Japan’s government on Wednesday unveiled a worst case disaster scenario that warned a monster earthquake in the Pacific Ocean could kill over 320,000 people, dwarfing last year’s quake-tsunami disaster.
Tokyo’s casualty toll estimate was based on a catastrophic scenario in which a powerful undersea quake of about 9.0 magnitude sparked a giant tsunami that swamps Japan’s coastline south of Tokyo
The Cabinet Office’s hypothetical disaster would see the quake strike at nighttime during the winter with strong winds helping unleash waves that reach 34-metre (110 feet), sweeping many victims away as they slept.
Many of the estimated 323,000 victims would be drowned by the tsunami, crushed under falling objects or in fires sparked by the disaster, it said.
On March 11 last year, a 9.0 magnitude quake struck seismically-active Japan in the early afternoon, triggering tsunami waves that reached 20 metres.
About 19,000 were killed or remain missing while the tsunami slammed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, sending reactors into meltdown and sparking the worst atomic crisis in a generation.
“As long as we live in Japan, we cannot deny the possibility of a huge earthquake and tsunami,” Masaharu Nakagawa, state minister for disaster management, told reporters Wednesday.
The report was designed to paint a worst-case scenario and help officials boost their disaster preparedness.
An estimate in 2003 assumed casualties of about 25,000 people, but that scenario envisioned a less powerful 8.4 magnitude quake striking a smaller area.
The deadliest quake in Japanese history struck the central Kanto region in 1923, killing at least 100,000 people.
SO2 plume from Bezymianny’s eruption on 1 Sep about 4 hours later (ESA)
A larger explosive eruption occurred at Bezyianni volcano in Kamchatka yesterday evening (1 Sep) around 19h15 GMT. The explosion produced an ash cloud rising to about 10 km altitude (flight level 340) and was first detected by Tokyo VAAC who sent out an ash-cloud aviation warning (major intercontinental routes pass this area).
The ash plume is rapidly drifting west and has already reached hundreds of kilometer length.
As of today (2 Sep), the eruption of the volcano is gradually finishing, but ash plumes are extending more 370 mi (600 km) to the east-north-east of the volcano. Ongoing activity could affect international and low-flying aircraft.
According to seismic data by KB GS RAS, the eruption began at 19:16 UTC on September 01, 2012. According to visual data, ash plumes rose up to 32,800 – 39,400 ft (10-12 km) a.s.l. at 19:30 UTC on September 01. According to seismic data, an explosive phase of eruption continued till 19:45 UTC on September 01, and later there was a volcanic tremor was registered about 2 hours.
There is no ash near Bezymianny volcano now, but ash plumes are extending to the east-north-east of the volcano about 550-600 km of the volcano (MTSAT at 2132 UTC on September 01).
(Source: KVERT)
A larger explosive eruption occurred at Bezyianni volcano in Kamchatka yesterday evening (1 Sep) around 19h15 GMT. The explosion produced an ash cloud rising to about 10 km altitude (flight level 340) and was first detected by Tokyo VAAC who sent out an ash-cloud aviation warning (major intercontinental routes pass this area). The ash plume is rapidly drifting west and has already reached hundreds of kilometer length. As of today (2 Sep), the eruption of the volcano is gradually finishing, but ash plumes are extending more 370 mi (600 km) to the east-north-east of the volcano. Ongoing activity could affect international and low-flying aircraft. According to seismic data by KB GS RAS, the eruption began at 19:16 UTC on September 01, 2012. According to visual data, ash plumes rose up to 32,800 – 39,400 ft (10-12 km) a.s.l. at 19:30 UTC on September 01. According to seismic data, an explosive phase of eruption continued till 19:45 UTC on September 01, and later there was a volcanic tremor was registered about 2 hours. There is no ash near Bezymianny volcano now, but ash plumes are extending to the east-north-east of the volcano about 550-600 km of the volcano (MTSAT at 2132 UTC on September 01).
The fire devastating the province of Malaga in southern Spain has left one person dead and five injured while forcing 5,000 people from their homes in municipalities on the edge of the blaze, Andalusian authorities said Friday. The charred body of an elderly man was found by police in a toolshed in the Malaga municipality of Ojen, which has been evacuated and is being cleared of rubble since they have reason to believe that a second victim might be found there, the officers said. The fire department attempting to douse the flames in six Malaga municipalities is currently focusing its efforts on the Ojen area, since the flames leaped across the highway that connects that village with Marbella, one of the area’s biggest tourist attractions. The president of the autonomous community of Andalusia, Jose Antonio Griñan, spoke of “suspicions” that the fire in Malaga “could have been set intentionally, and if that is confirmed, authorities will be dealing with a “criminal act.” Griñán told the press that the mountainous terrain makes it difficult to extinguish the fire, though he expressed hope that the blaze will be stabilized at some point on Friday.The fire has already consumed approximately 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of woodland and is moving through a forest that could endanger the nearby Sierra Blanca mountains. Deployed in the area are more than 300 firefighters, personnel of 34 police patrols, five backup brigades and 10 fire engines, as well as a mobile meteorology unit for the analysis and tracking of forest fires. As for air support, 31 aircraft have now been activated, of which 20 are from the regional Andalusian government and the rest belong to the Agriculture, Food and Environment Ministry. Altogether there are six freight aircraft, five large-capacity helicopters, 13 helicopters for transport and fire extinction, and three coordination and surveillance aircraft fighting the fire, plus 200 troops of the UME military emergency management unit. The fire is affecting the Malaga municipal terminals of Monda, Mijas, Marbella, Alhaurin El Grande and Ojen, as well as Coin, where the fire broke out, but up to now the exact area burned has not been determined. The village of Ojen was evacuated completely as were several nearby housing developments. The Red Cross has established campsites and shelters on lands of the Monda, Mijas and Marbella municipalities.
With regard to the injured, a 58-year-old woman and a man of about the same age have suffered burns over 60 and 65 percent of their bodies, respectively. Meanwhile a mother, 40, and her two children ages 11 and 3 also received medical attention for contusions, and were given artificial respiration due to the effects of being enveloped in smoke after seeking refuge from the flames in a cave in Ojen. So far this year, 11 people have died in Spain as a consequence of forest fires, of which all but one were in the months of July and August.
Twin typhoons renewed fears of a humanitarian crisis in North Korea, where poor drainage, widespread deforestation and crumbling infrastructure can turn even a routine rainstorm into a catastrophic flood. Typhoon Bolaven struck the North on Tuesday and Wednesday, submerging houses and roads, ruining thousands of acres of crops and triggering landslides that buried train tracks – scenes that are all too familiar in this disaster-prone nation. A second major storm, Typhoon Tembin, pounded the Korean Peninsula with more rains Thursday before dissipating. The storms came with North Korea still recovering from earlier floods that killed more than 170 people and destroyed thousands of homes. That in turn followed a springtime drought that was the worst in a century in some areas. The disaster relief group AmeriCares announced late Thursday that enough emergency antibiotics and medical supplies to treat 15,000 North Koreans would be airlifted to the country as early as this week in coordination with North Korean officials. Damage to 69 hospitals and clinics suffered during the earlier floods has left 700,000 North Koreans without access to health care at a time when scores are fighting off the threat of infection while living in temporary shelters, the group said in a statement.Other foreign aid groups said they were standing by in Pyongyang, but had not received new requests for help from the North Korean government. They had little information on the extent of damage and were relying on reports from state media. The country’s wariness toward the outside world, as well as a primitive rural road system, means aid may be slow arriving, if it is allowed to come at all. “These fresh storms, coming just a few weeks after the serious flooding – they do raise concerns because we see parts of the countryside battered again that have already been left in a vulnerable state,” said Francis Markus, spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in East Asia. Tembin’s strong winds and hard rain pounded South Korea on Thursday as residents of some cities waded through streets flooded with murky, knee-deep water. The storm moved off the peninsula’s east coast overnight. The national weather agency in Seoul predicted some cities in southern North Korea could see up to 80 mm (3.15 inches) of rain, but North Korea didn’t immediately release details on rainfall, deaths or damage from the latest storm. The earlier storm, Bolaven, left 20 people dead or missing in South Korea. It killed three people and left 3,300 people homeless in North Korea, the country’s official media reported. Downpours trigger landslides that barrel down the North’s deforested mountains. For years, rural people have felled trees to grow crops and for firewood, leaving the landscape barren and heavily eroded. Rivers overflow, submerging crops, inundating roads and engulfing hamlets.
Since June, thousands have been left without clean water, electricity and access to food and other supplies. That leads to a risk of water-borne and respiratory diseases and malnutrition, aid workers say. Because the North annually struggles to produce enough food from its rocky, mountainous landscape to feed its 24 million people, a poorly timed natural disaster can easily tip the country into crisis, like the famine in the 1990s that followed a similar succession of devastating storms. A North Korean land management official acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press that widespread deforestation and a lack of basic infrastructure have made the country vulnerable to the typhoons and storms that batter the peninsula each year. “It’s important for the future of our children to make our country rich and beautiful,” Ri Song Il, director of external affairs for the Ministry of Land and Environmental Protection, said in June. He said a campaign is under way to replenish forests, build highways and construct proper irrigation at the order of North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong Un. He held up a green pamphlet on land management that was the first official document Kim published after taking power from his father. But it may be too little, too late, for this year’s summer rains.
In Pyongyang, North Korea’s showcase capital of grand monuments and broad boulevards, the rains have been little more than a nuisance for residents tromping about in rubber boots and umbrellas. Outside the capital, it’s a different story. In villages without the luxury of paved roads, summer downpours have sliced through roadways and washed away bridges, all but cutting off already isolated communities from supplies, food and help. Two weeks ago, AP journalists visited a flood-ravaged mining hamlet in South Phyongan province where gushing waters from an earlier storm swallowed a whole block of homes. The trip, a mere 40-mile (60-kilometer) drive northeast of Pyongyang, required a bumpy four-hour ride along rutted, muddy roads. Along the way, workers piled stones along the roadside as a bulwark against landslides, but they were no match for the water rushing down mountainsides. Villagers crouched in makeshift lean-tos and camped on the rubble where their houses once stood. They vowed to rebuild once the roads are restored and trucks can cart in cement. But there are concerns about how vulnerable their new homes would be if they rebuild at the foot of a mountain in the county of Songchon, which means “place where many waters come together.” North Korea has no clear long-term strategy to deal with disasters or climate change, the United Nations said in a report issued in June. This year, North Korea is at a particularly dangerous juncture, said the Red Cross’ Markus. Over the last two years, he said, “we’ve been seeing a gradual deterioration in the humanitarian situation.” The Red Cross works with villagers to prepare evacuation plans and other ways to protect themselves, their homes and their farmland in the event of a disaster, he said. But severe weather remains an omnipresent threat, and poor infrastructure and massive deforestation are “a major factor in exacerbating these weather events,” he said. “There’s no doubt that the vulnerabilities in the countryside are considerable.”
You don’t see this in any of the mainstream media.
The occasion was when the boy-wonder of Osaka City Toru Hashimoto held the one and only townhall meeting to explain things about disaster debris acceptance in Osaka City on August 30 (see my previous post).
This happened after the meeting, after the boy-wonder hastily departed, guarded by plain-clothes policemen. Many citizens remained in the hall, wanting to have the answers to their questions from the officials at the city’s bureau of environment. Instead of engaging the citizens, they started to remove them out of the hall, according to this blog who had the link to the IWJ video below.
Sure it passed. The detection limit was 25 becquerels/kg, testing done in 5 to 10 seconds at most using brand-new detectors built specifically for the task of rapidly “measuring” the radioactive cesium in rice grown in Fukushima Prefecture.
Never mind the details like that. Shoppers in Edogawa-ku, Tokyo (itself in the more contaminated section of Tokyo) are happy to snap up this year’s fresh crop.
From Nikkei Shinbun quoting Kyodo News (9/1/2012; emphasis is mine):
福島産の新米、東京で販売開始 全袋検査に合格
New crop of Fukushima rice sale started in Tokyo, all bags passed the inspection [for radioactive materials]
New crop of rice harvested in Fukushima Prefecture this year started on September 1 at “Fukushima Market”, a shop to test selling the Fukushima produce in Edogawa-ku, Tokyo. Fukushima Prefecture has started testing all bags of rice for radioactive materials since August, and this was the first sale of the rice that passed the test outside Fukushima.
Bags of rice from Motomiya City and from Aizubange-machi, both of which tested below the detection limit (25 becquerels/kg) were put on sale. Shoppers were sampling at a sampling corner of the store, and seen purchasing [the rice] together with the peaches from Fukushima.
Mr. Takao Okamoto (age 45), an office worker who lives in Edogawa-ku, was visiting the shop with his family of four. He [said] he had been a fan of Fukushima rice even before the March 11, 2011 disaster. He said, “[The rice] tastes great this year, too. They test the rice, so I bought without any worries at all.”
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Gundersen
This week, Dr. Caldicott brings on nuclear engineer Arnold Gundersen to update readers on the unfolding effects of the Fukushima meltdowns and what is happening with nuclear power in other parts of the world. Longer show description to follow. As background, listen to earlier conversations with Gundersen (starting with April 1, 2011), which can be found on the Archives page.
Read the August 2012 news articles Study: Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Caused Mutant Butterflies and Grassroots Power Pushing Japan Towards Nuclear-Free Future . And visit Fairewinds.org, the website of Gundersen’s organization, for more information.
Nuclear Physicist Nils Bøhmer: Should there be a new earthquake in the region, you could have a dramatic situation once again. You could have new cracks, water entering into reactor core, you could maybe have a nuclear chain reaction starting in the fuel, which means you could have a lot of radioactivity released again
[...]
I’m most concerned that a nuclear chain reaction could start in the fuel if you have a lot of water in there because that will be very difficult to control and that will have a lot of heat there that you don’t have control over
[...]
If there is a new earthquake, there is leakages, the rain, a lot of rain, that water will get in contact with the fuel and act as a moderator and you will have a nuclear reactor starting again without any control mechanism, and that will be very, very [inaudible] [...]
So that is the main thing now, to keep the water out, to keep the cooling running, and build the buildings around the reactors [...]
Tepco releases badly photoshopped image of Fukushima Unit 4
As you can see the NHK drove down the article. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120831_14.html
So you can still see it on YOuTUBE under http://youtu.be/o3GYXG9XmYQ
NHK World News —- The Japanese government plans to study the possible effects of radiation on genes of people affected by the Fukushima nuclear accident. It will begin the tests in the next fiscal year.
Environment minister Goshi Hosono revealed the plan at a meeting in Fukushima City on Thursday.
Fukushima residents have been voicing concerns over possible genetic effects of radioactive substances emitted in the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March last year.
The ministry plans to conduct blood and other tests. The ministry says it will work with the Fukushima Medical University and research institutions. The first priority will be testing children.
Hosono said after the meeting that the health of Fukushima residents needs to be monitored for more than 50 years. He said understanding radiation influences on the genetic level could help these people in the future.
The ministry plans to request funding to carry out the study in its budget for the next fiscal year.
Aug. 31, 2012 – Updated 01:45 UTC (10:45 JST)
Quebec health officials are trying to contain a deadly outbreak of legionnaires’ disease.
CTVNews.ca Staff
Legionnaires’ disease has claimed another life in Quebec, bringing the total number of deaths linked to the latest outbreak of the infection-causing bacteria to 11.
Since the outbreak began in mid-July, public health officials have confirmed 169 cases of legionnaires’, four of which were detected on Sunday.
However, officials believe the outbreak is now under control.
The most recent cases are thought to have developed over the last 10 to 15 days and the symptoms are only now surfacing.
The potentially deadly legionella bacteria grow in stagnant water and are often spread through infected droplets in air conditioning systems, swimming pools and other commercial or domestic water systems.
While not everyone who breathes in the infected droplets will become sick, some who do can develop severe pneumonia.
In Quebec, health authorities have narrowed in on the cooling systems of two building towers as potential sources of contamination, but tests to confirm the source could take weeks to complete.
Meanwhile, the systems in more than 100 buildings in the city have been disinfected as a precaution.
A news released issued by Quebec’s public health department on Sunday states the agency should be able to confirm the source of the bacteria by mid-September.
Meanwhile, health authorities in Chicago confirmed this weekend that a legionnaires’ outbreak was behind three recent deaths there.
The source of the bacteria was traced to a hotel water fountain.
MessageToEagle.com – Once upon a time, Antarctica was a tropical zone covered in trees.
New research finds that the frozen continent was much warmer than originally thought. Some parts of Antarctica were almost lush forest zone with rich plant life located on its coasts.
If climate change continues, palm trees and other tropical vegetation – usually found in hot climatic conditions, – could grow in the Antarctic within a few hundred years, researchers said.
Climate scientists are particularly interested in warm periods that occurred in the geological past. Knowledge of past episodes of global warmth can be used to better understand the relationship between climate change, variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide and the reaction of Earth’s biosphere.Scientists from the Goethe University and the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in Frankfurt, Germany have discovered evidence of similar plants 52 million years ago growing in drill cores obtained from the seafloor near Antarctica – a region that is especially important in climate research.
The findings, published in the journal Nature highlight the contrast between modern and past climatic conditions on Antarctica and the extent of global warmth during periods of elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
“If the current CO2 emissions continue unabated due to the burning of fossil fuels, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, as they existed in the distant past, are likely to be achieved within a few hundred years,” Prof Jorg Pross, a paleoclimatologist at the Goethe University said.
An impression of a tropical Antarctica. Image Credits: Robert Nicholls/paleocreations.com
The scientists analyzed 53 and 46 million years old rock samples to reconstruct the local vegetation on Antarctica back then, and interpret the presence of tropical and subtropical rainforests covering the coastal region 52 million years ago.
The evaluations show that the winter temperatures on the Wilkes Land coast of Antarctica were warmer than 10 degrees Celsius at that time, despite three months of polar night.
Predicting rise in global temperatures in the coming decades, climate scientists believe that future climate warming will be particularly greater near the poles, suitable for this kind of vegetation.
The Sun is capable of disrupting electrical systems on Earth in a variety of ways, from solar flares and coronal mass ejections to proton storms. Typically, it is only objects far above the Earth’s surface, or systems at high altitudes at polar latitudes, that are considered at risk except during the most powerful storms. Notable recent examples include solar activity during March 1989 and October 2003 (the “Halloween Storms”), which knocked out power in Quebec, Canada, and Sweden, respectively. Research by Marshall et al., however, finds that even a moderate event can have destructive effects far from the typical regions of concern.Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-08-solar-storms-destabilize-power-grids.html#jCp
At 1:20 UT on 6 November 2001, a high-density pocket of solar wind, 18 nanoPascals above the background pressure, sped past the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite, which was orbiting 197 Earth radii above the Earth toward the Sun. In half an hour, this high-pressure wave traveled more than a million kilometers (620,000 miles) to the Earth’s magnetopause. The high- pressure pulse induced currents both in the magnetopause and in power lines across New Zealand, causing alarms to be tripped and a transformer to fail catastrophically. Extending from 35 degrees South to 46 degrees South, New Zealand is typically considered outside the region susceptible to such solar activity. A Northern Hemisphere equivalent would be a zone extending from Maine to North Carolina. The authors find currents of up to 27.4 amperes in transformer earth lines that were supposed to be neutral. For comparison, the Halloween Storms 2 years later caused peak currents of 23.4 amperes and no serious damage, though the authors suggest that this may have been due to damage prevention measures implemented following the 2001 event.
Sunspot AR1560 has more than quadrupled in size since August 30th, and now the fast growing active region is directly facing our planet: movie. NOAA forecasters estimate a 40% chance of M-class solar fares during the next 48 hours.
A filament of magnetism curling around the sun’s southeastern limb erupted on August 31st, producing a coronal mass ejection (CME), a C8-class solar flare, and one of the most beautiful movies ever recorded by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory:
The explosion hurled a CME away from the sun traveling faster than 500 km/s (1.1 million mph). The cloud, shown here, is not heading directly toward Earth, but it could deliver a glancing blow to our planet’s magnetic field on or about September 3rd. This date is preliminary and may be changed in response to more data from coronagraphs on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Stay tuned.
MessageToEagle.com – A group of astronomers made a rare and fascinating discovery, searching for groups of galaxies similar to ours in the most detailed map of the local Universe yet.
The Milky Way is a fairly typical galaxy on its own, but when paired with its close neighbours – the Magellanic Clouds – it is very rare, and could have been one of a kind, until a survey of our local Universe found another two examples just like us.
“We’ve never found another galaxy system like the Milky Way before, which is not surprising considering how hard they are to spot! It’s only recently become possible to do the type of analysis that lets us find similar groups,” says Dr Aaron Robotham, University of Western Australia who worked along with colleagues from International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and the University of St Andrews in Scotland“Everything had to come together at once: we needed telescopes good enough to detect not just galaxies but their faint companions, we needed to look at large sections of the sky, and most of all we needed to make sure no galaxies were missed in the survey”
Sophisticated simulations of how galaxies form don’t produce many examples similar to the Milky Way and its surrounds, predicting them to be quite a rare occurrence.
Astronomers haven’t been able to tell just how rare until now, with the discovery of not just one but two exact matches amongst the hundreds of thousands of galaxies surveyed.
An artist’s concept of how the Milky Way is stripping gas from the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Credit: Dallas Parr (CSIRO)
“We found about 3% of galaxies similar to the Milky Way have companion galaxies like the Magellanic Clouds, which is very rare indeed. In total we found 14 galaxy systems that are similar to ours, with two of those being an almost exact match,” says Dr Robotham.
The Milky Way is locked in a complex cosmic dance with its close companions the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, which are clearly visible in the southern hemisphere night sky. Many galaxies have smaller galaxies in orbit around them, but few have two that are as large as the Magellanic Clouds.
This image shows one of the two ‘exact matches’ to the Milky Way system found in the survey. The larger galaxy, denoted GAMA202627, which is similar to the Milky Way clearly has two large companions off to the bottom left of the image. In this image bluer colours indicate hotter, younger, stars like many of those that are found in our galaxy. Image Credit: Dr Aaron Robotham, ICRAR/St Andrews using GAMA data.
Dr Robotham’s work also found that although companions like the Magellanic Clouds are rare, when they are found they’re usually near a galaxy very like the Milky Way, meaning we’re in just the right place at the right time to have such a great view in our night sky.
The 3.9 meter Anglo-Australian Telescope is collecting optical galaxy data for the GAMA survey. Credits: Barnaby Morris
“The galaxy we live in is perfectly typical, but the nearby Magellenic Clouds are a rare, and possibly short-lived, occurrence. We should enjoy them whilst we can, they’ll only be around for a few billion more years,” adds Dr Robotham.
Dr Robotham and colleagues have been awarded further time on telescopes in New South Wales and Chile to study these Milky Way twin systems now that they’ve been found.
The Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey is an international collaboration led from ICRAR and the Australian Astronomical Observatory to map our local Universe in closer detail.
Research has been presented at the International Astronomical Union General Assembly in Beijing.
Only five of the 22 pilot whales survived after beaching themselves Saturday morning at Avalon Beach State Park Enlarge US scientists are to investigate what led 22 whales to beach themselves in Florida—killing 17 of them—one of three such incidents in North America over the weekend. US scientists are to investigate what led 22 whales to beach themselves in Florida—killing 17 of them—one of three such incidents in North America over the weekend. Ads by Google Criminal Justice – Discover South University’s Strong Academic Heritage. Apply Today! – http://www.SouthUniversity.edu The dead whales will be “dispersed at different labs across Florida for necropsy,” or animal autopsies, Blair Mase, regional stranding coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told AFP on Sunday. Only five of the 22 pilot whales survived after beaching themselves Saturday morning at Avalon Beach State Park, on the east coast of Florida, despite efforts by volunteers and experts to save the group. So far, it is unclear why the whales swam ashore. Mase said experts would collect data to try to find out why the whales stranded themselves. The survivors, four juveniles and one calf, are “stable” and “swimming on their own,” Mase said. They are currently at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and will likely be transported later to SeaWorld in Orlando. However, two other groups of whales swam onto beaches in North America—one in Cape Cod on Saturday and another in Canada on Sunday—an occurrence that Mase said merited further investigation. “It’s very interesting that we’re seeing all these mass strandings occur in North America right now,” she added. Pilot whales are tightly knit and sometimes swim on to beaches as a group when one of them is ill. In those cases, Mase told local media, it does not help to push the whales back into the water, because they tend to quickly swim back to shore again.
Sixteen pilot whales have died after beaching themselves on the east coast of Scotland, officials said on Sunday. Another 10 whales from the same pod also stranded themselves at Pittenweem, near St Andrews, but were refloated after being kept alive by vets from British Divers and Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) with help from the local fire and police services. Another 24 whales from the same pod were swimming in the shallows three miles along the coast, and experts were fearful that they could also be beached by the rising tide. The local coastguard was notified of the mass beaching at 07:00 am (0600 GMT) and there were soon 30 medics and 25 support crew from the emergency services on hand to try and save the six-metre (20 feet) long mammals. In the United States, 17 pilot whales died after beaching themselves Saturday morning at Avalon Beach State Park, on the east coast of Florida, despite efforts by volunteers and experts to save them. Two other groups of whales swam onto beaches in North America — one in Cape Cod on Saturday and another in Canada on Sunday. The causes of the events remained unclear.
Biohazard name:
Whales on the ground – beached whales
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
confirmed
02.09.2012
Biological Hazard
USA
State of California, Sacramento [Sutter Memorial Hospital]
Two Sacramento families are filing legal action against Sutter Memorial Hospital after their infants tested positive for a bacteria spread by skin contact (MRSA) while in the hospital’s care. Moseley Collins, who is the attorney representing the families, alleges hospital staff failed to wash their hands while treating two children in the neonatal intensive care unit. One mother, Stacey Heard, gave birth to her son Aug. 15 at Sutter Memorial Hospital. The other mother, Lashanda Bey, gave birth to her daughter July 7. Both infants tested negative at birth when they were screened for MRSA but later tested positive, according to Collins. MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is resistant to many antibiotics. According to Sutter Memorial staff, 23 babies tested positive for MRSA at the time of discharge during the last two weeks. Dr. Stephen Butler, who is the NICU medical director, said the hospital routinely screens patients when they are discharged. He said this is the first time the hospital has seen a cluster of patients that screened positive for MRSA but he doesn’t know what caused the outbreak. Butler said MRSA has not caused any serious infections in the patients that went home or that are currently in the NICU. However, one baby required a topical antibiotic for what may have been a minor infection, according to Butler. Hospital staff isolated the positive patients to decrease the chances of transferring the bacteria to other babies who have not been colonized in the NICU. Collins alleges a physician touched a door knob then handled an infant after birth. Collins said the infant’s father was videotaping the birth and caught the incident on camera. Sutter Memorial Hospital will have 90 days to respond to the claim.
Biohazard name:
MRSA
Biohazard level:
3/4 Hight
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans, but for which vaccines or other treatments exist, such as anthrax, West Nile virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, SARS virus, variola virus (smallpox), tuberculosis, typhus, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, yellow fever, and malaria. Among parasites Plasmodium falciparum, which causes Malaria, and Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes trypanosomiasis, also come under this level.
Hundreds of deer in the Chicago area have been killed by a virus previously unknown in the area. Roughly 200 deer in Cook County have died. Six suspected cases have been reported in Kane County. The disease is known as EHD, or epizootic hemorrhagic disease. It’s a virus that kills deer in about a week and is spread among them by bites from flies known as midges. The disease cannot be passed to humans or pets. He suspects the mild winter and hot summer helped it spread to northern Illinois. The first case was two weeks ago.
Biohazard name:
EHD (epizootic hemorrhagic disease)
Biohazard level:
1/4 Low
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses including Bacillus subtilis, canine hepatitis, Escherichia coli, varicella (chicken pox), as well as some cell cultures and non-infectious bacteria. At this level precautions against the biohazardous materials in question are minimal, most likely involving gloves and some sort of facial protection. Usually, contaminated materials are left in open (but separately indicated) waste receptacles. Decontamination procedures for this level are similar in most respects to modern precautions against everyday viruses (i.e.: washing one’s hands with anti-bacterial soap, washing all exposed surfaces of the lab with disinfectants, etc). In a lab environment, all materials used for cell and/or bacteria cultures are decontaminated via autoclave.
The Quang Ngai provincial People’s Committee declared on August 31 that a bird flu epidemic has swept through 23 hamlets in 17 communes of five districts across the province. All of the nearly 80 blood samples sent from these localities tested positive for the A/H5N1 virus, prompting local authorities have culled 58,000 infected fowl. The provincto e is implementing strict measures to control the illegal slaughter and transport of poultry to prevent the disease spreading wider. The provincial Department of Animal Health has provided one million doses of vaccine to protect poultry in seven neighbouring districts and towns.
Biohazard name:
Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (H5N1)
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
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The 4.1 earthquake that jolted Yorba Linda on Wednesday afternoon appears to be an aftershock of the cluster of quakes that hit the region earlier this month, seismologists said.
The jolted area included southeastern Los Angeles County, Orange County and the Inland Empire. The quake occurred in about the same location of an earthquake doublet, two 4.5 quakes that occurred on Aug. 7 at 11:23 p.m. and Aug. 8 at 9:33 a.m. The area was also hit by a 4.0 quake on June 14.
Wednesday’s quake, which hit at 1:31 p.m., was located near the center point of the magnitude-5.5 Chino Hills earthquake that reverberated through the Los Angeles Basin in the summer of 2008, U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones told The Times.
Wednesday’s quake appeared to be located in the “Yorba Linda trend,” a seismic area identified by Caltech geophysicist Egill Hauksson in 1990, that might be a buried fault.
Many who felt the quake said it was relatively mild.
At Vinjon’s Kennel in Yorba Linda, the quake hit just as Carisa Feeney, 22, was giving a bath to a year-and-a-half-old boxer mix. When the quake delivered its single strong jolt, the dog leaped up in the tub –- and both quickly ran outside.
“I’m pretty much covered in water,” Feeney said.
Nancy Ferguson, who owns SGO Designer Glass in Old Town Yorba Linda, said, “We had a big jolt, just for a few seconds, then everything just kind of swayed.”
Ferguson, who has hundreds of pieces of glass on display in her store, said she holds her breath every time there’s an earthquake. “But nothing fell over today, so we’re feeling pretty lucky,” she said.
It is unlikely that the earthquake swarm that has hit Imperial County with hundreds of quakes since the weekend is related to Wednesday’s quake in Yorba Linda, Jones said.
Aug 29 (Reuters) – The southern California town of Brawley has taken the unusual step of declaring a state of emergency after a swarm of earthquakes rattled nearly 20 mobile homes off their blocks and forced a slaughterhouse to close, the mayor said on Wednesday.
It is uncommon for quake-hardy California cities to declare emergencies due to tremors, but Brawley mayor George Nava said the earthquake swarm is a unique case because it has lasted for days and caused millions of dollars in damage.
The cluster of relatively small quakes, which are caused by water and other fluids moving around in the Earth’s crust, began on Saturday evening and climaxed the next day with a 5.5 temblor, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The tremors were continuing on Wednesday and geologists say there have been hundreds in total.
Nava said leaders in Brawley, a city of 25,000 residents south of the state’s inland Salton Sea and 170 miles (275 km) southeast of Los Angeles, declared a local emergency late on Tuesday. Officials with surrounding Imperial County made a similar declaration on Wednesday.
Nineteen mobile homes were knocked off their blocks and their residents forced out, Nava said. The auditorium at Brawley Union High School has been damaged and closed off, and the National Beef slaughter plant in Brawley has been temporarily shut down due to damage, he said.
Local businesses have suffered millions of dollars in losses from closures and from customers staying away, Nava said. But he could not give an exact account of quake-related losses.
The Red Cross and local government agencies will offer services to residents on Friday and Saturday at a local center. The emergency declaration allows Brawley to receive more assistance from Imperial County, Nava said.
At one point, about 10,000 residents in the city were without power, and the quakes have also caused water line disruptions, Nava said.
“When you don’t have an AC or running water, it’s just not a good thing in this weather,” he said.
Jeanne Hardebeck, research seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, said earlier this week that the cluster of quakes is not a sign that a larger temblor is imminent. (Reporting By Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Tim Gaynor and Sandra Maler)
An unusual swarm of hundreds of mostly small earthquakes has struck Southern California over the last three days and shaken the nerves of quake-hardy residents, but scientists say the cluster is not a sign a larger temblor is imminent. The earthquakes, the largest of which measured magnitude 5.5, began on Saturday evening and have been centered near the town of Brawley close to the state’s inland Salton Sea, said Jeanne Hardebeck, research seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. Scientists were monitoring the earthquake cluster, which continued on Tuesday, to see if it approaches the Imperial Fault, about three miles away. A destructive and deadly earthquake of magnitude 7.0 struck on that fault in 1940, she said. “We don’t have any reason to believe that the (earthquake) storm is going to trigger on the Imperial Fault, but there’s a minute possibility that it could,” Hardebeck said, adding that the swarm of quakes was not moving closer to that fault.The Brawley quake cluster, which is caused by hot fluid moving around in the Earth’s crust, is different than a typical earthquake, in which two blocks of earth slip past each other along a tectonic fault line. After that kind of an earthquake of magnitude 5.5 or above, there is a 5 percent chance a larger quake will follow, Hardebeck said. But she added the same kinds of probability estimates were not possible with earthquake clusters caused by the movement of hot fluid. “We understand them even less than we understand normal earthquakes,” Hardebeck said, adding that scientists do not know why a cluster of earthquakes will occur at one time rather than another. The swarm led to jangled nerves in Brawley, a town of about 25,000 residents 170 miles southeast of Los Angeles near the border with Mexico. “It’s pretty bad. We had to evacuate the hotel just for safety,” Rowena Rapoza, office manager of a local Best Western Hotel, said on Sunday. There were two earthquakes on Sunday afternoon, one with a 5.5 magnitude and one measuring 5.3, Hardebeck said. Those were the largest quakes in the cluster amid hundreds of others, she said.
In the past, earthquake clusters have gone on for as long as two weeks, Hardebeck said. Before this recent cluster in Brawley, the last swarm of this size to hit the area was in 1981, she said. Earlier this month, a pair of moderate-sized earthquakes both registering a magnitude 4.5 struck the California town of Yorba Linda within 10 hours of each other, but no damage was reported. Yorba Linda, the birthplace of the late President Richard Nixon, is 145 miles northwest of Brawley.
Earthquake swarms continued Wednesday in Imperial County as the city of Brawley declared an emergency to deal with the damage. The swarm that began Sunday morning showed signs of slowing down Wednesday, with fewer quakes reported by the U.S. Geological Survey than on recent days. The magnitude of the quakes is also declining. There was scattered damage around Brawley, but officials have not yet compiled a full estimate of the costs. The Brawley City Council on Tuesday declared a local emergency, according to the Imperial Valley Press. More than 400 earthquakes greater than magnitude 1.0 have been recorded in Imperial County since Saturday evening, said U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Elizabeth Cochran. The largest were a 5.3 and a 5.5 about midday Sunday. Scientists say the reason is not fully understood, but there is a clue: Earthquake faults work much differently south of the Salton Sea than they do closer to Los Angeles. Take, for instance, the San Andreas fault as it runs through Los Angeles County. Itâs a fault where, generally speaking, two plates of the Earthâs crust are grinding past each other. The Pacific plate is moving to the northwest, while the North American plate is pushing to the southeast.South of the Salton Sea, the fault dynamic changes. The Pacific and North American plates start to pull away from each other, Cochran told The Times from her Pasadena office. (That movement is what created the Gulf of California, which separates Baja California from the rest of Mexico.) So Imperial County is caught between these two types of faults in what is called the âBrawley Seismic Zone,â which can lead to an earthquake swarm, Cochran said. The last major swarm was in 2005, Cochran said, when the largest magnitude was a 5.1. The largest swarm before last weekend’s occurred in 1981, when the biggest quake topped out at 5.8. Before that, there were swarms in the 1960s and 1970s. Brawley school officials told the Imperial Valley Press that Palmer Auditorium, a performance facility it manages with a local arts group, has been shut down after an inspection. âWe were told by engineers it needs to be shut down because there were huge structural damages,â school Supt. Hasmik Danielian told the paper. Crews would have a better idea of the total damage caused by the quakes in the coming days, said Maria Peinado, a spokeswoman for the Imperial County Public Health Department, but so far the list of affected structures includes about 20 mobile homes shifted from their foundations. The earthquakes also caused “cosmetic” damage to at least three buildings dating to the 1930s in downtown Brawley, said Capt. Jesse Zendejas of the Brawley Fire Department. A few displaced residents spent Sunday night at an American Red Cross shelter at the Imperial Valley College gymnasium, Peinado said.
The southern California town of Brawley has taken the unusual step of declaring a state of emergency after a swarm of earthquakes rattled nearly 20 mobile homes off their blocks and forced a slaughterhouse to close, the mayor said on Wednesday. It is uncommon for quake-hardy California cities to declare emergencies due to tremors, but Brawley mayor George Nava said the earthquake swarm is a unique case because it has lasted for days and caused millions of dollars in damage. The cluster of relatively small quakes, which are caused by water and other fluids moving around in the Earth’s crust, began on Saturday evening and climaxed the next day with a 5.5 temblor, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The tremors were continuing on Wednesday and geologists say there have been hundreds in total.Nava said leaders in Brawley, a city of 25,000 residents south of the state’s inland Salton Sea and 170 miles (275 km) southeast of Los Angeles, declared a local emergency late on Tuesday. Officials with surrounding Imperial County made a similar declaration on Wednesday. Nineteen mobile homes were knocked off their blocks and their residents forced out, Nava said. The auditorium at Brawley Union High School has been damaged and closed off, and the National Beef slaughter plant in Brawley has been temporarily shut down due to damage, he said. Local businesses have suffered millions of dollars in losses from closures and from customers staying away, Nava said. But he could not give an exact account of quake-related losses. The Red Cross and local government agencies will offer services to residents on Friday and Saturday at a local center. The emergency declaration allows Brawley to receive more assistance from Imperial County, Nava said. At one point, about 10,000 residents in the city were without power, and the quakes have also caused water line disruptions, Nava said. “When you don’t have an AC or running water, it’s just not a good thing in this weather,” he said. Jeanne Hardebeck, research seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, said earlier this week that the cluster of quakes is not a sign that a larger temblor is imminent.
29.08.2012
Earthquake
British Virgin Islands
Atlantic Ocean, [Between 94 to 108 kilometers of the Road Town]
A total of 104 earthquakes were observed in the last four days, British Virgin Islands area. The smallest was M2.0 and the strongest quake was M4.8 on the Richter scale. The center of the earthquake at a distance of 94 to 108 kilometers and the depth were between 5 and 90 kilometers.
South Dakota students are used to extreme cold and having classes called off because of winter blizzards, but the weather that caused their school day to be cut short Wednesday was intense for a different reason: the triple-digit temperatures. More than two dozen school districts across the state shut down early Wednesday as temperatures rose above 100 degrees, turning classrooms into saunas. “The major factor in the decision is the safety and welfare of students and staff members. It’s tough to learn in an environment when a room is 100 degrees,” said Eureka Superintendent Bo Beck, whose north-central South Dakota district joined others in dismissing students a few hours early because their classrooms lack air conditioning. Eureka and other districts have called off classes due to late-summer heat in past years, but school closures are more common in winter months when snow, frigid temperatures and howling winds make travel unsafe, Beck said. Scott Doering, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Aberdeen, said high temperatures Wednesday were expected to range from the low 90s in northeastern South Dakota to as high as 107 in the center of the state as a ridge of high pressure made the northern and central Plains area the nation’s hotspot.Some places in central South Dakota could break or come close to breaking records before temperatures start to drop to the 80s and lower 90s Thursday, Doering said. He said temperatures topping 100 sometimes persist in South Dakota, even into September. “It’s unusual, but not highly unusual,” he added, referring to Wednesday’s heat. Don Hotalling, superintendent for the Stanley County School District, said all students in Fort Pierre were being sent home at 1 p.m. because some classrooms are not air-conditioned. That problem will be solved after a new building is completed next year, he said. “With 106 degrees forecast for today, we knew it really was going to be miserable for some of the students,” Hotalling said. “With the humidity and the heat, it’s very uncomfortable. Not much learning is going to be going on later in the afternoon, when it gets hotter.” Stanley County eighth-grader Madison Bogue was happy her Fort Pierre school ended the day early. “It’s really awesome. It’s better than sitting in there all day,” the 13-year-old said. The district used fans to try to cool buildings Tuesday, when a lot of parents picked up their kids and took them home to beat the heat, Hotalling said. Staff encouraged students to drink plenty of water, but some students complained Tuesday of headaches, he said. Deputy state Education Secretary Mary Stadick Smith said she didn’t know how many schools were closing because of the heat, but at least two dozen schools from northeastern South Dakota to Rapid City in the west let radio and television stations know of early closures.
“Typically in South Dakota, schools are closed because of cold weather and blizzards that kind of thing, so it is a little unusual,” Stadick Smith said. Schools will not have to make up the missed time as long as they meet annual requirements for hours spent in classrooms, she said. The Rapid City Journal reported that schools in that city also were closing early because 15 of the 25 public schools do not have air conditioning. “When we start reaching temperatures above 90 degrees in classrooms, we have concerns as to trying to do something to relieve that stress on the teachers and the students that have been trying to work in those rooms,” Rapid City Area Schools Superintendent Tim Mitchell told the newspaper. Principal Robin Gillespie said teachers at Rapid City’s Wilson Elementary have been beating the heat with fans, low lights, water breaks and Popsicles. Many South Dakota residents seemed to take the heat in stride.
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Sparked by lightning in July, the Mustang Complex fire had burned 149,828 acres (60,633 hectares) of rugged terrain near Salmon, Idaho, by August 29, 2012. The fire burned in steep, inaccessible terrain.
By August 23, more than 1,106,545 acres (447,803 hectares) had burned in Idaho—more than any other state except for Oregon. By August 29, more than 7,277,838 acres (2,945,236 hectares) had burned throughout the United States in what has proven to be one of the most severe wildfire seasons in the last decade.
Crews dug in Wednesday against another round of Montana wildfires as evacuations were ordered ahead of blazes near Butte and Roscoe that authorities said threatened at least 130 houses. Searing heat set in across much of the drought-parched state, and gusting winds pushed flames through tinder-dry stands of timber and grasslands. The dangerous conditions prompted Gov. Brian Schweitzer to declare a statewide fire emergency. Eight large fires were burning on more than 73 square miles Wednesday, and more than 1,300 square miles already have burned in Montana this summer. Most of that destruction has been in the rain-starved eastern half of the state. Compounding residents’ woes are plumes of smoke pouring into mountain valleys from local fires and blazes in neighboring Idaho. The air quality has deteriorated most significantly in Hamilton, where it was listed as unhealthy by state officials. In Butte, Helena, Great Falls and Bozeman, officials downgraded the air quality to unhealthy for sensitive groups. About 10 miles south of Butte, the 19 Mile fire torched at least two homes and two outbuildings after growing to several square miles. Officials said the exact size was hard to determine because of all the smoke. Residents of the Whiskey Gulch and Friends Road area were told to evacuate Wednesday, after people living on Upper and Lower Radar Creek and Toll Mountain roads were advised to leave Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the fire, Mariah Leuschen with the U.S. Forest Service, said the evacuations covered roughly 150 people living in about 80 homes. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency put the figure higher – 275 people living in 103 homes, with another 100 to 110 houses put on pre-evacuation notice. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear. State officials sought and received federal help to pay for the effort against the fire. That authorizes FEMA to pay 75 percent of the state’s firefighting costs on the blaze, but does not provide assistance to individual homes or business owners.
A wildfire that broke out Tuesday afternoon in the Malheur National Forest spread to at least 2,500 acres before sundown, officials said. The fire ignited at about 2:30 p.m. near Parish Cabin Campground, about 10 miles east of Seneca. No injuries have been reported — as of late evening, the fire remained in the center of the forest and mainly was a threat to campgrounds and historic buildings in the immediate area, said Mike Stearly, information officer for Malheur National Forest. “It’s in some prime timber growth areas…the conditions are right,” Stearly said. He said the fire grew to between 2,500 acres and 3,000 acres through the afternoon and evening. Crews will be working through the night to fight the blaze, and spike camps have been set up. A Type 2 incident management team is coming in Wednesday morning, Stearly said. The goal is to hold the fire south of the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness. Firefighters and the Grant’s County Sheriff’s Department evacuated Parish Cabin Campground. Evacuees included a number of bow hunters in the area for archery season, Stearly said. The cause of the fire remains unknown.
Tropical Storm in USA on Wednesday, 29 August, 2012 at 07:29 (07:29 AM) UTC.
Description
Nearly 100,000 homes and businesses lost power after Hurricane Isaac landed in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Louisiana later Tuesday, local media reported. And among the homes and businesses being left without power, near half are in Orleans Parish, the reports said. Utility companies in the southwestern U.S. state on Tuesday morning started bringing in extra crews to help restore power in case strong winds bring down power lines. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu warned residents about the dangers of approaching downed power lines. “These are serious threats, as I have said many times, which can cause fatalities,” Landrieu said. State authorities have mobilized more than 4,100 troops, with 680 of them in Orleans Parish. A further 35,000 troops and almost 100 aircraft are available for mobilization, according to reports on the website of NOLA.com. The troops are assisting with the setting up of evacuation shelters, including a “mega-shelter” with about 2,500 cots in the inland city of Alexandria. Some 300 soldiers will work as bus drivers in Metairie, supporting the state departments of transportation and education. At a press conference on Tuesday, Luisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said the State National Guard posted 23 liaison teams with local governments, adding that 13 communications teams will deployed in the region, along with 921 security vehicles, 531 high-water vehicles, 40 aircraft and 74 boats.
In New Orleans, streets were flooding and up to 85% of residents were without power, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said. “One of the great challenges with this storm … is that it’s going so slowly … which means that it’s going to hover over us,” he told the Weather Channel on Wednesday morning. “The longer the rain and the greater the wind … (that) continues to concern us. That wind is really, really heavy, which is why it’s important you stay inside.” “We’re asking people to be patient,” he said. New Orleans, devastated by Katrina seven years ago to the day, was reporting 60-mph winds and drenching rains. Landrieu said about 1,000 National Guard troops are positioned in the city, working with police, firefighters and standing by for rescue operations. The historic French Quarter that forms the heart of New Orleans’ tourism industry appeared to have dodged the worst of Isaac. Downed tree limbs, minor flooding at intersections and a brief electrical outage overnight were the main problems confronting the residents who stayed , and stayed mostly indoors. “Honestly, man, it’s just been rain,” said Huggington “Huggy” Behr, manager of Flanagan’s Pub on St. Phillips, which stayed open through the night and served “about a dozen” patrons. “To us, we’ve seen the worst, so it’s business as usual.”
Southern Mississippi was still feeling the effects of the storm but emergency management officials along the coast said they got through the night relatively unharmed. No injuries or deaths were reported overnight in the coastal counties of Hancock or Harrison, which were two of the hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina seven years ago. The biggest worry overnight from Hurricane Isaac? “We’re in the process of picking two people up who got stranded by the water and they’re scared,” Hancock County Emergency Management Director Brian Adam said Wednesday morning. With sustained winds throughout the region topping out at about 40 mph, the main concern remains flooding from a constantly driving storm surge and what is expected to be prolonged rainfall for several days. In Harrison County, the rising waters knocked a boat off its moorings. County Emergency Management Director Rupert Lacy said the boat slammed into Popps Ferry Bridge, forcing officials to shut it down until crews can inspect the integrity of the bridge. The bridge is one of two connecting Biloxi from the mainland, but Lacy said it could be a long time before an inspection can be done. “We cautioned our public safety employees … that you don’t need to be out there if the winds are too high,” Lacy said.
Twelve people were killed and 10 were missing after a strong typhoon pounded South Korea Tuesday, uprooting trees, sinking ships and cutting power to almost 200,000 homes.
By early evening Typhoon Bolaven — the strongest to hit the South for almost a decade — had moved to North Korea, which is still struggling to recover from deadly floods earlier this summer.
Hundreds of flights in the South were grounded, ferry services were suspended and schools in Seoul and several other areas were closed.
Bolaven left a trail of death and damage in southwestern and south-central regions of the country, although it was little felt in central parts of Seoul.
Off the southern island of Jeju, the storm drove two Chinese fishing ships aground early Tuesday, sparking a dramatic rescue operation.
Coastguards wearing wetsuits struggled through high waves and then used a line-launcher to fire ropes to one ship, a coastguard spokesman said. The other boat broke apart.
Rescuers saved 12 people while six swam ashore, but 10 crew members are still missing, the spokesman said. Five bodies were recovered.
In the southern county of Wanju, a 48-year-old man was killed by a shipping container flipped over by gale-force winds, the public administration ministry said.
An elderly woman was crushed to death when a church spire collapsed onto her house in the southwestern city of Gwangju, while another elderly woman was blown off the roof of her home in the western county of Seocheon.
A workman fell from the roof of a hospital in the southwestern port of Mokpo. At Imsil county in North Jeolla province, a 51-year-old man died while clearing toppled trees.
In Yeongkwang county west of Gwangju, a 72-year-old man suffered fatal head injuries when his house wall collapsed. At Buyeo city in South Chungcheong province, a woman aged 75 died after falling due to strong winds.
A 77,000-tonne bulk carrier broke in two off the southeastern port of Sacheon but no casualties were reported, the public administration ministry said.
The transport ministry said all 87 sea ferry services had been halted. A total of 247 flights — 183 domestic and 64 international — have been cancelled since Monday.
The typhoon — packing winds of 144 kilometres (90 miles) per hour at one time — brought heavy rain and strong winds to southern and western areas. It toppled street lights and signs, shattered windows, uprooted trees and tore off shop signs.
The National Emergency Management Agency said 197,751 homes in Jeju and the southwest and south-central regions lost power.
A total of 83 people, mostly in the southwest, were evacuated from their homes and taken to shelters. Some 21 homes were damaged.
The US and South Korean armed forces called a temporary halt to a large-scale joint military exercise that began last week.
After sweeping up the Yellow Sea to the west of South Korea, Bolaven made landfall in North Korea in the early evening.
The impoverished nation is already struggling to recover from a devastating summer drought, followed by floods which killed 169 people, left about 400 missing and made 212,000 people homeless, according to official figures.
Weather officials said Typhoon Tembin was also threatening the Korean peninsula, and was forecast to be some 200 kilometres west of Jeju early Friday.
NEW ORLEANS – Hurricane Isaac pounded Louisiana with heavy rains and damaging winds Wednesday as forecasters said the storm surge and serious flooding will likely continue through the night.
USA TODAYHurricane Issac landed at 3:15 a.m. EST just west of Port Fourchon, about 60 miles south-southwest of New Orleans.
USA TODAY
Hurricane Issac landed at 3:15 a.m. EST just west of Port Fourchon, about 60 miles south-southwest of New Orleans.
Isaac was still maintaining Category 1 hurricane strength, but just barely, with sustained winds of 75 mph, the National Hurricane Center reported. It was located directly over Houma, La., which is about 45 miles southwest of New Orleans.
The storm was crawling to the northwest at just 6 mph. It is expected to weaken to a tropical storm later Wednesday.
Widespread flooding was reported in New Orleans and other coastal cities.
One of the worst hit areas was Plaquemines Parish, about 50 miles southeast of New Orleans, where water spilled over a levee. Isaac passed directly over the region of marshland, fishing towns and marinas, peeling off roofs and flooding some areas.
The northern part of the parish is ringed in by the area’s hurricane protection system of fortified levees and floodwalls. But stretches of it on the east bank of the Mississippi River and further south lie outside the protection system, making it vulnerable to storm surge and flooding, Parish Councilman Kirk Lepine said.
Isaac came up the western edge of the parish, lashing at the area with powerful winds and storm surge, Lepine said.
“It came in at the worse scenario we can imagine,” he said. “There’s nowhere for that water to go than here.”
Rescue efforts were focused Wednesday in the small enclave of Braithwaite, on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish. Sheriff Deputies there were conducting rescue missions of residents trapped in homes, as flooding from Isaac overtook the area, said Trooper Melissa Matey, a Louisiana State Police spokeswoman.
Braithwaite was under a mandatory evacuation order prior to Isaac but some residents chose to stay, she said.
Early Wednesday, state police troopers were escorting National Guard troops with high-water vehicles down to that area to help in rescue efforts, state police spokesman Capt. Doug Cain said. Many of the roads in the area had become impassable.
Flanked by marshes and water, low-lying Plaquemines Parish has been repeatedly hit by disasters – from Katrina to Gustav to the 2010 BP oil spill, Cain said. Isaac late Tuesday passed directly over the area, pummeling the parish with powerful winds and a strong storm surge.
“The geography of it makes it vulnerable,” Cain said. “But talk about a resilient people. They’ve been through this before, and they’re going to make it through this one.”
Isaac also forced the closures of major roadways throughout the area, including US 90 at the Jefferson Parish/St. Charles Parish line, the causeway over Lake Pontchartrain and LA-73 south of Plaquemines, he said.
Besides dealing with downed trees across roadways from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, state police also encountered residents who may have underestimated the storm, he said. Troopers kept busy throughout the night with highway accidents, broken down cars and several DWI arrests.
“People aren’t adhering to the warnings,” Cain said. “Today, we’re really encouraging people to shelter in place.”
The Federal Amergency Management Agency has staged supplies throughout the south in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas and South Carolina. At Mississippi’s Camp Shelby, FEMA has 54 generators and 256,000 ready-to-eat meals. At Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, FEMA has 1.2 million meals, 2,134 cots and 3,800 tarps.
Volunteer organizations such as the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army can provide 65,000 hot meals a day in Louisiana, FEMA said in its daily briefing report.
So far the 350 miles of levees and floodwalls surrounding and meandering through New Orleans were holding back storm surge water as designed early Wednesday, city spokesman Hayne Rainey said. The city had not received any reports of levee breaches or calls for rescues, he said.
Early reports from Isaac’s effects were far different from the events that unfolded around Hurricane Katrina— which slammed the region seven years to the day and led to levee breaches and mass flooding of the city. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rebuilt the levee and floodwall system in the New Orleans area to be much stronger at a cost of $14.45 billion.
“All reports are indicating the federal levees protecting the city of New Orleans are holding,” he said.
The storm landed at 3:15 a.m. ET just west of Port Fourchon, about 60 miles south-southwest of New Orleans, said the National Hurricane Center.
Isaac, upgraded from a tropical storm to a Category 1 hurricane midday Tuesday, first touched land in Plaquemines Parish, about 90 miles southeast of New Orleans on Tuesday evening before heading back over the Gulf of Mexico.
Because it is moving so slowly, the storm system could dump up to 20 inches of rain in some areas. The hurricane center said Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana could see peak surges of 12 feet.
In New Orleans, streets were flooding and up to 75% of residents were without power, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said.
“One of the great challenges with this storm … is that it’s going so slowly … which means that it’s going to hover over us,” he told the Weather Channel on Wednesday morning. “The longer the rain and the greater the wind … (that) continues to concern us. That wind is really, really heavy, which is why it’s important you stay inside.”
“We’re asking people to be patient,” he said.
New Orleans, devastated by Katrina seven years ago to the day, was reporting 60-mph winds and drenching rains. Landrieu said about 1,000 National Guard troops are positioned in the city, working with police, firefighters and standing by for rescue operations.
More than 470,000 homes and businesses have lost power, including 156,000 in New Orleans and 162,000 in the New Orleans suburbs, Entergy reported.
The company, which serves most of southern Louisiana, said its crews would begin restoring power as soon as sustained wind speeds fall below 30 mph.
“We expect outages to last several days,” the company said on its storm center website. “Severe weather conditions are expected across Louisiana and Mississippi through early Thursday morning.”
Officials in coastal Alabama were heading out Wednesday morning to assess damage from the storm.
“Right now, we are compiling our assessment teams,” said Paula Tillman, spokeswoman for the Baldwin County Emergency Management Agency. “As soon as it gets good and daylight, we’ll be sending them out.”
Some roads along the coast were closed because of flooding. “Those are down in those lower areas near Fort Morgan, right in the beach area,” Tillman said. “Those roads are pretty typical for flooding.”
At 6:30 a.m. central time, there had been no reports of injuries or deaths from the storm in Alabama. In Baldwin County, which includes the resort communities of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, 243 people were in two county evacuation shelters.
In Mobile, there was virtually no evidence of storm impact.
Officials were warning residents that flooding from storm surges and heavy rainfall expected with the storm could still pose a threat.
Southern Mississippi still has a long way to go before Hurricane Isaac moves past, but emergency management officials along the coast say they got through the night relatively unharmed.
No injuries or deaths were reported overnight in the coastal counties of Hancock or Harrison, which were two of the hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina seven years ago.
The biggest worry overnight from Hurricane Isaac?
“We’re in the process of picking two people up who got stranded by the water and they’re scared,” Hancock County Emergency Management Director Brian Adam said Wednesday morning.
With sustained winds throughout the region topping out at about 40 mph, the main concern remains flooding from a constantly-driving storm surge and what is expected to be prolonged rainfall for several days.
In Harrison County, the rising waters knocked a boat off its moorings. County Emergency Management Director Rupert Lacy said the boat slammed into Popps Ferry Bridge, forcing officials to shut it down until crews can inspect the integrity of the bridge. The bridge is one of two connecting Biloxi from the mainland, but Lacy said it could be a long time before an inspection can be done.
“We cautioned our public safety employees…that you don’t need to be out there if the winds are too high,” Lacy said.
Although Hurricane Isaac‘s path has shifted a small degree, officials state Monday morning that all advisories released by the Assumption Parish Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Service remain, to expect the eye wall of Isaac to pass “right over” the parish, home of Louisiana’s giant sinkhole. Hard rains are causing concerning flooding of low-lying areas and power outages.
“Please note that as predicted, this update still shows 75 mph winds in Assumption parish at 1:00 p.m. today,” officials reported at 5:45 a.m. Wednesday.
“The track has shifted a bit; however, all advisories released by the Assumption Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness remain.”
Tuesday evening, Assumption Parish officials state that the latest update put the track of Hurricane Isaac‘s eye wall “right over Assumption Parish.”
A hurricane’s eye wall is located just outside of the eye. The eye wall is where the most damaging winds and intense rainfall is found.
The eye is typically the most calm location. It passes a vulnerable area in the hurricane path before the worst damage hits, thus the cliche, “The calm before the storm.”
“By 6:00 a.m., we should be experiencing tropical storm force winds,” officials advised.
“At noon, the forecast shows we will experience the strongest winds as the forecast predicts the eye wall to be right over us at that time,” the parish alert stated.
Up to 20 inches of rain could pound the already vulnerable giant sinkhole in Louisiana.
Rains were anticipated to make “flooding of low lying areas a concern,” WAFB reports Wednesday.
Isaac’s core is expected to pass over the sinkhole area west of New Orleans with winds close to 80 mph.
Winds could gust up to 100 mph at times.
“The hurricane is expected to gradually weaken, but only after dumping 7 to 14 inches of rain across the state, with some places receiving up to 20 inches,” reports Associated Press Wednesday morning.
Jeff Morrow with the WAFB Storm Team says that high winds will also cause widespread power outages, and “if that happens find the battery operated radio and tune to Tiger Country 100.7 FM as we will be simulcasting our advisories there.”
Katrina haunts thousands of residents
In New Orleans, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said evacuations would not be ordered and told residents to prepare carefully and ride it out. Nevertheless, Monday and Tuesday, traffic was bumper to bumper heading out of New Orleans.
In those vehicles were people too hurt and fearful to risk unpredictability of high waters and no power at home, with only hours away from the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
By midafternoon Tuesday, 400 residents of Plaquemines Parish, where Isaac made landfall southeast of New Orleans, were calling a hurricane shelter in Belle Chasse home.
Arriving on the eve of Hurricane Katrina’s seventh anniversary, Isaac is the first hurricane to hit Louisiana since Ike in 2008.
Everything reminds you of Katrina. When the wind howls, I think of Katrina. I don’t think of Isaac,” explained CNN iReporter Eileen Romero, a student in New Orleans who survived Katrina in 2005 but lost everything during it.
Romero still lives in New Orleans, in a different neighborhood and in a house built in 1908.
After going out Tuesday to take photographs, she said, “I am not seeing people real concerned to be honest. I think there is a false sense of security.
“Everybody talks about how we party all the time. When hurricanes are coming, people have hurricane parties.”
Many residents of public housing apartments never returned after 2005.
“Where are the people who lived here prior to Katrina?” she asked. “I don’t think they have a place to come back to.”
Assumption Parish officials ordered a mandatory evacuation. Monday morning, officials there ask that people who remained in the area to “please abide by the curfew and remain sheltered in place.”
Isaac inundated low-lying areas along Mississippi’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday as hurricane-driven water rose several feet in some spots while thousands waited out the storm in shelters. Officials in Hancock and Harrison counties extended curfews until 9 a.m. to keep off roads until after the high tide passes at around 8 a.m. Harrison County emergency management director Rupert Lacy said the storm surge coupled with the high tide could lead to more extensive flooding. Lacy said coastal rivers also were beginning to rise from the rainfall. More than 15,000 people remained without power in coastal areas.
A flood warning has been issued for the Capital after torrential rain battered the city this afternoon. Thunder and lightning storms were accompanied by the heavy rains at around 2.30pm. Environmental Agency SEPA issued a flood alert and warned that standing water was likely to pose a hazard to drivers and urged travellers to check the Traffic Scotland website before setting out. A spokesman for SEPA said: “ Due to the showery nature of the rainfall, it is difficult to predict which areas are most at risk, however, the overall risk is expected to decline during the early hours of Thursday morning.”
Mississippi wildlife officers and National Guard soldiers rescued at least 75 people from Isaac’s flooding Wednesday in Hancock County, including an 88-year-old man who had a stroke as the storm dumped heavy rains on his isolated neighborhood in Pearlington, near the Louisiana state line. The stroke victim was the last person brought out of the neighborhood, about 7:30 p.m. CDT, and Mississippi National Guard 1st Sgt. William Maddox said the man’s house is about six miles off the main thoroughfare, U.S. Highway 90. Rescuers spent hours trying to reach him, attempting with several vehicles. A paramedic waded through chest-deep water to get to the house, and then guided a large military truck to the man. Maddox said the man appeared to be in stable condition and was taken care of by paramedics at the scene. It was not immediately clear whether the man would be taken to a hospital. With a steady rain falling, wildlife officers used small motorboats to rescue at least two dozen people in Pearlington, including several members of an extended family. More than a dozen National Guard soldiers also helped with the rescues, as did ambulance crews and other emergency responders.One of those plucked from a rural neighborhood that had become a lake was 63-year-old Dianne Burton. She told The Associated Press that she and members of her extended family didn’t leave before Isaac because they didn’t expect so much water. She has lived there 46 years and said the only other time the area flooded was during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “Everything is under water. We picked up the furniture and stuff, as much as we could. I can’t believe it. The road and everything was dry yesterday,” Burton said after officers deposited her, her 82-year-old mother, her 46-year-old disabled daughter and two grandchildren, ages 10 and 12, safely on dry land. Those rescued were put onto school buses and were taken to shelters on higher ground. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant said Wednesday afternoon that officers from the state Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks had rescued at least 58 people in Hancock County, which borders Louisiana. The rescue of Burton, her relatives and at least 20 other people was happening at the same time Bryant was doing a press briefing in Gulfport, and his initial figures didn’t include them.
Parts of Cumbria have been hit by flash flooding after a night of heavy rain. The west of the county appears to have been worst affected, with police and fire crews reporting cars partially submerged in the Egremont area. About 20 elderly residents were moved to an emergency shelter at Egremont Market Hall, after a power cut. Cumbria Fire Service said it received more than 100 calls for help, mainly involving requests for sandbags. Forecasters say the rain is now easing. Northern Rail services between Whitehaven and Barrow have been cancelled after a landslip near St Bees and some roads are only passable with care because of debris left by floodwaters. A spokesman for Cumbria Police said drains were unable to cope with the amount of water after the River Ehen and several becks in the Egremont area burst their banks. The Environment Agency said one flood alert remained in force for the River Ehen in Copeland. The police spokesman said: “We started getting calls from about 1am, mainly from people concerned that water was coming into their homes and asking for sandbags.”We also had calls from the fire and ambulance services asking for our assistance in reaching some areas and had to close some roads for a time. “The Egremont and Middletown areas appear to have had the worst of it.” Emma Jane Taylor said floodwater began entering her St Bees home shortly before midnight. She said: “We’ve had heavy rain here before, but it’s never been this bad before. “I alerted some neighbours, but within 30 minutes it was through my front door and coming up through my floorboards. “It’s lifted the block paving from my grandmother’s house nearby and was also coming through her French windows. “We just hope the rain doesn’t come back because the drains are full to the top and wouldn’t be able to take any more.” Wasdale Mountain Rescue volunteers also assisted the fire service to pump out several properties in the Egremont area. Earlier this week the rear of a four-storey house house in Egremont collapsed into the River Ehen after heavy rain.
A tornado touched down in an Ocean Springs neighborhood about 7:30 p.m. tonight, the Jackson County Emergency Management Agency said. While EMA officials said that initial reports indicated that the tornado knocked down trees and power lines, at least one witness told the Mississippi Press that at least one house was reported damaged. Two houses on East Simmons Bayou in Gulf Park Estates have sustained damage, according to Jackson County Sheriff Mike Byrd who is en route to the scene. Byrd said there were no injuries reported. “There’s extensive damage at two houses,” Byrd said. “There’s a roof off one house and a shed was taken away from another one. We have deputies on the scene assessing the situation. In addition to the tornado, Jackson County emergency officials announced waterspouts have been spotted at Miss. 57 and I-10, headed northeast.
A non-government group is urging Bayou Corne sinkhole area residents to use a new record log as a veteran radiation expert says Louisiana environmental officials are “in denial” over hazards posed by elevated radium levels that are actually fifteen times higher than the state limit, a “worst nightmare coming true,” according to an environmental attorney.
Stanley Waligora, a New Mexico-based radiation protection consultant and leading authority on health risks of naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) has confirmed that radium levels at Bayou Corne’s sinkhole are not within safe limits, but instead, roughly 15 times higher than the state’s acceptable level, according to one of the nation’s leading environmental attorney’s Stuart Smith.
State officials are saying NORM is is below hazardous levels, but the independent findings indicate other actions need to be taken, including residents using Louisiana Environmental Action Network’s report logs to record signs and symptoms of ill health.
The information about radium is buried in a state news release, poorly written, “and goes out of its way to downplay the results,” Smith said Wednesday.
This week, after state officials released the results of samples taken 80 feet under the surface of the growing, slurry-filled pit, Marco Kaltofen, a civil engineer and president of Boston Chemical Data Corp., noted those results posted by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, show elevated rates of NORM in the sinkhole.
NORM is a frequent byproduct of the oil and gas drilling process, creating wastes that industry has often then dumped improperly, according to Smith who specializes in this area of environmental law.
Kaltofen’s analysis of the situation in Bayou Corne includes:
“Radium in the body is absorbed because it is chemically similar to calcium. The normal maximum guideline level for radium in surface water is 5 picoCuries per liter, (pCi/L). The state’s testing found 82 pCi/L in the water of the growing sinkhole. Radium gives off alpha’ radiation. This form of radiation is extremely dangerous if inhaled or ingested, and less dangerous if exposed by skin contact.”
When radium decays, it produces the dangerous radioactive gas, radon. EPA warns that radon gas causes lung cancer, and exposure can be as hazardous to your lungs as a serious cigarette habit.
“Waligora said officials with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality need to launch immediate additional testing to ensure that the hazardous radium is not leaking into nearby groundwater and posing a threat to human health as well as livestock,” Smith has stated Friday.
Waligora’s recommendations come two days after Smith’s blog first reported that analysis of DEQ test results from Bayou Corne, posted by the LEANouisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), revealed elevated radium levels and airborne chemicals associated with highly volatile butane stored by Crosstex in a cavern near the sinkhole.
They also come two days after Homeland Security Louisiana announced that officials are stepping up around-the-clock emergency operations near Bayou Corne’s sinkhole, including extra Hazardous Materials & Explosive Units.
LEAN, after reporting lethal contaminants found in the sinkhole area, is urging residents to use the new report log it has for recording signs and symptoms of poisoning, as reported by the Examiner on Wednesday.
The Advocatereports Friday, “In two statements released Tuesday, LEAN noted air monitoring by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality since Aug. 4 over the sinkhole and in the neighborhoods near the sinkhole had picked up, depending on the location, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, other volatile organic compounds and components of natural gas.”
‘Worst nightmare coming true,’ says attorney
If the butane in the sinkhole vicinity exploded, it would meet, according to the National Terror Alert, the definition of a dirty bomb.
“I sought an analysis of the recent DEQ test results from Waligora, who since a stint as a nuclear weapons officer in the U.S. military has been teaching, consulting and testifying as an expert witness in radiation litigation for more than 45 years,” asserted Smith Friday.
He expressed concern that the state reported its findings of radium-226 and radium-228 as “below acceptable levels,” when in fact, the results were 15 times higher than the state’s own standard for soil contamination.
“Well, once again the Louisiana DEQ is in denial because they don’t know what to do about the radioactive contamination in the Bayou Corne subsidence,” Waligora wrote, adding the following findings:
There are immediate radiation dose concerns, not only cumulative toxin concerns.
“The release could reach the usable aquifer and contaminate drinking water along with livestock and irrigated crops,” Waligora says. “The DEQ must sample ground water to assess any transport. Airborne particulate might become entrained and cause contamination to be inhaled by the public. DEQ must collect air samples to assess the airborne radioactive particulate. Radon gas emanating from the radium could be inhaled by members of the public. DEQ needs to monitor airborne radon.
“A long range plan must be developed for remedial action. Funding should be provided by the oil companies that used the cavern for disposal,” asserted Waligora.
Waligora reports being concerned about DEQ understating of the Bayou Corne risks because of what he has witnessed in other cases handled by the troubled agency:
“This is reminiscent of the illegal waste disposal that was discovered several years ago at St. Gabriel. The community complained about illegal disposal of radioactive waste. DEQ sent a team to investigate who determined that there was no problem. Complaints continued and a second DEQ team investigated and again said that there was no problem. Finally, a legal action attracted the EPA who found widespread contamination. The responsible party had no worth so the site was cleaned up with Superfund support. The cleanup took over one year and cost over $1million. Quite a bit for ‘no problem.’”
Earlier this year, Smith joined the Louisiana Bucket Brigade in calling for the EPA to intervene and assume responsibility from DEQ because the agency was “overwhelmed and “in the back pocket of the businesses it’s supposed to be regulating.”
“Although company officials informed the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources in early 2011 of significant problems at the cavern, local residents and authorities were not told of the risk even after they began complaining this summer of shaking homes and noxious orders,” Smith says.
National Terror Alert (NTA) recently reported that due to recent terrorist events, people have expressed concern about a possible terrorist attack involving radioactive materials, possibly through the use of a “dirty bomb,” and the harmful effects of radiation from such an event.
“A dirty bomb, or radiological dispersion device, is a bomb that combines conventional explosives, such as dynamite, with radioactive materials inthe form of powder or pellets. The idea behind a dirty bomb is to blast radioactive material into the area around the explosion. This could possibly cause buildings and people to be exposed to radioactive material. The main purpose of a dirty bomb is to frighten people and make buildings or land unusable for a long period of time.
“In Bayou Corne, we are witnessing our worst nightmares coming true,” Smith asserted Friday. “It’s time for the EPA and other outside authorities to step in and make sure that proper testing is done and that emergency measures are carried out.”
The sinkhole, now the size of three football fields, shaped like an upside-down Superdome Stadium, and filled with liquid slurry is blamed on Texas Brine Co.’s failed salt cavern near Bayou Corne.
“There’s no excuse for allowing this new Louisiana catastrophe to get any worse,” Smith says.
Sources:The Advocate, Stuart Smith, Louisiana Environmental Action Network
A thief in Uganda has contracted Ebola after stealing the mobile phone of a hospital patient suffering from the potentially fatal infection.
Security and medical officials in Kibaale District, mid-west Uganda, told the Daily Monitor website that the man went into the isolation ward at Kagadi Hospital and stole a cellular phone from one of the Ebola patients.
The patient, who later died from the hemorrhagic fever, reported the theft.
Police began tracking the thief when he started using the phone, the Daily Monitor reported.
But by the time they found him he had gone to hospital with symptoms similar to those of Ebola.
He reportedly confessed to stealing the phone.
Kibaale District Health Officer Dr Dan Kyamanywa, told the Daily Monitor: “The suspect is admitted at Kagadi Hospital with clinical signs of Ebola.” “He is receiving medication. We have obtained samples from him,” Mr Kyamanywa added.
The Uganda Virus Research Institute is yet to release the results of the tests.
Texas bears the brunt of the outbreak, which has yet to peak, experts say
By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Aug. 29 (HealthDay News) — One of the worst outbreaks of West Nile virus to ever hit the United States continues to expand, with 66 deaths and 1,590 illnesses reported as of Tuesday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Cases have jumped 40 percent nationwide since just last week, the agency added.
Cases have now reached their highest level since the mosquito-borne virus was first found in the United States in 1999, agency officials said in a Wednesday press briefing.
While almost all states have reported at least one case of West Nile illness, over 70 percent of cases have come from six states — Texas, South Dakota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Michigan.
The outbreak has hit hardest in Texas, where nearly half (45 percent) of the total U.S. cases have been reported.
“The number of people reported with West Nile virus continues to rise,” said Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC’s Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases. “We have seen this trend in previous West Nile epidemics, so the increase is not unexpected,” he added. “In fact, we think the reported numbers will get higher through October.”
According to Peterson, of the cases reported so far, 56 percent are what is called neuroinvasive disease, when the virus enters the nervous system causing conditions such as meningitis or encephalitis. The remaining reported cases (44 percent) are non-neuroinvasive.
“These numbers represent a 40 percent increase of last week’s report of 1,118 total cases and 41 deaths,” Petersen said.
These numbers can be somewhat misleading since most cases of West Nile are non-neuroinvasive and are mostly unreported, the CDC said. That means that the number of unreported cases probably far exceeds reported ones.
Neuroinvasive disease is the most serious for of West Nile infection and these patients usually are hospitalized, Petersen said. The size of the outbreak is based on these cases since they are the ones easily identifiable, he added.
The only states that have not reported cases are Alaska and Hawaii, he said.
“Based on current reports, we think the number of cases may come close to, or even exceed, the total number reported in the epidemic years of 2002 and 2003, when more than 3,000 cases of neuroinvasive disease and more than 260 deaths were reported each year,” Petersen said.
The reasons for a major outbreak this year aren’t clear, Petersen said. The drought in Texas may have played a role, but there were probably other factors as well, he added.
The best way to avoid the virus is to wear insect repellant and support local programs to eradicate misquotes, Petersen said.
There is currently no treatment for West Nile virus and no vaccine to prevent it, he added.
Speaking at the press conference, Dr. David L. Lakey, Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services said that, “As I look at the data, I am not convinced that we have peaked.”
Since last week, there have been 197 new cases and 10 more deaths in Texas, Lakey said. “Those numbers will continue to go up,” he added.
Generally speaking, 80 percent of people who are infected with West Nile virus develop no or few symptoms, while 20 percent develop mild symptoms such as headache, joint pain, fever, skin rash and swollen lymph glands.
Less than 1 percent will develop neurological illnesses, such as encephalitis or meningitis, and develop paralysis or cognitive difficulties that can last for years, if not for life.
People older than 50 and those with certain medical conditions, such as cancer, diabetes, hypertension, kidney disease and organ transplants, are at greater risk for serious illness, according to the CDC.
There are no specific treatments for West Nile virus; the greatest risk for infection with West Nile virus typically occurs from June through September, with cases peaking in mid-August.
And because reporting lags behind actual infections, “we expect many more cases to occur and the risk of West Nile infection will probably continue through the end of September,” said Petersen.
Although most people with mild cases of West Nile virus will recover on their own, the CDC recommends that anyone who develops symptoms should see their doctor right away. The best way to protect yourself from West Nile virus is to avoid getting bitten by mosquitoes, which can pick up the disease from infected birds.
30.08.2012
Epidemic Hazard
USA
State of Colorado, [Cimarrona Campground, Archuleta County]
In the first confirmed case of bubonic plague in Colorado since 2006, an Archuleta County resident has tested positive for the disease. The last human case in Archuleta County, which borders on New Mexico, was in 1998. It is believed that the person contracted the plague during a family outing in the Cimarrona Campground northwest of Pagosa Springs, but the investigation is ongoing, according to a news release from the San Juan Basin Health Department. The gender and age of the victim were not released, the paper reported. In 2006, Colorado had four cases of plague, all in La Plata County, Joe Fowler, a disease-control nurse with the San Juan Basin Health Department said. Most human cases of plague tend to occur in rural areas in two regions — northern Arizona and New Mexico and southern Colorado or in California, southern Oregon and western Nevada. One human case has been reported in New Mexico so far this year – in a 78-year-old Torrance County man who contracted the disease in May, in what state health officials called the nation’s first human plague case of the yea
Biohazard name:
Plague
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
A camper near Pagosa Springs has contracted bubonic plague. The Durango Herald reports that the person contracted the plague during a family outing in the Cimarrona Campground. The San Juan Basin Health Department did not give the victim’s age or gender. Warning signs are being posted in the campground, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports an average of seven cases of plague each year across the country. Most human cases tend to occur in rural areas in the Southwest. Symptoms of plague begin two to six days after a person is bitten by an infected flea, rodent or cat. The plague can be successfully treated if diagnosed promptly.
Ouest Haiti Department reported new cases of cholera as aftermath of the tropical storm Isaac, but Public Health Ministry General Director Guirlene Raymond sustains that so far the numbers do not match outbreak ratings.
Dr. Donald Francis, Ministry official on the matter, said the percentage of cases remain stable. Early July official statistics from the initial 2010 outbreak says the death rate climbed to 7,418, while the WHO talks of more than 42,000 new cases this year, blaming low budget and the rain season which undermines anti-epidemic efforts. The specialists think that enforcement and continuity of health promotional programs, access to drinkable water, sanitation and hygiene will stall propagation. US investigators suggested in June as source of the outbreak two distinctive cholera breads, not just one as they originally announced. Earlier studies indicated as source a microorganism -already reported in Asia- introduced by Nepalese soldiers working for the Minustah (UN Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti). However, a group of geneticists from Maryland University have found a new breed, seemingly of local origin and thought unable to stimulate epidemics. V. cholerae 01/0139 is part of the common populace in streams and lakes in the Western Hemisphere. It may cause diarrheas but only in very few cases. Just two percent of Haiti 10 million population has access to clean water and the majority defecates outdoors and in water sources like rivers and next to their homes.
Biohazard name:
Cholera
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
The epidemic of measles in North Waziristan Agency claimed the lives of two minor girls in Danada Derpakhel area on Wednesday while dozens of infected children are being brought to the Miranshah Headquarters Hospital for treatment. Talking to INP, Agency Surgeon Dr Mohammad Sadiq said that dozens of measles infected children have been admitted to the Miranshah Headquarters Hospital for treatment, adding that measles vaccine is not available in the tribal region to control the infection. “Around 40 children are infected by measles in three weeks that are brought to the hospital for treatment and two minor girls fell prey to the infection in Danda Derpakhel area of the tribal region,” Dr Mohammad Sadiq said. He said that health department should initiate measures on war footing in the area to control the spread of measles in the tribal region where vaccines of measles are short.
The agency surgeon said that not only from North Waziristan but children infected by measles are being brought from across the border to Miranshah for treatment, adding that scarcity of vaccines was creating problem in controlling the spread of epidemic.
Biohazard name:
Measles (fatal)
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
State wildlife officials believe hemorrhagic disease killed several deer in Calhoun County and the cases are being treated as an outbreak. There also have been reports of the disease in Roane County, said Jeff McCrady, a wildlife biologist with the Division of Natural Resources. “I think it is probably positive, based on the outward appearance of the deer,” McCradysaid. “…We are proceeding as if it is.” Samples of lung and spleen tissue from the Calhoun County deer were sent to the University of Georgia for testing. The testing requires fresh samples. “Seeing a deer two days ago in this heat is too late. … It is not easy to confirm,” McCrady said. The disease, which is transmitted by gnats, causes deer to hemorrhage internally and dehydrate. Infected deer head to water and more than one carcass found near water indicates the disease’s presence. “Usually multiple deer is an automatic trigger in our minds that it is hemorrhagic disease,” McCrady said. Hemorrhagic disease cannot be transmitted to humans but “it can kill a fair number of deer,” he said. “We probably have it every year somewhere in the state, it’s not like it is a real rare thing,” There is no treatment for hemorrhagic disease. Most cases appear in late summer or early fall, several months after deer are bitten. The disease’s spread stops when freezing temperatures arrive.
Biohazard name:
Undefined Hemorrhagic disease (deer)
Biohazard level:
3/4 Hight
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans, but for which vaccines or other treatments exist, such as anthrax, West Nile virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, SARS virus, variola virus (smallpox), tuberculosis, typhus, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, yellow fever, and malaria. Among parasites Plasmodium falciparum, which causes Malaria, and Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes trypanosomiasis, also come under this level.
A new virus, dubbed “Heartland virus,” is being spread to people by ticks common in the Southeast, the CDC reports. The only known cases are two northwestern Missouri men who fell ill in 2009. Ticks had bitten both men, but they did not get better after treatment with antibiotics. Tests later showed that the men did not have any tick-borne bacterial diseases. But CDC researcher Laura K. McMullan, PhD, and colleagues did find something else: a previously unknown virus in the patients’ blood. “This virus could be a more common cause of human illness than is currently recognized,” they said. The two men, one age 57 and the other age 67, lived on different farms. The first had only a single tick bite. The second said that over a two-week period he’d received some 20 tick bites a day. Both men had fever, fatigue, diarrhea, and low levels of blood platelets and white blood cells. The symptoms are similar to those of ehrlichiosis, a relatively common tick-borne disease that is caused by bacteria. The first patient spent 10 days in the hospital. Two years later, he’s still feeling tired and often has headaches. At first he had memory problems and loss of appetite, both of which slowly got better. The second patient was in the hospital for 12 days. Over the next four to six weeks he had memory problems, fatigue, and loss of appetite. All of these symptoms went away and did not come back over the next two years.The new virus is related to a tick-borne virus recently discovered in central and northeastern China. That virus, called SFTSV, causes fever and loss of blood platelets. The most common ticks in northwestern Missouri, where the two men were infected with Heartland virus, are lone star ticks. These ticks are found throughout the Southeast and up the Atlantic coast to Maine. No ticks carrying Heartland virus have been found. It’s not clear whether a person infected with the new virus can spread it to another person, or whether a tick bite is necessary. “Although these two patients had severe disease, the incidence of infection with the novel virus and range of disease severity are currently unknown,” McMullan and colleagues write. They warn health professionals to be on the lookout for people who fall ill after getting tick bites and who do not get better after antibiotic treatment.
Biohazard name:
Heartland Virus (new strain)
Biohazard level:
3/4 Hight
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans, but for which vaccines or other treatments exist, such as anthrax, West Nile virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, SARS virus, variola virus (smallpox), tuberculosis, typhus, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, yellow fever, and malaria. Among parasites Plasmodium falciparum, which causes Malaria, and Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes trypanosomiasis, also come under this level.
Bexar County sources are calling it an outbreak of Salmonella poisoning at the Bexar County Jail. But jail administrators will only refer to these cases as “severe food poisoning”. The outbreak happened inside the main jail facility downtown. The number of inmates affected is between 70 and 100. Four men were sent to a local hospital for treatment. And as of today, three out of those four inmates had been treated and released. At this point, the jail is working with Aramark to figure out how happened. But our sources tell us they are closely looking at meat the inmates were served late last week. Since last Friday, all of the inmates at the main jail have been given Gatorade to help speed up the recovery process. Metro health has confirmed they are investigating a foodborne illness situation and the problem has been contained to the jail. Jail administrators have not received a complaint in the last day. So, they do believe the problem has been fixed.
Biohazard name:
Mass. Food Poisoning
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
confirmed
29.08.2012
Biological Hazard
India
State of West Bengal, [Swarupnagar in North 24-Parganas]
A team of Animal Resource and Husbandry Department (ARD) on Wednesday visited Swarupnagar in North 24-Parganas to collect blood samples of dead chickens as reports of widespread deaths of poultry were reported from the area, triggering fear of an outbreak of bird flu. In the last 22 days, around 50,000 chickens have reportedly died in the four blocks of Swarupnagar — Baduria, Kakrasuti, Lakshmikantapur and Nayabandh. “I am closely monitoring the situation and the blood samples have been sent to Belgachia government laboratory for test,” said Chief Medical Officer (Health) of North 24-Parganas Susanta Kumar Sil. ARD Minister Noor -E- Alam Chowdhury urged people not to panic and said the government is prepared to tackle any outbreak of bird flu. “Yes, birds have died, but there can be a number of reasons behind it. We are prepared to tackle any such outbreak,” he said. Senior officials said if the blood samples of the dead birds are found positive of Avian Influenza Virus (H5N1) then it would be sent to National Institute of Virology in Pune for confirmation. Positive result from Pune lab would lead to beginning of culling operation within three days. Rapid response teams will be formed to carry out surveillance of bird deaths, said an official. Lime and bleaching powder are being sprayed in the area as a preventive measure. Leaflets containing dos and don’ts are being distributed. “We have started an awareness campaign in the area and asked villagers to dispose of the carcasses of the birds in a pit,” said an official. Villagers are being told to wear gloves while feeding their poultry or wild birds.
Biohazard name:
Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (H5N1)
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Alaska is known for pioneering, self-reliant residents who are accustomed to remote locations and harsh weather. Despite that, Gov. Sean Parnell worries a major earthquake or volcanic eruption could leave the state’s 720,000 residents stranded and cut off from food and supply lines. His answer: Build giant warehouses full of emergency food and supplies, just in case.
For some in the lower 48, it may seem like an extreme step. But Parnell says this is just Alaska.
In many ways, the state is no different than the rest of America. Most people buy their groceries at stores, and rely on a central grid for power and heat. But, unlike the rest of the lower 48, help isn’t a few miles away. When a fall storm cut off Nome from its final fuel supply last winter, a Russian tanker spent weeks breaking through thick ice to reach the remote town.
Weather isn’t the only thing that can wreak havoc in Alaska, where small planes are a preferred mode of transportation and the drive from Seattle to Juneau requires a ferry ride and 38 hours in a car. The state’s worst natural disaster was in 1964, when a magnitude-9.2 earthquake and resulting tsunami killed 131 people and disrupted electrical systems, water mains and communication lines in Anchorage and other cities.
“We have a different motivation to do this, because help is a long ways away,” said John Madden, Alaska’s emergency management director.
The state plans two food stockpiles in or near Fairbanks and Anchorage, two cities that also have military bases. Construction on the two storage facilities will begin this fall, and the first food deliveries are targeted for December. The goal is to have enough food to feed 40,000 people for up to a week, including three days of ready-to-eat meals and four days of bulk food that can be prepared and cooked for large groups. To put that number into perspective, Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage, has about 295,000 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and Juneau, its third largest, about 31,000.
It’s not unusual for states that routinely experience hurricanes or other large-scale disasters to have supplies like water, ready-to-eat meals, cots and blankets. But Alaska is interested in stocking food with at least a five-year shelf life that meets the nutrition, health and cultural requirements of the state’s unique demographics. That means, as part of the effort, trying to incorporate cultural foods like salmon for Alaska Natives as well as foods that would be more common in urban areas, state emergency management spokesman Jeremy Zidek said.
An estimated 90 percent of commodities entering Alaska are delivered through the Port of Anchorage. Air service is also a critical link to the outside world and generally the only way to reach many rural communities. A volcanic blast emitting a large amount of smoke and ash could disrupt supply lines by air and water for an extended period, Madden said, and an earthquake could knock out airport runways or ports. Those are just some of the disasters that might require emergency supplies.
Parnell has made disaster readiness a priority of his administration. His spokeswoman said he has experienced firsthand the devastation of natural disasters, including heavy flooding that knocked some buildings off foundations in Eagle in 2009, when he was lieutenant governor, and the Joplin, Mo., tornado last year. Parnell and his wife visited Joplin with members of the relief organization Samaritan’s Purse.
Madden said Alaska’s readiness is better than it once was and it continues to improve.
State officials have been working to encourage individual responsibility, with talks at schools and public gatherings. Emergency management officials plan to have a booth at the Alaska State Fair. A statewide disaster drill is planned for October.
Over the past year, the state has acquired or purchased water purification units and generators designed to work in cold climates, including units that could power facilities like hospitals, Madden said. Officials also are determining what the state needs in terms of emergency medical supplies and shelter, he said.
Delivery of the food stockpiles would be staggered over three years. It would be replaced after it’s used or expired, and it’s entirely possible that much of the food will never be needed. It is not clear what the state will do with the expired, unused food.
The project has a budget of around $4 million and hasn’t generated any real controversy.
Allen Geiger, enjoying hot dogs from a street vendor Tuesday in Anchorage’s Town Square Park, said he had no objections to the plan.
“It seems like an OK idea,” Geiger said. “The scale of it is not too huge.”
___
Associated Press writer Dan Joling in Anchorage contributed to this report.
More than half a million Louisiana homes and businesses lost power during Isaac and most will stay that way for at least several days, Entergy spokesman Chanel Lagarde said. As of noon Wednesday, 552,000 customers were without electricity, including 85% of New Orleans, Lagarde said. Entergy, which serves most of Louisiana, initially planned to dispatch 4,000 workers to repair the power lines once the storm passed. But with outages so widespread, the company said it will need 10,000 workers. Crews from power companies in 24 states, through mutual aid agreements, will pitch in, he said. “The one thing that’s really hampering us is that the winds are still here. The storm is just hanging around,” Lagarde said. “Looks like it won’t be until tomorrow (Thursday) that we can get out there.” Workers cannot go up in bucket trucks to do repairs until the winds drop below 30 mph. Entergy expects it will take “several days” before the company can restore power to most of its customers. The company will not have a more accurate estimate until the storm subsides and workers can assess the damage, Lagarde said. Lagarde also said the number of outages will continue to rise as the storm travels north through the state.
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(Reuters) – An unusual swarm of hundreds of mostly small earthquakes has struck Southern California over the last three days and shaken the nerves of quake-hardy residents, but scientists say the cluster is not a sign a larger temblor is imminent.
The earthquakes, the largest of which measured magnitude 5.5, began on Saturday evening and have been centered near the town of Brawley close to the state’s inland Salton Sea, said Jeanne Hardebeck, research seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey.
Scientists were monitoring the earthquake cluster, which continued on Tuesday, to see if it approaches the Imperial Fault, about three miles away. A destructive and deadly earthquake of magnitude 7.0 struck on that fault in 1940, she said.
“We don’t have any reason to believe that the (earthquake) storm is going to trigger on the Imperial Fault, but there’s a minute possibility that it could,” Hardebeck said, adding that the swarm of quakes was not moving closer to that fault.
The Brawley quake cluster, which is caused by hot fluid moving around in the Earth’s crust, is different than a typical earthquake, in which two blocks of earth slip past each other along a tectonic fault line.
After that kind of an earthquake of magnitude 5.5 or above, there is a 5 percent chance a larger quake will follow, Hardebeck said. But she added the same kinds of probability estimates were not possible with earthquake clusters caused by the movement of hot fluid.
“We understand them even less than we understand normal earthquakes,” Hardebeck said, adding that scientists do not know why a cluster of earthquakes will occur at one time rather than another.
The swarm led to jangled nerves in Brawley, a town of about 25,000 residents 170 miles southeast of Los Angeles near the border with Mexico.
“It’s pretty bad. We had to evacuate the hotel just for safety,” Rowena Rapoza, office manager of a local Best Western Hotel, said on Sunday.
There were two earthquakes on Sunday afternoon, one with a 5.5 magnitude and one measuring 5.3, Hardebeck said. Those were the largest quakes in the cluster amid hundreds of others, she said.
In the past, earthquake clusters have gone on for as long as two weeks, Hardebeck said. Before this recent cluster in Brawley, the last swarm of this size to hit the area was in 1981, she said.
Earlier this month, a pair of moderate-sized earthquakes both registering a magnitude 4.5 struck the California town of Yorba Linda within 10 hours of each other, but no damage was reported. Yorba Linda, the birthplace of the late President Richard Nixon, is 145 miles northwest of Brawley.
(Reporting By Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Philip Barbara)
The Gulf of California rift zone is a complex transition zone between the dextral (right-lateral) motion of the San Andreas transform fault system and the northwestward progressing spreading ridge complex of the Gulf of California segment of the Eastern Pacific Rise. The Gulf of California and its onshore extension, the Salton Trough (which includes Mexicali, Imperial, and Coachella Valleys), are located over a series of rifts in the Earth’s crust which are filling with sediment from above, chiefly from the Colorado River, and magmatic material from below. The Cerro Prieto geothermal field in Mexico and the Brawley Seismic zone in the U.S. are located above two of these rifts, and young volcanoes in these locations are evidence of intrusion of magma from below.
The volcanics in this exploration region are less then 5-million year old and associated with northwest folding, block- and thrust- faulting. Dacite is the most common volcanic rock, with a composition that ranges from basalt to rhyolite. The volcanic activity appears to be related to extension associated with the San Andreas fault system. The most recent volcanic activity is dated to 10,000 years ago. The heat source for the Geysers geothermal field is provided by a silicic magama chamber. Clear Lake Volcanic Field, California[1]
Assessment of Moderate- and High-Temperature Geothermal Resources of the United States[2]
(AP)—Aftershocks continue to shake the Southern California desert a day after moderate earthquakes knocked farming town trailer homes off foundations and shattered windows in a swarm that scientists say could last for days. There are no injuries. The largest quake centered near Brawley was at a magnitude-5.5 at 1:57 p.m. Sunday and it was widely felt from San Diego to Arizona. About 90 minutes earlier, a magnitude-5.3 quake shook the region. By dawn Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey website shows there have been dozens of aftershocks in Imperial County, the largest a magniutude-4.9 at 9:41 p.m. Sunday. There was also a 3.0 at 12:32 a.m. Monday. There was cosmetic damage to several 1930s buildings in downtown Brawley and 20 mobile homes were knocked off their foundations and deemed uninhabitable.
Hundreds of earthquakes have rattled Imperial County since Sunday morning as an earthquake swarm continued. But experts say the swarm does not necessarily indicates a larger temblor is on the way. Certainly, the weekend’s quakes were troubling for Imperial County, which is located in one of California’s most earthquake prone regions. More than 400 earthquakes have been detected since Saturday evening, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. One local family felt 15 quakes in 21/2 hours. But for all the ground movement, experts said there is no evidence the earthquake swarms were a precursor to much larger quakes on longer, more dangerous faults. And scientists don’t see any immediate signs of added pressure to the San Andreas fault, which is not far from the location of the earthquake swarm. That makes this weekend’s swarm different than what occurred after the 2010 Easter Sunday quake that shook up the California-Mexico border. The 7.2 quake appeared to have directed tectonic stress northward, toward populated areas in Southern California. Three months after the Mexicali quake, a 5.4 quake that centered south of Palm Springs rattled the region.Scientists said the Easter Sunday quake and its aftershocks triggered movement on at least six faults, including the Elsinore and San Jacinto faults, which run close to heavily populated areas in eastern Los Angeles County and the Inland Empire. For now, there is no evidence that this weekend’s swarm will trigger quakes elsewhere, U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones said. No deaths or serious injuries have been reported from the weekend’s swarm, but the shaking was sharp enough to postpone what was to be the first day of the school year in Brawley. Local officials reported 20 mobile homes shifted from their foundations and cosmetic damage to downtown buildings in this city of 25,000. The swarming of earthquakes has occurred before in this largely agricultural, desert region near the Mexican border. The so-called Brawley seismic zone, about 100 miles east of San Diego, has endured earthquake swarms in the 1930s, ’60s, and ’70s, but was quiet between 1981 to 2000, according to a report on the Southern California Seismic Network. In fact, some swarms in the ’60s and ’70s included “many thousands” of earthquakes, but the largest quakes during those sequences topped out at a magnitude 5.
“Swarms are fairly typical for this region,” U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Elizabeth Cochran said. The last significant swarm occurred in 2005, when the largest quake was a 5.1. After a few days of quakes, the shaking tapered off. Before this weekend’s swarm, in which the top magnitudes were a 5.5 and 5.3 on Sunday, the most powerful swarm to hit the region was in 1981, when the most powerful quake reached 5.8. There are a couple of reasons the Brawley seismic zone is prone to earthquake swarms. The area is at the crossroads between two different types of faults, Cochran said. To the region’s northwest is the more familiar type of fault, where the Pacific Plate grinds past the North American plate, with one plate moving northwest and the other southeast. But south of the border, the two plates are seeking to pull away from each other. (That movement is what created the Gulf of California, which separates Baja California from the rest of Mexico, Cochran said.) Sitting at the crossroads of the different types of faults makes the area particularly volatile, Cochran said. Another reason is the relative thinness of the Earth’s crust in that region, which allows naturally occurring heat from subterranean rock to rise closer to the surface, increasing instability. By Monday, the swarm appeared to be decreasing in frequency, Cochran said, although she didn’t rule out the pace picking up again. Previous earthquake swarms have gone on for days.
An unusual swarm of hundreds of mostly small earthquakes has struck Southern California over the last three days and shaken the nerves of quake-hardy residents, but scientists say the cluster is not a sign a larger temblor is imminent. The earthquakes, the largest of which measured magnitude 5.5, began on Saturday evening and have been centered near the town of Brawley close to the state’s inland Salton Sea, said Jeanne Hardebeck, research seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. Scientists were monitoring the earthquake cluster, which continued on Tuesday, to see if it approaches the Imperial Fault, about three miles away. A destructive and deadly earthquake of magnitude 7.0 struck on that fault in 1940, she said. “We don’t have any reason to believe that the (earthquake) storm is going to trigger on the Imperial Fault, but there’s a minute possibility that it could,” Hardebeck said, adding that the swarm of quakes was not moving closer to that fault.The Brawley quake cluster, which is caused by hot fluid moving around in the Earth’s crust, is different than a typical earthquake, in which two blocks of earth slip past each other along a tectonic fault line. After that kind of an earthquake of magnitude 5.5 or above, there is a 5 percent chance a larger quake will follow, Hardebeck said. But she added the same kinds of probability estimates were not possible with earthquake clusters caused by the movement of hot fluid. “We understand them even less than we understand normal earthquakes,” Hardebeck said, adding that scientists do not know why a cluster of earthquakes will occur at one time rather than another. The swarm led to jangled nerves in Brawley, a town of about 25,000 residents 170 miles southeast of Los Angeles near the border with Mexico. “It’s pretty bad. We had to evacuate the hotel just for safety,” Rowena Rapoza, office manager of a local Best Western Hotel, said on Sunday. There were two earthquakes on Sunday afternoon, one with a 5.5 magnitude and one measuring 5.3, Hardebeck said. Those were the largest quakes in the cluster amid hundreds of others, she said.
In the past, earthquake clusters have gone on for as long as two weeks, Hardebeck said. Before this recent cluster in Brawley, the last swarm of this size to hit the area was in 1981, she said. Earlier this month, a pair of moderate-sized earthquakes both registering a magnitude 4.5 struck the California town of Yorba Linda within 10 hours of each other, but no damage was reported. Yorba Linda, the birthplace of the late President Richard Nixon, is 145 miles northwest of Brawley.
Peruvian geologists have revealed that recent activity at El Misti signal that the volcano is active.
Last Thursday researchers at the Geophysical Institute of Peru (IGP) found that El Misti – located 17km outside the city of Arequipa – had recently recorded the highest amount of seismic activity than in the past five years.
Engineer Orlando Macedo told El Comercio that 224 earthquakes were registered at El Misti – an event known as an earthquake swarm – and which signaled that the volcano was no longer dormant.
El Misti, he said, experienced 143 volcano tectonic earthquakes, which were caused by the fracture of rock inside the volcano, due to sudden changes in pressure and temperature.
Despite the recent increase in activity, the IGP said there were still no conditions for an eruption to occur at El Misti, which last erupted sometime between 1450 and 1470.
For an eruption to happen, Macedo said, El Misti would have to experience continued earthquakes, which “would have to occur after long-term movements of magma, and causing these earthquakes known as tremors, with lava.”
NASA infrared time series of Tropical Storm Isaac shows consolidation Enlarge The AIRS instrument onboard NASA’s Aqua satellite has been monitoring Tropical Storm Isaac for several days. Shown here are AIRS data from Aug. 24 and 25 (top left and right) and Aug. 26 and 27 (bottom left and right). AIRS has been providing infrared data about cloud temperatures, and sea surface temperatures around the storm. Credit: Credit: NASA JPL, Ed Olsen NASA’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument is an infrared “eye” that flies onboard NASA’s Aqua satellite. AIRS has been providing the National Hurricane Center with valuable temperature data on Isaac’s clouds and the surrounding sea surface temperatures, and a time series of data shows that Isaac is consolidating. Ads by Google FLIR® Infrared Cameras – 12 Things To Know Before Buying An Infrared Camera. Read It Now! – FLIR.com/Learn-More The AIRS instrument has been monitoring Tropical Storm Isaac for several days. AIRS data from Aug. 24, 25, 26 and 27 showed Isaac’s movements through the eastern and central Caribbean Sea, across eastern Cuba and into the Gulf of Mexico. On Aug. 24, Isaac’s strongest convection (rising air that forms the thunderstorms that make up a tropical cyclone) appeared all around the center, except in the western quadrant of the storm. On Aug. 25, when Isaac was affecting Haiti, it appeared more disorganized, and the strongest storms extended from southwestern Haiti into the central Caribbean Sea. On Aug. 26, AIRS data showed the area of strong convection had increased and the largest area was over the Florida Keys, with bands of strong thunderstorms extending over southeastern Florida and the Bahamas. On Aug. 27, Isaac’s center of circulation appeared more rounded on AIRS imagery, indicating the circulation center was becoming more organized. Southeasterly wind shear and the larger than average wind radii, and entrance of some dry air had been keeping Isaac from strengthening more quickly today, Aug. 27. That wind shear is the result of an upper-level low pressure area that lies southwest of Tropical Storm Isaac. As that low moves away and the wind shear lessens, Isaac will have more ability to strengthen. Where is Isaac on Aug. 27? NASA infrared time series of Tropical Storm Isaac shows consolidation Enlarge NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Isaac on Aug. 26 at 18:15 UTC (2:15 pm EDT) when it was over Florida and Cuba and the MODIS instrument captured this visible image of the storm. Credit: Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team At 11 a.m. EDT (1200 UTC) on Monday, Aug. 27, Isaac was a strong tropical storm with maximum sustained winds near 65 mph (100 kmh). Isaac is expected to become a hurricane in the next day or two over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. When Isaac reaches maximum sustained winds of 74 mph, it will be classified as a category one hurricane. Isaac’s cloud extent is about 480 miles in diameter, as tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 240 miles (390 km) from the center. Ads by Google Doppler Weather Forecast – Upto-the-Minute Radar Maps Plus Forecasts & Advisories in Your Area – http://www.WeatherBlink.com Tropical Storm Isaac was located about 250 miles (400 km) south of Apalachicola, Fla. and about 310 miles (500 km) southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River. That puts Isaac’s center near latitude 25.7 north and longitude 84.7 west. Isaac is moving toward the west-northwest near 14 mph (22 kmh) and the tropical storm is expected to continue on that track, but slow down before turning to the northwest on Tuesday, Aug. 28. The National Hurricane Center expects Isaac to move over the eastern Gulf of Mexico later today, Aug. 27 and approach the northern Gulf coast in the hurricane warning area on Tuesday, Aug. 28. An animation of satellite observations from Aug. 25-27, 2012, shows Tropical Storm Isaac moving past Cuba and the Florida Keys and into the eastern Gulf of Mexico. This visualization was created by the NASA GOES Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., using observations from NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite. Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project Hurricane Warnings and Watches A Hurricane Warning is in effect from east of Morgan City, Louisiana to Destin, Fla., including metropolitan New Orleans, Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas. A Hurricane Watch is in effect for Intracoastal City to Morgan City, Louisiana. Tropical Storm Warnings and Watches A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the Florida Peninsula from Ocean Reef Southward on the east coast and from Tarpon Springs southward on the west coast; the Florida Keys including the Dry Tortugas and Florida Bay; east of Destin, Fla. to the Suwannee River; and Intracoastal City to Morgan City, Louisiana. A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for east of Sabine Pass to west of Intracoastal City, La. Heavy rainfall, gusty winds, isolated tornadoes and dangerous surf can be expected along Isaac’s path. For updates on local effects, go the National Hurricane Center website (www.nhc.noaa.gov).
Nearly 100,000 homes and businesses lost power after Hurricane Isaac landed in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Louisiana later Tuesday, local media reported. And among the homes and businesses being left without power, near half are in Orleans Parish, the reports said. Utility companies in the southwestern U.S. state on Tuesday morning started bringing in extra crews to help restore power in case strong winds bring down power lines. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu warned residents about the dangers of approaching downed power lines. “These are serious threats, as I have said many times, which can cause fatalities,” Landrieu said. State authorities have mobilized more than 4,100 troops, with 680 of them in Orleans Parish. A further 35,000 troops and almost 100 aircraft are available for mobilization, according to reports on the website of NOLA.com. The troops are assisting with the setting up of evacuation shelters, including a “mega-shelter” with about 2,500 cots in the inland city of Alexandria. Some 300 soldiers will work as bus drivers in Metairie, supporting the state departments of transportation and education. At a press conference on Tuesday, Luisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said the State National Guard posted 23 liaison teams with local governments, adding that 13 communications teams will deployed in the region, along with 921 security vehicles, 531 high-water vehicles, 40 aircraft and 74 boats.
The yellow dots represent the location of all of the oil rigs in the northwest Gulf of Mexico.
Oil companies scrambled out of the path of Tropical Storm Isaac, withdrawing offshore workers and cutting oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico.
By mid-day Sunday, the U.S. government said that daily oil production in the Gulf was down 24 percent and natural gas production was off 8 percent.
Isaac, already carrying winds of more than 60 miles an hour, was expected to cross the Florida Keys by late afternoon. The storm will likely pick up strength from the warm, open waters of the Gulf of Mexico and strike somewhere between New Orleans and the Florida Panhandle between late Tuesday and early Wednesday, the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
Noting that the storm was moving west and threatening to grow more powerful, energy giant BP evacuated all its installations and temporarily halted production in the Gulf Sunday. Earlier, it had pulled workers from its massive Thunder Horse platform in the eastern Gulf.
Royal Dutch Shell is withdrawing all workers and suspending production in the eastern Gulf. It is pulling out all but essential personnel and cutting production in the central Gulf.
Apache Corp., a Houston oil services company, is withdrawing 750 workers and contractors from its installations in the eastern Gulf. It is also cutting production of oil and natural gas. Other energy companies have also been evacuating their platforms and rigs in the Gulf.
Murphy Oil Corp., based in El Dorado, Ark., said Sunday that it is pulling out all workers and suspending operations in the Gulf.
Overall, oil companies pulled workers off 39 (7 percent) of 596 production platforms and eight (11 percent) of 76 Gulf oil rigs, the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement reported Sunday.
Former energy trader Stephen Schork, who now edits a report on the oil industry, worries that the storm will be a repeat of Hurricanes Katrina in 2005 and Gustav in 208, damaging Gulf refineries and pipelines and disrupting oil tanker traffic.
But Fadel Gheit, oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., says that the explosion that rocked an oil refinery in Venezuela on Saturday, killing 26 people, will likely have a bigger impact than Isaac. It could drive up gasoline prices and “further erode consumer confidence and derail (the) economic recovery.”
Tropical Storm Isaac, back over warm ocean waters, lashed Cuba with winds and rain as it swept toward the Florida Keys, where it was expected to strike on Sunday as a minor hurricane. The storm left six dead in Haiti, still recovering from a 2010 earthquake, and at least three missing in the Dominican Republic after battering their shared island of Hispaniola on Saturday.
The AIRS instrument onboard NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this infrared image of Typhoon Tembin southwest of Taiwan and Typhoon Bolaven entering the Yellow Sea on Aug. 26. AIRS has been providing infrared data about cloud temperatures, and sea surface temperatures around the storm. The purple areas indicate the highest, coldest cloud top temperatures. Credit: Credit: NASA JPL, Ed Olsen NASA satellites are providing imagery and data on Typhoon Tembin southwest of Taiwan, and Typhoon Bolaven is it barrels northwest through the Yellow Sea. In a stunning image from NASA’s Aqua satellite, Bolaven appears twice as large as Tembin.
NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies onboard the Terra satellite captured a remarkable image of Typhoon Tembin being dwarfed by giant Typhoon Bolaven at 0240 UTC on Aug. 27, 2012. The visible image shows that the island of Taiwan appears to be squeezed between the two typhoons, while the northeastern arm of Typhoon Tembin’s clouds extend over the southern half of Taiwan and sweep over Luzon, the Philippines, where it is better known as Typhoon Igme. Bolaven appears to be twice as large as Typhoon Tembin and has a visible eye. Tembin’s eye appears obscured by high clouds in satellite imagery. Typhoon Bolaven recently passed over Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan as it moves northwestward into the Yellow Sea for a final landfall later this week in North Korea. Clouds from Bolaven’s northeastern quadrant were blanketing Japan’s island of Kyushu, which is the southwestern most island of the four main islands of Japan. The Yellow Sea is an arm of the North Pacific of the East China Sea, and it is situated between China and Korea. On Aug. 26, NASA’s Aqua satellite captured both storms in one infrared image. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured an infrared image of Typhoon Tembin southwest of Taiwan and Typhoon Bolaven entering the Yellow Sea. AIRS has been providing infrared data about cloud temperatures, and sea surface temperatures around the storm. Both storms had large areas of very cold clout top temperatures that exceeded -63F/-52C) indicating strong uplift in each storm. At the time of the image, Bolaven was moving over the Ryukyu Islands. They are a chain of islands owned by Japan that stretch southwest from Kyushu, Japan to Taiwan.
On Aug. 27, infrared imagery from NASA’s Aqua satellite showed that Bolaven maintained tightly-curved banding of thunderstorms that were wrapping into a well-defined and large low-level circulation center. The center of circulation is as large as 550 nautical miles in diameter! NASA sees Typhoon Bolaven dwarf Typhoon Tembin Enlarge NASA’s MODIS instrument that flies onboard the Terra satellite captured this remarkable image of Typhoon Tembin (lower left) being dwarfed by giant Typhoon Bolaven (top right)in the Philippine Sea at 0240 UTC on Aug. 27, 2012. Credit: Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team Typhoon Bolaven in the Yellow Sea On Aug. 27, 2012, Typhoon Bolaven was moving through the Yellow Sea. Its maximum sustained winds were down to 70 knots (80.5 mph/129.6 kmh). Bolaven was located approximately 380 nautical miles (437.3 miles/703.8 km) south-southwest of Seoul, South Korea, near 32.2 North and 125.0 East. The typhoon is moving to the north-northwestward at 16 knots (18.4 mph/29.6 kmh) and creating high seas of 43 feet (13.1 meters). Bolaven is expected to weaken as it moves into cooler waters in the Yellow Sea. It is also expected to run into stronger wind shear. Bolaven is expected to make landfall in southwestern North Korea on Aug. 28. Typhoon Tembin Ready to Move North Typhoon Tembin completed its cyclonic loop south of Taiwan, and is now poised to move northeast and pass Taiwan on its journey behind Bolaven, into the Yellow Sea. On Aug. 27 at 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EDT), Tembin had maximum sustained winds near 65 knots (75 mph/120.4 kmh) making it a minimal typhoon. It was located about 240 nautical (276 miles/444.5 km) miles south-southwest of Taipei, Taiwan near 21.6 North and 120.4 East. It was moving to the east-northeast near 14 knots (16.1 mph/26 kmh). AIRS infrared data showed that Tembin showed an eye covered by central dense overcast, as correlated by the MODIS visible imagery. Tembin is expected to move north past Taiwan over the next couple of days, and track through the Yellow Sea. Tembin’s final resting place will be a landfall in southeastern China, near the North Korea border by the weekend. Provided by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center search and more info website
Today
Flash Flood
Pakistan
Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) , [Sudhanoti district]
At least 18 people, including eight women, are feared dead, while nine others were injured, after a passenger bus was swept away in a flash flood in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) on Tuesday. “Nine bodies have so far been recovered, while nine people have been rescued, from the sharp currents of Nullah Sair in the mountainous Sudhanoti district of AJK”, said the district police chief Sajaad Hussain. “The bus, with at least 27 passengers on board, was on its way from Palandri town to Anjaal Kot town when it was swept away in the seasonal nullah which had overflowed its banks,” said Shoukat Tabassam, a local resident and an eyewitness. Flash floods have become more frequent following a spell of heavy late monsoon rains in the northern areas. “Nine people, including three women and a child, were rescued and rushed to district hospital Palandri,” Tabassam said, adding their condition is stated to be out of danger. The deceased, whose bodies have been recovered, are all residents of Anjaal Kot town. Search for the remaining passengers continued till the filing of this report. The wreckage of the private passenger bus could not be recovered from the nullah till late Tuesday night.
Abuja, : At least 10 people were killed and 20,000 displaced when waters from a dam in Cameroon flooded some parts of the Adamawa state in Nigeria over the weekend.
State Emergency Management Agency official Shadrach Daniel Baruk said the flood was made more intense by heavy rainfall.
”Farmlands numbering thousands of hectares and cattle ranches were also inundated in the region which is mostly rural,” he said, adding that many persons were still missing.
Baruk said more than 40 villages were swept away by the flooding even as some houses were also destroyed.
He said that authorities in Cameroon had warned Nigerians living near Benue River to vacate the place because of the impending flooding but they refused.
Flooding is very common in Nigeria during rainy season and this year four persons were killed after a heavy downpour in Niger state. Another flood in central city of Jos left 68
people dead.
Nigeria has two seasons; dry and rainy.
Last July, torrential rain and flooding that hit Lagos led to more than 20 deaths, even as 2,000 persons were displaced.
Then, heavy downpour in the Island city of 15 million people triggered the overflow of canals with water pouring into residential areas and major roads.
Eleven of the dead were children who drowned in the ensuing flood as the victims could not distinguish between the roads and drainage channels.
Two residents walk among the damaged houses, suspected to be caused by a tornado in Vero Beach, Florida, the United States. The suspected tornado is believed to be caused by Tropical Storm Isaac. (Xinhua/Marcus DiPaola)
A tornado spawned by Hurricane Isaac touched down in the Gainestown area of Clarke County about 50 miles north of Mobile. Clarke County Sheriff Ray Norris said the small tornado touched down Tuesday afternoon. Norris said it did not cause any injuries and deputies could not find any structures that were damaged. He said the tornado knocked down some trees and power poles. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley mentioned the tornado at a news conference when he was talking about some of the early effects of Isaac on Alabama as the storm approached the Gulf coast. The governor also said there had been some flooding along coastal roads in Baldwin and Mobile counties. He said power had been lost on Dauphin Island south of Mobile.
In this photo from Sunday Oct. 23, 2011, tents are seen in Curry Village in Yosemite National Park, Calif. 2 people have died after contracting the rare rodent-borne hantavirus that might have been linked to their stay at this popular lodging area in Yosemite, officials said.
Photo: Ben Margot / AP
Another visitor to Yosemite National Park this summer who contracted the hantavirus while staying in the popular Curry Village has died, park officials said Monday.
That makes three confirmed cases, including two deaths. A fourth case, also reported Monday, is being investigated.
All four visitors stayed in Curry Village, a collection of tents and cabins at the eastern end of Yosemite Valley, over a one-week period in mid-June. Park officials are now contacting everyone who has stayed in the tent cabins since mid-June to warn them about the virus and advise them to seek medical attention if they have any symptoms of infection.
“This is being taken very seriously,” said park spokesman Scott Gediman. “We’ve been able to isolate the cabin area, we’ve done the thorough cleaning, we’re monitoring the area, we’re trapping mice and testing them. We’re making sure the cabins are shored up. We’re being very active, and we have been since the cases came to light.”
Hantavirus is a rare viral infection carried by mice and passed to humans by the rodents’ feces or urine. Most people infected with the virus suffer flu-like symptoms first, including fever, headache and muscle pains, often in the thighs, back and hips. After two to seven days, many patients have severe difficulty breathing and can die.
No cure available
Patients may not develop symptoms until one to six weeks after exposure. There is no cure or virus-specific treatment for hantavirus.
The first victim reported was a 37-year-old Alameda County man who died in late July. The second victim was a woman from Southern California who survived the infection. The third victim is a man who lives in another state and also died in July.
No immediate information was available on the fourth victim, who is expected to survive. Public health officials are waiting for lab tests to confirm that the fourth victim has hantavirus, but given the symptoms it’s likely that patient also contracted the virus in Yosemite, Gediman said.
Difficult to diagnose
Public health officials aren’t expecting to find more cases of hantavirus, but since it’s a rare disease that can be difficult to diagnose, it’s possible other victims may still be found, Gediman said. The two newest cases were reported to California public health officials only last weekend, although both victims had been symptomatic for weeks.
All four of the victims stayed in Curry Village’s “signature tent cabins” over a one-week period in mid-June. Curry Village has 408 tent cabins with wood frames and canvas sides; 91 of those cabins are higher-end, with more insulation and other amenities.
Gediman said contractors are currently making improvements to all of the signature cabins, including replacing the insulation and checking carefully for areas where mice could get into the structures.
“They’re doing everything they can to eliminate areas where mice can get into the cabins,” Gediman said. “This was never because the cabins were dirty, it was never because we didn’t take care of them. This is just because approximately 20 percent of all deer mice are infected with hantavirus. And they’re here in Yosemite Valley.”
Spread by deer mice
Hantavirus is spread primarily via deer mice, which generally live at higher elevations and, in California, are most common in the eastern Sierra. Lab tests taken after the first two victims fell ill confirmed that the hantavirus was present in fecal matter from mice trapped near Curry Village.
These four cases are the first ever to be reported from Yosemite Valley, although the national park has had two cases in past years, both in visitors to the higher-elevation Tuolumne Meadows.
There have been about 60 cases of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome reported in California since the virus was identified in the United States in 1993. About a third of those patients died.
Hantavirus
How it’s caught: Mice carry the viral infection and pass it to humans through their feces or urine.
Effects on patients: People infected with the virus may suffer flu-like symptoms, including fever, headache and muscle pains, often in the thighs, back and hips. After two to seven days, many patients have severe difficulty breathing. Death is possible.
To learn more: Anyone with questions about hantavirus at Yosemite National Park can call (209) 372-0822.
Cuba says a cholera outbreak on the island has run its course with more than 10 days since the last confirmed case of the infectious disease. A notice from the Health Ministry gives a final toll of 417 people sickened and three dead. It blames heavy rains and high temperatures this year for raising the risk of diarrheic diseases. The notice says the outbreak originated in contaminated water systems in the eastern city of Manzanillo, Granma province. Cases elsewhere in Granma, Santiago de Cuba and Havana were detected in people who had traveled from Manzanillo. The Health Ministryâs bulletin says ââthe outbreak is over,ââ but authorities remain vigilant.
On August 26, 2012, the extent of Arctic water covered by sea ice fell below 4.17 million square kilometers (1.61 million square miles), the record minimum set in 2007. Arctic sea ice stood at 4.10 million square kilometers (1.58 million square miles), the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA reported on August 27.
This image was made from observations collected by the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) on the satellites of the U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. Sea ice appears in shades of white and light blue, with white indicating the greatest concentrations of ice. Open ocean water is blue, and land is gray. The yellow outline shows the median minimum ice extent for 1979-2000—in other words, areas that were at least 15 percent ice-covered in at least half the years between 1979 and 2000—on August 26.
In April 2012, Arctic sea ice reached a near-average extent, but periods of intense ice loss in June and August 2012 helped push Arctic sea ice below the previous record from 2007. In 2007, high pressure over the Beaufort Sea and low pressure over northeastern Eurasia pulled in warm winds, which melted the ice and pushed it away from the Siberian and Alaskan coastlines. Although these pressure patterns also occurred in 2012, they were much less persistent. Nonetheless sea ice melt rates still reached up to 150,000 square kilometers (57,900 square miles) per day in 2012, more that twice the long-term rate.
By early July, Arctic sea ice melting was three weeks ahead of schedule, but then slowed somewhat. Ice loss rates picked up again in early August, “probably the highest in the record for that period,” according to NSIDC staff scientist Walt Meier. Because the old record has been passed in August 2012—and Arctic sea ice generally reaches its lowest annual extent in September—it is likely that the amount of ice cover may continue to shrink. NSIDC provides an overview of melt rates in its Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis blog.
Arctic sea ice reached previous record lows in 2002, 2005, and 2007. (The 2007 record low was previously recorded as 4.13 million square kilometers, or 1.59 million square miles. Slightly different processing and quality-control procedures used by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center led to revised estimates of sea ice extent.) Over the past decade, sea ice extent in the Arctic has been well below the 1979–2000 average.
The loss of so much sea ice means that when ice reforms over the winter, it is “first-year ice,” which is much thinner than sea ice that has persisted over multiple years. Joey Comiso, senior research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, explained that the loss of this multiyear ice contributed to record low ice extent in 2012. Another possible factor at work in the summer of 2012, Comiso suggested, may have been a strong summer cyclone, which broke up ice in the Central Arctic and dispersed it into warmer waters.
NSIDC director Mark Serreze differed with Comiso somewhat on the role of the storm. “The ice was already so thin it was ready to go,” said Serreze. “2012 likely would have set a new record without the storm.”
Once sea ice loss gets underway, it can become a self-reinforcing process. Because there is less light-colored ice to reflect the Sun’s energy back into space, more energy is absorbed by darker ocean water.
The new record low for sea ice in 2012 fits into a larger pattern of a changing Arctic. Regarding the rapid loss of Arctic sea ice, Serreze remarks, “What is perhaps most surprising is that we are no longer surprised.”
A meteorite the size of a golf ball exploded over South Wales last night, according to reports. At around 11.10pm, people across the UK reported seeing a bright light travelling across the skies which allegedly exploded near Cwmbran. Police said they were not aware of the incident, but dozens of Twitter users and people on meteor forum Meteorite News said the bright light stayed within view for between three and eight seconds as it travelled. Nathan Jones from St Athan, writing on Meteorite News, said: “After about eight seconds I lost line of sight due to houses. “I saw an object, I can’t specify what, with a heat trail behind. It was orange and white and very bright, and also seemed very close, not that I could see. “Never seen something so amazing in my life. It looked like it was skimming through the atmosphere due to the curved path it was taking.” Hannah Sabido said it looked like a “bright white ball with a long bright tail and possibly a green hue”. She said: “It became more orange towards the North East, giving off orange sparks before bursting out. “There was no sound distinguishable above background. It began brighter than the moon. It was first noticed as a very bright glowing light behind cloud, ravelling very fast.” T Doran, of New Brighton, Wirral, Merseyside, wrote: “We were on the beach walking towards the sea wall, facing the South East and it travelled from right to left across the sky. “It just appeared in the sky, then the view was obscured by the sea wall. “It was silent, a large orange and white globe with a long straight green tail.”
Wildlife authorities say a strong earthquake in the Pacific Ocean late Sunday destroyed more than 45,000 endangered sea turtle eggs on the coast of El Salvador. The director of the turtle conservation program for the El Salvador Zoological Foundation says the 7.4-magnitude undersea quake sent at least three waves at least 30 feet high up the beach and destroyed thousands of nests and just-hatched turtles. It also washed up on about 150 people collecting eggs in order to protect them in special pens hundreds of feet up the beach. The waves injured three. Program director Emilio Leon said that in the last year and a half the foundation has successfully hatched and released 700,000 turtles from four species at risk of extinction.
Biohazard name:
Mass. Die-off (sea turtle)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Hundreds of rats have died in the water-logged Walled City over the past few days. Not willing to take a chance, the district administration has sent the dead mice to a lab in Bangalore for testing. Nobody is willing to mention the plague word, yet, but residents fear the death of rodents is an ominous sign. Dr BR Meena, director of public health department, says his field unit is monitoring the situation on daily basis. “We have sent samples of the dead rodents for an autopsy to the animal husbandry department,” he said. “Samples have also been dispatched to a testing laboratory in Bangalore for interpreting the situation,” he said. Officials are wary of pronouncing a health scare due to the dead mice, but are on their toes after residents brought to their notice carcasses of pigs and stray dogs also floating in the rainwater that has flowed into the man-made lake. Local ward commissioner Kailash Mahawat says he has written to the Jaipur Municipal Corporation on the issue, but help has not yet arrived. “I have informed the CEO Loknath Soni on fears of plague in the area due to mass death of rats, but the JMC has not taken any initiative to clean up the lake or remove the bodies from it,” Mahawat adds. Talkatora Lake has around 1500 to 2000 people living around it. Water level in the lake is now eight feet high after recent spell of heavy rains. But, the lake has become a curse for the locals. “The dried-up lake was better on hindsight. Now we are worrying over the health risk it poses to our families,” Ramdas Agrawal, a sixty-year-old resident of Talkatora colony told us. “The odour coming of the dead animals floating in water is making our lives a hell; My wife lives in constant terror of our children falling to some water-borne disease,” says Rakesh Meena, another resident. Health director, BR Meena refuses a plague in the making, but admits the lake is breeding ground for seasonal diseases, particularly malaria and dengue. He says, “We are taking measures to ensure the dirty water in lake does not lead to spread of diseases in the area.”
Biohazard name:
Mass. Die-off (rats)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
confirmed
28.08.2012
Biological Hazard
Australia
State of Western Australia, [ Quobba Station, north of Carnarvon]
A man has been attacked by a shark off Western Australia’s Gascoyne coast on Tuesday afternoon. The attack occurred while he was surfing at Red Bluff near Quobba Station, 70 kilometres north of Carnarvon. The break is about 1,000 kilometres north of Perth. The 34-year-old man received serious injuries but was conscious when he was brought ashore. The Department of Fisheries says the shark bit the surfer on the abdomen and as he tried to fend it off he was then mauled on the arm. Rebecca Caldwell’s children were in the water when they noticed the man was injured, but she says they did not see the shark. “The water was full of blood,” she said. “He was conscious the whole way back though he was OK, he was good. “He’s in good spirits, as well as he could be.” Carnarvon Shire chief executive Maurice Battilana says the beach has since been closed. He has said it is in a remote area that is very popular with tourists. “Extremely popular surfing and camping spot and we’re probably in the peak season, very popular surfing spot,” he said. Police and the St John Ambulance were sent to the location and the man has been taken to Carnarvon Hospital. The Royal Flying Doctor Service is flying its crew from Meekatharra to Carnarvon and they will then fly the man to Perth for treatment. The RFDS says the man has serious injuries to his right arm and is in a stable condition. There have been five fatal shark attacks in less than a year off WA’s coast.
Biohazard name:
Shark attack (Non-Fatal)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Bolivian police on Tuesday confiscated two tons of uranium that was being stored at a building in central La Paz located near the U.S. and Spanish embassies. Four people, all of them Bolivian nationals, were arrested while they were transferring the uranium from one vehicle to another, Deputy Interior Minister Jorge Perez said. The radioactive material was in sacks of jute and nylon, he said. Since Bolivia does not produce uranium, Perez said, authorities assume the consignment originated in either of two neighboring countries that do: Brazil or Chile. The commander of the elite police unit that carried out the operation, Col. Eddy Torrez, said the seizure was the fruit of a six-week investigation. Police pounced when they learned the people in possession of the uranium planned to meet Tuesday with a potential buyer, the colonel said. Perez said one of the people arrested is an engineer who told police he was holding the uranium for other people, but provided no information on the owners of the cache.
Photo taken on Aug. 27, 2012, shows a storage tank on fire at the Amuay refinery in Punto Fijo, Venezuela. According to the local press, after two days of Paraguana Refining Complex’s blast, the fire remains confined in two storage tanks. The Paraguana Refining Complex’s blast at Amuay refinery caused the death of at least 48 people and left dozens injured on Saturday. (Xinhua/AVN)
CARACAS, (Xinhua) — Fire from an explosion at Venezuela’s Amuay refinery over the weekend, which has left 48 deaths, spread to a third fuel tank Monday, local media reported.
“We must announce that a third tank… is on fire,” said Oil and Mining Minister Rafael Ramirez, who is also head of the state-run Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) oil company, which operates the country’s biggest Amuay refinery in Falcon state. Full story
CARACAS, (Xinhua) — The number of people killed in a blast over the weekend at Venezuela’s Amuay oil refiner has climbed to 48, an official source said on Monday.
Stella Lugo, governor of northwestern Falcon state, where the blast occurred, told local Union Radio station that the number of fatalities rose from 41 to 48 over the past few hours.
Seven people badly burnt by the explosion are in stable condition and receiving treatment at a hospital in neighboring Zulia state, she said, dismissing earlier rumors that they died.
CARACAS, (Xinhua) — The number of people killed in a blast over the weekend at Venezuela’s Amuay oil refiner has climbed to 48, an official source said on Monday.
Stella Lugo, governor of northwestern Falcon state, where the blast occurred, told local Union Radio station that the number of fatalities rose from 41 to 48 over the past few hours.
Seven people badly burnt by the explosion are in stable condition and receiving treatment at a hospital in neighboring Zulia state, she said, dismissing earlier rumors that they died.
“We have been serious, transparent and honest in releasing the figures, we don’t release figures we have not confirmed,” Lugo said. State officials were monitoring the progress of the injured at clinics and hospitals, said Lugo, adding they would be transported to Zulia if needed.
A total of 33 families have been evacuated from their homes in the immediate vicinity of the refinery and relocated at Falcon’s Punto Fijo Naval Base as a preventive measure, since fires continued to rage Monday.
State inspectors have assessed the damage to some 520 homes so far, and found some to be totally destroyed, while others sustained only minor damages, said Lugo.
Medical reports said some of the victims suffered burns to 90 percent of their bodies, as well as multiple other injuries.
The explosion is one of the worst industrial disasters in Venezuela’s history and one of the worst to have occurred in recent years worldwide. It leveled 209 nearby homes and 11 businesses, and caused the largest number of fatalities at a National Guard post.
The Amuay refinery, 350 km from the capital Caracas, is part of the Paraguana Refinery Complex, which is the second largest oil refinery in the world and capable of producing 955,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
Venezuela is South America’s biggest oil producer and the world ‘s fifth biggest oil exporter.
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TEHRAN (FNA)- An earthquake measuring 3.3 on the Richter scale hit the town of Lali in Khuzestan province, Southwestern Iran, on Friday.
The Seismological center of Khuzestan province affiliated to the Geophysics Institute of Tehran University registered the quake at 08:02 hours local time (0332 GMT).
The epicenter of the quake was located in an area 49.2 degrees in longitude and 33.6 degrees in latitude.
Iran sits astride several major faults in the earth’s crust, and is prone to frequent earthquakes, many of which have been devastating.
The worst in recent times hit Bam in southeastern Kerman province in December 2003, killing 31,000 people – about a quarter of its population – and destroying the city’s ancient mud-built citadel.
The deadliest quake in the country was in June 1990 and measured 7.7 on the Richter scale. About 37,000 people were killed and more than 100,000 injured in the northwestern provinces of Gilan and Zanjan. It devastated 27 towns and about 1,870 villages.
Tehran alone sits on two major fault lines, and the capital’s 14 million residents fear a major quake.
ROLPA: Villages in Rolpa got up this morning to an earthquake to the 10 consecutive time, locals said.
According to local Jay Prakash Rokamagar, they felt the shake for at least 10 times till 9.45 today morning. “Villagers have been staying out in the open since the first tremor,” he said.
With the quake’s epicenter in the border areas of Rukum and Baglung, the tremor of the first quake was felt in Kathmandu at 10.15 pm yesterday for 23 seconds. Its magnitude was 5 on the Richter Scale.
The tremor, measured at 28.699 degree North, 82.693 degree East and 38.3 kilometre depth, was mostly felt around Rukum and Rolpa’s eastern region and Rolpa’s northern areas, District Police Office Inspector, Rolpa, Rupesh Khadka said.
Newly build Thawang-4-based Bir Balbhadra Higher Secondary School and two-storey hostel building of Thawang Higher Secondary School have been collapsed by the quake. After the incident, all the students were shifted to safer places.
Likewise, Thawang VDC’s health post’s wall and Area Police Office building were also cracked by the tremors, DSP Kedar Rajaure informed.
More than a dozen houses, including Thawang-8’s Dil Bahadur Pariyar’s house and shed, Ramu Pariyar’s and Utte Pariyar’s houses and Kureli-8’s Reg Bahadur Budha’s two storey house were damaged by the shake.
Almost all the people of headquarters Libang and Rolpa are said to be staying in open after the tremor of the first quake.
The details of the further destruction are yet to arrive, District Police Office said.
An increase in seismic activity at Tangkubanperahu volcano near Bandung, the capital of West Java, has been detected since 13 August and promted the Indonesian Volcanological survey (PVMBG) to increase the alert level of the volcano from 1 (normal) to 2 (alert) on 23 August.
Between 1 July and 23 Aug, 264 volcanic earthquakes were recorded, which is almost double to values measured during similar periods of time at the beginning of the year. In addition, pulses of volcanic tremor could be recognized.
Tangkubanperahu has 2 main craters, each about 1000 m wide and 400 m deep, filled by crater lakes, Kawah Ratu (queen) and Kawah Upas, respectively. The craters and lakes along with fumaroles and warm springs are popular tourist destinations. (It is recommended not to climb the volcano’s crater, which is a popular tourist destination in the area.
The last eruptions of the Tangkubanperahu were phreatic explosions in 1994.
Bosnian authorities put the entire country on red alert Thursday against a heatwave that has seen the Balkan nation bake in its hottest summer on record, the national weather institute said.
Meteorologist Dzenan Zulum said the months of June, July and August had been the hottest since measurements were first recorded 120 years ago.
In some places, the mercury has soared to 41 degrees Celsius (105.8 Fahrenheit) and temperatures in the capital Sarajevo have in recent days been about seven degrees Celsius warmer than normal.
“We predict a similar temperature for the next two or three days followed by a slight cooling from Sunday,” Zulum said.
Farmers say between 50-80 percent of their crops have been damaged in the heatwave, and water distribution to several towns has been disrupted.
Bosnia is also battling dozens of forest fires in the south and east of the country, with many hundreds of hectares (acres) of land burned.
Firefighters on Saturday managed to partially control a large forest fire that broke out on the northeastern outskirts of Athens, officials said. “I believe we are going well,” Pavlos Papageorgiou, a senior fire department officer, told state television NET. “The only front is in a ravine near the town of Afidnes, we are moving forces from other areas where the fire is under control,” he said. The fire broke out before dawn near Afidnes, clouding the skies over the capital’s northern suburbs with smoke and ash. It had earlier threatened an army camp and an industrial park in the vicinity. NET said a number of homes and vehicles had been burnt in the community of Drosopigi and that local residents had heard explosions before the fire broke out, suggesting that arson was involved. Traffic police briefly diverted traffic on the national highway leading north of Athens as a precaution. The same area had also been ravaged by fires in 2009. Greece suffers from a large number of summer fires usually aided by high temperatures and strong winds and are often attributed to arson. The Athens national observatory this week said the months of June and July were among the hottest on record. The worst disaster this season occurred on the Aegean island of Chios where scores of mastic orchards were destroyed by a fire burning for a week.
Flash floods and landslides triggered by heavy rain have killed at least 26 people and destroyed hundreds of houses in northern Pakistan, officials said on Thursday.
Chaudhry Abdul Majeed, the prime minister of Pakistan-administered Kashmir said at least 17 people have been killed and nine others injured in six districts since Monday.
“Some 685 houses and 125 shops have been damaged and roads washed away,” Majeed said, adding that a request has been made to the federal government for financial help.
Irshad Bhatti, a spokesman for the country’s National Disaster Management Authority, said the extent of the damage was still being assessed.
The majority of the deaths in Kashmir came when buildings collapsed due to the rains, and a further nine people died in flooding in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, officials said.
Adnan Khan, an official from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said he feared the death toll there could rise.
“Dozens of families have suffered and their houses were destroyed, several people are still missing” Khan told AFP.
Weather officials are predicting heavy rain in the next three days and rescue teams are closely monitoring the situation, Bhatti said.
Floods in Pakistan in the summer of 2011 affected 5.8 million people, with floodwaters killing livestock, destroying crops, homes and infrastructure as the nation struggled to recover from record inundations the previous year.
Florida’s governor declares a state of emergency as residents and tourists flee Key West. Storm preparations are under way all along the Gulf Coast. NBC’s Thanh Truong reports.
By NBC News and wire services
Updated at 6 p.m. ET: Tropical Storm Isaac was hugging the northern coastline of eastern Cuba on Saturday after claiming at least four lives in Haiti. Isaac should become a Category 1 hurricane on Sunday just as it nears the Florida Keys, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said, and then grow into an even stronger Category 2 storm with 100 mph winds.
Isaac “could be significantly stronger than currently forecast” once it enters the Gulf of Mexico, the center said in an advisory.
It will first sweep past southwest Florida and the Florida Keys, where “hurricane conditions are expected … Sunday,” it said in a separate update.
Isaac is a massive storm, with tropical storm-force winds extending 230 miles from the center. Key West International Airport was halting all flights at 7 p.m. Saturday until the storm had passed.
Tropical Storm Isaac is picking up steam as it barrels through the Caribbean. The Weather Channel’s Mike Seidel reports on the storm’s effects.
In Haiti, a woman and a child in the town of Souvenance were killed in the storm, a local official reported. A woman in the southern coastal city of Jacmel was crushed to death when a tree fell on her house, government officials said.
In the capital Port-au-Prince – where some 350,000 people are still living in tents or shelters after the 2010 Haiti earthquake – a girl, 10, was killed when a wall fell on her.
Power outages and flooding were reported as Isaac moved across the hilly and severely deforested Caribbean country.
“There’s a lot of rain, a lot of wind,” said Magdala Jean-Baptiste, who huddled with her frightened children in their home in the southern coastal city of Jacmel. “We haven’t had any power since the storm started yesterday. We passed the night with no sleep.”
Tropical Storm Isaac lashes the island of Hispaniola, killing at least three people in Haiti, where thousands still live in tents after an earthquake over two years ago. NBC’s Mark Potter reports.
In neighboring Dominican Republic, Isaac felled power and phone lines and left at least a dozen towns cut off by flood waters. The most severe damage was reported along the south coast, including the capital Santo Domingo, where more than half the city was without power.
Cuba prepared by closing beaches and evacuating tourists in vulnerable areas, NBC’s Mary Murray and The Weather Channel’s Mike Seidel reported from Havana. Flights across Cuba were also suspended.
In Baracoa, a city on Cuba’s eastern side, high seas began topping the seawall Friday night, Radio Baracoa reported.
Now with 60-mph winds, Isaac should exit Cuba on Sunday and then move south of the Florida Keys and into the Gulf.
Dieu Nalio Chery / AP
Residents wade through a flooded street in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Saturday.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Saturday declared a state of emergency to make sure local and state agencies would be ready. Republicans effectively canceled the first day of their national convention in Tampa, on Florida’s central Gulf Coast, deciding to gavel it open on Monday, then immediately recess to some time on Tuesday.
Gulf of Mexico operators began shutting down offshore oil and gas rigs on Friday ahead of the storm.
Tampa’s weather forecast includes rain and high winds Sunday night and into Monday, The Weather Channel reported. The winds could gust up to 60 mph.
The Weather Channel’s Bryan Norcross tracks Tropical Storm Isaac’s movement and predictions about where it is headed.
Monday and Tuesday include a risk of tornadoes across south Florida.
Officials were handing out sandbags to residents in the Tampa area, which often floods when heavy rainstorms hit. Sandbags also were being handed out in Homestead, 20 years after Hurricane Andrew devastated the community there. Otherwise, however, convention preparations were moving ahead as usual.
Isaac’s exact path is still unclear, but the hurricane center said models suggest it will make landfall somewhere between the Florida Panhandle and New Orleans on Tuesday night.
The storm’s anticipated path did shift closer to the Keys than previously forecast and emergency managers urged tourists to leave the islands if they could do so safely. A single road links the chain of islands to the Florida Peninsula.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Tropical Storm Isaac rakes the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba as it makes its way toward Florida, where Tampa will be hosting the Republican National Convention.
In January 2005, the storm Gudrun hit Sweden. It has been estimated to have caused an overall economic damage of 2.4 billion euros in Swedish forestry alone. But has there been more damage to the forest than was clearly visible? A recently published study by Seidl and Blennow shows that Gudrun caused not only immediate damage corresponding to 110% of the average annual harvest in Sweden from only 16% of the country’s forest area but also pervasive effects in terms of growth reduction.
In recent decades, the frequency and severity of natural disturbances by e.g., strong winds and insect outbreaks has increased considerably in many forest ecosystems around the world. Future climate change is expected to further intensify disturbance regimes, which makes addressing disturbances in ecosystem management a top priority. As a prerequisite a broader understanding of disturbance impacts and ecosystem responses is needed. With regard to the effects of strong winds — the most detrimental disturbance agent in central and northern Europe — monitoring and management has focused on structural damage, i.e., tree mortality from uprooting and stem breakage. Effects on the functioning of trees surviving the storm (e.g., their productivity and allocation) have been rarely accounted for to date.
Seidl and Blennow show that growth reduction following the storm was significant and pervasive in a 6.79 million hectare forest landscape. Wind-related growth reduction in Norway spruce forests surviving the storm exceeded 10% in the worst hit regions. At the landscape scale, wind-related growth reduction amounted to 3.0 million m3 in the three years following Gudrun. It thus exceeds the annual long-term average storm damage from uprooting and stem breakage in Sweden and is in the same order of magnitude as the volume damaged by spruce bark beetles after Gudrun.
Seidl and Blennow conclude that the impact of strong winds on forest ecosystems is not limited to the immediately visible area of structural damage, and call for a broader consideration of disturbance effects on ecosystem structure and functioning in the context of forest management and climate change mitigation.
An unusually powerful typhoon packing 250-kilometre per hour gusts is approaching the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. Okinawa weather officials projected that Typhoon Bolaven would be the strongest typhoon to hit the island in several years. The Japan Meteorological Agency said the typhoon was centered about 200 kilometres southeast of Okinawa and was expected to pass directly over the island by this evening, dumping as much as 500 millimetres of rain over a 24-hour period. Public broadcaster NHK warned that the storm’s strong winds could produce heavy damage and told residents to stay indoors and away from windows.
Six tourists died and more than 30 were evacuated after a flash flood that soaked a mountain ravine in Northwest China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region Saturday, local authorities said. The flash flood, triggered by torrential rains in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, hit the Leek Ravine in the Helan Mountain that borders Inner Mongolia’s Alxa League and Shizuishan city of Ningxia at 12 pm, Ningxia’s regional drought relief and flood control headquarters said in a statement. Nine tourists were washed away while playing near a waterfall in the ravine. Six of them were found dead by rescuers and the other three were hospitalized with injuries, it said. At least 30 other tourists were evacuated to the city proper for safety considerations, said Xu Dongtao, an officer with Ningxia’s fire prevention headquarters who led the rescue operation. More than 100 officers and fire fighters joined the search and rescue. The city government of Shizuishan warned citizens Saturday of more mountain torrents and landslides in the Helan Mountain this flood season
At least 15 roads in the Roanoke Rapids area became impassable Saturday morning after flash floods swept through the city following at least one hour of heavy rainfall, according to a Halifax County official. Authorities are asking all residents to stay in their homes and, if they have to drive, to never attempt to pass through any high water. A flash flood warning remains in effect for Halifax County until noon. One shelter is open in the city, at the T.J. Davis Recreation Center, 600 E. 6th St., authorities said. No injuries have been reported, said Roanoke Rapids Police Chief Jeff Hinton. He estimated that some streets are covered with up to 4 feet of water. Flooded roads were also reported in Northampton County. Rain, along with warn temperatures and partly cloudy skies, are on tap throughout central North Carolina for the weekend. The rainfall started Friday night in many areas, including Wake County. Temperatures will climb to the upper 70s on Saturday and the mid-80s on Sunday. Monday’s high temperature could reach the low 90s. Tropical Storm Isaac could end up having an impact on North Carolina later this week. As of 8 p.m. Friday, the storm had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph and was expected to make landfall on Haiti late Friday and could lose some of its intensity over the weekend, as it moves over mountainous terrain. “It may get ripped apart so much that by the time it makes its way into the Gulf of Mexico, it may have a difficult time to reorganize,” WRAL meteorologist Mike Maze said. The storm, however, is expected to strengthen again in the Gulf to a Category 1 hurricane, and if it does, that could mean rain for the Triangle.
Four school girls have died from an unknown disease at Khimna VDC in Palanta area of Kalikot district. Over 65 students have fallen sick due to a breakout of mysterious disease. The victims were the students at the local Kalika Lower Secondary School. Following an outbreak of mysterious illness, an emergency meeting of the school management on last Wednesday decided to close the school until the situation comes under control, said school principal Man Bahadur Budha. Principal Budha has complained that the District Public Health Office has turned a deaf ear towards frequent calls by the school management to take measures to investigate the causes of mass illness and take the situation under control. “The local health centers here are not able to provide even Citamol tablets for the sick,” he said. The locals have submitted an application at the District Administration Office and the District Education Office demanding that lives of the students be saved. Meanwhile, a man who, was found dead on the bank of a glacier at Phoimahadev Ward No-1 in the district few days back, has been identified, said the District Police Office, Jumla. He is Surya Hamal, 29, of Narakot-2 in the district. Mentally ill Hamal had left his home some two weeks ago, said the family source. His body was handed to the family today and his final rites were conducted today itself.
Biohazard name:
Unidentified fatal disease
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
Your child goes to bed in perfect health. The next morning she wakes up with high fever, malaise and bright red blisters erupting all over her body. Johns Hopkins Children’s Center dermatologists say the disturbing scenario has become quite common in the last few months, sending scared parents to their pediatrician’s office or straight to the emergency room.
Bernard Cohen, M.D., director of pediatric dermatology at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, and colleague Kate Puttgen, M.D., have seen or consulted on close to 50 such cases in the last few months and have received countless phone calls from scared parents and concerned physicians. Cohen believes this number may be just the tip of the iceberg with primary care pediatricians seeing the bulk of new cases.
Cohen and Puttgen want to reassure parents that most cases of the disease are benign and that nearly all patients recover in seven to 10 days without treatment and without serious complications.
“What we are seeing is relatively common viral illness called hand-foot-and-mouth disease but with a new twist,” Cohen says.
The culprit is an unusual strain of the common coxsackie virus that usually causes the disease. The new strain, coxsackie A6, previously found only in Africa and Asia, is now cropping up all over the United States.
The coxsackie virus strikes infants and children under age 5 in the summer and autumn months. Symptoms include fever and malaise and, a day or two later, a non-itchy skin rash with flat or raised red spots on the hands and feet and/or mouth sores. The new strain, however, behaves somewhat differently from its homegrown cousin, Cohen says. It carries a slightly higher risk for more serious illness and more widespread rash that can involve the arms, legs, face and diaper area. The new strain also seems to affect older as well as younger children.
“We’ve talked with many of our pediatric dermatology colleagues around the country and the number of cases and the severity of the rash is clearly new and different from the typical hand, foot and mouth disease we are used to seeing,” adds Puttgen. “The good news is that it looks bad but hasn’t actually caused severe symptoms for our patients.”
The new virus can also cause a rash that mimics lesions of herpes simplex virus, which requires treatment with antivirals.
“It can look like disseminated herpes simplex, and parents may panic if they don’t know what it is,” Cohen says. “But unlike herpes simplex, this rash evolves very fast. It’s bad for a few days and then gets better very quickly without any treatment at all.”
To reduce the spread of the virus, Cohen and Puttgen advise frequent hand washing and good general hygiene. Pediatricians need not refer patients to a specialist if they recognize the rash for what it is and if the child is otherwise healthy, they say. “If the child has low-grade fever, but is otherwise well, waiting and watching is appropriate,” Cohen says. “If the child is having problems with feeding or drinking or acting ill, it’s time to call the doctor.” Specifically, Cohen says, children with immune deficiencies, cancer or other serious illness should be followed closely by their pediatrician to avoid or promptly treat any complications.
The worst drought to hit the United States in at least 50 years does have one benefit: it has created the smallest “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico in years, says a Texas A&M University researcher who has just returned from gulf waters.
Less oxygen dissolved in the water is often referred to as a “dead zone” (in red above) because most marine life either dies, or, if they are mobile such as fish, leave the area. Habitats that would normally be teeming with life become, essentially, biological deserts. (Credit: NOAA)
Oceanography professor Steve DiMarco, one of the world’s leading authorities on the dead zone, says he and other Texas A&M researchers and graduate students analyzed the Gulf Aug. 15-21 and covered more than 1,200 miles of cruise track, from Texas to Louisiana. The team found no hypoxia off the Texas coast while only finding hypoxia near the Mississippi River delta on the Louisiana coast.
“We had to really hunt to find any hypoxia at all and Texas had none,” he explains.
“The most severe hypoxia levels were found near Terrabonne Bay and Barataria Bay off the coast of southeast Louisiana.
“In all, we found about 1,580 square miles of hypoxia compared to about 3,400 square miles in August 2011. What has happened is that the drought has caused very little fresh-water runoff and nutrient load into the Gulf, and that means a smaller region for marine life to be impacted.”
DiMarco has made 27 research trips to investigate the dead zone since 2003.
DiMarco says the size of the dead zone off coastal Louisiana has been routinely monitored for about 25 years. Previous research has also shown that nitrogen levels in the Gulf related to human activities have tripled over the past 50 years. During the past five years, the dead zone has averaged about 5,700 square miles and has reached as high as 9,400 square miles.
Hypoxia is when oxygen levels in seawater drop to dangerously low levels, defined as concentrations less than 2 milligrams per liter, and persistent hypoxia can potentially result in fish kills and harm marine life, thereby creating a “dead zone” of life in that particular area.
The Mississippi is the largest river in the United States, draining 40 percent of the land area of the country. It also accounts for almost 90 percent of the freshwater runoff into the Gulf of Mexico.
“These findings confirm what we found in a trip to the Gulf back in June, and also what other researchers in Louisiana have discovered, so there is general agreement that the dead zone this year is a very, very small one.
“But the situation could certainly change by next spring,” DiMarco adds.
“The changes we see year to year are extreme. For example, last year, record flooding of the Mississippi River and westerly winds in the Gulf led to a much larger hypoxic area, particularly earlier in the summer. We’ll just have to wait and see what kind of rainfall is in store for the Midwest over the next 8-10 months.”
A quick check of Hubble’s gallery shows just 1,300 images; however more than raw 700,000 images reside in a vast archive with hundreds of potentially jaw-dropping astronomical scenes just waiting to be uncovered. That was the idea behind the European Space Agency’s international contest called Hubble’s Hidden Treasures. And now with the hard work of amateur astronomers and more than 3,000 submissions, some of Hubble’s incredible celestial treasures are revealed.
“The response was impressive, with almost 3000 submissions,” the ESA said in a press release. “More than a thousand of these images were fully processed: a difficult and time-consuming task. We’ve already started featuring the best of these in our Hubble Picture of the Week series.”
The top 10 images selected in the Hubble Hidden Treasures basic imaging category. Top row: NGC 6300 by Brian Campbell, V* PV Cephei by Alexey Romashin, IRAS 14568-6304 by Luca Limatola, NGC 1579 by Kathlyn Smith, B 1608+656 by Adam Kill Bottom row: NGC 4490 by Kathy van Pelt, NGC 6153 by Ralf Schoofs, NGC 6153 by Matej Novak, NGC 7814 by Gavrila Alexandru, NGC 7026 by Linda Morgan-O’Connor
Credit: NASA & ESA
Judges ranked images from two categories, an image processing category and basic image searching category. Judges sifted through 1189 entries in the image processing category; a painstaking process of finding promising data and creating an attractive image using professional imaging software. But even if contestants didn’t have the technical know-how to create large mosaics and combine color filters, they could find stunning images in the Hubble archive using using simple online tools. The ESA received more than 1600 entries in this category.
“Every week, we search the archive for hidden treasures, process the scientific data into attractive images and publish them as the Hubble Picture of the Week,” says the ESA on their Hidden Treasures website. “But the archive is so vast that nobody really knows the full extent of what Hubble has observed.”
Josh Lake of the United States won with this awesome image of NGC 1763, part of the N11 star-forming region of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
First place in the processed category, which asked contestants to find promising data within the archive and process that scene into an attractive image, went to Josh Lake, from the United States. The image, which won the public vote, narrowly edged out other images. Lake produced a bold two-color image that is not in natural colors but contrasts light from glowing hydrogen and nitrogen. In natural colors, the two glowing gasses produce almost indistinguishable shades of red. Lake’s image separates them out into red and blue offering a dramatic view of the structure.
Messier 77 produced by Andre van der Hoeven, of the Netherlands came in a close second.
Andre van der Hoeven of the Netherlands came in a close second. The jury noted the impressive nature of Messier 77 in the image as well as the processing which combines several datasets from separate instruments to create the amazing image.
“This was my hardest job until now,” van der Hoeven says on the Flickr page. “Combining the different datasets to get equal colors was really hard. M77 was not fully covered by one dataset, so I had to combine channels of the WFPC2 with different wavelengths and tune the colors to get them to fit. But the result is in my opinion quite astonishing.”
We are as surprised as him that this image had not been released before.
Judy Schmidt of the United States entered this image of XZ Tauri, a new star lighting up a nearby cloud of gas and dust. She entered several images into the contest.
Third place went to an interesting image of XZ Tauri, a newborn star spraying gas into its surroundings as well as lighting up a nearby cloud of gas. The panel said it was a challenging dataset to process because Hubble captured only two colors in the region. “Nevertheless, the end result is an attractive image, and an unusual object that we would never have found without her help,” the panel said.
Revealing the challenge of many Hubble mosaics, the jury was impressed with the technical achievement Renaud Houdinet showed in putting together this ambitious view. He called this “The Great Mosaic Disaster in Chamaeleon. “Sometimes, things don’t turn out as they ought,” Houdinet admits on the Flickr description. Chamaeleon 1 is a large nebula near the south celestial pole and was not covered in one single Hubble image.
Robert Gendler took fifth place with an image of spiral galaxy Messier 96. You may know Gendler’s work as his version of Hubble’s image of NGC 3190 is the default image on the desktop of new Apple computers.
Top image caption: Top ten images selected in the Hubble Hidden Treasures image processing competition. Top row: NGC 1763 by Josh Lake, M 77 by Andre van der Hoeven, XZ Tauri by Judy Schmidt, Chamaeleon I by Renaud Houdinet, M 96 by Robert Gendler. Bottom row: SNR 0519-69 by Claude Cornen, PK 111-2.1 by Josh Barrington, NGC 1501 by kyokugaisha1, Abell 68 by Nick Rose, IC 10 by Nikolaus Sulzenauer. Credit: NASA & ESA
About the Author:John Williams is owner of TerraZoom, a Colorado-based web development shop specializing in web mapping and online image zooms. He also writes the award-winning blog, StarryCritters, an interactive site devoted to looking at images from NASA’s Great Observatories and other sources in a different way. A former contributing editor for Final Frontier, his work has appeared in the Planetary Society Blog, Air & Space Smithsonian, Astronomy, Earth, MX Developer’s Journal, The Kansas City Star and many other newspapers and magazines.
Italian researchers said a new strain of West Nile virus appeared to be spreading in the northeast area of the country. A new report from the University of Padua said the strain of West Nile first detected last month was different from the virus that caused outbreaks in Italy’s Veneto region in 2008 and 2009. Health officials in the area were urged by the researchers to increase their surveillance of mosquito-borne West Nile. West Nile has been appearing more frequently in the Mediterranean and Eastern European nations in recent years. The Padua study published in Eurosurveillance concluded the new virus had found a hospitable home in the area. “This shows that the virus is able to winter in wetland areas near rivers, where it probably has established its endemic cycle”, said Giorgio Palu, one of the authors of the study.
Biohazard name:
West Nile virus
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Poplar Island attracts hundreds of species of birds, from shorebirds to waterfowl to birds of prey. But some of them are in trouble. Avian botulism is sickening and killing some of the shorebirds and waterfowl at Poplar, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services one of the government agencies involved in restoring the Chesapeake Bay island as a wildlife sanctuary. This summer’s heat waves and lack of rain have allowed avian botulism to thrive on the island, where dredged material is being used to reclaim the island as a wildlife habitat, said Chris Guy, a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Chesapeake Bay office in Annapolis. Avian botulism is not harmful to humans but can cause lethargy and dehydration in birds. If left untreated, it can be fatal to birds. The concern started Aug. 2 when a black-neck stilt, a large black-and-white shorebird, was spotted with signs of avian botulism. In recent weeks, biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Maryland Environmental Service have collected nearly 300 sick or dying birds, mostly sandpipers and mallards. A total of 78 birds have been sent to Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research in Delaware for treatment. The goal is to eventually allow the birds to be released. Biologists think they caught the outbreak in time to prevent a large-scale loss of birds. “By recognizing warning signs and taking decisive action, we were able to keep the number of birds harmed by this event very low,” said Pete McGowan, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. More than 130 species of birds have been spotted nesting, feeding or resting at Poplar Island. It has a particularly robust population of cormorants, as well as many egrets, terns and ducks.
Biohazard name:
Avian botulism
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
Symptoms:
Status:
confirmed
25.08.2012
Biological Hazard
USA
State of California, Burbank [700 block of Screenland Drive]
Health officials are trying to stop the spread of the potentially deadly disease Typhus, primarily transmitted by fleas. “Murine typhus, which is a disease transmitted primarily by fleas, has been slowly increasing in Los Angeles County,” said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, director of the L.A. County Department of Health. “It is not an epidemic. We had a total of 38 cases reported last year. We’ve had 15 confirmed this year and another 17 that we’re investigating.” Health officials say people can get typhus when their pets come in contact with wild, flea-infested animals like possums, rats, feral cats and others. “And some of the fleas have moved from those animals to your animals,” said Fielding. If one of those fleas from your pet bites you, you could end up with typhus. Health officials say the symptoms of typhus are similar to a bad case of the flu: headaches, high fever, chills, muscle aches and more. Another sign of typhus is a rather large rash that can break out over your body. “The good news is when it’s diagnosed it’s very treatable with antibiotics,” said Fielding. At least one human infection had been confirmed so far this year in Burbank, and two have been verified in the San Fernando Valley. Another three cases are under investigation, according to public health officials. In Los Angeles County, 15 cases of typhus have been confirmed so far this year, while another 17 were still under investigation, according to Fielding. The latest infections are part of a trend in which county officials have noticed a slight increase in flea-borne typhus cases over the past five to six years.
[This event happened on 24.08.2012] An ammonia leak at the Pilgrim’s Pride poultry packing plant on FM 127 in Mount Pleasant Friday afternoon resulted in a general evacuation and sent at least 17 people to the hospital. The leak happened about 2:30 p.m. Friday at the plant. Pilgrim’s spokeswoman Margaret McDonald said that contract workers were performing maintenance on the plant roof when the leak began and the plant was evacuated. Titus County first responders provided oxygen and chilled water for the employees as they were examined. Folding cots were also provided for the employees described by the incident as the “walking wounded”. The plant’s cafeteria was re-opened to allow the workers get some relief from the heat; at least 40 employees took advantage of the air conditioning. Because of the large emergency response, FM 127 (Monticello Road) was closed temporarily to through traffic. McDonald says all workers taken to the hospital were examined, treated and released, and the leak was repaired by 3:30 p.m. The incident was formally terminated by Titus County emergency services at 4:10 p.m., although some first responders remained a little longer. TRMC spokesman Shannon Norfleet told the Associated Press says the examinations were precautionary and no serious injuries or illnesses were found.
A patch of oil reached the coast of Wellawatte, a zone of Colombo popular with local swimmers, the coast conservation department said. The national Disaster Management Centre (DMC) has said the slick is about 10 kilometres (six miles) long and warned that areas popular with tourists could be at risk. But the spill had not reached any such areas on Saturday and the conservation department said it did not pose a great danger. “The spill is manageable and the leak from the sunken ship had stopped from last night,” department chief Anil Premarathne told AFP. “About 10 or 15 people would be enough for this clean up.” The rusting 15,000-tonne Thmothrmopolyseara, a Cyprus-flagged carrier, went down late Thursday after remaining anchored outside the Colombo harbour since 2009 following a dispute over its cargo of steel, local officials said. The DMC said it had mobilised 500 volunteers, including security personnel, for a coastal clean up if the problem got worse.
Centre director Sarath Kumara said much of the 600 tonnes of oil from the ship had been pumped out before it sank and only a small residue remained aboard. The coast line from Mount Lavinia, a popular tourist resort just south of the capital Colombo, and Negombo, the first beach resort opened for tourism in the early 1970s, was at risk, the DMC said. The vessel had been detained by Sri Lankan courts following litigation over the cargo of steel valued at over $300 million, according to local media reports. It was not clear who owned the vessel. Sri Lanka’s merchant shipping authority director Ajith Seneviratne said they were ready to tow the ship away to a salvage yard in the island’s east, but were prevented by a court order against the removal.
A huge explosion rocked Venezuela’s biggest oil refinery early Saturday, killing at least 19 people and injuring more than 50 others in the deadliest disaster in memoryfor the country’s key oil industry. Balls of fire rose over the Amuay refinery, one of the largest in the world, in video posted on the Internet by people who were nearby at the time. Those killed included a 10-year-old boy, and at least 53 people were injured, Falcon state Gov. Stella Lugo said on state television. She said firefighters had controlled the flames at the refinery on the Paraguana Peninsula in western Venezuela, where large clouds of smoke were rising. “The areas that had to be evacuated were evacuated,” Lugo said, according to the state-run Venezuelan News Agency. “The situation is controlled. Of course they’re still a fire rising very high, but … the specialists tell me there is no risk of another explosion.” The blast occurred after 1 a.m. when a gas leak created a cloud that ignited, Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said. Some nearby houses were damaged by the blast, he said on television. “That gas generated a cloud that later exploded and has caused fires in at least two tanks of the refinery and surrounding areas,” Ramirez said on state television. “The blast wave was of a significant magnitude.”
Images in state media showed the flames casting an orange glow against the night sky. One photograph showed an injured man being wheeled away on a stretcher. Ramirez said oil workers will determine what caused the gas leak and were inspecting the damage along with troops. He said supplies of fuel had been cut off to the part of the refinery that was still in flames. Troops were securing the area at the refinery, Lugo said. Vice President Elias Jaua said on his Twitter account that the military was deployed to the area and that air ambulances were dispatched to ferry the wounded. The defense minister was traveling to the refinery along with Ramirez and other officials, Jaua said. Amuay is part of the Paraguana Refinery Complex, which also includes the adjacent Cardon refinery. Together, the two refineries process about 900,000 barrels of crude a day and 200,000 barrels of gasoline. It was unclear to what extent the explosion might affect oil shipments from Venezuela, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
A gas leak caused an explosion that killed at least 19 people at Venezuela’s biggest oil refinery on Saturday and wounded more than 50 in the OPEC nation’s worst industrial accident in recent memory. The deadly blast follows a string of minor accidents and unplanned stoppages that have afflicted state oil company PDVSA over the last decade, prompting critics to accuse President Hugo Chavez’s government of mismanagement. It was not immediately clear how the blast would affect operations at the 645,000-barrels-per-day (bpd) Amuay facility, which makes up two-thirds of the world’s second-largest refinery complex, nor for how long output might be affected. State TV showed footage of smoke billowing from the refinery as dawn broke, and emergency workers were on the scene. Stella Lugo, the governor of local Falcon state, said the explosion had also hit homes in the area and that a 10-year-old child was among the dead. “We are deploying our whole fire service team, all our health team, the whole contingency plan on the orders of Comandante Chavez to first of all care for the people affected by this emergency,” Lugo told state TV.
Located on a peninsula overlooking the Caribbean sea in the west of Venezuela, Amuay is part of the Paraguana Refining Center, the second-biggest refinery complex in the world with an overall capacity of 955,000 bpd. “A cloud of gas exploded,” Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez told state TV. “It was a significant explosion. There is appreciable damage to infrastructure and to houses opposite the refinery.” Both Ramirez and Lugo said the situation was under control several hours after the explosion at about 1 a.m. local time. “There’s no risk of another explosion,” Lugo said. Ivan Freites, a union leader at the Paraguana complex, said foam had been used to control the blaze. PDVSA has struggled with repeated refinery problems in recent years, crimping its capacity and its ability to fulfill ambitious expansion plans. Power faults, accidents and stoppages for maintenance have also curbed exports of oil products.
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Analysis of small, repeating earthquakes in an Antarctic ice sheet may not only lead to an understanding of glacial movement, but may also shed light on stick slip earthquakes like those on the San Andreas fault or in Haiti, according to Penn State geoscientists.
“No one has ever seen anything with such regularity,” said Lucas K. Zoet, recent Penn State Ph. D. recipient, now a postdoctoral fellow at Iowa State University. “An earthquake every 25 minutes for a year.”
The researchers looked at seismic activity recorded during the Transantarctic Mountains Seismic Experiment from 2002 to 2003 on the David Glacier in Antarctica, coupled with data from the Global Seismic Network station Vanda. They found that the local earthquakes on the David Glacier, about 20,000 identified, were predominantly the same and occurred every 25 minutes give or take five minutes.
The researchers note in the current Nature Geoscience that, “The remarkable similarity of the waveforms … indicates that they share the same source location and source mechanisms.” They suggest that “the same subglacial asperity repeatedly ruptures in response to steady loading from the overlying ice, which is modulated by stress from the tide at the glacier front.”
“Our leading idea is that part of the bedrock is poking through the ductile till layer beneath the glacier,” said Zoet.
The researchers have determined that the asperity — or hill — is about a half mile in diameter.
The glacier, passing over the hill, creates a stick slip situation much like that on the San Andreas fault. The ice sticks on the hill and stress gradually builds until the energy behind the obstruction is high enough to move the ice forward. The ice moves in a step-by-step manner rather than smoothly.
But motion toward the sea is not the only thing acting on the ice streaming from David glacier. Like most glaciers near oceans, the edge of the ice floats out over the water and the floating ice is subject to the action of tides.
“When the tide comes in it pushes back on the ice, making the time between slips slightly longer,” said Sridhar Anandakrishnan, professor of geoscience. “When the tide goes out, the time between slips decreases.”
However, the researchers note that the tides are acting at the ground line, a long way from the location of the asperity and therefore the effects that shorten or lengthen the stick slip cycle are delayed.
“This was something we didn’t expect to see,” said Richard B. Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences. “Seeing it is making us reevaluate the basics.”
He also noted that these glacial earthquakes, besides helping glaciologists understand the way ice moves, can provide a simple model for the stick slip earthquakes that occur between landmasses.
“We have not completely explained how ice sheets flow unless we can reproduce this effect,” said Alley. “We can use this as a probe and look into the physics so we better understand how glaciers move.”
Before 2002, this area of the David glacier flowed smoothly, but then for nearly a year the 20-minute earthquake intervals occurred and then stopped. Something occurred at the base of the ice to start and then stop these earthquakes.
“The best idea we have is that during those 300 days, a dirty patch of ice was in contact with the mount, changing the way stress was transferred,” said Zoet. “The glacier is experiencing earthquakes again, although at a different rate. It would be nice to study that.”
Unfortunately, the seismographic instruments that were on the glacier in 2002 no longer exist, and information is coming from only one source at the moment.
The image shows how the Caribbean plate is pushed to the east relative to the South American plate, causing the Caribbean Islands’ distinctive arc shape.
CREDIT: Courtesy of Meghan Miller and Thorsten Becker
The movement of Earth’s viscous mantle against South America has pushed the Caribbean islands east over the last 50 million years, according to a study published Monday (Aug. 20) in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The University of Southern California, in announcing the study, said the findings upend previous hypotheses of the seismic activity beneath the Caribbean Sea and provide an important new look at the unique tectonic interactions that are causing the Caribbean plate to tear away from South America.
The Caribbean plate is being pushed eastward due to a thick section of the South American plate called a “cratonic keel.” This section of crust is three times
Meanwhile, part of the South American plate is being pushed beneath the Caribbean plate, a process called subduction. Intense heat and pressure gradually force water-containing magma to rise into the Earth’s mantle and fuel the many active volcanoes in the region.
All of this pushing and pulling formed the distinctive arc shape of the Caribbean islands and has created a very complex system of faults between the two plates, in northern South America, according to the USC statement. The study mapped several of these strike-slip faults, which are similar to California’s San Andreas Fault.
Recent earthquakes in the area helped the two researchers develop an image of the Earth’s deep interior. The earthquake waves move slower or quicker depending on the temperature and composition of the rock.
“Studying the deep earth interior provides insights into how the Earth has evolved into its present form,” researcher Meghan S. Miller said in the statement.
For their study, the researchers used earthquake data to develop 176 computer models, USC said
Mount Tongariro volcano (New Zealand) showed some seismicity earlier today (see seismogram below). The activity can only be seen in Oturere and West Tongariro seismograms (close to the Te Maari craters). Below also one of the rara clear view images of Mt. Tongariro with a strongly steaming vent. N report from GNS science about the seismicity however. The Park service has announced that the trekking trails at Mount Tongariro would be reopened. A 3 km hazard and risk zone will remain in place for some time and might be further reduced once new information of the gas and ash composition is known.
According to INGEOMINAS, the Observatorio Vulcanológico and Sismológico de Popayán reported that during 8-14 August seismic activity at Sotará increased. The seismic network recorded 110 magnitude 0.2-1.6 events mainly located in an area 0.1-5 km NE of the peak, at depths of 2-6 km. Inflation was detected in the NE area, coincident with the zone of increased seismicity. Web-camera views showed no morphological changes. The Alert Level was raised to III (Yellow; “changes in the behavior of volcanic activity”), or the second lowest level. (Smithsonian Institute)
KVERT reported moderate seismic activity from Karymsky during 10-20 August. Satellite imagery showed a weak thermal anomaly on the volcano during 10-13, 15, and 18-20 August. The Aviation Color Code remained at Orange.
KVERT reported that during 10-18 August weak seismic activity was detected at Shiveluch. Observers noted gas-and-steam activity during 15-17 August; weather conditions prevented observations of the volcano on the other days. Satellite imagery showed a thermal anomaly on the lava dome during 10, 12-13, and 18-19 August. Seismic activity increased to moderate levels and hot avalanches were observed during 19-20 August. The Aviation Color Code remained at Orange.
Insivumeh reports 2 moderate explosions at Santiaguito (Santa Maria), Guatemala. The other Guatemala volcano, Fuego sends a white plume approx. 50 meter in the air and grumbles every 1 to 3 minutes. See also seismograms from both volcanoes.
Activity observed by satellites
VAAC reports still the same volcanoes which can be dangerous for aviation ; Sakurajima, Batu Tara and a very active Tungurahua
SO2 satellite imagery shows SO2 clouds at the following volcanoes : Etna, Kilauea and Nevado del Ruiz. Clouds of a number of other volcanoes are not defined enough to be sure.
A smoking Nevado del Ruiz yesterday – image courtesy Ingeominas Colombia
Some scientists say that questions over whether man-made warming is disrupting the Earth’s climate are diminishing Severely damaged corn stalks due to a widespread drought are seen at sunset on a farm near Oakland City, Indiana, August 15, 2012. Heatwaves, drought and floods that have struck the northern hemisphere for the third summer running are narrowing doubts that man-made warming is disrupting Earth’s climate system, say some scientists. Heatwaves, drought and floods that have struck the northern hemisphere for the third summer running are narrowing doubts that man-made warming is disrupting Earth’s climate system, say some scientists.
Climate experts as a group are reluctant to ascribe a single extreme event or season to global warming. Weather, they argue, has to be assessed over far longer periods to confirm a shift in the climate and whether natural factors or fossil-fuel emissions are the cause. But for some, such caution is easing. A lengthening string of brutal weather events is going hand in hand with record-breaking rises in temperatures and greenhouse-gas levels, an association so stark that it can no longer be dismissed as statistical coincidence, they say. “We prefer to look at average annual temperatures on a global scale, rather than extreme temperatures,” said Jean Jouzel, vice chairman of the UN’s Nobel-winning scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Even so, according to computer models, “over the medium and long term, one of the clearest signs of climate change is a rise in the frequency of heatwaves”, he said. “Over the last 50 years, we have seen that as warming progresses, heatwaves are becoming more and more frequent,” Jouzel said. “If we don’t do anything, the risk of a heatwave occurring will be 10 times higher by 2100 compared with the start of the century.” The past three months have seen some extraordinary weather in the United States, Europe and East and Southeast Asia. The worst drought in more than 50 years hit the US Midwest breadbasket while forest fires stoked by fierce heat and dry undergrowth erupted in California, France, Greece, Italy, Croatia and Spain. Heavy rains flooded Manila and Beijing and China’s eastern coast was hit by an unprecedented three typhoons in a week.
Last month was the warmest ever recorded for land in the northern hemisphere and a record high for the contiguous United States, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Globally, the temperature in July was the fourth highest since records began in 1880, it said. James Hansen, arguably the world’s most famous climate scientist (and a bogeyman to climate skeptics), contends the link between extreme heat events and global warming is now all but irrefutable. The evidence, he says, comes not from computer simulations but from weather observations themselves. In a study published this month in the peer-reviewed US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Hansen and colleagues compared temperatures over the past three decades to a baseline of 1951-80, a period of relative stability. Over the last 30 years, there was 0.5-0.6 C (0.9-1.0 F) of warming, a rise that seems small but “is already having important effects”, said Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. During the baseline period, cold summers occurred about a third of the time, but this fell to about 10 percent in the 30-year period that followed. Hot summers which during the baseline period occurred 33 percent of the time, rose to about 75 percent in the three decades that followed. Even more remarkable, though, was the geographical expansion of heatwaves. During the baseline period, an unusually hot summer would yield a heatwave that would cover just a few tenths of one percent of the world’s land area. Today, though, an above-the-norm summer causes heatwaves that in total affect about 10 percent of the land surface. “The extreme summer climate anomalies in Texas in 2011, in Moscow in 2010 and in France in 2003 almost certainly would not have occurred in the absence of global warming with its resulting shift of the anomaly situation,” says the paper. In March, an IPCC special report said there was mounting evidence of a shift in patterns of extreme events in some regions, including more intense and longer droughts and rainfall. But it saw no increases in the frequency, length or severity of tropical storms.
A wildfire burning on military land south of Fairbanks has grown to 42,000 acres, and smoke continues to cause hazy conditions. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports the Dry Creek Fire is growing because of shifting winds. The fire was more than 28,000 acres on Thursday, and spread 14,000 acres throughout the day. The fire located on land co-managed by the U.S. Army and the Bureau of Land Management about 25 miles south of Fairbanks. Air quality advisories have been issued. The fire is not being actively fought since there’s no threat to people or resources. However, that could change if the fire jumps the Tanana River. The National Weather Service expects winds to shift the fire away from population centers on Friday, when rain could also suppress the fire.
A Malian refugee pulls a jerry-can of water in Mauritania Enlarge A Malian refugee pulls a jerrican of water at the Mbere refugee camp on May 3, 2012, near Bassiknou, southern Mauritania. The worst effects of drought could be avoided if countries had a disaster management plan to confront the problem, the UN World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday. The worst effects of drought could be avoided if countries had a disaster management plan to confront the problem, the UN World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday.
With world food prices 6 percent higher now than at the start of the year and approaching the 2010 record, “it’s time for countries affected by drought to move towards developing a policy”, said Mannava Sivakumar, director of the WMO’s Climate Prediction and Adaptation Branch. Such a global approach would also help counter the “major impact” of El Nino, said Sivakumar, in reference to the weather system credited with causing dry conditions in countries including Australia, India and much of east Africa, and flooding in Latin American countries. Initial forecasts for El Nino show that water temperatures in the Pacific are likely to be warmer than normal for September and October, he said, echoing recent Japanese meteorological research that the phenomenon is likely to last until winter in the northern hemisphere. “If it continues through the winter months there could be some consequences but we will carefully monitor (them),” said Sivakumar. Despite repeated droughts throughout human history and their long-term impact compared with other natural disasters, Australia is the only country in the world to develop a risk management policy for drought, Sivakumar said. “To fill the existing vacuum in virtually every nation (for drought management)” the WMO is to host a high-level meeting on national drought policies in Geneva next March, the UN agency said in a statement. Such measures would include better drought monitoring by countries, implementing early-warning systems and most importantly putting in place an “effective system to help the poorest of the poor”, Sivakumar said. Communicating the information to largely uneducated rural farming communities was essential, said Sivakumar, since this would enable them to avoid the worst effects of droughts by taking measures such as thinning crops to reduce the overall water requirement. This would ensure that they would have “some crop instead of no crop”, said Sivakumar.
This NOAA GOES-13 satellite image taken on Aug. 21 at 7:45 a.m. EDT shows three of the four tropical systems being watched in the Atlantic Ocean basin. From left to right are: System 95L, Tropical Depression 9 and System 96L. Post-tropical Storm Gordon is just beyond the horizon. Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project.
The Atlantic Ocean is kicking into high gear with low pressure areas that have a chance at becoming tropical depressions, storms and hurricanes. Satellite imagery from NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites have provided visible, infrared and microwave data on four low pressure areas. In addition, NASA’s GOES Project has been producing imagery of all systems using NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite to see post-Tropical Storm Gordon, Tropical Depression 9, and Systems 95L and 96L.
Tropical Storm Gordon is no longer a tropical storm and is fizzling out east of the Azores. Tropical Depression 9 was born on Aug. 20 and continues to get organized. Behind Tropical Depression 9 in the eastern Atlantic is another low pressure area called System 96L. In the Gulf of Mexico lies another low, called System 95L.
In an image taken from NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite on Aug. 21 at 7:45 a.m. EDT, all of the systems were visible except for post-tropical Storm Gordon. The storms are seen lined up along the Atlantic basin from left to right with System 95L in the Gulf of Mexico, Tropical Depression 9 just east of the Caribbean Sea and System 96L in the eastern Atlantic Ocean.
NOAA manages the GOES-13 satellite, and NASA’s GOES Project uses the data to create images and animations out of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Tropical Depression 9 On Aug. 20 at 0435 UTC (12:35 a.m. EDT) before System 94L organized into Tropical Storm 9, NASA’s Aqua satellite passed overhead, and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured an infrared image of the storm.
It showed that the strongest convection (rising air that forms the thunderstorms that make up the tropical cyclone) were located south of the center of circulation.
Those thunderstorms had cold cloud top temperatures of -63 Fahrenheit (-52 Celsius) that indicated there was strong uplift in the low pressure area, and were an indication that the system could strengthen, which it did later into a depression.
Tropical Depression 9 has been the cause for tropical storm warning posts in a number of islands. On Aug. 21, a Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for Dominica, Guadeloupe, Desirade, Les Saintes, Marie Galante, and St. Martin.
TD9 appears as a rounded storm on the GOES-13 satellite image from Aug. 21. In the image, low pressure area “System 96L” trails to the southwest of TD9.
On Aug. 21 at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 UTC) Tropical Depression 9 (TD9) had maximum sustained winds near 35 mph (55 kmh) and is expected to strengthen into a tropical storm later [today]. It was located about 645 miles (1,035 km) east of Guadeloupe near latitude 15.1 north and longitude 51.8 west. TD90 is moving toward the west near 20 mph (32 kmh) and is expected to continue moving in that direction for the next couple of days, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).
NHC said that the cyclone should move through the central Lesser Antilles on Wed., Aug. 22 and move into the Caribbean Sea the next day. NHC expects rainfall between 4 and 8 inches to affect the northern Windward and the Leeward Islands, accompanied by heavy surf and rip tides. System 96L in Eastern Atlantic
System 96L appears well-defined on the GOES-13 satellite imagery. It is associated with a tropical wave, and is spinning about 425 miles southwest of the Cape Verde Islands. The NHC said that System 96L could very well become the tenth tropical depression of the Atlantic Hurricane Season in the next day or two. It is moving to the west at 15 mph.
System 95L Struggles in the Gulf of Mexico The eastern-most low pressure area in the Atlantic Ocean basin is System 95L, located in the western Gulf of Mexico. It is producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms just off-shore of the northeastern coast of Mexico. The low-level center of circulation is also elongated, which is a bad sign for a tropical cyclone trying to organize. Tropical cyclones need a strong, rounded circulation to strengthen.
The NHC noted that slow development is still possible before System 95L moves inland in northeastern Mexico later in the day on Wed. Aug 21. The system has a 30 percent chance of developing before that happens. Once inland, its chances for development are greatly reduced because it will be cut off from its life-giving warm water supply.
Tropical Storm Gordon is History On Monday, August 20, satellite imagery and surface data revealed that Tropical Storm Gordon lost his tropical characteristics, making it a post-tropical cyclone. According to Reuters news, Gordon caused some power outages, fallen trees and minor flooding.
The National Hurricane Center issued their final advisory on Gordon on August 20 at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 UTC). At that time, Gordon still had maximum sustained winds near 45 mph (75 kmh) and was weakening.
Gordon was about 370 miles (595 km) east-northeast of the Azores, near latitude 39.2 north and longitude 20.3 west. Gordon was moving east-northeast near 16 mph (26 kmh) and was expected to turn southeast while weakening further. Gordon is expected to dissipate in a couple of days east of Portugal.
Over the past 10,000 years, climate changes in the Dead Sea region have led to surprisingly swift desertification within mere decades. This is what researchers from the University of Bonn and their Israeli colleagues found when analyzing pollen in sediments and fluctuations in sea levels, calling the findings ‘dramatic.’ They are presented in the current issue of the international geosciences journal Quaternary Science Reviews, whose print version is published on 23 August.
The Dead Sea, a salt sea without an outlet, lies over 400 meters below sea level. Tourists like its high salt content because it increases their buoyancy. “For scientists, however, the Dead Sea is a popular archive that provides a diachronic view of its climate past,” says Prof. Dr. Thomas Litt from the Steinmann-Institute for Geology, Mineralogy and Paleontology at the University of Bonn. Using drilling cores from riparian lake sediments, paleontologists and meteorologists from the University of Bonn deduced the climate conditions of the past 10,000 years. This became possible because the Dead Sea level has sunk drastically over the past years, mostly because of increasing water withdrawals lowering the water supply. Oldest pollen analysis In collaboration with the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (German Research Centre for Geosciences) and Israel’s Geological Service, the researchers took a 21 m long sediment sample in the oasis Ein Gedi at the west bank of the Dead Sea. They then matched the fossil pollen to indicator plants for different levels of precipitation and temperature. Radiocarbon-dating was used to determine the age of the layers. “This allowed us to reconstruct the climate of the entire postglacial era,” Prof. Litt reports. “This is the oldest pollen analysis that has been done on the Dead Sea to date.” In total, there were three different formations of vegetation around this salt sea. In moist phases, a lush, sclerophyll vegetation thrived as can be found today around the Mediterranean Sea. When the climate turned drier, steppe vegetation took over. Drier episodes yet were characterized by desert plants. The researchers found some rapid changes between moist and dry phases.
Transforming pollen data into climate information The pollen data allows inferring what kinds of plants were growing at the corresponding times. Meteorologists from the University of Bonn took this paleontological data and converted it into climate information. Using statistical methods, they matched plant species with statistical parameters regarding temperature and precipitation that determine whether a certain plant can occur. “This allows us to make statements on the probable climate that prevailed during a certain period of time within the catchment area of the Dead Sea,” reports Prof. Dr. Andreas Hense from the University of Bonn’s Meteorological Institute. The resilience of the resulting climate information was tested using the data on Dead Sea level fluctuations collected by their Israeli colleagues around Prof. Dr. Mordechai Stein from the Geological Services in Jerusalem. “The two independent data records corresponded very closely,” explains Prof. Litt. “In the moist phases that were determined based on pollen analysis, our Israeli colleagues found that water levels were indeed rising in the Dead Sea, while they fell during dry episodes.” This is plausible since the water level of a terminal lake without an outlet is exclusively determined by precipitation and evaporation. Droughts led to the biblical exodus According to the Bonn researchers’ data, there were distinct dry phases particularly during the pottery Neolithic (about 7,500 to 6,500 years ago), as well as at the transition from the late Bronze Age to the early Iron Age (about 3,200 years ago). “Humans were also strongly affected by these climate changes,” Prof. Litt summarizes the effects. The dry phases might have resulted in the Canaanites’ urban culture collapsing while nomads invaded their area. “At least, this is what the Old Testament refers to as the exodus of the Israelites to the Promised Land.” Dramatic results In addition, this look back allows developing scenarios for potential future trends. “Our results are dramatic; they indicate how vulnerable the Dead Sea ecosystems are,” says Prof. Litt. “They clearly show how surprisingly fast lush Mediterranean sclerophyll vegetation can morph into steppe or even desert vegetation within a few decades if it becomes drier.” Back then, the consequences in terms of agriculture and feeding the population were most likely devastating. The researchers want to probe even further back into the climate past of the region around the Dead Sea by drilling even deeper. More information: Holocene climate variability in the Levant from the Dead Sea pollen record, Quaternary Science Reviews 49 (August 2012), dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2012.06.012 Journal reference: Quaternary Science Reviews search and more info website Provided by University of Bonn search and more info website
Ice melts next to the village of Ny-Aalesundin Norway in 2009. The Arctic ice cap is melting at a startlingly rapid rate and may shrink to its smallest-ever level within weeks as the planet’s temperatures rise, US scientists said Tuesday. The Arctic ice cap is melting at a startlingly rapid rate and may shrink to its smallest-ever level within weeks as the planet’s temperatures rise, US scientists said Tuesday.
Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder said that the summer ice in the Arctic was already nearing its lowest level recorded, even though the summer melt season is not yet over. “The numbers are coming in and we are looking at them with a sense of amazement,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the university. “If the melt were to just suddenly stop today, we would be at the third lowest in the satellite record. We’ve still got another two weeks of melt to go, so I think we’re very likely to set a new record,” he told AFP. The previous record was set in 2007 when the ice cap shrunk to 4.25 million square kilometers (1.64 million square miles), stunning scientists who had not forecast such a drastic melt so soon. The Colorado-based center said that one potential factor could be an Arctic cyclone earlier this month. However, Serreze played down the effects of the cyclone and said that this year’s melt was all the more remarkable because of the lack of special weather factors seen in 2007. Serreze said that the extensive melt was in line with the effects of global warming, with the ice being hit by a double whammy of rising temperatures in the atmosphere and warmer oceans. “The ice now is so thin in the spring just because of the general pattern of warming that large parts of the pack ice just can’t survive the summer melt season anymore,” he said. Russia’s Roshydromet environmental agency also reported earlier this month that the Arctic melt was reaching record levels. Several studies have predicted that the cap in the summer could melt completely in coming decades. The thaw in the Arctic is rapidly transforming the geopolitics of the region, with the long forbidding ocean looking more attractive to the shipping and energy industries.
Five nations surround the Arctic Ocean — Russia, which has about half of the coastline, along with Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States — but the route could see a growing number of commercial players. The first ship from China — the Xuelong, or Snow Dragon — recently sailed from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the Arctic Ocean, cutting the distance by more than 40 percent. Egill Thor Nielsson, an Icelandic scientist who participated in the expedition, said last week in Reykjavik that he expected China to be increasingly interested in the route as it was relatively easy to sail. But the rapid melt affects local people’s lifestyles and scientists warn of serious consequences for the rest of the planet. The Arctic ice cap serves a vital function by reflecting light and hence keeping the earth cool. Serreze said it was possible that the rapid melt was a factor in severe storms witnessed in recent years in the United States and elsewhere as it changed the nature of the planet’s temperature gradients. The planet has charted a slew of record temperatures in recent years. In the continental United States, July was the hottest ever recorded with temperatures 3.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.8 Celsius) higher than the average in the 20th century, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Most scientists believe that carbon emissions from industry cause global warming. Efforts to control the gases have encountered resistance in a number of countries, with some lawmakers in the United States questioning the science.
Virginia’s largest city may get up to 45,000 acres smaller over the next century, due to an anticipated 2.3 to 5.2 feet of relative sea-level rise expected in Virginia Beach – a rise that would also impact the entire Hampton Roads region and the Eastern Shore. Recognizing the challenges this will pose, the University of Virginia’s Institute for Environmental Negotiation is assisting citizens and decision-makers in long-range planning. Under director Frank Dukes, associate director Tanya Denckla Cobb and graduate associate Melissa Keywood – all from U.Va.’s School of Architecture – the institute is working to develop awareness of, and strategies to face, rising sea levels. Beginning in March 2011, the institute established partnerships with the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, Wetlands Watch and the city of Virginia Beach to host four listening sessions for Hampton Roads and Eastern Shore citizens to share their experiences of sea-level rise and ideas for confronting it. Following these gatherings, the institute has been working with its partners to synthesize its findings and develop recommendations for action. Later this week, it will release a report on a May 9 session in Virginia Beach, at which the institute facilitated a meeting of a diverse group of 15 regional stakeholders. There, the project partners sorted through 56 potential policies and chose the five most important, and relevant, policy categories for Virginia Beach, discussing in detail the costs and benefits of each category. These included preparing educational materials, tools and online programs; the use of transfer or purchase of development rights; reasonable restrictions and rolling easements; special tax districts for improvements; and updating the zoning code to prepare buildings in vulnerable areas. “I feel strongly that planners need to play a pivotal role in helping communities prepare for these difficult challenges. However, this is not an issue we can address with traditional planning tools, like zoning, alone,” said Keywood, who developed the coastal listening sessions (for which she earned the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Walter B. Jones Award for Excellence in Coastal and Ocean Management in June). Nearly 200 citizens and elected officials turned out June 13 for a Coastal Flooding Workshop in Melfa on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Denckla Cobb, the project coordinator, said the turnout was “record-breaking,” and remarked on participants’ enthusiasm and desire for local government to boost its involvement in education and outreach regarding rising sea levels – a sentiment also heard in Virginia Beach. A vast majority of the Melfa participants said they had noticed changes in wetlands and beaches, she said. “They know that rising sea levels are having real impacts, such as causing more frequent flooding during storm events. It’s also clear that people want more information, not just about what’s happening and why, but also about specific ways communities can prepare for sea-level rise.” “It was clear that people were very interested in catalyzing action to implement new policies to address this concern,” said Keywood, a graduate of the Architecture School’s master’s program in urban and environmental planning. According to a survey taken in Virginia Beach, people considered themselves fairly knowledgeable about sea-level rise and its potential consequences, ranging from wildlife habitat concerns to potential road blockages. “Participants in our workshops are very in tune with their local environments and are acutely aware of the changes they’ve observed over time in regards to habitat loss, shoreline erosion, business loss and others,” Keywood said. Nevertheless, Denckla Cobb saw that many were less aware of strategies and tools they could implement on an individual or local level – reinforcing the need for the institute to play a role in facilitating the development of practical solutions. Sea-level rise is a “multifaceted issue for which there are not a lot of practical, usable tools, unless political will changes,” she said, adding, “There is a difference between knowing what is needed and getting it done.” In addition to the efforts of the institute, Virginia Sea Grant has funded graduate student fieldwork in Hampton Roads as part of architecture professor Timothy Beatley’s “Climate Change and Coastal Planning” course. Its final report focuses on adaptation and accommodation as ways to mitigate sea-level rise, specifically through strategies of land use and growth management, resilience and knowledge dissemination. Since 1980, the Institute for Environmental Negotiation has worked throughout Virginia to mediate natural and man-made environmental issues, such as re-mediating coal mines, revitalizing tobacco farms and mitigating sea-level changes. For more on its Community Resilience in Coastal Virginia initiative, including the new focus group reports, visit its website. Provided by University of Virginia search and more info website
Spotless Days Current Stretch: 0 days
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
Since 2004: 821 days
Typical Solar Min: 486 days
Update 25 Aug 2012
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 3 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 3 quiet explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 6.7 nT
Bz: 5.7 nT north explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 0936 UT
Coronal Holes: 25 Aug 12
A stream of solar wind flowing from the indicated coronal hole should reach Earth on Aug. 26-27. Credit: SDO/AIA.
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2012 Aug 24 2200 UTC
FLARE
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
CLASS M
10 %
10 %
CLASS X
01 %
01 %
Geomagnetic Storms:
Probabilities for significant disturbances in Earth’s magnetic field are given for three activity levels: active, minor storm, severe storm
Scientists have long suspected that the Sun’s 11-year cycle influences climate of certain regions on Earth. Yet records of average, seasonal temperatures do not date back far enough to confirm any patterns. Now, armed with a unique proxy, an international team of researchers show that unusually cold winters in Central Europe are related to low solar activity — when sunspot numbers are minimal. The freezing of Germany’s largest river, the Rhine, is the key.
Researchers have linked low solar activity to a localized, temporary cooling of Central Europe, by studying the freezing of the Rhine river. (Credit: Warburg via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons license)
Although Earth’s surface overall continues to warm, the new analysis has revealed a correlation between periods of low activity of the Sun and of some cooling — on a limited, regional scale in Central Europe, along the Rhine.
“The advantage with studying the Rhine is because it’s a very simple measurement,” said Frank Sirocko lead author of a paper on the study and professor of Sedimentology and Paleoclimatology at the Institute of Geosciences of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. “Freezing is special in that it’s like an on-off mode. Either there is ice or there is no ice.”
From the early 19th through mid-20th centuries, riverboat men used the Rhine for cargo transport. And so docks along the river have annual records of when ice clogged the waterway and stymied shipping. The scientists used these easily-accessible documents, as well as other additional historical accounts, to determine the number of freezing episodes since 1780.
Sirocko and his colleagues found that between 1780 and 1963, the Rhine froze in multiple places fourteen different times. The sheer size of the river means it takes extremely cold temperatures to freeze over making freezing episodes a good proxy for very cold winters in the region, Sirocko said.
Mapping the freezing episodes against the solar activity’s 11-year cycle — a cycle of the Sun’s varying magnetic strength and thus total radiation output — Sirocko and his colleagues determined that ten of the fourteen freezes occurred during years when the Sun had minimal sunspots. Using statistical methods, the scientists calculated that there is a 99 percent chance that extremely cold Central European winters and low solar activity are inherently linked.
“We provide, for the first time, statistically robust evidence that the succession of cold winters during the last 230 years in Central Europe has a common cause,” Sirocko said.
With the new paper, Sirocko and his colleagues have added to the research linking solar variability with climate, said Thomas Crowley, Director of the Scottish Alliance for Geoscience, Environment, and Society, who was not involved with the study.
“There is some suspension of belief in this link,” Crowley said, “and this study tilts the argument more towards thinking there really is something to this link. If you have more statistical evidence to support this explanation, one is more likely to say it’s true.”
The study, conducted by researchers at Johannes Gutenberg and the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich, Switzerland, is set to be published August 25 in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
When sunspot numbers are down, the Sun emits less ultraviolet radiation. Less radiation means less heating of Earth’s atmosphere, which sparks a change in the circulation patterns of the two lowest atmospheric levels, the troposphere and stratosphere. Such changes lead to climatic phenomena such as the North Atlantic Oscillation, a pattern of atmospheric pressure variations that influences wind patterns in the North Atlantic and weather behavior in regions in and around Europe.
“Due to this indirect effect, the solar cycle does not impact hemispherically averaged temperatures, but only leads to regional temperature anomalies,” said Stephan Pfahl, a co-author of the study who is now at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich.
The authors show that this change in atmospheric circulation leads to cooling in parts of Central Europe but warming in other European countries, such as Iceland. So, sunspots don’t necessarily cool the entire globe — their cooling effect is more localized, Sirocko said.
In fact, studies have suggested that the extremely cold European winters of 2010 and 2011 were the result of the North Atlantic Oscillation, which Sirocko and his team now link to the low solar activity during that time.
The 2010 and 2011 European winters were so cold that they resulted in record lows for the month of November in certain countries. Some who dispute the occurrence of anthropogenic climate change argue that this two-year period shows that Earth’s climate is not getting any warmer. But climate is a complex system, Sirocko said. And a short-term, localized dip in temperatures only temporarily masks the effects of a warming world.
“Climate is not ruled by one variable,” said Sirocko. “In fact, it has [at least] five or six variables. Carbon dioxide is certainly one, but solar activity is also one.”
Moreover, the researchers also point out that, despite Central Europe’s prospect to suffer colder winters every 11 years or so, the average temperature of those winters is increasing and has been for the past three decades. As one piece of evidence of that warming, the Rhine River has not frozen over since 1963. Sirocko said such warming results, in part, from climate change.
To establish a more complete record of past temperature dips, the researchers are looking to other proxies, such as the spread of disease and migratory habits.
“Disease can be transported by insects and rats, but during a strong freezing year that is not likely,” said Sirocko. “Also, Romans used the Rhine to defend against the Germanics, but as soon as the river froze people could move across it. The freezing of the Rhine is very important on historical timescales.”
It wasn’t, however, the Rhine that first got Sirocko to thinking about the connection between freezing rivers and sunspot activity. In fact, it was a 125-mile ice-skating race he attended over 20 years ago in the Netherlands that sparked the scientist’s idea.
“Skaters can only do this race every 10 or 11 years because that’s when the rivers freeze up,” Sirocko said. “I thought to myself, ‘There must be a reason for this,’ and it turns out there is.”
As the midnight sun sets, aurora season has resumed around the Arctic Circle. Last night’s display was photographed by Antony Spencer from Kirkufell, Snaefellsnes, Iceland:
“The midnight sun is now long gone in Iceland,” says Spencer. “I was heading back from a sunset photo shoot when I noticed the auroras. They were bright enough to see right through the sunset colors.”
More auroras are in the offing. A stream of solar wind is heading for Earth, due to arrive on August 26-27.
Information courtesy of NASA, NOAA, the US Library, the Goddard Space Flight Center, the Jet Propulsion Lab, the Environmental Visualization Laboratory, the NASA Earth Observatory, SDO, SOHO, Stereo, ISWA, SSEC, HAARP, and SolarIMG – Your information, images, and videos were essential to this video.
Quebec health officials are trying to contain a deadly outbreak of legionnaires’ disease.
MessageToEagle.com – Once upon a time, Antarctica was a tropical zone covered in trees.
MessageToEagle.com – A group of astronomers made a rare and fascinating discovery, searching for groups of galaxies similar to ours in the most detailed map of the local Universe yet.
An artist’s concept of how the Milky Way is stripping gas from the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Credit: Dallas Parr (CSIRO)
This image shows one of the two ‘exact matches’ to the Milky Way system found in the survey. The larger galaxy, denoted GAMA202627, which is similar to the Milky Way clearly has two large companions off to the bottom left of the image. In this image bluer colours indicate hotter, younger, stars like many of those that are found in our galaxy. Image Credit: Dr Aaron Robotham, ICRAR/St Andrews using GAMA data.
The 3.9 meter Anglo-Australian Telescope is collecting optical galaxy data for the GAMA survey. Credits: Barnaby Morris
Two residents walk among the damaged houses, suspected to be caused by a tornado in Vero Beach, Florida, the 
Dieu Nalio Chery / AP
