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CNN 10
Australia Faces Another Fire Season; Plastic Industry and a Worldwide Call To Action; Heartwarming Story of a Photo Finish for a Mother`s Marathon Run. Aired 4-4:10a ET
Aired September 25, 2023 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COY WIRE, CNN 10 ANCHOR: Hello lovely people. Happy Monday. I hope you had an awesome weekend. Today is the holiest day of the year in Judaism. Yom
Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It began sundown Sunday and it ends tonight, which is why many schools are closed today. For those of you who observe
Yom Kippur, we hope you had a meaningful fast.
All right, summer has ended officially here in the United States, but in Australia it`s early spring and it`s unseasonably warm. Australia`s Bureau
of Meteorology announced the arrival of El Nino, a natural weather pattern that tends to bring hot and dry conditions to the country. Experts worry
that the combination of El Nino and the underlying global heating spells a summer of extreme heat and fire.
Australia suffered its worst fires in 2019 and 2020, burning millions of acres, including homes and natural habitats. The fire season down under
usually starts in October and ends around March. It`s a dangerous, sometimes deadly time for people and wildlife.
Already this year, bushfires have hit parts of the country and firefighters are working hard to keep up with the help of volunteer crews. There are
tens of thousands of volunteer firefighters across Australia, especially in rural areas. We`re about to join two of them now.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LAUREN WILSON, ADVANCE FIREFIGHTER, OAKS RURAL FIRE BRIGADE HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL: When I tell people I`m a firefighter, I actually get a lot
of mixed reactions. Oh, you do all that for free? What makes you do that? It really does spark a lot of curiosity in people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Australia battles some of the largest and hottest wildfires on the planet. The fire season in Australia typically runs from
October until the end of March, when temperatures are at their highest. Most of the firefighting is conducted by the Rural Fire Service, a
volunteer force separate to state emergency services. The New South Wales Rural Fire Service has more than 70,000 members.
ANDREW HAIN, SENIOR DEPUTY CAPTAIN, PICTON RURAL FIRE BRIGADE INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT PLANNER: We were founded in 1939 by local farmers and local
residents that needed a firefighting service in the area, and it was a bunch of guys with old trucks or trailers. Now we`re sitting here in a
million dollar plus facility with these trucks that are basically a multi- tool. We do flood work in this. We do fires, car accidents, house fires.
WILSON: We`re coming into a family of a long line of firefighters. I believe there is that little bit of pressure. I can remember when I first
told my father-in-law that I had joined. The first thing he said to me was, as long as you can operate a pump, you`ll be fine.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As a volunteer service, recruits come from all walks of life and require intense training before being deployed.
HAIN: It`s a huge amount of effort. A lot of hours go into training a new recruit. It`s not for bragging rights, it`s because they`ve got to go out
on the truck with you. You need to be able to work with everybody from different backgrounds. You know, people that work in corporate, people that
work in construction, you`d name it. We`ve probably got it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Inaudible) they`ve come Picton 1 blue.
HAIN: The common thing is this desire to help people. So you`ve got to be willing to give your time to someone else for a thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In 2019 and 2020, what became known as the Black Summer Fires burned 10.3 million land across the country.
HAIN: We were tasked to go into property protection, but the house was in a spot that was very difficult to defend. One road in, one road out. But
then you walk around this house and you look in the back window and it is a carbon copy of my kids bedroom. There`s Lego all over the floor, there`s
posters on the wall. This family have literally bundled everything they can into the car and they`ve left. They don`t know that there`s someone there
to look after their house, but you staying there and maybe putting in that extra time and that extra work is going to be the reason they have a house
to come back to.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The deadly fires claimed 33 lives, including nine firefighters. More than 3000 homes were destroyed. The house Andrew and his
crew protected was one of 14,000 saved in New South Wales.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIRE: 10 second trivia, which industry is behind at least 232 million tons of emissions that warm our planet every year?
Oil and gas, transportation, plastic, or tourism?
The plastic industry is your answer here, and it`s responsible for the same amount of emissions on average as 50 million cars according to the EPA.
All right, if you clicked into CNN 10 last week, you`ll remember it was a big week for the United Nations. The General Assembly held its annual
summit in New York. While they were in the city, world leaders also gathered for a one-day conference about the climate crisis, the Climate
Ambition Summit.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANTONIO GUTERRES, SECRETARY-GENERAL, UNITED NATIONS: Sweltering temperatures spawning disease, and thousands fleeing in fear as historic
fires rage.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WIRE: This is U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. He kicked off the conference with a special sobering speech. Guterres called on developed
countries to reach net zero emissions by 2040. What that means is removing at least the same amount of planet warming pollution from the atmosphere as
those countries produce. He also asked countries to commit to timelines to phase out fossil fuel emissions. Significantly increase financial help so
that low-and middle-income countries can move to clean energy and invest in climate resilience measures to better cope with increasingly severe extreme
weather events. But you don`t need to be a world leader in New York to help our planet. Some solutions start right at home.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Reduce, reuse, recycle.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Recycling is important.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Reduce, reuse, recycle. These three green habits have been part of our daily lives since the 1970s.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Recycle, we do.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The power is yours.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But it seems like many of us are still confused by one of these elements. A report from one NGOs says more than half of
household recyclables end up in the trash. Think you know the rules pretty well?
What about this piece of cardboard? Nope. Does Finnish jam jar? Wrong again. This greasy pizza box? Yes and no. This one`s tricky. Some local
authorities accept this for recycling but others don`t because they count grease as food contamination.
So it`s not as simple as you might think. All these items are made from materials that can be recycled but there`s a few golden rules to remember.
If an item has food residue on it, then it can`t go into the recycling, rinsed at first. It`s the same for mixed materials like sticky tape on
cardboard. You should remove it before you recycle.
When something`s thrown into recycling that shouldn`t be there, it can contaminate the entire system. This recycling plant in East London sorts
more than 400 tons of waste a day.
DAVID RUMBLE, STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT, BYWATERS: Contamination is where in the dry mix recycling there are things that should just not be in there
like food waste for instance, electrical equipment. Food waste will just contaminate the other materials in the recycling, the paper and the
cardboard and make it useless. But the other items, they can obviously just cause blockages within the complex machinery.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Luckily, there`s a couple of handy tips to help you make the right decisions. So the first is the scrunch test for things like
crisp packets or wrapping paper, which are often mixed with other materials. If you crush it in your hand and it stays scrunched, it`s
probably recyclable. If it starts to open, it probably needs to go in the trash. If you can tip the item upside down, maybe even over your head, and
nothing comes out, you`re good. If not, rinse it again.
With so many symbols, rules and regulations that not only differ country to country but region to region, it`s not surprising that we often get
confused.
RUMBLE: There`s a lot of confusion about recycling because our industry is constantly changing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIRE: Marathons are tough. Running 26.2 miles takes a lot of training, heart and determination. Courtney Rich from Salt Lake City, Utah was
nearing the end of the race, but her legs started giving out. She started crying because she worried that she was going to disappoint her kids, she
said.
Well, she was totally re-energized when her 10-year -old daughter Avery jumped in to help her finish the race.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AVERY RICH: In my head, I was thinking, I love my mom and I`m doing this for my mom and she needs it, so I have to do this.
COURTNEY RICH: As soon as I caught Avery`s hand in that moment, like any pain that I had in my legs, it felt like it disappeared.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WIRE: My goodness, poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said, magic is believing in yourself and if you can make that happen, you
can make anything happen. Well, sometimes we just need someone else to believe in us too. And you know what? I believe in all of you.
Today`s shout out goes to the Bearcats, Mr. Bingham`s class at Burlingame Junior High in Burlingame, Kansas. Rise up. I`m Coy Wire, and we are CNN
10.
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