Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - January 10, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba Innovation HSC Radiothon Presented by: JANUARY 17, 2025 DONATE TODAY AT HSCFOUNDATION.MB.CA Listen live starting at 6 am 4.00% * *Rate subject to change. Conditions apply. 28-MONTH GIC SPECIAL (RRSP/RRIF/TFSA/FHSA*) SCU.MB.CA/GICS SERVING MANITOBA SINCE 1872. FOREVER WITH YOUR SUPPORT. FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 2025 WEATHER PARTLY SUNNY. HIGH -13 — LOW -16 BUSINESS MAGELLAN TO ADD 60 JOBS / B5 City firefighter leaps into action against L.A. wildfire ‘It was a pretty scary scene’ TYLER SEARLE BUFFETED by embers, choked by smoke and enveloped in the glow of the most destructive wildfire in modern Los Angeles history, Lt. Romeo Petit faced a reality closer to hell than the paradise of Pasadena he’d known just hours before. “You could see the hue of orange and the flames — it was just — I’ve never seen a fire that big in my life and I’ve been a firefighter for 22 years. It was a pretty scary scene; it’s just surre- al,” said the senior Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service member, speaking by phone from California Thursday afternoon. Nightmare blazes have engulfed parts of coastal California this week, razing homes from the Pacific Coast to Pasadena, causing nearly 200,000 evacuations and killing at least five people. Petit, his voice hoarse from inhal- ing acrid smoke, described how he, his girlfriend and their friend faced flames with little more than garden hoses overnight Tuesday. Their efforts likely saved a smat- tering of homes from a surrounding inferno. “I was just trying to help out these local firefighters because they were overwhelmed with most of the city burning down,” he said. “Instinct kicked in.” Petit was vacationing in Kinneloa Mesa — a community in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains over- looking Pasadena — when flames from a nearby fire threatened to consume the home in which he was staying with Winnipeg-born actress Melissa Elias and California film producer Adam Stone. According to California state wild- fire maps, a portion of the community is within the boundary of the Eaton fire, near Pasadena. The fire remained out of control with the area subject to a mandatory evacuation order Thursday. Left without power for much of Tuesday, the trio evacuated shortly before 7 p.m. as extreme winds fuelled a fire that had already engulfed entire neighbourhoods in the surrounding area. Local fire services, stretched well beyond capacity, had largely resigned to let Kinneloa burn, prioritizing saving lives over structures as the hellscape expanded, Stone said. Inspired to help, and emboldened by Petit’s expertise as a firefighter, the group returned to the community shortly before midnight. For more than four hours they beat back flames with shovels, dug fire trenches and doused structures and surrounding areas with as much water as they could muster. Stone described how “sheets of embers” cascaded from the hillside, causing parched foliage to ignite with spot fires in every direction. Tariffs to squeeze U.S. orange juice O TTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says incoming U.S. president Donald Trump is trying to distract from how costly his tariffs will be for American consumers by talking about making Canada the 51st state. Trudeau made the comments in an interview on CNN late Thurs- day while in Washington, where he attended the funeral for the late U.S. president Jimmy Carter. He did not meet with Trump during his trip south of the border. “(President-elect) Trump, who’s a very skilful negotiator, is getting people to be somewhat distracted by that conversation, to take away from the conversation around 25 per cent tariffs on oil and gas and electricity and steel and aluminum and lumber and concrete,” Trudeau said. “Everything the American con- sumers buy from Canada is suddenly going to get a lot more expensive if he moves forward on these tariffs.” Trump has threatened to slap 25 per cent tariffs on imports imme- diately after he gets into office. Trudeau confirmed Canada will respond with retaliatory measures, just as it did in 2018. Trudeau declined to outline the specifics of Canada’s response. A senior government official confirms Ottawa is looking to target American steel, ceramics, plastics and orange juice with retaliatory tariffs. The official said Ottawa has made no decisions yet on retaliation and is not prepared to share the full draft list of items it’s considering for retal- iatory tariffs. The selective release of certain re- taliation plans comes just a week and a half before Trump’s inauguration. Trudeau and the premiers are set to meet in Ottawa next Wednesday to discuss Canada’s response plan, including retaliatory tariffs. Trump has threatened to impose 25 per cent across-the-board tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico as one of his first actions after he is sworn in on Jan. 20. Conservative Leader Pierre Poil- ievre said at a news conference in Ottawa Thursday that Canada should not consider making oil and gas part of its retaliatory response. “The reality is putting Canadian tariffs on American energy wouldn’t do very much because they buy a hell of a lot more oil and gas from us than we do from them,” he said. Experts said that while Canada is right to signal that it’s prepared for a fight, it would lose a wider trade war and risk escalation if Ottawa threatened similar across-the-board tariffs. Laura Dawson, a trade expert and executive director of the Future Borders Coalition, said Canada has a lot of economic exposure and tariffs are ultimately paid by consumers and importers. “By leaking or sharing or hinting about what’s on the list, it’s trying to signal to the White House that Don- ald Trump’s tariffs will be costliest to Americans,” she said. KYLE DUGGAN Most Manitoba schools hit in cyberattack THE majority of Manitoba school divisions have been impacted by a data breach involving a popular software program used to track student and employee contact information. More than 20 superintendents have informed families in recent days that PowerSchool — the owner and operator of their shared student-information system — was hacked in late Decem- ber. Customers across Canada and the U.S., where PowerSchool’s Folsom, Calif., headquarters are located, have been affected to varying degrees. The Winkler-based Garden Valley School Division was advised it was not impacted. Others, including Sunrise School Division, were not so lucky. “We believe that the data accessed included information about students and staff — particularly contact information and other information provided to the division at the time the student was registered, or when staff commenced their employment,” superintendent Trevor Reid wrote in a mass email to families and employ- ees from Oakbank and surrounding communities. Reid noted the company, not Sunrise in and of itself, was the target of the cyberattack. He also assured students and employees that neither banking data nor student photos appear to have been accessed by hackers. His letter mirrored ones sent by Lou- is Riel, River East Transcona, Seine River, Portage la Prairie, Brandon, Mountain View, Hanover, Prairie Spir- it, Prairie Rose, Southwest Horizon, Lakeshore, Flin Flon, Beautiful Plains, Swan Valley, Border Land, Western, Kelsey, Frontier and the franco-mani- tobaine district. One of the memos indicates Power- School paid a ransom fee to delete data that was obtained to keep it from being released. The company is investigating the incident and announced a “town meet- ing” for affected divisions. It has also pledged to share a report compiled by CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity technolo- gy company, with clients by Jan. 17. A spokesperson for PowerSchool said emergency response protocols were initiated on Dec. 28 after the discovery of “unauthorized access” to student records via a customer portal. MAGGIE MACINTOSH LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER Popular American software program hacked JACQUELYN MARTIN / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, at former U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s state funeral, said Donald Trump’s musing about Canada becoming the 51st state is merely a distraction. Canada eyes retaliation to Trump’s threat, targets prime Florida commodity ● ATTACK, CONTINUED ON A2 ● FIREFIGHTER, CONTINUED ON A3 ● TARIFFS, CONTINUED ON A2 ;