title: Tchéky Karyo

text: His film credits include "La Femme Nikita", "Vincent and Me", "Nostradamus", "Crying Freeman", "Bad Boys", "GoldenEye", "", "The Patriot" and "Kiss of the Dragon". His television roles include Dr. Willy Rozenbaum in the HBO film "And the Band Played On", Georges Méliès in the HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon", and French detective Julien Baptiste in the BBC crime drama "The Missing", and its spin-off series "Baptiste" (2019-2021).


title: Tchéky Karyo

text: He was named Baruch Djaki Karyo at birth in 1953 in Istanbul, Turkey; his mother was Greek Jewish and his father was from a Turkish Jewish family with ancestral roots in Spain (Sephardic Jewish). When he was young, his family moved to Paris, France, where he grew up. He attended the Parisian secondary school Lycée Arago (Paris). As a young man, Karyo studied drama at the Cyrano Theatre, and later became a member of the Daniel Sorano Company, playing many classical roles. The spelling of his name, Djaki, was changed to Tchéky in a form of French transliteration.


title: Tchéky Karyo

text: Karyo joined the National Theatre of Strasbourg, where he starred in both contemporary and classical plays. He found success in French films beginning in the 1980s, first as a character actor. He later appeared in leading roles in several notable films, such as "The Bear", in which he played one of the hunters, and director Luc Besson's "La Femme Nikita", in which he played the heroine's spy mentor.


title: Tchéky Karyo

text: He has appeared in many Hollywood movies, often portraying a French character, in the same fashion as Jean Reno. His movie credits include 1994's "Nostradamus" in which he plays the famous French prophet, and 1995's "Bad Boys" opposite Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in which he plays a criminal named Fouchet. He also appeared alongside Jet Li in "Kiss of the Dragon" (2001) as a corrupt and violent Paris police detective. He has acted in prominent roles in major films set during wartime. Such performances include his acting as a vengeful French officer alongside Mel Gibson in "The Patriot" (2000), set during the American Revolutionary War, and his role as Jean de Dunois in "". In the DVD edition of "The Patriot", Karyo overdubbed his own lines on the French-language track. He appeared in Martin Sheen's film "The Way" (2010) as Captain Henri.


title: Tchéky Karyo

text: In 2014 and 2016 Karyo appeared as Julien Baptiste in the acclaimed BBC One/Starz drama series "The Missing". He has received critical praise for his performance. In April 2018, it was confirmed that Karyo would reprise his Baptiste role in a spin-off series titled "Baptiste", to be written by Jack and Harry Williams. The first six-episode series began on BBC One on 17 February 2019, with a second series beginning on 18 July 2021.


title: Tchéky Karyo

text: In 2018, Karyo appeared as Elisha in "Mary Magdalene", written by Helen Edmundson and directed by Garth Davis.


title: Tchéky Karyo

text: Karyo is also a musician and songwriter. In 2006 he released the album "Ce lien qui nous unit" (English: "The link that binds us"), and released "Credo" in 2013 on his 60th birthday.


title: Tchéky Karyo

text: In 1982, He was nominated for a César Award for Most Promising Actor for his role in "La Balance". In 1986, he was awarded the Jean Gabin Prize in recognition of his acting performances.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The Camp Fire was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California's history, and the most expensive natural disaster in the world in 2018 in terms of insured losses.<ref name="Rice_1/8/2019"></ref><ref name="Time_1/9/2019"></ref>


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Named after Camp Creek Road, its place of origin, the fire started on Thursday, November 8, 2018, in Northern California's Butte County. Ignited by a faulty electric transmission line, the fire originated above several communities and an east wind drove the fire downhill through developed areas. After exhibiting extreme fire spread, fireline intensity, and spotting behaviors through the rural community of Concow, an urban firestorm formed in the foothill town of Paradise. Drought was a factor: Paradise, which typically sees five inches of autumn rain by November 12, had only received one-seventh of an inch by that date in 2018. With the arrival of the first winter rainstorm of the season, the fire reached 100 percent containment after seventeen days on November 25.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The Camp Fire caused at least 85 civilian fatalities, with one person still missing as of August 2, 2019, and injured 12 civilians and five firefighters. It covered an area of , and destroyed more than 18,000 structures, with most of the destruction occurring within the first four hours. The towns of Paradise and Concow were almost completely destroyed, each losing about 95% of their structures. The towns of Magalia and Butte Creek Canyon were also largely destroyed. By January 2019, the total damage was estimated at $16.5 billion; one-quarter of the damage, $4 billion, was not insured. The Camp Fire also cost over $150 million in fire suppression costs, bringing the total cost of the fire to $16.65 billion.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The same month, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), the utility company responsible for the faulty power line, filed for bankruptcy, citing expected wildfire liabilities of $30 billion. On December 6, 2019, the utility made a settlement offer of $13.5 billion for the wildfire victims; the offer covered several devastating fires caused by the utility, including the Camp Fire. On June 16, 2020, the utility pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The Camp Fire is the deadliest wildfire in the United States since the Cloquet fire in 1918, and ranks number 13 on the list of the world's deadliest wildfires; it is the sixth-deadliest U.S. wildfire overall.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: In 2005, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) released a fire management plan for the region, which warned that the town of Paradise was at risk for an ember-driven conflagration similar to the Oakland firestorm of 1991. The report stated, "the greatest risk to the ridge communities is from an east wind driven fire that originates above the communities and blows downhill through developed areas."


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The Camp Fire started in an area that had experienced 13 large wildfires since 1999. The area was most recently burned in 2008 following the Humboldt Fire and the larger Butte Lightning Complex fires. In June 2009, a Butte County civil grand jury report concluded that roads leading from Paradise and Upper Ridge communities had "significant constraints" and "capacity limitations" on their use as evacuation routes. The report noted a combination of road conditions "which increases the fire danger and the possibility of being closed due to fire and or smoke", namely sharp curves, inadequate shoulders, and fire hazards adjacent to shoulders, such as "fire fuel and steep slopes". The report also recommended a moratorium on new home construction in fire-prone areas. In September 2009, the Butte County Board of Supervisors called the grand jury report "not reasonable", citing improved building codes and fire prevention requirements as arguments against a moratorium.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Based on these reports, there had been warnings to Paradise city planners that they were not including study results in new plans. For example, in 2009, the town of Paradise proposed a reduced number of travel lanes on the roadways and received state funding from the California Department of Transportation to implement a road diet along Skyway, Pearson Road, and Clark Road, three of the town's main thoroughfares and evacuation routes.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: In March 2015, an updated plan codified changes made after the 2008 fires that would convert Skyway into a one-way route during emergencies, effectively doubling its capacity.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Residential development in wildland–urban interface areas such as Paradise and its vicinity are often located in state responsibility areas, where the State of California provides fire prevention and suppression. Due to a need for increased state resources to safeguard these communities, a special fee was imposed on property owners starting in 2011 to provide for fire prevention. However, the fee was unpopular with rural, predominantly conservative, lawmakers, landowners, and taxpayer groups. After collecting and spending $470 million, a measure to suspend and repeal the fee was approved by the California State Legislature in July 2017. Assemblyman Devon Mathis (Republican) claimed, "not one cent has gone to putting more boots on the ground."


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Initially, much of the revenue funded existing fire programs; the process of building out new prevention programs was slow. However, the revenue did fund projects such as secondary evacuation routes and fuel reduction zones. In August 2018, three months before the fire, fire safe councils in the Paradise region were awarded $5 million in grants from the fire prevention fee program to pay for fuel reduction and education projects.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Despite years of fuel reduction funded by special fees, numerous wildfires ravaged wildland–urban communities. Investigations found that PG&E power line failures during high winds had caused many of the fires. Utilities have the ability to disable dangerous power lines; however, the nearly 100-year-old transmission lines required intentional manual effort. PG&E shut off residential power to some customers, particularly in Paradise, in the days leading up to the fire. Following the 2017 North Bay fires, PG&E adopted a policy that precluded shutting off lines carrying more than 115 kV due to the number of customers who would be adversely affected by such a shutdown.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is responsible for inspecting PG&E's electrical infrastructure. The scope of the CPUC in relation to the scope of electrical infrastructure is unbalanced, however, and the CPUC has had difficulty fulfilling their oversight mandate.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: A CPUC inspection of the section of electrical infrastructure at the origin of the Camp Fire was omitted for six years. Many of the electrical towers are original to the Upper North Fork Feather River Project, which was constructed in the early 1900s. This section is the 115 kV Caribou-Palermo line. A 2009 inspection noted three-bolt connectors, used to join two conductors, were in need of replacement, which PG&E said had been done by 2016. In a 2011 audit, the CPUC found several thousand deficiencies, some of which PG&E disputed; it was not clear if the number of deficiencies on the Caribou-Palermo line was unusually high. A 2012 windstorm brought down five towers.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: After the Camp Fire, the CPUC's Safety and Enforcement Table Mountain Division audited three years of the missing ten years of PG&E's records. A worn C-hook on a transmission tower touched off the fire—a hazard PG&E knew was urgent. Focusing on where the Camp Fire broke out, the audit found "the company was late in fixing 900 problems on its towers and other equipment, including two critical threats that regulators say languished more than 600 days before being repaired." In May 2018, the CPUC gave PG&E permission to replace the aging line, though the design did not include line hardening through high fire hazard areas.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Conditions immediately leading up to and during the fire combined to create a highly combustible fuel load. These conditions included:


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The day the fire started, November 8, the fuel energy release component was above the historic record for that date; the first autumn rain normally occurs before November 1. In addition, the strong winds caused a Red Flag Warning to be issued on the day the fire started.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Regional previous burn patterns and topography also contributed to the fire. In Paradise, across from Rattlesnake Creek, the local fuel had never burned in recorded history. In addition, steep canyons in the area made firefighting access difficult.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Combined, the conditions formed a recipe for a firestorm. A subsequent Cal Fire report noted, "When the fire reached the town of Paradise, an urban firestorm began to spread from building to building, independent of vegetation." It was compared to the July 27, 1943, Royal Air Force bombing that caused the firestorm that consumed Hamburg, Germany, and killed an estimated 42,600 people, during World War II.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) notified customers for two days before November 8 that it might shut down power due to a forecast of high winds and low humidity. Ultimately, PG&E de-energized portions of Paradise on November 7, but not on November 8; however, even de-energizing Paradise would not have prevented the fire unless Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) chose to perform the manually intensive task of shutting down their 115 kV transmission lines located in and near Pulga, California. The National Weather Service had issued a red flag warning for most of Northern California's interior, as well as Southern California, through the morning of November 9.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Early November 8 the northeasterly "Jarbo Winds" formed; a katabatic wind off the Great Basin that picked up speed as it funneled through the Feather Canyon.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: On Thursday, November 8, 2018 around 6:15 a.m. there was a problem on a PG&E power transmission line above Poe Dam near Pulga, California in Butte County. A fire under power transmission lines near Poe Dam was reported to Cal Fire by a PG&E Rock Creek Powerhouse worker at 6:33 a.m. PST. The fire was first reported to the Rock Creek Powerhouse by a PG&E field crew. The location is accessed by Camp Creek Road above Poe Dam and the Feather River railroad tracks. Soon after this report, a size-up fire officer was dispatched. Within minutes, a few other people, most of them other PG&E workers, called in about the fire.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: An electrical machinist took two photos of the fire at 6:44 a.m., when it had grown to , and four minutes later two other employees sent in 21 photos and three videos. That afternoon airborne observers noted that an insulator had separated from the tower. PG&E later reported that power lines were down.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Arriving ten minutes later, Captain Matt McKenzie, the first unit on scene, observed rapid fire growth and extreme fire behavior. Possibly saving many, he radioed in a request for resources and evacuations with a note, "this has got potential for a major incident," and that he was "still working on [finding a way to] access [the fire]." Access to the fire was by a narrow mountain road, which the fire engines were too large to navigate. Air resources had to wait until 30 minutes after sunrise, "i.e.", 7:14 a.m., but due to winds, aircraft were not on the fire until the afternoon.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The community of Concow did not receive an evacuation warning before the fire arrived less than twenty minutes later around 7 a.m. A call at 7:07 a.m. from someone directly observing the fire reported it in Concow with high winds on it, they said it was "rippin'." Several additional calls from Concow followed soon thereafter. At 7:23 a.m. the Butte County Sheriff's Office began evacuating Pulga.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Calls from Concow and Paradise continued for an hour at nearly one call per minute to report a fire — all were told there was no danger, that the fire was north of Concow off Highway 70, that there was no evacuation, and that authorities would contact residents if there were danger.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: By 8 a.m. PST, the fire entered the town of Paradise. Several minutes later, "the Butte County Fire Department notified Paradise dispatchers of their orders to evacuate the entire town" which would be in a sequence of zones beginning with the east side of town. At some point that day, emergency shelters were established. Wind speeds approached , allowing the fire to grow rapidly. Most residents of Concow and many residents of Paradise were unable to evacuate before the fire arrived. Due to the speed of the fire, firefighters for the most part never attempted to prevent the flames from entering Concow or Paradise, and instead sought to help people get out alive. According to Chief Scott McLean of Cal Fire, "Pretty much the community of Paradise is destroyed, it's that kind of devastation. The wind that was predicted came and just wiped it out."


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The first hours saw a cascade of failures in the emergency alert system, rooted in its patchwork, opt-in nature, and compounded by a loss of 17 cell towers. Thousands of calls to 9-1-1 inundated two emergency dispatchers on duty. Emergency alerts suffered human error as city officials failed to include four at-risk areas of the city in evacuation orders and technical error as emergency alerts failed to reach 94 percent of residents in some areas and even in areas with the highest success still failed to reach 25 percent of those residents signed up.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: On November 10, an estimate placed the number of structures destroyed at 6,713, which surpassed the Tubbs Fire as the most destructive wildfire in California history, but that has since been updated to 18,793.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: By November 15, 5,596 firefighters, 622 engines, 75 water tenders, 101 handcrews, 103 bulldozers, and 24 helicopters from all over the Western United States were deployed to fight the fire.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: In the first week, the fire burned tens of thousands of acres per day. Containment on the western half was achieved when the fire reached primary highway and roadway arteries that formed barriers. In the second week the fire expanded by several thousand acres per day along a large uncontained fire line. Each day, containment increased by 5 percent along the uncontained eastern half of the fire that expanded into open timber and high country.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Heavy rainfall started on November 21, which helped contain the fire. Fire crews pulled back and let the rain put out the remaining fires while teams searched for victims.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: On November 25, 2018, Cal Fire announced that the fire had reached 100 percent containment and a total burn area of .


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: There were a large number of fatalities in the first several hours of the fire, but they were not found quickly. Discovery of these early fatalities took place over the course of the following two weeks. In the first week, nearly ten victims per day were found. In the second week, that lowered to several victims per day. Victims were still being found in the third week and beyond.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Identification of the deceased was hampered by the fragmentary condition of many bodies. Ten of 18 dentists in Paradise lost their offices and patient records in the fire. Two of the dead were identified from the serial numbers on artificial joints, 15 from dental records, five from fingerprints and 50 from DNA. Funerals and benefits were delayed by the identification difficulties. As of 2022, a few victims are still unidentified and are undergoing testing and identification by the DNA Doe Project.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Traffic jams on the few evacuation routes led to cars being abandoned while people evacuated on foot, but did not contribute to any deaths. At least seven deaths occurred when the fire overtook people who were trapped in their vehicles, most on Edgewood Road, as well as one person outside a vehicle and two on ATVs. Some residents who were unable to evacuate survived by sheltering in place at the American gas station and the Nearly New antique store across the street. Others gathered in the nearby parking lot shared by a KMart and a Save Mart. The survival of some of those who sheltered in place has raised the question of whether in some scenarios last-minute mass evacuations provide the best outcomes, with some pointing to Australia's policy discouraging them, instituted following the 1983 Ash Wednesday brushfires in which many of the 75 dead were killed while trying to evacuate. However, 70 of the 84 fatalities listed in the Butte County District Attorney's Camp Fire investigation summary occurred inside or immediately outside the victim's residences, indicating that failure to evacuate contributed to many more deaths (70) than occurred while evacuating (8).


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Many seniors were evacuated by passersby and neighbors, with at least one account of dozens of evacuees jumping into a reservoir to escape the flames.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Butte County Sheriff's Department initially reported a partial death count for each community (total 67): 50 in Paradise, 7 in Concow, 9 in Magalia, and 1 in Chico.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: In two separate incidents, a pair of fire captains, a firefighter, and a pair of prison inmate firefighters were burned. The first incident was a burnover, and the second incident was an exploding propane tank.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Berry Creek and Yankee Hill and threatened the communities of Butte Valley, Chico, Forest Ranch, Helltown, Inskip, Oroville, and Stirling City.<ref name="Afzal_11/9/2018"></ref>


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The community of Concow and the town of Paradise were destroyed within the first six hours of the fire, losing an estimated 95 percent of their buildings. The town of Magalia also suffered substantial damage, and the community of Pulga, California suffered some. Nearly 19,000 buildings were destroyed, most of them homes, along with five public schools in Paradise, a rest home, churches, part of Feather River hospital, a Christmas tree farm, a large shopping center anchored by a Safeway, several fast food chains, such as Black Bear Diner and McDonald's, and numerous small businesses, as well. The Honey Run Covered Bridge over nearby Butte Creek, the last three-span Pratt-style truss bridge in the United States, was incinerated on November 10.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: In May 2019, NPR reported that more than 1,000 families who were displaced by the fire were still looking for housing six months later. Rural northern California had been experiencing a severe housing shortage and growing homelessness crisis, compounded in part due to the fire. Prior to the fire, Chico had a housing vacancy rate of less than 3 percent. The loss of several thousand residences placed additional strain on Butte County's housing market. Average list prices for homes were reported to have increased by more than 10 percent.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: "Note: Cal Fire damage updates do not contain categories tagged with *, however, a count was given November 17; also, '~' denotes an estimate."


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The smoke from the fire resulted in widespread air pollution throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Central Valley, prompting the closure of public schools in five Bay Area counties and dozens of districts in the Sacramento metropolitan area on November 16. Smoke was reportedly visible as far away as New York City after smoke plumes traveled a distance of over 3,000 miles. John Balmes, a physician at the University of California, Berkeley who sits on the California Air Resources Board, noted that the fire "[resulted in] the worst air pollution [ever] for the Bay Area and northern California."


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Recovery efforts were slowed as crews tested burned debris for environmental contaminants such as asbestos, volatile organic compounds, heavy metals, arsenic, dioxins, and other hazardous materials that may have burned or spread in the fire.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The Butte County Health Officer, Andy Miller, declared the burned region uninhabitable. A strong warning was issued against rehabitation, noting, "[you] will be exposed to hazardous materials." In the weeks following the fire, Paradise City Council and Butte County Supervisors passed emergency ordinances to alleviate the delay in FEMA temporary housing by allowing residents to return to their land and live in temporary residences until the cleanup was completed and they could rebuild. However, with additional information it was clear there was a significant risk to public health and in early February 2019,


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: FEMA's Federal Coordinating Officer David Samaniego forced policymakers to retract the accommodation and remove residents from the burn area. Those policymakers released an announcement, "The Town of Paradise and Butte County were informed that emergency ordinances intended to provide a process for citizens to return to their properties prior to removal of the debris may impact federal funding. The disaster assistance is predicated on the need to remedy health and safety hazards that pose an immediate risk to citizens prior to living in recreational vehicles on their properties with structures burned during the Camp Fire." Emotions were summed up by resident Ben Walker while addressing the Paradise City Council: "I'm asking you not to throw the people of this town into the cold in the middle of winter. If the option is to choose federal money to rebuild the town, or the people to rebuild the town—choose the people".


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Multiple drinking water systems across the burn area were chemically contaminated, and contaminated building plumbing. Benzene levels found in some drinking water samples, from multiple systems, exceeded hazardous waste levels. Other contaminants such as methylene chloride, vinyl chloride monomer, naphthalene, and others were also found above allowable drinking water exposure limits. In particular, methylene chloride was present above safe drinking water limits when benzene was not detected indicating benzene was not a predictor of wildfire contaminated water. Sources of this contamination are thought to include smoke being sucked into depressurized buried and building water system components and the thermal degradation of plastics in the water systems themselves. Investigators found that traditional methods of calculating burn severity using satellite imagery were not appropriate for classifying localized burn severity within WUI communities. Density of structural loss was more predictive of water system contamination. Studies revealed significant hardship by households across the burn area who had standing homes lacking safe water. Household drinking water and plumbing education efforts were conducted by Purdue University, University of California Berkeley, Butte College, and Chico State University researchers in collaboration with the Camp Fire Zone Project. In 2020, the U.S. National Academies convened a workshop to address questions related to post-wildfire public health challenges.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The volume of insurance claims overwhelmed Merced Property and Casualty Company, a small insurer founded in 1906, to the point of insolvency (policyholders' surplus $25 million). In response to a notice given by the company, the California Department of Insurance reviewed and then placed it into liquidation. This allows the California Insurance Guarantee Association, a state guaranty association, to cover claims. The Department of Insurance will continue with a review of all insurers with a domicile in California so to determine the exposure of each to Camp Fire losses. An estimate by the "Los Angeles Times" of Merced Property and Casualty Company's assets and reinsurance shows that they would only be able to cover 150 homes out of the 14,000 homes destroyed in a region where they were one of the only companies that still provided fire insurance policies despite the region being categorized as a high fire-hazard severity zone by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. This is the only known instance of an insurance company becoming insolvent from a single event.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: On November 16, the Chico city council passed an emergency ordinance to prohibit price gouging in Chico, by preventing the cost of rent, goods or services from being increased by more than 10 percent for 6 months.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Facing potential liabilities of $30 billion from the wildfire, the electrical utility that was responsible for the transmission line suspected of sparking the wildfire, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), on January 14, 2019, began the process of filing for bankruptcy with a 15-day notice of intention to file for bankruptcy protection. On January 29, 2019 PG&E Corporation, the parent corporation of PG&E, filed for bankruptcy protection. Because fire survivors are unsecured creditors with the same priority as bondholders, they will only be paid in proportion to their claim size if anything is left after secured and priority claims are paid; it nearly ensures that they will not get paid in full. PG&E had a deadline of June 30, 2020 to exit bankruptcy in order to participate in the California state wildfire insurance fund established by AB 1054 that helps utilities pay for future wildfire claims.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: PG&E settled for $1 billion with state and local governments in June, 2019, and settled for $11 billion with insurance carriers and hedge funds in September, 2019. Claims for wildfire victims consist of wrongful death, personal injuries, property loss, business losses, and other legal damages. Representatives for wildfire victims said PG&E owed $54 billion or more, and PG&E was offering $8.4 billion for fire damages, Cal Fire, and FEMA. FEMA originally requested PG&E for $3.9 billion from the wildfire victims fund, threatening to take the money from individual wildfire victims if PG&E did not pay, and Cal OES had an overlapping $2.3 billion request, but they later settled for $1 billion after all wildfire victims are paid.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: On November 12, 2019, PG&E in its proposed reorganization plan provided an additional $6.6 billion for the claims of wildfire victims and other claimants, increasing the amount to $13.5 billion. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), this puts the total amount for fire claims at $25.5 billion. This consists of $11 billion to insurance companies and investment funds, $1 billion to state and local governments, and $13.5 billion for other claims.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: On December 6, 2019, PG&E proposed to settle the wildfire victim claims for a total of $13.5 billion, which would cover liability for its responsibility originating from the Camp Fire, Tubbs Fire, Butte Fire, Ghost Ship warehouse fire, and also a series of wildfires beginning on October 8, 2017, collectively called the 2017 North Bay Fires. The offer was tendered as part of PG&E's plan to exit bankruptcy. Wildfire victims will get half of their $13.5 billion settlement as stock shares in the reorganized company, adding to the uncertainty as to when and how much they will be paid. On June 12, 2020, because of uncertainties in the value of the liquidated stock, in part because of the financial market impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, PG&E agreed to increase the amount of stock.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: On June 16, 2020, PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for those that died in the Camp Fire, for which it will pay the maximum fine of $3.5 million and end all further criminal charges against PG&E. This action does not alleviate PG&E of any future civil claims by victims of the Camp Fire which would fall outside the bankruptcy proceedings, as well as how existing litigation against PG&E may be handled.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: On Saturday, June 20, 2020, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali issued the final approval of the plan for the reorganized PG&E to exit bankruptcy, meeting the June 30, 2020 deadline for PG&E to qualify for the California state wildfire insurance fund for utilities.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: On July 1, 2020, the PG&E Fire Victim Trust (FVT) was established as part of the reorganization plan of the 2019 bankruptcy of PG&E to administer the claims of the wildfire victims. Also on July 1, PG&E funded the FVT with $5.4 billion in cash and 22.19% of stock in the reorganized PG&E, which covered most of the obligations of its settlement for the wildfire victims. PG&E had two more payments totaling $1.35 billion in cash that were paid in January 2021 and January 2022 to complete its obligations to the wildfire victims. For additional funding, on January 28, 2021, the FVT sued multiple PG&E contractors responsible for tree trimming, infrastructure inspections and maintenance for breach of contract and neglect, and on February 24, 2021, sued 22 former PG&E officers and directors for breach of fiduciary duty by failing to put in place policies and practices to respond to deficient tree trimming work and aging infrastructure. On September 29, 2022, the FVT announced that they had settled the lawsuit against PG&E's former officers and directors for $117 million.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Initially, the Trustee, the Honorable John K. Trotter (Ret.), and the Claims Administrator, Cathy Yanni, were in charge of the FVT. On July 1, 2022, Cathy Yanni became Trustee of the FVT, replacing Justice John Trotter. Claimants are wildfire victims from the 2015 Butte Fire, 2017 North Bay Fires, and 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California. The 2017 Tubbs Fire is considered to be one of the 2017 North Bay Fires. Victims of the 2019 Kincade Fire are not covered by the FVT. Victims of the 2016 Ghost Ship warehouse fire are not covered by the FVT, but by PG&E's insurance coverage for the year 2016.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Claims for wildfire victims include real estate and personal property, personal income loss, business loss, wrongful death, personal injury, emotional distress, zone of danger, and nuisance claims. Wildfire victims will be paid in cash, funded partly from the cash portion of the settlement, and partly from 478 million shares of PG&E stock that will be liquidated into cash on a schedule and at a price that is not yet determined. Starting November 23, 2020, the FVT began issuing Preliminary Payments up to $25,000 for those with significant losses. There were 71,394 wildfire victims who filed claims by the deadline of February 26, 2021. Starting March 15, 2021, the FVT began issuing the first installment of Pro Rata Payments (partial payments) to eligible claimants. This first installment was 30% of the Approved Claim Amount for their damages, because the total amount of money available to the FVT is unknown. Starting February 15, 2022, the FVT began issuing payments with a Pro Rata of 45%, meaning that those that had already received a payment would get a supplemental payment, and payments made after February 15, 2022 would be at 45%. As of September 30, 2022, there were 244,292 distinct claims that had been filed, and the FVT had distributed $5.08 billion to 49,301 wildfire victims.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and state utility regulators investigated Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) to determine if they complied with state laws in the areas burned in the fire. The "Associated Press" noted the fire started near a property where PG&E detected sparks on the day before its outbreak. PG&E was convicted of a felony due to a gas pipeline explosion in 2010 and is on probation, which means penalties for subsequent crimes are enhanced. PG&E also reported damage to the Caribou-Palermo transmission line 15 minutes before flames were first reported under the wires; the same line was previously damaged in a windstorm in December 2012.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Investigators believe that the failure of a badly maintained steel hook holding up a high voltage line was a key cause of the fire. A PG&E report to CPUC on December 11, 2018 said that "it had found a hook designed to hold up power lines on the tower was broken before the fire, and that the pieces showed wear."


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: A distribution line in Concow malfunctioned a half hour later, which was considered as a possible second ignition source. On November 11, PG&E employees saw bullets and bullet holes on pole equipment from the Big Bend distribution line affected by that outage, and downed wires, damaged poles and fallen trees about two thirds of a mile away.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Following the fire, multiple fire victims sued PG&E and its parent company in San Francisco County Superior Court before a definite cause had been determined, accusing PG&E of failure to properly maintain its infrastructure and equipment. In mid-May 2019, California state investigators announced that PG&E was responsible for the fire. The Cal Fire report was sent to the Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: While successful in evacuating nearly the entire town of Paradise, first responders were limited by an insufficient number of cell phone repeaters, which resulted in communication difficulties and reduced Internet speed: "Paradise quickly lost its equipment, the California Public Utilities Commission confirmed." The wildfire alert system was similarly hampered by damaged cell towers; 17 towers burned the first day. Many residents didn't sign up for the warnings, some neighborhoods for some reason did not receive any warnings, and the failure rate of the warnings that did get sent ranged from 25 to 94 percent.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Randall L. Stephenson, AT&T CEO, committed to fixing this problem, as AT&T added mobile repeaters to improve coverage. Two weeks into the fire, 66 cell repeaters were still damaged or out of service, and the remaining cell infrastructure was overloaded.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Initial widespread confusion about reporting missing people limited the search for victims. The Butte County Sheriff's Office opened a call center, staffed daily from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., to provide and receive information and inquiries on missing persons.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The North Valley Animal Disaster Group worked with law enforcement and other shelters, rescue groups and independent operations to rescue and reunite pets and families, and established an animal shelter at the Chico Airport.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Fire resources were stretched as the fire began on the same day as the Woolsey Fire and the Hill Fire in Southern California. Camp Fire resource requests alone equalled the entire 6,000 Cal Fire full-time fire professionals. Both fires pulled resources from 17 states to respond.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: By the second day of the fire, only half the fire resources had assembled. The initial response within Paradise was shouldered by Paradise's three fire engines in stations 81, 82, and 83, and the two engines at Butte County Cal Fire Station 35.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: At the height of deployment, there were 5,596 firefighters (including 770 inmate firefighters), 622 engines, 75 water tenders, 101 fire crews, 103 bulldozers, 24 helicopters, and 12 fixed-wing aircraft.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: On the morning of ignition, high winds limited fixed-wing air support. By that afternoon, calming winds allowed for 9 fixed-wing aircraft on the fire, including 5 - 1,200-gal S-2 Trackers, 3 - 3,000-gal BAE 146s, and a 12,000-gal DC-10 Air Tanker. Eventually, three additional aircraft were deployed from out of state, including 2 - 1,620-gal CL-415 Super Scoopers that arrived from their home in Washington on November 9 and a 19,600-gal 747 Supertanker that arrived from its home in Colorado on November 11 after gaining a contract to work on federal land.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The California National Guard activated 700 soldiers to assist, including 100 military police officers from the 49th Brigade to provide security and search for remains with the assistance of 22 cadaver dogs. The


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: 2632nd Transportation company provided haul trucks. The 140th Regiment provided air support. The 224th Sustainment Brigade constructed Alaska tents for temporary facilities.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: From November 8 to December 1, an encampment formed in a vacant lot next to the Walmart store in nearby Chico. The camp was in addition to motel room vouchers from FEMA and ten shelters established by the Red Cross and churches to house evacuees. Over a hundred people had become ill with norovirus at the shelters due to poor hygiene in overcrowded centers—prompting many to camp outdoors. Volunteers from across the region came to the camp and provided services for food, shelter, and sanitation; fire refugees referred to their camp as 'Wallywood.' The camp population swelled to over a thousand people. Butte County has a persistent homeless population of 7,500 people; many reside in Chico, and some campers were revealed as resident homeless people who did not live in the fire zone. On December 1, the firefighter camp facilities at the Butte County Fairgrounds became available, whereupon the Walmart camp was closed and the field fenced off, with the remaining fifty refugees relocated to the firefighters' camp.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Recovery efforts included supporting the mental health of Camp Fire victims, particularly the youth. Some former residents reported survivor guilt, troubling dreams, and symptoms of posttraumatic stress. To ease the stress on fire victims, several people brought therapy dogs from the Butte Humane Society's Animal Assisted Wellness program. Lise Van Susteren summarized the burden these children bear in experiencing climate change, "These kids are at the tip of the spear."


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The Camp Fire cleanup became the largest hazardous material cleanup in state history. Due to the time required to clean up a town of nearly 30,000 people and surrounding rural metro region of another 3,000 people, and the infeasible task of developing temporary housing, residents were allowed to take up residence on their burned-out lots, which possibly exposed them to hazardous materials. Winter rains began at the end of the Camp Fire and as a result, hazardous contaminants soaked into the ground and ran into waterways which raised concerns for the drinking water. Another concern was benzene contamination from burning plastic pipes. Paradise tested sections of their water supply and initially "22 out of 24 water systems were tested" and announced as passed. Later, the Paradise Irrigation District issued a notice that the water is contaminated and cannot be used. For water tributaries within the 244-square-mile burn, "a months-long water monitoring program [sampled] surface water at least seven times through spring 2019." While heavy metals and dioxins were concerns, a more pressing public health issue was an intestinal parasite, cryptosporidium, to which bare soil provided greater access to water systems.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) collaborated on developing a site to process fire zone demolition and remediation debris. Of fifty potential sites within thirty miles of Paradise, they identified the 200-acre Koppers Superfund Site in Oroville as a suitable site based on an industrial zoning and a rail spur; the site ultimately was dismissed due to concerns of toxicity. After consideration, all fifty sites were rejected and instead, hazardous waste, such as electronics, car batteries, and asbestos were hauled several hours by trucks directly from the individual cleanup sites to landfills in California and Nevada.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The government procurement for cleanup was broken into several contract packages and put out to public bid to remove, process, and dispose of 5 million tons of materials at a cost of $3 billion:


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The Paradise Fire Safe Council is looking at putting out bids for salvage logging the 443,000 dead trees, which would otherwise be the responsibility of homeowners at a combined cost of $750 million. There are challenges—such as logging must be within a few months or the trees will begin to rot—these challenges are being tested through a pilot program.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The "Los Angeles Times" reported the Camp Fire burned across an area burned to bare dirt by a hot burning wildfire ten years earlier, then salvage logged; fire ecologist Chad Hanson suggested brush piles and young trees left over after the salvage logging provided fast-burning fuels aiding the fire's rapid spread. The Camp Fire was initially fueled by dry grass amid sparse pine and oak woodlands. This drove most of the post-event discussion away from timber management as a future fire-prevention solution.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The fire was largely driven by extreme weather conditions — high winds and low humidity — and spread through fuels parched by more than 200 days without significant precipitation, part of a statewide drought related to climate change.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: "The Sacramento Bee" looked at if residential development is appropriate in the Sierra Nevada wildland-urban zones, quoting a former Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District chief, "There's just some places a subdivision shouldn't be built." Issues include if development can be safe, and if safe, what building codes and emergency response infrastructure would be needed. That discussion pointed to other Sierra Foothill communities similar to Paradise. Cal Fire states "Those kinds of geographic features are present in many foothill towns." Those features include proximity and alignment to river canyons channeling wind-fed flames over foothill communities. Visiting Professor Moritz (UC Santa Barbara) notes "if we were to go back and do the wind mapping, we would find, at some intervals, these areas are prone to these north and northeasterly [strong hot autumn wind] events."


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: On November 10, then-U.S. president Donald Trump misleadingly stated that "There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor", including the Camp Fire and the concurrent Woolsey Fire in Southern California. In a tweet, he threatened to end federal assistance unless "gross mismanagement of the forests" is remedied.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Trump elaborated on his claims in an interview with Chris Wallace and during his trip to Paradise, stating "you got to take care of the floors. You know the floors of the forest — very important" and "[Finland] spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things and they don't have any problem." Finland's president Sauli Niinistö was baffled by Trump's assertions and denied they talked about raking, leading to an Internet phenomenon of Finnish people sharing photos of themselves sarcastically raking forests with items such as house brooms and vacuum cleaners.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Some fire experts refuted Trump's claims, noting Californians were experiencing unusually dry conditions and abnormally high fire danger. Brian Rice, president of the California Professional Firefighters, described Trump's assertion about state forest management practices as "demeaning" and "dangerously wrong," noting that 60 percent of California forests are directly managed by federal agencies, primarily the United States Forest Service, which had reduced spending on forest management in recent years.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Regardless of the assertions for greater attention to raking by the President at the time, an ongoing discussion in California had revolved around the issue of increasing fire hazard due to a buildup of fuels. In 2016, prior to the Camp Fire, then Governor Jerry Brown warned that this is "the new normal." Yet in September 2016, despite unanimous Legislative approval, California Governor Brown vetoed Senate Bill 1463, which aimed to reduce the risk of power lines sparking fires in brush-covered and wooded areas. The key provisions in SB1463 were requirements to define in R.15-05-006 what "Enhanced mitigation measures” means and to explain how concerns of regional fire agencies were incorporated into R.15-05-006. The Governor pointed out that the bill duplicated ongoing efforts by Cal-Fire and PG&E in fire mapping power lines with R.15-05-006. Subsequent to the veto, "on January 19, 2018 the CPUC adopted, via Safety and Enforcement Division's (SED) disposition of a Tier 1 Advice Letter, the final CPUC Fire-Threat Map." See the resulting firemap here, the region that would become the Camp Fire ignition point is a Tier 2 (elevated) hazard, which is a large area that burned heavily in 2008, and much of the burn area is Tier 3 (extreme), which had never burned in recorded history


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Following the Camp Fire, the CPUC moved on a new approach to fire prevention with a vote on December 15, 2018 to improve rules governing when utilities should disable power lines to reduce the risk of fires.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: US District Court Judge William Allsup ruled May 7, 2019 that the board of PG&E would be required to tour the fire area, at a hearing on the utility's violation of its criminal Federal probation for its negligence in causing the 2010 San Bruno natural gas pipeline failure and subsequent explosion. This violation of Federal probation predated the Camp Fire; after the 2017 Honey Fire, a much smaller but also in Butte County, investigators found that PG&E equipment started that fire. The company settled with prosecutors but did not properly report these events to its Federal probation officer.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Going forward post-Camp Fire, policymakers are looking at options to harden the California energy distribution infrastructure against wildfires. A key constraint is that California is reliant on a system of centralized electrical generation with distribution to end-users. One proposal to prevent fires is underground distribution similar to modern suburban electrical distribution. In November 2018 and initiated prior to the Camp Fire, PG&E piloted in the North Bay a hardened section of electrical infrastructure.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: While buried power lines will reduce the risk of sparking wildfires, however, that solution increases distribution infrastructure cost by 10 times. A suggestion to reduce cost is to harden the sections of high energy lines through high wind areas upwind of residential communities in the wildland–urban interface, in particular, around river canyons pointing to those residential areas. The State Legislaturers have made efforts towards this strategy, however, while PG&E piloted a segment of hardened infrastructure, PG&E also diverted half the funds intended by the Legislature for this purpose. Hardening utilities with underground placement is common, such as gas and fiber-optic, which are usually buried The cost to install overhead utilities is $500,000 per mile, while underground utilities are $5 million per mile.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: Given the high cost of hardening, figuring out which sections to harden is therefore important. Of 175,000 miles of Californian electrical infrastructure, 80,000 miles is fireprone; currently, those 175,000 miles breakdown into 81,000 miles of overhead electrical distribution, 26,000 miles of underground distribution, and 18,000 miles of overhead-high voltage-transmission. Regardless of the solution chosen, as development and buildout of the State economy continues, that utility distribution system will expand, possibly doubling the current system in the next years. Policymakers will decide if an investment in hardened distribution is equitable and if the existing distribution should be modified as a single project or as a piecemeal replacement as sections of lines require replacement.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The first two building permits were reissued for Paradise after almost five months on March 28, 2019. Local public policymakers want to promote rebuilding with higher standards for fire-resistant construction, upgraded infrastructure, and using the recommended 2009 redesigns for enhanced fire safety, which included expanded road capacity to increase evacuation capacity and to provide better access for emergency equipment. The first Certificate of Occupancy was awarded in July 2019.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: The Paradise Seventh-day Adventist church was completely destroyed, as was part of its adjacent academy. Estimates were that at least 600 homes of Adventist Health employees in Paradise had been destroyed. When power was restored to the site, the church began providing free potable water to neighbors. Its leaders said, "Though the physical attributes of our earthly Paradise are destroyed, the spirit of Paradise has spread across the country and around the world, as people are moved to volunteer resources to help." Most other places of worship were also destroyed, including Our Savior Lutheran Church, Ridge Presbyterian Church, Paradise Church of Christ, First Assembly of God, Craig Memorial Congregational Church, Paradise Foursquare, New Life Apostolic Church, Paradise Pentecostal Church of God, and Community Church of the Brethren. The lead pastor of Hope Christian Church, Stan Freitas, wrote, "Building was burnt down, but cross and rock still standing." "The church is still alive." A Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) meetinghouse and a Center for Spiritual Living were also destroyed.


title: Camp Fire (2018)

text: A community interfaith memorial was held on February 8, 2019, at the Paradise Performing Arts Center. The event was their grand re-opening since the Camp Fire. Over a dozen faith traditions offered a free celebration of life for the lives lost in the Camp Fire. The event was broadcast by Action News Now, NBC attended by 800+ Butte County community members. The event, which promoted healing, unity, and a time for the community to reconnect was sponsored by the Chico Area Interfaith Council. Families received remembrance gifts, and there was prayer, two choirs, piano, and a tribute to each individual who lost their life. The memorial was hosted by Linda Watkins-Bennett and Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Red Grammer performed his song called, "We're Made of Love", which was written for the memorial.


title: Reversi

text: Reversi is a strategy board game for two players, played on an 8×8 uncheckered board. It was invented in 1883. Othello, a variant with a fixed initial setup of the board, was patented in 1971.


title: Reversi

text: There are sixty-four identical game pieces called "disks", which are light on one side and dark on the other. Players take turns placing disks on the board with their assigned color facing up. During a play, any disks of the opponent's color that are in a straight line and bounded by the disk just placed and another disk of the current player's color are turned over to the current player's color. The objective of the game is to have the majority of disks turned to display one's color when the last playable empty square is filled.


title: Reversi

text: Englishmen Lewis Waterman and John W. Mollett both claim to have invented the game of Reversi in 1883, each denouncing the other as a fraud. The game gained considerable popularity in England at the end of the 19th century. The game's first reliable mention is on 21 August 1886 edition of "The Saturday Review". Later mention includes an 1895 article in "The New York Times", which describes Reversi as "something like Go Bang, [...] played with 64 pieces." In 1893, the German games publisher Ravensburger started producing the game as one of its first titles. Two 18th century continental European books dealing with a game that may or may not be Reversi are mentioned on page fourteen of the Spring 1989 "Othello Quarterly", and there has been speculation, so far without documentation, that the game has older origins.


title: Reversi

text: A Japanese publication in 1907 titled "World Games Rules Complete Collection" (世界遊戯法大全) describes the board game Reversi with the same rules as Othello where the first four pieces go in the center in a diagonal pattern and the player who cannot make a move simply passes.


title: Reversi

text: The modern version of the game—the most regularly used rule-set, and the one used in international tournaments—is marketed and recognized as Othello. It was patented in Japan in 1971 by (legal name: Satoshi Hasegawa), then a 38-year-old salesman. Hasegawa initially explained that Othello was an improvement on Reversi, but from around 2000, he began to claim that he invented it in Mito regardless of Reversi. Hasegawa also claims that the origin of Reversi/Othello dates back 5,000 years.


title: Reversi

text: Hasegawa established the Japan Othello Association in March 1973, and held the first national Othello championship on 4 April 1973 in Japan. The Japanese game company Tsukuda Original launched Othello in late April 1973 in Japan under Hasegawa's license, which led to an immediate commercial success.


title: Reversi

text: The name was selected by Hasegawa as a reference to the Shakespearean play "Othello, the Moor of Venice", referring to the conflict between the Moor Othello and Iago, and more controversially, to the unfolding drama between Othello, who is black, and Desdemona, who is white. The green color of the board is inspired by the image of the general Othello, valiantly leading his battle in a green field. It can also be likened to a jealousy competition (jealousy being the central theme in Shakespeare's play, which popularized the term "green-eyed monster"), since players engulf the pieces of the opponent, thereby turning them to their possession.


title: Reversi

text: Othello was first launched in the U.S. in 1975 by Gabriel Industries and it also enjoyed commercial success there. Sales have reportedly exceeded $600 million. More than 40 million classic games have been sold in over 100 countries.


title: Reversi

text: Hasegawa's "How to play Othello (Osero No Uchikata)" in Japan in 1974, was published in 1977 in an English translation entitled "How to Win at Othello".


title: Reversi

text: Kabushiki Kaisha Othello, which is owned by Hasegawa, registered the trademark "OTHELLO" for board games in Japan; Tsukuda Original registered the trademark in the rest of the world. All intellectual property regarding Othello outside Japan is now owned by MegaHouse, the Japanese toy company which acquired Tsukuda Original's successor PalBox.


title: Reversi

text: Each of the disks' two sides corresponds to one player; they are referred to here as "light" and "dark" after the sides of "Othello" pieces, but any counters with distinctive faces are suitable. The game may for example be played with a chessboard and Scrabble pieces, with one player "letters" and the other "backs".


title: Reversi

text: The historical version of Reversi starts with an empty board, and the first two moves made by each player are in the four central squares of the board. The players place their disks alternately with their colors facing up and no captures are made. A player may choose to not play both pieces on the same diagonal, different from the standard "Othello" opening. It is also possible to play variants of Reversi and "Othello" where the second player's second move may or must flip one of the opposite-colored disks (as variants closest to the normal games).


title: Reversi

text: For the specific game of "Othello", the game begins with four disks placed in a square in the middle of the grid, two facing light-side-up, two dark-side-up, so that the same-colored disks are on a diagonal. Convention has this such that the dark-side-up disks are to the north-east and south-west (from both players' perspectives), though this is only marginally consequential: where sequential openings' memorization is preferred, such players benefit from this. The dark player moves first.


title: Reversi

text: Dark must place a piece (dark-side-up) on the board and so that there exists at least one straight (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal) occupied line between the new piece and another dark piece, with one or more contiguous light pieces between them. For move one, dark has four options shown by translucently drawn pieces below:


title: Reversi

text: Play always alternates. After placing a dark disk, dark turns over (flips to dark, captures) the single disk (or chain of light disks) on the line between the new piece and an anchoring dark piece. No player can look back to the previous status of disks when playing moves. A valid move is one where at least one piece is reversed (flipped over).


title: Reversi

text: If dark decided to put a piece in the topmost location (all choices are strategically equivalent at this time), one piece gets turned over, so that the board appears thus:


title: Reversi

text: Now light plays. This player operates under the same rules, with the roles reversed: light lays down a light piece, causing a dark piece to flip. Possibilities at this time appear thus (indicated by transparent pieces):


title: Reversi

text: Players take alternate turns. If one player cannot make a valid move, play passes back to the other player. When neither player can move, the game ends. This occurs when the grid has filled up or when neither player can legally place a piece in any of the remaining squares. This means the game may end before the grid is completely filled. This possibility may occur because one player has no pieces remaining on the board in that player's color. In over-the-board play this is generally scored as if the board were full (64–0).


title: Reversi

text: The player with the most pieces on the board at the end of the game wins. An exception to this is that if a clock is employed then if one player defaults on time that player's opponent wins regardless of the board configuration, with varying methods to determine the official score where one is required.


title: Reversi

text: In common practice over the Internet, opponents agree upon a time-control of, typically, from one to thirty minutes per game per player. Standard time control in the World Championship is thirty minutes, and this or something close to it is common in over-the-board (as opposed to internet) tournament play generally. In time-defaulted games, where disk differential is used for tie-breaks in tournaments or for rating purposes, one common over-the-board procedure for the winner of defaulted contests to complete both sides' moves with the greater of the result thereby or one disk difference in the winner's favor being the recorded score. Games in which both players have the same number of disks their color at the end (almost always with a full-board 32–32 score) are not very common, but also not rare, and these are designated as 'ties' and scored as half of a win for each player in tournaments. The term 'draw' for such may also be heard, but is somewhat frowned upon.


title: Reversi

text: What are generally referred to as "transcript sheets" are generally in use in tournament over-the-board play, with both players obligated to record their game's moves by placing the number of each move in an 8×8 grid. This both enables players to look up past games of note and tournament directors and players to resolve disputes (according to whatever specific rules are in place) where claims that an illegal move, flip or other anomaly are voiced. An alternative recording method not requiring a grid is also in use, where positions on a board are labeled left to right by letters "a" through "h" and top to bottom (far-to-near) by digits "1" through "8" (Note that this is the opposite of the chess standard, with numerals running upward away from the side (White) that has "a" through "h" left to right, and also that the perspective may be that of either player (with no fixed standard)), so that the very first move of a game may be (based upon standard starting setup) d3, c4, f5 or e6. This alternate notational scheme is used primarily in verbal discussions or where a linear representation is desirable in print, but may also be permissible as during-game transcription by either or both players.


title: Reversi

text: Tournament play using ordinary sets rather than a computer interface—where this cannot be an issue—have various ways of handling illegal moves and over- or underflipping (flips that should not be made but are or should be but are not). For example, permitting either player (perpetrator or its opponent) to make a correction going back some fixed number of moves (after which no remedy is available) is one procedure that has been used.


title: Reversi

text: Significant variants of the game, such as where the starting position differs from standard or the objective is to have the fewest pieces one's color at the end, are sometimes—but rarely—played.


title: Reversi

text: Invented by the British mathematician and three times runner-up at the World Championship and five times British Champion Graham Brightwell, this is the tie-breaker that is now used in many tournaments including the W.O.C. If two players have the same number of points in the thirteen-round W.O.C. Swiss, the tie is resolved in favour of the player with the higher Brightwell Quotient.


title: Reversi

text: Good Othello computer programs play very strongly against human opponents. This is mostly due to difficulties in human look-ahead peculiar to Othello: The interchangeability of the disks and therefore apparent strategic meaninglessness (as opposed to chess pieces for example) makes an evaluation of different moves much harder. This can be demonstrated with blindfold games, as the memorization of the board demands much more dedication from the players than in blindfold chess.


title: Reversi

text: The first tournament pitting Othello computer programs against human opponents took place in 1980. In it, then world champion Hiroshi Inoue, although he would go on to win the tournament, lost a game against the computer program "The Moor". In 1997, the computer Othello program Logistello defeated the reigning human champion, Takeshi Murakami, six games to zero.


title: Reversi

text: Analysts have estimated the number of legal positions in Othello is at most 10, and it has a game-tree complexity of approximately 10. Mathematically, Othello still remains unsolved. Experts have not absolutely resolved what the outcome of a game will be where both sides use perfect play. However, analysis of thousands of high-quality games (most of them computer-generated) appears to lead to a reliable conclusion (pending actual proof if true) that, on the standard 8×8 board, perfect play on both sides results in a draw. When generalizing the game to play on an "n"×"n" board, the problem of determining if the first player has a winning move in a given position is PSPACE-complete. On 4×4 and 6×6 boards under perfect play, the second player wins. The first of these proofs is relatively trivial, and the second dates to around 1990.


title: Reversi

text: The World Othello Championship (WOC), which started in 1977, was first organized by the Japan Othello Association. From 1978 until 2004, the World Othello Championship was organized by the Othello TD group and Anjar Co. In 2005, the World Othello Federation took over the responsibility for the WOC.


title: Reversi

text: From 1977 to 1986, each country could send one player to participate in the WOC. From 1987, each country could send up to three players to participate. 1987, the title WOC team championship started. In 2005, a female championship category was added to the WOC. From 2006, each World Othello Federation member could send a full team of up to four players. In 2016, a youth champion title was added to the WOC. The WOC was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Archduke Franz Karl of Austria

text: Archduke Franz Karl Joseph of Austria (17 December 1802 – 8 March 1878) was a member of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. He was the father of two emperors: Franz Joseph I of Austria and Maximilian I of Mexico. Through his third son Karl Ludwig, he was the grandfather of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria – whose assassination sparked the hostilities that led to the outbreak of World War I – and the great-grandfather of the last Habsburg emperor Karl I.


title: Archduke Franz Karl of Austria

text: Franz Karl was born in Vienna, the third son of Emperor Francis II of the Holy Roman Emperor by his second marriage with Princess Maria Theresa from the House of Bourbon, daughter of King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies and Maria Carolina of Habsburg-Lorraine. On 4 November 1824 in Vienna, he married Princess Sophie of Bavaria from the House of Wittelsbach, a daughter of King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria by his second wife Caroline of Baden. Sophie's paternal half-sister, Caroline Augusta of Bavaria was by this time Franz Karl's stepmother, having married his thrice-widowed father in 1816. The Wittelsbachs condoned the unappealing manners of Sophie's husband in consideration of the incapability of his elder brother Ferdinand and Sophie's chance to become Austrian Empress.


title: Archduke Franz Karl of Austria

text: Franz Karl was an unambitious and generally ineffectual man, although he was, together with his uncle Archduke Louis, a member of the "Geheime Staatskonferenz" council, which after the death of Emperor Francis II ruled the Austrian Empire in the stead of his mentally ill brother Ferdinand from 1835 to 1848. The decisions, however, were actually made by the Minister of State Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich and his rival Count Franz Anton von Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky. His wife Sophie had already transferred her ambitions, when she urged Franz Karl to renounce his claims to the throne at the time of his brother's abdication on 2 December 1848, allowing their eldest son Franz Joseph I to take the throne.


title: Archduke Franz Karl of Austria

text: Archduke Franz Karl died in Vienna in 1878, six years after the death of his wife. He is buried at the Imperial Crypt at the Capuchin Church. Franz Karl was the last Habsburg whose viscera were entombed at the Ducal Crypt of St. Stephen's Cathedral and whose heart was placed at the "Herzgruft" of the Augustinian Church according to a centuries-long family rite.


title: The Straight Story

text: The Straight Story is a 1999 biographical road drama film directed by David Lynch. It was edited and produced by Mary Sweeney, Lynch's longtime partner and collaborator, who also co-wrote the script with John E. Roach. It is based on the true story of Alvin Straight's 1994 journey across Iowa and Wisconsin on a lawn mower. Alvin is an elderly World War II veteran who lives with his kind intellectually disabled daughter. When he hears that his estranged brother has suffered a stroke, Alvin makes up his mind to visit him and hopefully make amends before he dies. Because Alvin's legs and eyes are too impaired for him to receive a driver's license, he hitches a trailer to his recently purchased thirty-year-old John Deere 110 Lawn Tractor, having a maximum speed of about , and sets off on the 240-mile (390 km) journey from Laurens, Iowa, to Mount Zion, Wisconsin.


title: The Straight Story

text: "The Straight Story" was released by Buena Vista Pictures (under the Walt Disney Pictures banner) in the United States, and was a critical success, though it underperformed at the box office. Reviewers praised the intensity of the character performances, particularly the realistic dialogue which film critic Roger Ebert compared to the works of Ernest Hemingway. It received a nomination for the Palme d'Or at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival and Farnsworth received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.


title: The Straight Story

text: In Laurens, Iowa, Alvin Straight fails to show up to his regular bar meeting with friends and is eventually found lying on his kitchen floor. His daughter, Rose, takes her reluctant father to see a doctor, who sternly admonishes Alvin to give up tobacco and use a walking frame. Alvin refuses and instead opts to use two canes. Shortly after, Alvin learns that his brother, Lyle, has suffered a stroke. Longing to visit him, but unable to drive, Alvin develops a plan to travel 240 miles to Mount Zion, Wisconsin on his riding lawnmower, towing a small homemade travel-trailer along the way. This stirs doubt and worry in the minds of his family, friends, and neighbors.


title: The Straight Story

text: Alvin's first attempt fails: after experiencing difficulty starting the old mower's motor, he does not get far before the machine breaks down. Alvin arranges for his mower to be transported back home on a flatbed truck, where he takes out his frustrations on the mower with a shotgun blast. At the John Deere dealership, he purchases a used lawn tractor whose transmission is still intact from 1966. The salesman offers Alvin kind words as his journey resumes.


title: The Straight Story

text: On the side of the highway, Alvin passes a young female hitchhiker who later approaches his campfire and says that she could not get a ride. In conversation, Alvin deduces that she is pregnant and has run away from home. Alvin tells her about the importance of family by describing a bundle of sticks that is hard to break compared to a single stick. The next day, Alvin emerges from the trailer to find that she has left him a bundle of sticks tied together. Later, a huge group of RAGBRAI cyclists race past him. He arrives at the cyclists' camp and is greeted with applause. That night, he speaks with a pair of friendly cyclists around the campfire about growing old.


title: The Straight Story

text: The next day, Alvin is troubled by massive trucks passing him. He then interacts with a distraught woman who has hit a deer and is being driven insane by the fact she continually hits deer while commuting, no matter how hard she tries to avoid them. She drives away in a tearful huff, and Alvin, who has started to run short on food, cooks and eats the deer. He mounts the antlers on his trailer as a tribute to the deer and the sustenance it provided. Alvin's brakes fail as he travels down a steep hill; he struggles to maintain control of the speeding tractor and finally manages to bring the vehicle to a complete stop. A man named Danny helps Alvin get his mower and trailer off the main road. They discover that the mower has transmission problems.


title: The Straight Story

text: Now beginning to run low on cash, Alvin borrows a cordless phone from Danny – gently refusing an invitation to come indoors – and calls Rose to ask her to send him his Social Security check. He leaves money on the doorstep to pay for his telephone call. Danny offers Alvin a ride the rest of the way to Lyle's, but Alvin declines, stating that he prefers to travel his own way. Verlyn, an elderly war veteran, takes Alvin into town for a drink. As Alvin does not drink alcohol, he orders a glass of milk, and the two men exchange traumatic stories about their experiences in World War II fighting against the Germans.


title: The Straight Story

text: Alvin's tractor is fixed, and he is presented with an exorbitant bill by the mechanics, who are twins and are constantly bickering. Alvin successfully negotiates the price down and explains his mission to help his brother. The twins seem to relate to Alvin's struggle. Alvin crosses the Mississippi River and makes camp in a cemetery. He chats with a Catholic priest who recognizes Lyle's name and is aware of his stroke. The priest says that Lyle did not mention he had a brother. Alvin responds that all he wants is to make peace with Lyle after their falling out ten years prior.


title: The Straight Story

text: Finally arriving in Mount Zion, Alvin stops at a bar to have a single beer: his first drink in years. He asks the bartender for directions to Lyle's house. Alvin experiences engine trouble just a few miles from Lyle's house and stops in the middle of the road. A large farm tractor driving by stops to help, then leads the way to make sure Alvin gets to his destination. When he arrives, Alvin finds the house dilapidated. He calls for his brother, who appears using a walking frame. Using two canes, Alvin makes his way to the door. Lyle invites Alvin to sit down on the porch. Lyle tearfully looks at Alvin's mower-tractor contraption and asks if Alvin had ridden it just to see him. Alvin simply responds, "I did, Lyle." The two men sit together silently and gaze up at the stars.


title: The Straight Story

text: In 1994, 73-year-old Alvin Straight rode a lawnmower across 300 miles of the American Midwest to visit his ailing brother. Mary Sweeney, David Lynch's frequent collaborator, read about Straight's story in "The New York Times" that summer. Said Sweeney, "Growing up in Wisconsin, I easily connected with that kind of stoic, non-verbal, stubborn, idiosyncratic American character. I get how hard it is to have quiet pride and dignity when you're old and poor and are living in the middle of nowhere. I understand what these people's dreams and frustrations are. And I loved how much his journey captured the national imagination, so, wearing my producer's hat, I started trying to secure the rights."


title: The Straight Story

text: Producer Ray Stark had already acquired the rights to Straight's story and envisioned the project as a potential star vehicle for Paul Newman. Straight died in 1996, and the rights to his story became available again. Sweeney co-wrote the script with John Roach, a childhood friend; the two retraced Straight's route in the process of writing. When Lynch saw the finished script he immediately took to it, saying "it became, for me, very real."


title: The Straight Story

text: For the role of Alvin Straight, producers cast their first choice, Richard Farnsworth. Though he was reluctant to commit to the role as he was then terminally ill with metastatic prostate cancer, he took the role out of admiration for Straight. Sissy Spacek, a longtime friend of Lynch's who had helped to finance his earlier film "Eraserhead", was cast as Alvin's daughter, Rose. Harry Dean Stanton was cast as Alvin's ailing brother.


title: The Straight Story

text: "The Straight Story" was independently shot along the actual route taken by Straight, and all scenes were shot in chronological order in the autumn of 1998. Lynch would later call the film "my most experimental movie".


title: The Straight Story

text: During production, Farnsworth's cancer had spread to his bones, but he astonished his co-workers with his tenacity during production. The paralysis of his legs as shown in the film was real. Farnsworth died by suicide the following year, at the age of 80.


title: The Straight Story

text: "The Straight Story" was acquired by Walt Disney Pictures in the United States after a successful debut at Cannes and was given a G-rating by the MPAA (the only Lynch film to receive such a rating).


title: The Straight Story

text: The musical score for "The Straight Story" was composed by Angelo Badalamenti, continuing a 13-plus year collaboration with Lynch that began with "Blue Velvet". A soundtrack album was released on October 12, 1999, by Windham Hill Records.


title: The Straight Story

text: "The Straight Story" was critically acclaimed upon its release, with critics lauding Lynch's uncharacteristic subject matter. "Entertainment Weekly" described the film as a "celestial piece of Americana". The "Chicago Tribune" wrote of the film, "we see something American studio movies usually don't give us: the simple, unsentimentalized beauty of the rural American Midwestern landscape."


title: The Straight Story

text: Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" wrote, "the same bellwether quality that left "Blue Velvet" looking so prescient, and ushered in a whole cinematic wave of taboo-shattering, is at work once again. When a born unnaturalist like Lynch can bring such interest and emotion to one man's simple story, the realm of the ordinary starts looking like a new frontier." Of Farnsworth's performance, Maslin wrote, "he automatically frees the film from any sense of artifice and delivers an amazingly stalwart performance that will not soon be forgotten." Her review concluded, ""The Straight Story" is...about gazing at the sky, about experiencing each encounter to the fullest, than it is about getting anywhere in a hurry. It's been too long since a great American movie dared to regard life that way."


title: The Straight Story

text: Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars, the first positive review he had ever given for a film by Lynch. He wrote, "The movie isn't just about the old Alvin Straight's odyssey through the sleepy towns and rural districts of the Midwest, but about the people he finds to listen and care for him."


title: The Straight Story

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 95% based on 106 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "With strong performances and director David Lynch at the helm, "The Straight Story" steers past sentimental byways on its ambling journey across the American heartland." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 86 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". AllMovie wrote, "David Lynch offers an uncharacteristically straightforward and warmly sentimental approach to his material in this film", calling it "one of his best films".


title: The Straight Story

text: "The Straight Story" was released on DVD on November 7, 2000. As with many of Lynch's films, there are no chapter markers on the original North American DVD release, with a note written by Lynch inside the DVD case that reads, "It is my opinion that a film is not a book - it should not be broken up. It is a continuum and should be seen as such."


title: The Straight Story

text: On September 17, 2021, "The Straight Story" received a limited edition Blu-ray release from Imprint Films.


title: The Straight Story

text: "The Straight Story" was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. Richard Farnsworth earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his portrayal of Alvin Straight. For 20 years he held the record for the oldest person (at 79) to be nominated for a Best Actor Oscar until 2021 when Anthony Hopkins was nominated at age 83. Farnsworth also won the 1999 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor for his performance in the film.


title: Imperial State Crown

text: The Imperial State Crown is one of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom and symbolises the sovereignty of the monarch.


title: Imperial State Crown

text: It has existed in various forms since the 15th century. The current version was made in 1937 and is worn by the monarch after a coronation (St Edward's Crown having been used to crown the monarch) and used at the State Openings of Parliament.


title: Imperial State Crown

text: The crown is adorned with 2,901 precious stones, including the Cullinan II diamond, St Edward's Sapphire, the Stuart Sapphire, and the Black Prince's Ruby.


title: Imperial State Crown

text: St Edward's Crown, used to crown English monarchs, was considered to be a holy relic, kept in the saint's shrine at Westminster Abbey and therefore not worn by monarchs at any other time. Instead, a "great crown" with crosses and fleurs-de-lis, but without arches (an open crown), was a king's usual headgear at state occasions until the time of Henry V, who is depicted wearing an imperial crown of state with gold arches (a closed crown). Arches were a symbol of sovereignty, and by this point in history, the king of England was being celebrated as "rex in regno suo est imperator" – an emperor of his own domain – owing obedience to no one but God, unlike some continental rulers, who owed fealty to more powerful kings, or to the Holy Roman Emperor.


title: Imperial State Crown

text: Henry VII or his son and successor Henry VIII may have commissioned a more elaborate version of the state crown which is first described in detail in an inventory of royal jewels in 1521, and again in 1532, 1550, 1574, and 1597, and was included in a painting by Daniel Mytens of Charles I in 1631. The Tudor Crown had more pearls and jewels than its medieval predecessor, and the centre petals of each of the fleurs-de-lis had images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and St George. The crown weighed 3.3 kg (7 lb 6 oz) and was set with 168 pearls, 58 rubies, 28 diamonds, 19 sapphires, and 2 emeralds.


title: Imperial State Crown

text: Following the abolition of the monarchy and the execution of Charles I in 1649, the Tudor Crown was broken up by order of Oliver Cromwell during the Interregnum, and its valuable components were sold for £1,100.


title: Imperial State Crown

text: Upon the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, a new state crown was made for Charles II by Sir Robert Vyner. About 10 versions of the crown have existed since the Restoration. The one made for Queen Victoria in 1838 is the basis for today's crown. Made by Rundell and Bridge in 1838 using old and new jewels, it had a crimson velvet cap with ermine border and a lining of white silk. It weighed and was decorated with 1,363 brilliant-cut, 1,273 rose-cut and 147 table-cut diamonds, 277 pearls, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, 4 rubies, and the Black Prince's Ruby (a spinel).


title: Imperial State Crown

text: At the State Opening of Parliament in 1845, the Duke of Argyll was carrying the crown before Queen Victoria when it fell off the cushion and broke. Victoria wrote in her diary, "it was all crushed and squashed like a pudding that had sat down". The empty frame of Victoria's imperial state crown survives in the Royal Collection.


title: Imperial State Crown

text: The crown was adjusted for Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953, with the head size reduced and the arches lowered by 25 mm (1 inch) to give it a more feminine appearance.


title: Imperial State Crown

text: It is expected that the crown will be remade for the coronation of Charles III in May 2023, with the arches being raised to their original height and the head size being adjusted.


title: Imperial State Crown

text: The Imperial State Crown is 31.5 cm (12.4 in) tall and weighs 1.06 kg (2.3 lb), and has four fleurs-de-lis and four crosses pattée, supporting two arches topped by a monde and cross pattée. Its purple velvet cap is trimmed with ermine. The frame is made of gold, silver and platinum, and decorated with 2,868 diamonds, 273 pearls, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, and 5 rubies.


title: Imperial State Crown

text: Notable stones are St Edward's Sapphire on the top cross, reputedly taken from the ring of Edward the Confessor when he was re-interred at Westminster Abbey in 1163, and the Black Prince's Ruby (a large spinel) on the front cross. In 1909, the 104-carat (21 g) Stuart Sapphire, set in the front of the crown, was moved to the back and replaced by the 317-carat (63 g) Cullinan II. Below the monde hang four pearls, three of which are often said to have belonged to Queen Elizabeth I, but the association is almost certainly erroneous.


title: Imperial State Crown

text: The crown is worn by the monarch on leaving Westminster Abbey at the end of his or her coronation. It is usually also worn at State Openings of Parliament, although Elizabeth II wore a hat in March 1974, June 2017 and December 2019 after snap general elections, and in May 2021; and, in October 2019 she wore the State Diadem, while the Imperial State Crown was carried beside her. Usually, it is taken to the Palace of Westminster under armed guard in its own carriage and placed in the Robing Room, where the monarch dons the Robe of State and puts on the crown before giving the speech to Parliament. If a State Opening occurs before a coronation, the crown is placed on a cushion beside the monarch. In 1689, one week after being proclaimed king, William III wore his crown in Parliament to pass the Crown and Parliament Recognition Act 1689. When not in use, the Imperial State Crown is on public display in the Jewel House at the Tower of London.


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: The shortfin mako shark (; ; Isurus oxyrinchus), also known as the blue pointer or bonito shark, is a large mackerel shark. It is commonly referred to as the mako shark, as is the longfin mako shark ("Isurus paucus"). The shortfin mako can reach a size of in length and weigh . The species is classified as Endangered by the IUCN.


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: "Mako" comes from the Māori language, meaning either the shark or a shark tooth. Following the Māori language, "mako" in English is both singular and plural. The word may have originated in a dialectal variation, as it is similar to the common words for shark in a number of Polynesian languages—"makō" in the Kāi Tahu Māori dialect, "mangō" in other Māori dialects, "mago" in Samoan, "ma'o" in Tahitian, and "mano" in Hawaiian. The first written usage is in Lee and Kendall's "Grammar and vocabulary of the language of New Zealand" (1820), which simply states, "Máko; A certain fish". Richard Taylor's "A leaf from the natural history of New Zealand" (1848) is more elaborate: "Mako, the shark which has the tooth so highly prized by the Maoris".


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: In 1809, Constantine Rafinesque gave the shortfin mako the scientific name "Isurus oxyrinchus" ("isurus" means "the same tail", "oxyrinchus" means "pointy snout").


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: The shortfin mako shark is a fairly large species of shark. Growth rates appear to be somewhat accelerated in comparison to other species in the lamnid family. An average adult specimen measures around in length and weighs from . The species is sexually dimorphic, with females typically larger than males. Large specimens are known, with a few large, mature females exceeding a length of and a weight of . The largest taken on hook-and-line was , caught off the coast of California on June 3, 2013, and the longest verified length was caught off the Mediterranean coast of France in September 1973. A specimen caught off the coast of Italy and examined in an Italian fish market in 1881 was reported to weigh an extraordinary at a length of . Yet another fish was caught off Marmaris, Turkey in the late 1950s at an estimated size of between making it the largest known specimen of the species. However, this estimate was created using photos of the shark and not at the time of capture so this estimate must be taken with reasonable caution. The authors did not estimate a weight for this specimen.


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: The shortfin mako shark is cylindrical in shape, with a vertically elongated tail. This species exhibits countershading, with brilliant metallic blue coloration dorsally and white ventrally. The line of demarcation between blue and white on the body is distinct. The underside of the snout and the area around the mouth are white. Larger specimens tend to possess darker coloration that extends onto parts of the body that would be white in smaller individuals. The juvenile mako differs in that it has a clear blackish stain on the tip of the snout. The longfin mako shark very much resembles the shortfin mako shark, but has larger pectoral fins, dark rather than pale coloration around the mouth and larger eyes. The presence of only one lateral keel on the tail and the lack of lateral cusps on the teeth distinguish the mako from the closely related porbeagle sharks of the genus "Lamna".


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: The shortfin mako inhabits offshore temperate and tropical seas worldwide. The closely related longfin mako shark is found in the Gulf Stream or warmer offshore waters (e.g. New Zealand and Maine).


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: It is a pelagic species that can be found from the surface to depths of , normally far from land, though occasionally closer to shore, around islands or inlets. One of the very few known endothermic sharks, it is seldom found in waters colder than .


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: In the western Atlantic, it can be found from Argentina and the Gulf of Mexico to Browns Bank off of Nova Scotia. In Canadian waters, these sharks are neither abundant nor rare. Swordfish are good indicators of shortfin mako populations, as the former are a source of food and prefer similar environmental conditions.


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: Shortfin mako sharks travel long distances to seek prey or mates. In December 1998, a female tagged off California was captured in the central Pacific by a Japanese research vessel, meaning this fish traveled over . Another specimen swam in 37 days, averaging a day.


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: The shortfin mako shark feeds mainly upon cephalopods and bony fish including mackerels, tunas, bonitos, and swordfish, but it may also eat other sharks, porpoises, sea turtles, and seabirds. They hunt by lunging vertically up and tearing off chunks of their preys' flanks and fins. Mako swim below their prey, so they can see what is above and have a high probability of reaching prey before it notices them. In Ganzirri and Isola Lipari, Sicily, shortfin mako have been found with amputated swordfish bills impaled into their head and gills, suggesting swordfish seriously injure and likely kill them. In addition, this location, and the late spring and early summer timing, corresponding to the swordfish's spawning cycle, suggests they hunt while the swordfish are most vulnerable, typical of many predators.


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: Shortfin mako sharks consume 3% of their weight each day and take about 1.5–2.0 days to digest an average-sized meal. By comparison, the sandbar shark, an inactive species, consumes 0.6% of its weight a day and takes 3 to 4 days to digest it. An analysis of the stomach contents of 399 male and female mako sharks ranging from suggest mako from Cape Hatteras to the Grand Banks prefer bluefish, constituting 77.5% of their diet by volume. The average capacity of the stomach was 10% of the total weight. Shortfin mako sharks consumed 4.3% to 14.5% of the available bluefish between Cape Hatteras and Georges Bank.


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: Shortfin mako sharks over have interior teeth considerably wider and flatter than smaller mako, which enables them to prey effectively upon dolphins, swordfish, and other sharks. An amateur videotape, taken in Pacific waters, shows a moribund pantropical spotted dolphin whose tail was almost completely severed being circled by a shortfin mako. Mako also tend to scavenge long-lined and netted fish.


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: The bite of a shortfin mako shark is exceptionally strong; the current record for the strongest bite measured for any shark belongs to a shortfin mako that was recorded at Mayor Island in New Zealand in 2020. The shark had been coaxed into biting a custom-made "bite meter" as part of an experiment to measure mako bite force. The strongest bite recorded during the experiment was roughly 3,000 lbs. of force, or roughly 13,000 newtons.


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: Like other lamnid sharks, the shortfin mako shark has a heat-exchange circulatory system that allows the shark to be warmer than the surrounding water. This system enables them to maintain a stable, very high level of activity, giving it an advantage over its cold-blooded prey.


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: The shortfin mako is a fast species that can leap into the air when hooked, making it a highly sought-after game fish worldwide. Some cases of shortfin mako jumping into a boat after having been hooked have been reported.


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: The shortfin mako shark is a yolk-sac ovoviviparous shark giving birth to live young. Developing embryos feed on unfertilized eggs (oophagy) within the uterus during the 15- to 18-month gestation period. They do not engage in sibling cannibalism unlike the sand tiger shark ("Carcharias taurus"). The four to 18 surviving young are born live in the late winter and early spring at a length of about . Females may rest for 18 months after birth before mating again. Shortfin mako sharks bear young on average every three years.


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: A common mating strategy of shortfin mako sharks has been documented as using multiple paternity as a mating strategy, known as polyandry. Polyandry is where the females mate with more than one male. This strategy is used to have a single brood sired by multiple males (multiple paternity) and is a common strategy in diverse taxa, including invertebrates and vertebrates.


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: Shortfin mako sharks, as with most other sharks, are aged by sectioning vertebrae – one of the few bony structures in sharks – and counting growth bands. The age of shortfin mako, and therefore important parameters, such as age at sexual maturity and longevity, were severely underestimated until 2006 (e.g. claims of sexual maturity at 4–6 years, claims of longevity as low as 11 years), because of a poorly supported belief that shortfin mako sharks deposited two growth bands per year in their vertebrae. This belief was overturned by a landmark study which proved that shortfin mako sharks only deposit one band in their vertebrae per year, as well as providing validated ages for numerous specimens. Natanson et al. (2006) aged 258 shortfin mako specimens and recorded:


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: Similar, validated age findings were made (median age at maturity in males 7–9 years, median age at maturity in females 19–21 years, longevity estimates 29 years and 28 years respectively) in New Zealand waters.


title: Shortfin mako shark

text: Due to this error, fishery management models and ecological risk assessment models in use around the world were underestimating both the longevity and the age at sexual maturity in shortfin mako sharks, particularly in females, by two-thirds or more (i.e. 6 years versus 18+ years), and some of these inaccurate models remain in use.