This is a web edition of GBH Daily, a weekday newsletter bringing you local stories you can trust so you can stay informed without feeling overwhelmed.
⛅Some clouds and a chance of afternoon showers, with highs in the 80s. Sunset is at 8:19 p.m.
Today we have a look at people on Cape Cod talking about their own emergency plans in light of the July 4 flooding in Texas. A week after the flood, 161 people are still missing and 120, including 36 children, have died.
If you’d like to help: our friends at Texas Public Radio put together a list of organizations on the ground that you can donate to. And more locally, the MSPCA’s Northeast Animal Shelter in Salem welcomed about 20 cats and 30 dogs on Friday that had been at the Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter in Georgetown, Texas. The animals had a 48-hour quarantine and will be put up for adoption as they’re ready.
“There’s a common misconception that transports like this mean people’s pets get lost, end up in a shelter, and are immediately shipped out of town. That’s just not true,” the organization’s animal relocation manager, Josie Waldron, said in a statement.
The animals transferred to Massachusetts were living in shelters before the floods, Waldron said. Think of it as helping the helpers: with these furry friends now safe, the Williamson County shelter staff can focus on another local shelter without running water, care for animals found after the floods and support for families who, while getting back on their feet, need temporary homes for their pets.
Four Things to Know
1. Energy manufacturer GE Verona has agreed to pay Nantucket $10.5 million over the collapse of a turbine blade at Vineyard Wind last year. The funds will support local businesses that lost money during the clean-up, which disrupted a busy tourist season.
Pieces of the fiberglass blade, made in Quebec, washed up on Nantucket’s shores. GE Verona, based in Cambridge, said there was a manufacturing error at the Quebec factory and removed a few more blades that came from the same source.
2. Reports of shoplifting in Boston are up about 15% in the first six months of 2025 compared to the first half of 2024, according to a Boston Police Department spokesperson. Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox believes it’s in part because more stores are reporting incidents, and said the department is focusing on identifying repeat and violent offenders.
“While we recognize that we will not eradicate shoplifting, we are working together to encourage better reporting, which will eventually lead to a reduction of crime in general in this area,” Cox said.
3. Changing of the health guard: Health and Human Services Secretary Kate Walsh is leaving her post citing personal reasons after nearly 40 years in health care leadership — including two years overseeing MassHealth, the Department of Public Health, the Department of Children and Families and more. She led a 23,000-person workforce, also responsible for food assistance and disability services.
On the job starting today is Dr. Kiame Mahaniah, who until now was undersecretary of health. His focus will be running programs that serve roughly a third of Massachusetts residents, at a time when federal funding becomes increasingly unreliable, Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement.
4. If you’re looking to start the week with local music: the city of Boston released its third annual playlist of summer bops from Greater Boston artists and DJs. “In the past two, we leaned a lot on R&B and hip-hop. This one’s still a good handful of R&B and hip-hop, but we lean a lot into the alternative, the rock,” said Chimel “Real P” Idiokitas, who served as co-executive producer and curator of the mixtape for the last three years. “I’m very proud about it.”
You can find the mixtape on Soundcloud, Spotify and Apple Music. Hear more about how it came together on GBH’s Under the Radar.
Flash flooding here? Not much. On Cape Cod, officials prepare for 'The Big One’ — a hurricane
Let’s start with this: the National Hurricane Center is not predicting any storms in our area right now. Hurricanes are far less common here than they are in other parts of the U.S. But Chip Reilly, emergency preparedness director for Barnstable County, said it’s still good to be prepared.
A hurricane can mean flooding along the coast, power outages, very strong winds and heavy rain. On the Cape it can also mean gridlock, he told CAI’s Jennette Barnes. If a storm hits the Cape in August, when tourist season is at its zenith and hurricane season is approaching its September peak, making sure everyone is safe would be a challenge, especially if people have to evacuate via the Bourne and Sagamore bridges.
“People are here for vacation; they’re not going to want to leave until the last minute,” he said. “And, of course, we’re restricted by our bridges.…We saw that on Sunday, as everybody left for the long weekend. We were at gridlock status through a lot of the communities in the mid-Cape.”
But, Reilly said: “we plan for it. We plan for everything.”
The state has an emergency traffic plan for directing people over the bridges, or to safe shelters on Joint Base Cape Cod, if the bridges are impassable. There are also shelters at six high schools on the Cape, in Eastham, East Sandwich, Falmouth, Harwich, Hyannis and South Yarmouth (check them out on this map.) There’s also one on Nantucket.
Hurricanes usually don’t show up unannounced, he said: meteorologists can track them as they form off the coast of Africa, meaning there’s usually at least a week of headway. Tornadoes, he said, can be more sudden. Reilly’s advice is paying attention to weather alerts.
“I’ve personally been there before, where we’ve gotten tornado alerts in the middle of the night, and we say, 'Is it really worth waking up the kids?’” he said. “Since the first time that we heard this happen, I now wake up my children, and we bring them down to the basement, and we camp out down there until the 'all clear’ is given. That’s what we encourage people to do: take the weather alert seriously.”
Get the full story from Jennette Barnes here.
When we venture beyond the familiar, we can transform the unexplored into a canvas of discovery. Avesha’s love of the outdoors is instilled by her father. Antonio turns a chaotic whale-watching trip into a memorable adventure. Jenny chronicles her run across America and the community who made it possible. Three storytellers, three interpretations of “Into the Wild.”
Airs tonight at 9:30 p.m. on GBH WORLD and on the PBS app.
