term mitigation efforts and environmental resilience to prevent and manage future fires, which are all but inevitable in climate change. 'The reality is we don't have enough money to rebuild every lot that was lost,' Reale said. 'What we can do is wrap ourselves around tools or ways that a lot of people can benefit from when they're ready to rebuild, and that could be the sustainable models. We can't rebuild the same way. So we'll put our money toward things that are helping people with home hardening models, and things to prevent and mitigate future fires.' For the more intangible cultural communities lost — like the music studios, rehearsal rooms and artists' homes burned in both fires — recovery will be diffuse. The January concert made FireAid a natural fit as a partner for MusiCares, the Recording Academy's affiliated charity. That organization declined to say how much FireAid gave specifically, but said that the grant contributed to $6.25 million in fire recovery aid given to 3,200 affected music professionals to help rebuild studios, pay medical bills and evacuate burn sites. Post-fire gentrification and financial speculating are new major fears. The Palisades has always been a coveted neighborhood, where working-class residents will face challenges returning to any affordable apartments lost. Altadena — home to a long-standing Black community and many blue-collar, intergenerational households — could see longtime residents forced out of their beloved neighborhood yet again, this time by economic forces. A spokesperson for the Black LA Relief and Recovery Fund said it will use its FireAid grant to 'build power among residents so they can return, reclaim and rebuild amidst political and financial threats like land grabs and gentrification.' FireAid moved heaven and earth to produce a benefit concert on par with the Concert For Bangladesh and Live Aid. Yet that $100 million is just a sliver of the billions in damage inflicted on Altadena and the Palisades. (Applications for the final round of small nonprofit grants are still open). Reale and other FireAid organizers admit that the scale of aid needed is staggering, universally painful yet fraught with class and racial stratification. The FireAid concert made a profound impact for the groups serving survivors on the ground. It's also nowhere near enough to meet the need, and never could be. 'At the beginning, we were just worried about basic necessities. Then the reality set in of 'I have no home, I can't go back,'' Hillsides' Roth said. 'The need we're seeing now is helping people process that, and get a path to move forward.'
CNBC
2 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
House bill would expand the pool of people who can buy certain investments — if they can pass an SEC test
More consumers could gain access to investments typically reserved for the wealthy — provided they can pass a test from regulators — under proposed bipartisan legislation. The U.S. House of Representatives Monday approved a bill to expand the definition of who can qualify as a so-called "accredited investor" under federal securities laws. Accredited investors are permitted to invest in a wider range of assets, including pre-IPO companies, private credit and equity, venture capital and hedge funds. The Equal Opportunity for All Investors Act of 2025 would direct the Securities and Exchange Commission to create a test that individuals can take to qualify as an accredited investor, without regard to their wealth or income. Currently, to qualify as accredited, investors generally need an annual earned income of $200,000 for individuals, or $300,000 for married couples. Individuals or couples can also qualify with a total net worth of at least $1 million, not including the value of their primary residence. (Those thresholds are not pegged to inflation and haven't changed in decades; as a result, more households have become accredited over the years as wealth and incomes grow.) "In my view, wealth alone is not a particularly strong judge of whether someone should be an accredited investor, or not," Rep. Mike Flood, R-Neb., the bill's sponsor, said on the House floor. "A better one is whether someone has the knowledge to accurately weigh the benefits and risks of private offerings." The bill must still pass the Senate and be signed by the President before it can become law. Accredited investor rules are about consumer protection: The limits "ensure that all participating investors are financially sophisticated and able to fend for themselves or sustain the risk of loss," according to the SEC's Private securities are less liquid, harder to value and more volatile than publicly-traded assets, experts say. The bill asks that the SEC test be designed to determine whether an individual understands different types of securities, financial statements and risks associated with private assets, including their limited liquidity and disclosures, subjective valuations and longer investment horizons. "The exam created by this bill is meant to strike the right balance between rigorously testing for sophistication and not being set to such a difficult standard that even an intelligent investor could not pass it," Flood said. The proposal is also aimed at getting more money into the hands of start-up businesses. "Small business leaders say that it's not a lack of ideas, but a lack of capital that holds them back," Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Del., co-sponsor of the bill, said on the floor. "This bill opens up new sources of funding from a pool of investors more reflective of the community, so that these founders can turn their vision into jobs and economic growth."Companies are already gearing up for more investors to be qualified to participate in private markets. "I think this is really a great first step in terms of opening up what has otherwise been a walled garden," said Eric Satz, founder and CEO of Alto, a self-directed IRA platform. "We have to give everyone the opportunity to participate as if they were an ultra-high net worth investor or a large financial institution." Many financial advisors are lukewarm on private investments, and explore them with high-net-worth clients only after all the basics are covered. "I would argue that a lot of investors shouldn't go anywhere near this," said certified financial planner Catherine Valega, founder of Green Bee Advisory, a Boston-based financial advisory firm. "Probably 95% of the country doesn't even have an emergency savings fund, and now you're going to tell them, if they're smart enough, I can invest in private securities. That does not make sense to me."
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
After L.A. firestorms and Texas floods, forecasters haunted by warnings not being heard
Meteorologists warned about the chance of flash floods days before Texas' Fourth of July disaster that killed at least 133. Yet, local officials in the hardest-hit areas say they were shocked by the scale of the devastation. "I have cried on multiple occasions," Chris Suchan, chief meteorologist with WOAI-TV Channel 4, the NBC affiliate in San Antonio, wrote in a recent Facebook post. "At times, I've been overwhelmed with forecaster regret that I could have done more the night before in my weather report." Forecasters often issue alerts for possible flooding, landslides and "red flag" fire warnings multiple times a year. Sometimes, those warnings are followed by major catastrophes, but other times they are not. And that has led some to become complacent, rather than heeding the alerts. Read more: Warnings ignored: The grim connection between the L.A. wildfires and Texas floods Two massive disasters this year — the Texas floods and Los Angeles firestorms — are leading some to grapple with the question of how to get officials and the public to care and take action. In the case of Texas, Suchan said he is experiencing what he calls "forecaster regret." That's despite having presented viewers a weather forecast showing "a signal of localized flash flooding" on the afternoon of July 3 — hours before the disaster struck. During the 6 p.m. broadcast later that day, Suchan pointed to an area "where we could see storms develop and then train over the same area. ... And that is a classic flash-flooding signal here in 'Flash Flood Alley.'" The disconnect between available warnings and the action officials and the public takes has been seen repeatedly over the years, from inadequate preparations in California ahead of fire weather or flood alerts, to the failure of some communities to evacuate ahead of the catastrophic tsunami that hit Japan in 2011. Of course, there are times when alerts are taken seriously, and forecasters and officials are in the same room. For instance, the publicity around Hurricane Hilary in 2023 reached a fever pitch as it headed toward Southern California. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass stood at press briefings along with then-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley and the National Weather Service. No deaths were reported in California, despite significant flooding and harrowing rescues in the Coachella Valley. There are other instances where preparation has helped Southern California emerge from periods of severe fire weather or landslide danger — such as through public safety power shutoffs, or crews emptying debris basins to catch mud pouring from landslides. Read more: L.A.'s flood-control system survived epic storm. But it's losing battle with climate change The National Weather Service office in Oxnard, which issues forecasts for Los Angeles, has also made attempts to more clearly get its messages across. In 2019, the weather service issued an "extreme red flag" fire weather warning that got plenty of attention. During last fire season, the agency issued an unprecedented five "particularly dangerous situation" warnings ahead of forecast extreme fire weather conditions — including one on Jan. 6, a day before L.A. County's devastating wildfires began. Despite the weather service giving briefings as early as Dec. 30 about forecasted increasing fire weather danger, Bass was overseas in Ghana on Jan. 7, when the fire that destroyed much of Pacific Palisades began spreading rapidly. And the L.A. Fire Department, a Times investigation found, chose not to assign roughly 1,000 available firefighters for emergency deployment in advance of the Palisades fire, which ultimately killed 12 people and destroyed more than 6,000 homes, businesses and other structures. The Times has previously reported that the day before Bass left for Ghana, her aides received an email, on Jan. 3, from the city's emergency management department warning of "high confidence in damaging winds and elevated fire conditions occurring next week." A spokesperson for the mayor said the email did not suggest imminent catastrophe. Bass later fired Crowley as fire chief, and accused her of failing to provide adequate warning of the potential for a cataclysmic wind event. One simple lesson that could be learned from past disasters is that both officials and the public need to better respond to forecasters' warnings. Read more: Six months after the fire, has Mayor Karen Bass done enough for the Palisades? An after-action report by the weather service from the Joplin, Mo., tornado disaster in 2011 found that most residents didn't immediately head to shelter after hearing the first warning. Among the reasons: apathy, a bias toward optimism and a feeling that sirens were activated too often in Joplin. But the weather service at that time also said it could do a better job at supporting "effective decision-making," which would help empower people to quickly make appropriate decisions. The agency said it should ensure that tools are in place to easily conduct conference calls with key entities, such as sheriff's offices and other emergency officials. Suchan remembers listening to weather service meteorologists recall the Joplin tornado, which resulted in 158 deaths — the first single tornado in the U.S. to cause more than 100 deaths since 1953. "I listened to them describe feeling scarred by the disaster. They asked themselves if their warnings were early enough, strong enough," Suchan wrote in his Facebook post. "The room was very silent through that presentation. It left a mark on me but you can't fully understand that feeling until you experience it for yourself." In Texas, flooding alerts circulated in the hours and days before the Fourth of July disaster. On July 2, Texas state officials, citing the weather service, warned that "heavy rainfall with the potential to cause flash flooding" was anticipated over the following days. They said swift-water rescue boat squads would be available to assist with flood rescues. At 1:18 p.m. on July 3, the weather service issued a flood watch for Texas' Kerr County and other areas. On July 4 at 1:14 a.m., a flash-flood warning was issued, sounding the alarm for "life threatening flash flooding." At Camp Mystic, where at least 27 campers and counselors died, leadership was aware of the earlier flood watch, and also got a cellphone alert of the weather service's flash flood warning at 1:14 a.m. But they did not begin to evacuate campers in cabins near the Guadalupe River until more than an hour later, the Washington Post reported. The Post reported that waters began rising at the all-girls camp around 2 a.m., and breached at least one cabin around 3 a.m. Parts of Camp Mystic are considered at high risk of flooding, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. At a different camp along the same river, Presbyterian Mo-Ranch Assembly, a facilities manager saw the river rising around 1 a.m., and told his boss, who had been monitoring reports of the storms approaching, the Associated Press reported. Camp officials there acted quickly to relocate 70 children and adults from a building near the river, and no one died. There was no warning from local authorities, the AP said. Read more: FEMA removed dozens of Camp Mystic buildings from 100-year flood map before expansion, records show In an interview, Suchan said he wonders "are there things that you could have done faster, stronger, or do things differently?" "We're looking at a massive casualty event and it weighs on my heart," he said. His counterpart at a local CBS affiliate offered a similar warning ahead of the flooding. Bill Taylor, weather chief at KENS-TV Channel 5 in San Antonio, showed a forecast weather model showing a severe storm "just sitting still" for hours in the area around Kerr County. "This would be a huge flood problem if this happens," Taylor told his viewers on July 3. In an interview, Taylor said he doesn't feel guilt about how he conveyed his forecast, saying he gave all the information he had about the flood risk. Still, "moving forward, in all honesty, I've even thought to myself recently how much of my verbiage will now change because of this disaster." He and other forecasters say they hope people take things like flood watches more seriously moving forward, especially if they live in or visit low-lying areas prone to flooding. Read more: Unusual summer storms in SoCal bring dry lightning, flooding concerns for weekend "When we say 'flood watch' in this region, I mean, you've really got to be paying attention," Taylor said. One lingering question is how closely officials in Kerr County — like the sheriff's office and emergency managers — were monitoring the storm. "If those emergency managers were sleeping that night, oh my gosh ... they won't have a job anymore," said Alex Tardy, a former weather service meteorologist who owns Weather Echo, a consulting company. Alerts about possible future floods should've triggered some kind of action well ahead of the storm — especially given the campgrounds located in the area, Tardy said. Suchan said a proper alerting system should be installed along the Guadalupe River. He noted that further downstream in neighboring Kendall County, the community of Comfort has sirens that were activated to warn of flooding on July 4, "and there were no casualties." "I don't want to ever see a nightmare like [this]," Suchan said. "It's 2025. We shouldn't be doing this." Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Southern Westchester under flood watch Monday, July 14. See the forecast from NWS
Southern Westchester is under a flood watch starting 2 p.m. Monday, July 14, according to an alert issued by the National Weather Service. According to the alert, a forecast of scattered showers and thunderstorms, with potential for heavy rains, Monday afternoon and evening could result in rainfall rates of 2-plus inches per hour. "A widespread 1/2 to 1 1/2 inches of rainfall is likely with localized rainfall totals of up to 3 inches possible," the NWS alert says. "Much of this could fall in only 3 to 4 hours, causing isolated to scattered instances of flash flooding." Flooding in urban and poor drainage areas could be possible due to excessive runoff. "Small rivers, creeks, streams and other low-lying and flood-prone locations" could also flood. Residents should "monitor later forecasts and be alert for possible Flood Warnings," the NWS said. "Those living in areas prone to flooding should be prepared to take action should flooding develop." This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: NY weather: Southern Westchester under NWS flood watch July 14
