Oshkosh letters address fireworks and building 'resilient infrastructure'
Editor's note: The following letter is in response to the article 'Oshkosh residents are advised to buy only legal fireworks. What to know ahead of July 4.'
It is something else we are worried about: citizens lighting fireworks for our nation's birthday. This is not a new idea! The EAA goes on for a week with loud airplanes. The tornado siren blares every Saturday at noon. Seemingly, motorcycles have no laws for their loud exhaust, which starts happening every spring, and we must put up with it all summer. Thunderstorms — where are those complaints?
Animal PTSD, right? I'll hear every argument, but I have one, too: leave people alone. I have animals, too; they're fine for a night. Leave people alone and let them celebrate the birthday of our beautiful country. How do the retailers of fireworks get permits from the city/county to sell illegal items to the city residents?
Mark Dante
Oshkosh
This past month, we saw roads buckle across Oshkosh during the extreme heatwave from June 21-23. It's not the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last.
Whether you're liberal, conservative or somewhere in between, one thing is clear: the weather is getting stranger. Summers are hotter and wetter, winters are shorter and more unpredictable, and heavy storms are hitting harder. We can feel it. And our roads, sewers and homes are feeling it, too.
No one wants flooded basements, cracked sidewalks or damaged roads. We need to be proactive and start planning for a future with more extreme weather events.
That starts here in Oshkosh. Local government can lead the way by investing in resilient infrastructure: stronger stormwater systems, sustainable road repairs and planning that accounts for the reality of our changing climate.
I encourage residents to contact their council members and our representatives in the state legislature. Ask them what they're doing to make our infrastructure more resilient.
This is our city. Let's build it to last.
Alec Lefeber
Oshkosh
Letters to the editor are published in the order in which they are received and letter-writers are limited to having one letter published per month. Letters can be emailed to oshkoshnews@thenorthwestern.com and Editor Brandon Reid at breid@gannett.com. Letters must meet specific guidelines, including being no more than 250 words and be from local authors or on topics of local interest. All submissions must include the name of the person who wrote the letter, their city of residence and a contact phone number. Letters are edited as needed for style, grammar, length, fairness, accuracy and libel.
This article originally appeared on Oshkosh Northwestern: Oshkosh letters on fireworks and building 'resilient infrastructure'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Associated Press
18 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Texas officials face scrutiny over response to catastrophic and deadly flooding
KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Before heading to bed before the Fourth of July holiday, Christopher Flowers checked the weather while staying at a friend's house along the Guadalupe River. Nothing in the forecast alarmed him. Hours later, he was rushing to safety: He woke up in darkness to electrical sockets popping and ankle-deep water. Quickly, his family scrambled nine people into the attic. Phones buzzed with alerts, Flowers recalled Saturday, but he did not remember when in the chaos they started. 'What they need they need is some kind of external system, like a tornado warning that tells people to get out now,' Flowers, 44, said. The destructive fast-moving waters that began before sunrise Friday in the Texas Hill Country killed at least 32 people, authorities said Saturday, and an unknown number of people remained missing. Those still unaccounted for included 27 girls from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp along a river in Kerr County where most of the dead were recovered. But as authorities launch one of the largest search-and-rescue efforts in recent Texas history, they have come under intensifying scrutiny over preparations and why residents and youth summer camps that are dotted along the river were not alerted sooner or told to evacuate. The National Weather Service sent out a series of flash flood warnings in the early hours Friday before issuing flash flood emergencies — a rare alert notifying of imminent danger. Local officials have insisted that no one saw the flood potential coming and have defended their actions. 'There's going to be a lot of finger-pointing, a lot of second-guessing and Monday morning quarterbacking,' said Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, whose district includes Kerr County. 'There's a lot of people saying 'why' and 'how,' and I understand that.' When the warnings began An initial flood watch — which generally urges residents to be weather aware — was issued by the local National Weather Service office at 1:18 p.m. local time on Thursday. It predicted rain amounts of between 5 to 7 inches (12.7 to 17.8 centimeters). Weather messaging from the office, including automated alerts delivered to mobile phones to people in threatened areas, grew increasingly ominous in the early morning hours of Friday, urging people to move to higher ground and evacuate flood-prone areas, said Jason Runyen, a meteorologist in the National Weather Service office. At 4:03 a.m., the office issued an urgent warning that raised the potential of catastrophic damage and a severe threat to human life. Jonathan Porter, the chief meteorologist at AccuWeather, a private weather forecasting company that uses National Weather Service data, said it appeared evacuations and other proactive measures could have been undertaken to reduce the risk of fatalities. 'People, businesses, and governments should take action based on Flash Flood Warnings that are issued, regardless of the rainfall amounts that have occurred or are forecast,' Porter said in a statement. Local officials have said they had not expected such an intense downpour that was the equivalent of months' worth of rain for the area. 'We know we get rains. We know the river rises,' said Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county's top elected official. 'But nobody saw this coming.' Kelly said the county considered a flood warning system along the river that would have functioned like a tornado warning siren about six or seven years ago, before he was elected, but that the idea never got off the ground because of the expense. 'We've looked into it before … The public reeled at the cost,' Kelly said. Hundreds of rescues Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Saturday that the massive response to the flooding had resulted in the rescue and recovery of more than 850 people, including some found clinging to trees. Scores of people in and along the river were airlifted to safety by helicopter, including girls at Camp Mystic. Kelly said he didn't know what kind of safety and evacuation plans the camps may have had. 'What I do know is the flood hit the camp first, and it came in the middle of the night. I don't know where the kids were,' he said. 'I don't know what kind of alarm systems they had. That will come out in time.' U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said Saturday it was difficult for forecasters to predict just how much rain would fall. She said the Trump administration would make it a priority to upgrade National Weather Service technology used to deliver warnings. 'We know that everyone wants more warning time, and that's why we're working to upgrade the technology that's been neglected for far too long to make sure families have as much advance notice as possible,' Noem said during a press conference with state and federal leaders. Weather service had extra staffers The National Weather Service office in New Braunfels, which delivers forecasts for Austin, San Antonio and the surrounding areas, had extra staff on duty during the storms, Runyen said. Where the office would typically have two forecasters on duty during clear weather, they had up to five on staff. 'There were extra people in here that night, and that's typical in every weather service office — you staff up for an event and bring people in on overtime and hold people over,' Runyen said. ___ Murphy reported from Oklahoma City.
Fox News
19 minutes ago
- Fox News
Elon Musk launches ‘America Party' after Trump signs historic spending bill: 'Waste & graft'
Elon Musk says the two-party system is broken, and he just launched a new political party to prove it. On Saturday, Musk announced on X, the social media platform he owns, the formation of the "America Party," calling it a direct response to what he described as a corrupt political establishment that no longer represents the American people. The announcement followed a viral July 4 poll on X, where Musk asked whether voters wanted independence from what he called the "two-party (some would say uniparty) system." Over 1.2 million votes were cast, with 65.4% saying "yes." "By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it," Musk posted Saturday. "When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy. Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom." The move came just after President Donald Trump signed the "big, beautiful bill" into law Friday at the White House. The sweeping $3.3 trillion legislation includes tax cuts, infrastructure spending and stimulus measures and has drawn criticism from fiscal conservatives and libertarians. Though Musk did not reference the bill directly in his America Party posts, the timing suggests rising friction between the billionaire and the president. Musk has previously warned that unchecked spending by both parties threatens the long-term health of the economy. The new party, according to Musk's posts, will target a few key seats in Congress. The goal is to create a swing bloc powerful enough to hold the balance of power and block what Musk sees as the worst excesses of both Republicans and Democrats. Some on the right voiced concern in the comments section that a third party could split the conservative vote and help Democrats win more easily. "Your third party will disproportionately take votes from the right vs the left and give the left an easier path to power," conservative commentator Shawn Farash posted. Others, like Joey Mannarino, urged Musk to focus instead on reforming the GOP from within. Critics also pointed out that the X poll was informal, not limited to American voters and vulnerable to bots. Third parties have traditionally had a difficult time gaining ground in American politics as the system is built for two dominant parties. With the Electoral College, winner-take-all elections and strict ballot access laws, outsiders cannot meaningfully compete. Even when a third-party candidate catches fire, it rarely lasts beyond a single election cycle. One of the biggest third-party efforts in recent history was Ross Perot's 1992 run. He earned nearly 19% of the popular vote as an independent but didn't win a single Electoral College vote. It was the closest a third-party candidate got to the White House after President Teddy Roosevelt's famed Bull Moose Party run in 1912 against his onetime protégé, William Howard Taft. Others, like Ralph Nader, have tried with the Green Party, and Gary Johnson with the Libertarian Party, but no third-party candidate has come close to winning national HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPThe White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
F-16 escorts plane out of area after airspace incursion near Trump's golf course
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -An F-16 U.S. fighter jet on Saturday intercepted a general aviation aircraft that violated a temporary restriction of the airspace over U.S. President Donald Trump's golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, the U.S military said in a statement. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said the incident, which occurred around 2:39 p.m. (1839 GMT), marked the fifth unauthorized incursion of the restricted airspace on Saturday. A spokesperson confirmed the jet was an F-16. NORAD aircraft conducted a so-called headbutt maneuver to get the civilian pilot's attention and the aircraft was safely escorted out of the area, NORAD said in a statement. The White House had no immediate comment on the incident. NORAD has reported multiple similar incidents in recent weeks, and is urging general aviation pilots to check all notifications before taking off in the area.
