Philadelphia News Briefs: 11/21/17
1.) Are you ready for Thanksgiving? The good news is that the weather should cooperate with your plans, whatever they are. Thursday is looking to be clear, albeit cold, with a high near 45 degrees. The wind shouldn’t exceed 6 miles per hour, meaning that the handlers at the Philadelphia Thanksgiving Parade shouldn’t have too much trouble wrangling the balloons. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the AAA says that “50.9 million Americans are expected to travel 50 miles or more away from home this Thanksgiving, a 3.3 percent increase over last year and the highest volume since 2006.” Of those leaving home for Turkey Day, 90 percent will travel by car.
Thanksgiving’s the day after tomorrow. Here’s what’s going on in Philadelphia.
2.) A pair of formerly conjoined twins who made headlines with their incredible separation story are – finally! – headed home in time for Thanksgiving. The girls, named Abby and Erin Riley, have spent their entire lives (all 485 days of it) at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, or CHOP. The hospital is recognized nationwide for the amount of conjoined twin separations it performs. Their mother, Heather Riley, was admitted into the hospital in the midst of her pregnancy once tests showed the twins were conjoined at the head, the rarest type of conjoined twinning. The girls have had multiple surgeries and still need several more, but they have been cleared by their doctors to go home to North Carolina for the holidays.
3.) Philadelphia, which prides itself on its status as a sanctuary city, has started welcoming displaced victims of Hurricane Maria from Puerto Rico. The survivors, who number around 1,200, have registered with the city’s disaster aid center. Pennsylvania was not designated a host state for Maria survivors by the federal government, and are therefore depending on nonprofit agencies, community-based organizations and public-private partnerships for help. Two months after the Category 4 hurricane swept the island, most Puerto Ricans remain without power. It’s estimated that damage from the storm could amount to almost $100 billion dollars.
