USA Today

Wildfires blown by fierce desert winds forced quarter million of people in Southern California to flee on Monday.
Flames reduced hundreds of homes to ashes, and laid a hellish pattern of luminous orange over the drought-stricken region.
At least one person was killed and dozens were injured. More than 600 homes burned, nearly 130 in one mountain area alone, and thousands of other buildings were threatened by more than a dozen blazes covering at least 802.9 sq. kilometers.
More than 265,000 people were warned to leave their homes.
Soon after nightfall, fire officials announced that 500 homes and 100 commercial properties had been destroyed by a fire in northern San Diego County that exploded to 145,000 acres.
The fire injured seven firefighters and one civilian, and was spreading unchecked, said Roxanne Provaznik, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry.
Firefighters who lost valuable time trying to persuade stubborn homeowners to evacuate struggled as winds gusting to 112 kph scattered embers onto dry brush, spawning more fires.
California officials pleaded for help from fire departments in other states. ”A lot of people are going to lose their homes today,” San Diego Fire Capt. Lisa Blake said earlier.
At least 14 fires were burning in Southern California, said Patti Roberts, spokeswoman for the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
At least 250,000 people were told to flee in San Diego County alone. ”It’s probably closer to 300,000,” said County Supervisor Ron Roberts.
Among them were hundreds of patients moved by school bus and ambulance from a hospital and nursing homes, many still in their hospital gowns and wheelchairs.
About 129 kilometers northeast, a fire destroyed 128 homes in a mountain resort community.
Meanwhile, in Orange County, a 1,049-inmate jail was evacuated because of heavy smoke. The prisoners were taken by bus to other lockups.

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The young teacher hung his head, avoiding eye contact. Yes, he had touched a fifth-grader’s breast during recess. “I guess it was just lust of the flesh,” he told his boss.

That got Gary C. Lindsey fired from his first teaching job in Oelwein, Iowa. But it didn’t end his career. He taught for decades in Illinois and Iowa, fending off at least a half-dozen more abuse accusations.

When he finally surrendered his teaching license in 2004 — 40 years after that first little girl came forward — it wasn’t a principal or a state agency that ended his career. It was one persistent victim and her parents.

Lindsey’s case is just a small example of a widespread problem in American schools: sexual misconduct by the very teachers who are supposed to be nurturing the nation’s children.

Students in America’s schools are groped. They’re raped. They’re pursued, seduced and think they’re in love.

An Associated Press investigation found more than 2,500 cases over five years in which educators were punished for actions from bizarre to sadistic.

There are 3 million public school teachers nationwide, most devoted to their work. Yet the number of abusive educators — nearly three for every school day — speaks to a much larger problem in a system that is stacked against victims.

Most of the abuse never gets reported. Those cases reported often end with no action. Cases investigated sometimes can’t be proven, and many abusers have several victims.

And no one — not the schools, not the courts, not the state or federal governments — has found a surefire way to keep molesting teachers out of classrooms.

Those are the findings of an AP investigation in which reporters sought disciplinary records in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The result is an unprecedented national look at the scope of sex offenses by educators — the very definition of breach of trust.

The seven-month investigation found 2,570 educators whose teaching credentials were revoked, denied, surrendered or sanctioned from 2001 through 2005 following allegations of sexual misconduct.

Young people were the victims in at least 1,801 of the cases, and more than 80% of those were students. At least half the educators who were punished by their states also were convicted of crimes related to their misconduct.

The findings draw obvious comparisons to sex abuse scandals in other institutions, among them the Roman Catholic Church. A review by America’s Catholic bishops found that about 4,400 of 110,000 priests were accused of molesting minors from 1950 through 2002.

Clergy abuse is part of the national consciousness after a string of highly publicized cases. But until now, there’s been little sense of the extent of educator abuse.

Beyond the horror of individual crimes, the larger shame is that the institutions that govern education have only sporadically addressed a problem that’s been apparent for years.

“From my own experience — this could get me in trouble — I think every single school district in the nation has at least one perpetrator. At least one,” says Mary Jo McGrath, a California lawyer who has spent 30 years investigating abuse and misconduct in schools. “It doesn’t matter if it’s urban or rural or suburban.”

One report mandated by Congress estimated that as many as 4.5 million students, out of roughly 50 million in American schools, are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade. That figure includes verbal harassment that’s sexual in nature.

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tornado damaged a church, a daycare center and the city’s major shopping mall Thursday as violent thunderstorms made their way across the western Florida Panhandle. There were no reports of injuries.

The twister damaged roofs of several homes and buildings in downtown Pensacola and tossed debris around. It first touched down around 11:15 a.m. ET.

Escambia County sheriff’s spokesman Glenn Austin said the Greater Little Rock Baptist Church’s roof was damaged, as was its daycare center. But children there had been moved to safety before the tornado struck, he said

“They heard the warnings, grabbed the kids and followed the drill,” he said

Near the church, Leeann Franzonne said she and her 3-year-old son, Gabriel, stood on their porch and watched as the tornado formed and dipped into the nearby trees. They took shelter inside when the tornado approached.

“It sounded creepy, like a bunch of cars were driving over my house,” Franzonne said about an hour later as emergency crews directed traffic through her neighborhood and worked to restore power. A section of twisted metal from the church hung over a power line in the Franzonne’s yard.

At the Cordova Mall, Dillard’s stock manager Eddie English Jr. said he heard the wind outside the department store suddenly speed up and get louder, and noticed tree branches flying through the air as he looked through the glass doors into the parking lot.

“It was all of a sudden. It was just normal raining, then the wind started,” English said.

The twister “felt like an earthquake,” said Lindsey Lassiter, manager of the mall’s Express for Men store. She said the ceiling in her store was damaged and that water was pouring in.

Officials at a hospital across the street from the mall said no wounded shoppers had been brought to their emergency room. Another hospital also reported no injuries.

Jack Cullen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Mobile, Ala., confirmed that it was a tornado that touched down.

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