Tropical Storm Franklin makes landfall with major flood threats to Dominican Republic and Haiti

Raging wildfires in Maui have left at least 106 people dead and hundreds of others missing after they were forced to flee their homes.

“We are heartsick that we’ve had such loss,” Hawaii Governor Josh Green said during a news conference on Tuesday.

Governor Green said he expects the death toll to rise every day as recovery teams and cadaver dogs search the burned area in Lahaina on Maui. Despite the number of deaths increasing, only a few of the 111 have been identified.

Part of this reason is due to the state that many bodies were found in after the blazing wildfires moved quickly through Lahania.

A mobile morgue unit arrived to help Hawaii officials identify the remains as teams continued to search for more in neighbourhoods that were reduced to ash.

Mr Green asked people who are missing loved ones to submit their DNA to help them identify the victims.

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Torrential mudflows caused by Tropical Storm Hilary have wreaked havoc across southern California, including in the resort town of Cathedral City where the scale of devastation was captured by aerial footage.

Hilary was the first tropical storm to hit California in almost a century and deluged cities including Los Angeles and San Diego before moving north into Nevada.

Officials in Palm Springs, California, announced that the city had been completely cut off by flooding on Monday. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, power outages led to a major hospital being evacuated in the Boyle Heights neighbourhood.

The clean-up was beginning on Tuesday after rivers of mud and torrential downpours swamped communities including a number of resort towns in the Coachella Valley.

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Within hours of Tropical Storm Harold making landfall in Texas, the National Weather Service warned of another cyclone gathering steam right behind it.

Tropical Storm Franklin poses a threat to parts of the Caribbean in the coming 36-48 hours.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Dominican Republic upgraded the Tropical Storm Watch to a Tropical Storm Warning for the entire northern and eastern coast from the Haiti border eastward and southward to Isla Saona.

A parade of tropical storms, with conditions amplified by the climate crisis, has impacted both Atlantic and Pacific regions of the US in a matter of days.

Less than 24 hours after Tropical Storm Hilary wreaked havoc across California and Nevada, another cyclone - Harold - made landfall in southern Texas. The cyclone came ashore on Padre Island at 10am local time on Tuesday with maximum sustained winds of 50mph, according to the National Weather Service. Texas is now facing flash flooding, strong winds and possible tornadoes and multiple watches and alerts have been issued.

Hilary, which caused one death in Mexico, was the first tropical storm to hit California in almost a century and deluged cities including Los Angeles and San Diego before moving north into Nevada.

Video revealed a surging fountain of mud in Oak Glen, California during Tropical Storm Hilary.

The footage, shared by Reuters, showed the impacts of the historic deluge in the small San Bernardino Mountain town as mud and debris burst from beneath the surface.

The National Weather Service has shared a tracker map for Tropical Storm Harold. The storm made landfall shortly after 10am at South Padre Island in the state.

Harold continues to move inland over south Texas, the NWS said, with increasing coverage of showers and thunderstorms along and south of the I-10 corridor.

The National Weather Service in Houston shared its relief that rain was falling in Texas’ largest city after going 25 days without measurable rainfall.

The US South has seen record-breaking levels of heat this summer with Texas experiencing weeks of triple-digit temperatures, and drought conditions.

In a dramatic scene, rescue officials in the desert community of Cathedral City, near Palm Springs, drove a bulldozer through mud to a swamped care home and rescued 14 residents by scooping them up and carrying them to safety, fire chief Michael Contreras said.

They were among 46 rescues the city performed between late on Sunday night and the next afternoon from mud and water standing up to 5 feet (1.5 metres.)

“We were able to put the patients into the scoop. It’s not something that I’ve ever done in my 34 years as a firefighter, but disasters like this really cause us to have to look at those means of rescue that aren’t in the book and that we don’t do everyday,” he said at a news conference.

Associated Press

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hit out at Facebook as detrimental to democracy after the social media site blocked access to news stories on its platforms in Canada in the midst of a wildfire crisis.

“It is so inconceivable that a company like Facebook is choosing to put corporate profits ahead of ensuring that local news organizations can get up-to-date information to Canadians and reach them,” Mr Trudeau said prior to a cabinet meeting on Prince Edward Island on Monday.

Mr Trudeau’s anger at Facebook comes as the company has started enforcing a new policy blocking Canada-based users from accessing news stories in response to a recent Canadian law that requires the company to pay publishers for content shared on the platform.

Facebook, in response, has sharply reduced its role as a news service in the country — an issue in an emergency like the one Canada is facing now as its summer wildfires have forced the evacuation of some 35,000 families in the western province of British Columbia.

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