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HRW Says Iranian Authorities Continue to Repress People

File photo/ Iranian protesters gather around a burning car in Tehran. AFP
File photo/ Iranian protesters gather around a burning car in Tehran. AFP
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HRW Says Iranian Authorities Continue to Repress People

File photo/ Iranian protesters gather around a burning car in Tehran. AFP
File photo/ Iranian protesters gather around a burning car in Tehran. AFP

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Iran's security and intelligence apparatus, in partnership with the judiciary, of harshly cracking down on dissent, including through excessive and lethal force against protesters.

The group also reported abuse and torture in detention.

"President Rouhani and his administration have shown little inclination to curb or confront these serious rights violations perpetrated by Iran’s security agencies," HRW said in its report.

"Authorities at the highest level continue to greenlight these rampant abuses," the report read.

Meanwhile, thousands of workers in Iran's energy sector have held protests for better wages and working conditions in southern gas fields and some refineries in big cities, according to Iranian news agencies and social media postings.

With an economy tanked under the weight of US sanctions and the worst COVID-19 pandemic impact in the Middle East, Iran has faced nearly continuous protests by workers and pensioners for months over an inflation rate of more than 50%, high unemployment and unpaid wages.

An unspecified number of workers with temporary hiring contracts "stayed home" to press for higher wages earlier this week in Assaluyeh, Iran's main gas production hub on the Gulf, the semi-official Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) reported.

"Since we learned of the labor actions and their salary and benefit demands... the issues are being seriously followed up in (parliament's) Energy Commission," Mousa Ahmadi, a lawmaker whose district includes Assaluyeh, told ILNA, Reuters reported.

According to rights groups and social media posts, Tehran's refinery has fired 700 striking workers. A social media video showed refinery workers holding up what appeared to be notices of termination.

Shaker Khafai, spokesman for the state-run Tehran Oil Refining Company, denied the dismissal report, the state news agency IRNA reported.

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Fire Tornadoes are a Risk Under California's Extreme Wildfire Conditions

The National Weather Service warned Tuesday that the combination of high winds and severely dry conditions have created a “particularly dangerous situation” - The AP
The National Weather Service warned Tuesday that the combination of high winds and severely dry conditions have created a “particularly dangerous situation” - The AP
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Fire Tornadoes are a Risk Under California's Extreme Wildfire Conditions

The National Weather Service warned Tuesday that the combination of high winds and severely dry conditions have created a “particularly dangerous situation” - The AP
The National Weather Service warned Tuesday that the combination of high winds and severely dry conditions have created a “particularly dangerous situation” - The AP

As if they aren’t already facing enough, firefighters in California also could encounter fire tornadoes — a rare but dangerous phenomenon in which wildfires create their own weather.

The National Weather Service warned Tuesday that the combination of high winds and severely dry conditions have created a “particularly dangerous situation” in which any new fire could explode in size. The advisory, which runs into Wednesday, didn’t mention tornadoes, but meteorologist Todd Hall said they're possible given the extreme conditions.

 

A look at fire tornadoes according to The AP.

What is a fire tornado? Fire whirl, fire devil, fire tornado or even firenado — scientists, firefighters and regular folks use multiple terms to describe similar phenomena, and they don’t always agree on what’s what. Some say fire whirls are formed only by heat, while fire tornadoes involve clouds generated by the fire itself.

The National Wildfire Coordinating Group’s glossary of wildland fire terms doesn’t include an entry for fire tornado, but it defines a fire whirl as a “spinning vortex column of ascending hot air and gases rising from a fire and carrying aloft smoke, debris and flame,” and says large whirls “have the intensity of a small tornado.”

Wildfires with turbulent plumes can produce clouds that in turn can produce lightning or a vortex of ash, smoke and flames, said Leila Carvalho, professor of meteorology and climatology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“There is a rotation caused by very strong wind shear and a very hot, localized low-pressure system,” she said.

What is a fire tornado capable of? Fire tornadoes can make fires stronger by sucking up air, Carvalho said. “It creates a tornado track, and wherever this goes, the destruction is like any other tornado.”

In 2018, a fire tornado the size of three football fields killed a firefighter as it exploded in what already was a vast and devastating wildfire near near Redding, about 250 miles (400 kilometers) north of San Francisco in northern California. Scientists later described an ice-capped cloud that reached 7 miles (11 km) into the air and caused winds up to 143 mph (230 kph).

Research also suggests fire tornadoes can carry airborne embers, also called firebrands, over long distances, said James Urban, an assistant professor in the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. They also can change the fire’s behavior, he said.

“That’s also something that is dangerous and scary for first responders, or really anyone,” he said. “It can change and maybe go in a different direction.”

The interaction between wind, the fire plume and topography determines whether a tornado will develop, he said. For example, sometimes a certain topography will restrict airflow in such a way that a spiral pattern develops.

Can you make one in a lab? Together with San José State University, Worcester Polytech is part of a Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center. In the lab in Worcester, researchers have created small fire tornadoes by putting up walls around a fire or arranging a bunch of little fires that together restrict airflow. But that’s on a much smaller scale than what’s happening with the wildfires.

“We’ve got the biggest fire lab in the US for a university, but we cannot get something the size of what’s been reported at these fires,” he said. “You can’t really bottle that and put it in a lab.”