Seismotectonics of the New Guinea Region and Vicinity
The Australia-Pacific plate boundary is over 4000 km long on the northern margin, from the Sunda (Java) trench in the west to the Solomon Islands in the east. The eastern section is over 2300 km long, extending west from northeast of the Australian continent and the Coral Sea until it intersects the east coast of Papua New Guinea. The boundary is dominated by the general northward subduction of the Australia plate.
Along the South Solomon trench, the Australia plate converges with the Pacific plate at a rate of approximately 95 mm/yr towards the east-northeast. Seismicity along the trench is dominantly related to subduction tectonics and large earthquakes are common: there have been 13 M7.5+ earthquakes recorded since 1900. On April 1, 2007, a M8.1 interplate megathrust earthquake occurred at the western end of the trench, generating a tsunami and killing at least 40 people. This was the third M8.1 megathrust event associated with this subduction zone in the past century; the other two occurred in 1939 and 1977.
Further east at the New Britain trench, the relative motions of several microplates surrounding the Australia-Pacific boundary, including north-south oriented seafloor spreading in the Woodlark Basin south of the Solomon Islands, maintain the general northward subduction of Australia-affiliated lithosphere beneath Pacific-affiliated lithosphere. Most of the large and great earthquakes east of New Guinea are related to this subduction; such earthquakes are particularly concentrated at the cusp of the trench south of New Ireland. 33 M7.5+ earthquakes have been recorded since 1900, including three shallow thrust fault M8.1 events in 1906, 1919, and 2007.
The low-lying Pacific nation of Kiribati is running out of time on climate change as seas rise, and is drafting plans including mass relocation of its people while the world procrastinates on the issue, the country’s leader says.
President Anote Tong said areas of Kiribati — consisting of more than 30 coral atolls, most only a few metres (feet) above sea level — had already been swamped by the rising ocean.
“We’ve had communities that have had to relocate because their previous village is submerged, it’s no longer there,” he told AFP in a telephone interview from the capital Tarawa.
“We had a very high tide at the beginning of this month and communities were washed out. It’s becoming more frequent, time is running out.”
Kiribati is among a number of island states — including Tuvalu, Tokelau and the Maldives — the UN Human Rights Commission is concerned could become “stateless” due to climate change.
With erosion gnawing at the coast and crops dying as sea water infiltrates fresh water sources, Tong said plans to relocate people from Kiribati to Fiji and East Timor had been put forward.
He was pessimistic UN climate talks underway in Doha would offer a solution, saying they assumed global warming would occur in the future, allowing countries to stall over emissions targets.
“That’s not relevant to us,” he said. “The reality is that we’re already facing problems.
“Are the negotiations addressing this? I don’t believe so. They’re regarded as a game by many of the negotiators, they’re not focusing on what’s already happening in the most vulnerable countries.
“We (in Kiribati) are not talking about economic growth, we’re not talking about standards of living — we’re talking about our very survival.”
– “Some of our people will have to be relocated” –
Rather than wait for global action, Tong said Kiribati was examining options for the climate-threatened nation, including relocating parts of its 103,000-strong population.
Last update: 14 Aug 2012 (1-2 weak explosions per hour) Typical eruption style: Dominantly explosive, construction of lava domes. Plinian eruptions at intervals of several centuries or few thousands of years, vulcanian and strombolian activity in intermittent phases. Popocatépetl volcano eruptions: 1345-47, 1354, 1363(?), 1488, 1504, 1509(?), 1512, 1518, 1519-23(?), 1528, 1530, 1539-40, 1542, 1548, 1571, 1580, 1590, 1592-94, 1642, 1663-65, 1666-67, 1697, 1720, 1802-04, 1827(?), 1834(?), 1852(?), 1919-22, 1923-24, 1925-27(?), 1933, 1942-43, 1947, 1994-95, 1996-2003, 2004-ongoing Last earthquakes nearby:No recent earthquakes
Popocatepetl is one of Mexico’s most active volcanoes. After almost 50 years of dormancy, “Popo” came back to life in 1994 and has since then been producing powerful explosions at irregular intervals.
In the past centuries befor European invasions, large eruptions produced giant mud flows that have buried Atzteque settlements, even entire pyramids.
Background:
Volcán Popocatépetl, whose name is the Aztec word for smoking mountain, towers to 5426 m 70 km SE of Mexico City to form North America’s 2nd-highest volcano. The glacier-clad stratovolcano contains a steep-walled, 250-450 m deep crater. The generally symmetrical volcano is modified by the sharp-peaked Ventorrillo on the NW, a remnant of an earlier volcano.
At least three previous major cones were destroyed by gravitational failure during the Pleistocene, producing massive debris-avalanche deposits covering broad areas south of the volcano. The modern volcano was constructed to the south of the late-Pleistocene to Holocene El Fraile cone. Three major plinian eruptions, the most recent of which took place about 800 AD, have occurred from Popocatépetl since the mid Holocene, accompanied by pyroclastic flows and voluminous lahars that swept basins below the volcano. Frequent historical eruptions, first recorded in Aztec codices, have occurred since precolumbian time.
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Source: GVP, Smithsonian Institution – Popocatepetl information
A volcano erupted on one of Russia’s far eastern Kuril Islands, releasing a cloud of noxious fumes and raising temperatures in the surrounding area. Emergency officials said in a statement on their website that the volcano, called Ivan the Terrible and located on the sparsely populated island of Iturup to the south of the Kuril archipelago, erupted Wednesday due to increased water flows rushing into the volcano after heavy downpours. Officials stressed that the volcano had released no lava and that it erupts regularly, adding that the last major eruption was in 1989. According to the statement, Iturup residents were exposed to a slight smell of hydrogen peroxide and noticed ash falling as a result of the eruption. By Thursday, the hydrogen peroxide fumes and ash were no longer noticeable. Emergency officials advised citizens to steer clear of Ivan the Terrible and said they were monitoring the volcano’s activity.
Michael Snyder: The worst drought in more than 50 years is having a devastating impact on the Mississippi River. The Mississippi has become very thin and very narrow, and if it keeps on dropping there is a very real possibility that all river traffic could get shut down. And considering the fact that approximately 60 percent of our grain (NYSEARCA:JJG), 22 percent of our oil (NYSEARCA:USO) and natural gas (NYSEARCA:UNG), and and one-fifth of our coal travel down the Mississippi River, that would be absolutely crippling for our economy. It has been estimated that if all Mississippi River traffic was stopped that it would cost the U.S. economy 300 million dollars a day. So far most of the media coverage of this historic drought has focused on the impact that it is having on farmers and ranchers, but the health of the Mississippi River is also absolutely crucial to the economic success of this nation, and right now the Mississippi is in incredibly bad shape. In some areas the river is already 20 feet below normal and the water is expected to continue to drop. If we have another 12 months of weather ahead of us similar to what we have seen over the last 12 months then the mighty Mississippi is going to be a complete and total disaster zone by this time next year.
Most Americans simply do not understand how vitally important the Mississippi River is to all of us. If the Mississippi River continues drying up to the point where commercial travel is no longer possible, it would be an absolutely devastating blow to the U.S. economy.
Unfortunately, vast stretches of the Mississippi are already dangerously low. The following is an excerpt from a transcript of a CNN report that aired on August 14th….
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You might think this is some kind of desert just outside of Memphis. It’s not. I’m actually standing on the exposed bottom of the Mississippi River. That’s how dramatic the drought impact is being felt here. Hard to believe, a year ago we were talking about record flooding. Now, they are worried about a new kind of record: a record low. The river was three miles wide here, it’s now down to three tenths of a mile. And that’s causing all kinds of problems. There are some benefits, I mean, take a look over here: new beach front. In fact, some quip that now the Mississippi River has more beaches than the entire state of Florida, which would be funny if it didn’t have an impact on trade.
A lot of stuff we use goes up and down the Mississippi River. We are talking steel, coal, ore, grain. The problem is now a lot of those barges have had to lighten their loads, and even doing that, they are still running aground. There is a real fear that there could be a possibility of closing the Mississippi River. If that happens, well, all that product that used to be carried cheaply by barge is now going to be carried more expensively by truck or train. And guess who is going to pay for all of that.
You can see video footage of what is happening along the Mississippi right here.
It really is amazing that last year we were talking about historic flooding along the Mississippi and this year we are talking about the Mississippi possibly drying up.
As I mentioned earlier, there are some areas along the river that are already 20 feet below normal levels. The following is from a recent article posted on inquisitr.com….
Just outside of Memphis the river is 13 feet below normal depth while the National Weather Service says Vicksburg, Mississippi is 20 feet below normal levels. Overall the Mississippi is 13 feet below normal averages for this time of year.
The drying up river is forcing barge, tugboat and towboat operators to navigate narrower and more shallow spots in the river, slowing their speeds as they pass dangerously close to one another. In some parts of the Mississippi the river is so narrow that one-way traffic is being utilized.
A lot of barges have been forced to go with greatly reduced loads so that they will sit higher in the river, and other commercial craft have been forced to stop operating completely.
Down south, the Mississippi River has gotten so low that saltwater is actually starting to move upriver. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is fighting hard to keep that contained.
Other waterways in the middle part of the country are in even worse shape.
For example, a 100 mile stretch of the Platte River has already dried up. Millions of fish are dying as rivers and streams all over the country continue to get shallower and warmer as a result of the ongoing drought.
The last time the condition of the Mississippi River was this bad was back in 1988. At that time, a lot of barge traffic was stopped completely and the shipping industry lost approximately a billion dollars.
If a similar thing were to happen now, the consequences could potentially be far worse.
As I wrote about recently, a standstill along the Mississippi would cost the U.S. economy about 300 million dollars a day.
In fact, one towing company that works on the Mississippi says that it has already been losing about $500,000 a month since May.
In fact, this crisis could end up costing American consumers a whole lot of money….
So here’s the math. If you want to raise the average barge one inch above the water, you’ve got to take off 17-tons of cargo. To raise it a foot, you’re talking 200 tons.
And since, according to the American Waterways Operators, moving cargo by river is $11 a ton cheaper than by train or truck. The more that now has to be moved on land, well, the more the costs go up. Steven Barry says, “And, eventually, the consumer’s gonna pay that price somewhere along the line.”
And considering the fact that we are already facing a potential food crisis due to the drought, the last thing we need is for the Mississippi River to dry up.
So is there any hope on the horizon for the Mississippi?
Unfortunately, things do not look promising.
The fall and the winter are typically drier than the summer is along the Mississippi River. That means that conditions along the river could actually get even worse in the months ahead. The following is from a recent Time Magazine article….
But without significant rainfall, which isn’t in any long-range forecasts, things are likely to get worse. As summer turns to fall, the weather tends to get drier. Lower temperatures generally mean fewer thunderstorms and less rainfall.
“Take away the thunderstorm mechanism and you run into more serious problems,” says Alex Sosnowski, expert senior meteorologist for AccuWeather.com. And while droughts tend to be a temporary setback, longer-range forecasts are troublesome. Sosnowski says he is anticipating an El Niño weather pattern next year, which would mean below-normal snowfall and above-average temperatures.
Let us hope and pray that we don’t see another 12 months similar to the 12 months that we have just been through.
Michael has an undergraduate degree in Commerce from the University of Virginia and a law degree from the University of Florida law school. He also has an LLM from the University of Florida law school. Michael has worked for some of the largest law firms in Washington D.C., but now is mostly focus on trying to make a difference in the world.
An unusually strong storm formed off the coast of Alaska on August 5 and tracked into the center of the Arctic Ocean, where it slowly dissipated over the next several days. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color mosaic image on Aug. 6, 2012. The center of the storm at that date was located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. The storm had an unusually low central pressure area. Paul A. Newman, chief scientist for Atmospheric Sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., estimates that there have only been about eight storms of similar strength during the month of August in the last 34 years of satellite records. “It’s an uncommon event, especially because it’s occurring in the summer. Polar lows are more usual in the winter,” Newman said. Arctic storms such as this one can have a large impact on the sea ice, causing it to melt rapidly through many mechanisms, such as tearing off large swaths of ice and pushing them to warmer sites, churning the ice and making it slushier, or lifting warmer waters from the depths of the Arctic Ocean. “It seems that this storm has detached a large chunk of ice from the main sea ice pack. This could lead to a more serious decay of the summertime ice cover than would have been the case otherwise, even perhaps leading to a new Arctic sea ice minimum,” said Claire Parkinson, a climate scientist with NASA Goddard. “Decades ago, a storm of the same magnitude would have been less likely to have as large an impact on the sea ice, because at that time the ice cover was thicker and more expansive.” Aqua passes over the poles many times a day, and the MODIS Rapid Response System stitches together images from throughout each day to generate a daily mosaic view of the Arctic. This technique creates the diagonal lines that give the image its “pie slice” appearance.
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Today
Forest / Wild Fire
Canada
Province of British Columbia, [About 15 kilometres northeast of Squamish]
A small forest fire ignited on a cliff face about 15 kilometres northeast of Squamish on Wednesday afternoon, engulfing a five-hectare stretch of trees but posing no threat to people or buildings. Shortly after 4 p.m., the Wildfire Management Branch sent in a repel crew – a three-person initial attack team – to climb down to the blaze from helicopter ropes. With a steep cliff face and no roads, the mountain allows no access except via helicopter, said Coastal Fire Centre spokeswoman Donna MacPherson. A shallow fissure running along the cliff face accelerated the flames – reported by Squamish residents – and funnelled them upward, she said. “If you look closely it looks like there’s an indentation on the cliff.We call it a chimney. And it acts just like a chimney, so that hot air has a tendency to rise up those chimneys that are on the sunny slope,” she said. “It created quite a plume, I guess the people in Squamish could see it.” The repel team later called in an air crew to establish a retardant line at the “head” of the blaze, which had nearly spread into the alpine, by dropping hundreds of gallons of retardant. “They put a retardant line on the top because the fire was going uphill – fire has a tendency to burn uphill,” MacPherson said. As night fell, the repel crew was constructing a makeshift helicopter pad by clearing a small area of forest and building a deck using logs like stilts to prop up the structure on the steeply sloped mountain side, she said. “They’ll feel the trees and cut the logs and then build a little log structure,” MacPherson said, adding the battle will likely continue for several days. “It’s going to be hard work for the crews. It’s incredibly hot up there and we’re going into a hot weekend. Also, we won’t be able to get any machinery in there at all, it’s going to be done all by hand I think the crews are going to have a rough time on this one,” she said. Where terrain allows, crews will typically employ bulldozers, excavators and “feller bunchers” – claw-like industrial arms atop a pair treads – to make no-cross fire trenches more quickly.MacPherson said Coastal Fire Centre members were figuring out a plan Wednesday night for how to battle the blaze Thursday. A lightning storm moved through the Squamish area over a week ago, making a tinderbox of the mountainous region by sparking embers that didn’t ignite immediately into a full-blown wildfire. “When that kind of thing happens, the fire will be retarded. It will smoulder underground or inside of a tree, and it will wait until things are dry enough that it pops to the surface,” MacPherson said. Crews normally stationed in the Interior recently came to the coast in anticipation of area fires.
An emergency situation has been called in southern Bulgarian Black Sea resorts of Nesebar and Pomorie just south of Sunny Beach over a sizeable wildfire blazing for a second day. Some 2,500 acres of of pine and deciduous forests and dry grass and bushes along the road in the Dyulinski Pass. Over 150 firefighters and military servicemen have taken part in extinguishing the fire, aided by two helicopters. However, the situation has been complicated by the arid weather and especially by the hard terrain, leading Burgas Region vice-governor Atanas Terziev to declare an emergency situation in the two municipalities. Work for managing the fire is continuing Thursday evening. There is no danger for nearby settlements and resorts, report authorities.
Hundreds of residents of two small Idaho towns were packing their belongings and clearing out of the way of a massive wildfire burning in a gulch a few miles away and expected to hit the towns later this week. Not only are more of the nation’s wildfires occurring in the West this year than last, but the fires have gotten bigger, said Jennifer Smith of the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. As of Wednesday, 42,933 wildfires have been reported in the nation this season, burning 6.4 million acres. The 10-year average for this period is 52,535 fires, but covering only 5 million acres, she said. “Nevada has been hammered, and Idaho has some big ones that are going to burn until the snow falls,” Smith said. Idaho’s Trinity Ridge fire has burned more than 100 square miles in the past two weeks. It’s bearing down on Pine and Featherville, recreation getaways in the mountains two hours northeast of Boise. On Wednesday, there was a steady stream of traffic, with people leaving Featherville and Pine. The area has 450 homes. About half are inhabited year-round, while the others are summer homes and weekend retreats. Fire crews are battling a total of nine big fires in Idaho, including one in the Salmon-Challis National Forest that stranded 250 rafters floating the Middle Fork of the Salmon River.
Lightning-sparked wildfires in rural East County spread to over 15,000 acres Wednesday and hundreds of residents were still evacuated from their homes. The evacuees, residents of the small towns of Ranchita and San Felipe, got phone calls late Tuesday afternoon by the county’s “reverse 911” emergency system, directing them to clear out of their homes and advising them to the availability of a makeshift shelter at Warner Springs High School. The evacuation orders remained in effect Wednesday evening. Road and highway closures between Borrego Springs, Julian and Ranchita also were in effect through the day. By early evening, the following routes remained off-limits to the public: San Felipe Road from State Route 79 to SR-78; Montezuma Valley Road from San Felipe Road to Palm Canyon; Yaqui Pass Road from Rams Hill Road to SR- 78; and SR-78 between Scissors Crossing and Borrego Springs. No structural damages had been reported by 6 p.m., but two firefighters have suffered minor injuries, including heat exhaustion, Cal Fire Capt. Mike Mohler said. Firefighters were concerned about 69-kilovolt electrical distribution lines that run through Grapevine Canyon and serve Borrego Springs, Ranchita and Warner Springs, but they remained intact Wednesday night, according to Cal Fire. The fires — collectively known as the Vallecito Lightning Complex — had scorched 15,525 acres as of Wednesday evening and was 35 percent contained, according to the agency. The first of the blazes to begin spreading through the remote northeastern reaches of San Diego County was the Vallecito Fire, which charred roughly 520 acres since about 8 p.m. Sunday and was 100 percent contained as of Tuesday night, Cal Fire reported.
A forest fire near Highway 4 in eastern Calaveras County grew to more than 1,000 acres overnight. Fire crews have just 15 percent containment starting the day, though no structures have been destroyed. An out-of-control campfire near the North Fork of the Stanislaus River started the blaze Saturday. Most of the burned area is south of Highway 4, near Dorrington, though there have been embers blown to the north side of the road. Fire crews have quickly put out those flames. People traveling on Highway 4 should expect extended delays and partial closures due the fire crews, fire and heavy smoke across the road. The fire is burning slowly to the east. More than 300 fire personnel are on scene; they are using helicopters, air tankers and bulldozers to try and contain the flames. There have been three minor injuries fighting the fire.
16.08.2012
Forest / Wild Fire
USA
State of California, Aguanga [Riverside County (San Jacinto foothills)]
A fast-moving wildfire stoked by triple-digit temperatures burned 3,000 acres Tuesday in the foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains, creeping perilously close to tinder-dry areas of the San Bernardino National Forest, officials said. At least four structures, including one home, were destroyed by the blaze, which spread rapidly through dry brush and grasslands in a sparsely populated area south of Hemet and east of Temecula. The fire, just 5% contained as of Tuesday evening, was spreading rapidly through the rocky hills and desert scrub, and was within a mile of forest lands west of Anza, where drought has heightened fire danger all summer. “Of course we’re concerned,” said John Miller, spokesman for the San Bernardino National Forest. “This year our big concern is the fact that rainfall and that includes snow for our forest was somewhere between 50% to 70% of normal.” Mandatory evacuations were ordered in the sparsely populated area near Aguanga, and more than 30 homes have been evacuated, according to Jody Hagemann of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Two firefighters suffered minor injuries and were taken to a hospital, according to radio dispatch reports. One man who lived in a trailer was seriously burned and taken by helicopter to a local hospital. Authorities said the man, whose home was in a remote area, apparently had not received a notice to evacuate.South of the Riverside County fire, fast-moving blazes, some started by lightning strikes from heat-born thunderstorms, have burned more than 2,300 acres in northeast San Diego County, leading to evacuations in the rural communities of Ranchita and the San Felipe area off California 78. The four San Diego County fires are being fought by more than 500 firefighters, along with air tankers and water-dropping helicopters. No structures have yet been reported damaged. “We have very dry vegetation, brush and grass and things like that. Now we have multiple days of very high temperatures,” said Chief Julie Hutchinson, spokeswoman for the state fire agency. “It’s like lighting your fireplace with a blowtorch.” The fire in Riverside County was reported just before 1 p.m. in the community of Aguanga. More than 210 firefighters were working to extinguish the blaze, and six water-carrying helicopters and six water-tender aircraft as well as a DC-10 were assisting, state fire officials said. Crews from the Sierra Nevada mountains areas are being dispatched to assist firefighters. “That’s one thing that’s unique about California. We have a state fire agency, and we’re able to move resources up and down the state,” said Hutchinson, adding that crews from the U.S. Forest Service, local departments and the California National Guard are playing a role in the statewide firefighting efforts. Although flames are more than 14 miles away from Idyllwild, residents and fire officials in the artsy mountain community have been nervously watching television news reports.
Andrea Thompson, OurAmazingPlanet Managing Editor – Aug 16, 2012 09:56 AM ET
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NASA’s Aqua satellite captured infrared data on Tropical Storm Gordon on Aug. 15, 2012, when it was still a low pressure system. The purple areas indicate the coldest, strongest thunderstorms and are areas where heavy rain is likely falling. It appears that there was a band of strong thunderstorms northwest of the center.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL, Ed Olsen
A low pressure system out over the Atlantic Ocean that has been watched closely by hurricane forecasters has now developed into Tropical Storm Gordon as expected. It is the seventh named storm of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season.
As of yesterday (Aug. 15), the low pressure system was given a 90 percent chance of developing into a tropical cyclone, the blanket term for tropical storms, hurricanes and typhoons. Sure enough, the 5 a.m. Atlantic Standard Time update from the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) announced that the system had intensified and was now classified as a tropical storm.
Gordon was the next name on the 2012 Atlantic season name list, which is set by the World Meteorological Organization. Lists are drawn up for seven seasons out and the lists rotate. Names alternate between male and female names.
As of the 5 a.m. update, Gordon had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph (65 kph) and was located about 580 miles (940 kilometers) east of Bermuda and 1,600 miles (2,600 km) west of the Azores.
The storm is not currently a threat to any land areas, but it is moving toward the north-northeast and could threaten the Azores early next week.
Gordon is expected to strengthen over the next 48 hours as it moves over warmer ocean waters, according to the NHC, and could become a hurricane over the weekend. Current projections though have it weakening into an extratropical storm (meaning it lacks tropical characteristics) before it reaches the Azores, though intensity forecasts that far out are highly subject to change.
The NHC update noted that Gordon is a small storm, with tropical-storm force winds extending out for only 25 miles (35 km).
If Gordon doe become a hurricane, it will be the third one of the 2012 Atlantic season. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the NHC, updated their forecast for the season last week, upping the number of storms expected. The forecast now estimates that there will be between 12 and 17 named storms, of which five to eight are expected to become hurricanes.
[This event happened on 14th Aug.] At least 20 people were injured and more than 100 cars damaged in a sudden mid-summer hailstorm in a Russian Siberian town on Tuesday (August 14). The weather suddenly changed in the evening with wind bringing a torrential downpour of huge hailstones, some larger than chicken eggs. Witnesses said some hailstones reached seven centimeters in diameter. Town residents had literally to save themselves and run to nearby buildings to find cover. Big hailstones pierced holes in car windows, sometimes smashing the glass altogether. Meteorologists said they believed the sudden summer storm was caused by a sharp temperature drop from 32 degrees Celsius at lunchtime to just 16 degrees Celsius by the evening. The town is located in the Kemerovo region in Central Siberia some 3,800 km east of Moscow.
Folks in Floyd County it came out of nowhere. “A downpour just opened up from the sky. I was traveling up the hollow, noticed that the water was coming down the hollow,” said Roger Varney. Varney says he was driving up Alum Lick Road and before he knew it he was trapped by rising water. “I noticed that I couldn’t travel any further up through there. I looked in my rear view mirror to back up, and I couldn’t get out. The water was up on the door,” he said. Melinda Hager and her dog came to his rescue. “The dog she was throwing a fit so I got up to check and see what was going on and a guy was sitting in my driveway and the flood waters were coming up. I knew he was in trouble if I didn’t get down there and open up the gate to give him room to come up in,” she said. “I was able to pull up into the driveway over here and save the car, keep from having to bail out of it. By the time it was over with the water was probably four or five feet deep in the road,” said Varner. People who live here on Alum Lick Road say this is the forth time since the spring the roads have flooded like this, and they say with just a little more rain they fear it could cause some major home damage. “There’s no creek bank. The creek is full. There’s just nowhere for it to go except out into the road and then into our yard. All you can do is stand and watch and pray that it doesn’t keep coming up,” said Hager. They say they are thankful this time the water receded before it caused any damage.
Flash flood warnings have been issued until 5:30pm today for Brooklyn and Queens amid severe thunderstorms. And they weren’t kidding! Multiple reports from Twitter show that some pretty impressive flooding has hit Brooklyn. The photo above was posted to Twitter by Jezerfic and was taken on Woodbine street in Bushwick, Brooklyn. I’ve also seen pictures from Williamsburg Gowanus and Park Slope.
16.08.2012
Flood
Canada
Province of Saskatchewan, [James Smith First Nation]
A state of emergency has been declared by the James Smith Cree Nation following continued high rainfall and flooding. Local officials are calling for increased assistance from the federal and provincial governments. The drinking water of nine homes has been contaminated due to the high water levels and some roads have flooded over, says a news release issued Tuesday by James Smith. The continued rainfall is adding to the problems caused by last year’s flooding, said the release. “The high rains are destroying what’s left of our roads and water systems, and this is creating dangerous health conditions for our people, especially very young children and our elders,” said James Smith Chief Wally Burns. “We’ve been trying to get assistance since the 2011 flood, but have so far received minimal support.” Last month officials with the provincial disaster assistance program met with band leadership. The program provided $110,000 to repair damage from previous years of flooding, but the band estimates $3.2 million is needed. James Smith is located about 180 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon.
Make-shift homes of cattle dealers are submerged in floods at the Kara slum on Lagos -Ibadan highway, October 23, 2011. Many homes were submerged in floods and valuable properties were destroyed in Lagos following a torrential downpur that lasted for hours during the weekend. The floods that cut across some parts of the city was further aggravated by the overflow of the Odo Ogun River Basin, which has rendered families homeless and ignited traffic log jam in the affected areas. Photo courtesy AFP.
Flooding caused by heavy rains in central Nigeria has killed at least 28 people, with many others still missing, while also destroying homes, bridges and farmland, officials said Tuesday.
“I have counted 28 bodies and many people are still missing after the flood,” said Kemi Nshe, local government chairman for the Shendam district in central Nigeria’s Plateau state.
He said some 1,500 people were displaced from the rains, the worst of which occurred Sunday.
A Red Cross official in the area said relief workers were having difficulties accessing flooded areas, which he said included around five communities. He said heavy rain began Saturday night and continued into Sunday.
“Flooding has affected close to five (districts), and a lot of bridges have been broken, a lot of people have lost their houses,” said Manasseh Panpe.
He said a Red Cross team was able to visit one displaced camp so far where more than 200 people had relocated to.
“They need blankets,” said Panpe. “They need food, water.”
Last month in another area of Plateau state, heavy rainfall forced a dam to overflow, causing flooding that left at least 35 people dead and destroyed or damaged some 200 homes.
Much of Africa’s most populous nation has been affected by heavy seasonal rainfall, and officials have warned more flooding is likely to occur in a number of areas in the coming days.
The rainy season typically runs from March to September.
Also in July, at least three people were killed by flood waters some 150 kilometres (90 miles) north of the economic capital Lagos in Ibadan, an area of southwestern Nigeria where 102 died following torrential rains last year.
At least 20 people died from flooding in Lagos last year, while 24 were killed after rains inundated a neighbourhood in Nigeria’s largest northern city of Kano.
Nigerian officials have faced criticism for failing to put in place measures to mitigate the impact of the annual, often severe floods.
The largest cities in Nigeria are overcrowded, with many residents living in haphazardly constructed slums. Drainage systems are also often poorly maintained and contribute to the problem.
In 2010, flooding affected roughly half a million people in two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 states.
Seasonal flooding also affects the west African region, with 2010 having been a particularly harsh year.
More than 300 people were killed in the 2010 rainy season in western and central Africa and at least 680,000 people were affected by the floods in neighbouring Benin, a country of some nine million.
The flooding also raises the risk of the spread of diseases such as cholera.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Tuesday morning discovered possibly highly radioactive water on the first floor of the No. 4 reactor turbine building at its disaster-crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The company believes the water leaked from a pipe that is transferring highly radioactive water from the basement of the No. 3 reactor’s turbine building. A TEPCO worker found the water on the floor of a power control room in the No. 4 reactor turbine building at 11:15 a.m. The company confirmed that the leak had stopped by about 1 p.m. after the radioactive water transfer was suspended at 12:20 p.m. According to TEPCO, a puddle of water about one centimeter deep had collected on the floor of the 350-square-meter power control room. There was no water leak outside the room, the company added. The water is estimated to contain tens of thousands of becquerels of radioactive cesium per cubic centimeter, according to the firm.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings on Wednesday declared the city’s recent West Nile virus outbreak to be a state of emergency and authorized the first aerial spraying of insecticide in the city in more than 45 years.
Dallas and other North Texas cities have agreed to the rare use of aerial spraying from planes to combat the nation’s worst outbreak of West Nile virus so far this year. Dallas last had aerial spraying in 1966, when more than a dozen deaths were blamed on encephalitis.
More than 200 cases of West Nile and 10 deaths linked to the virus have been reported across Dallas County, where officials authorized aerial spraying last week. State health department statistics show 381 cases and 16 deaths related to West Nile statewide.
“The number of cases, the number of deaths are remarkable, and we need to sit up and take notice,” Rawlings said during a city council briefing. “We do have a serious problem right now.”
Aerial spraying for mosquitoes could begin Thursday evening, depending on weather conditions. The state health department, which will pay for the $500,000 aerial spraying with emergency funds, has a contract with national spraying company Clarke. Clarke officials have said two to five planes will be used in Dallas County.
Dallas City Council members voiced concerns about aerial spraying’s health effects on humans and animals. Rawlings said the aerial dosage will be much lower than the dosage used so far during ground spraying. He also said aerial spraying recently has been safely used in California, Massachusetts and New York.
The city charter allows Rawlings to declare a state of emergency and request aerial spraying, but the City Council would have to approve additional action beyond seven days.
State health commissioner Dr. David Lakey, who participated in the briefing via telephone, reiterated the seriousness of the situation in Dallas, saying half of all West Nile cases in the United States so far this year are in Texas.
“There is a public health emergency related to West Nile right now,” Lakey said. “The risk of air-based spraying is minimal versus the ongoing spread of West Nile.”
disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only
After a 2011-2012 winter that saw little snow, the mid-Atlantic and southern New England states will get a snow dump this winter, forecasters say.
Above-normal snowfall during winter 2012-2013 is forecast for the major I-95 cities including New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, AccuWeather.com reported Wednesday.
“The I-95 cities could get hit pretty good,” forecaster Paul Pastelok said. “It’s a matter of getting the cold to phase in with the huge systems that we are going to see coming out of the southern branch of the jet stream this year.”
The presence — and strength — of El Nino conditions in the Pacific Ocean are used to project how active the winter season will be, forecasters said.
El Nino warming of ocean water and the air above it causes weather patterns to change globally, and El Nino winters feature a strong southern branch of the jet stream across the United States, AccuWeather.com said.
When the strong southern jet stream phases with the northern branch of the jet stream, meteorologists said, big storms can hit the east coast.
(NaturalNews) The ice in Greenland appears to be less vulnerable than earlier believed to uncontrolled melting that some scientists and climatologists said would drive up sea levels and lead to a host of environmental issues, according to a new study that found a spike in loss of ice had declined.
Kurt Kjaer of the University of Copenhagen, lead author of the new study, said in a statement of findings recently in the journal Science that “it is too early to proclaim that the ‘ice sheet’s future doom’” due to climate change being imminent.
Researchers from the Netherlands, Britain and Denmark wrote that they examined aerial photos taken from aircraft which showed stark glacial thinning in northwest Greenland between 1985 and 1993. They also said another spike in loss of ice took place between 2005 and 2010.
A wash of warm air
From that data some scientists, environmentalists and climatologists had concluded that Greenland could be headed towards a perpetual, endless meltdown of its glacial ice – a phenomenon many experts have attributed to man-made global warming.
In fact, in the latter part of July, scientists at NASA recorded an unprecedented warming event in Greenland, where – over the span of just a few days – nearly the country’s entire massive ice sheet began melting.
“You literally had this wave of warm air wash over the Greenland ice sheet and melt it,” NASA ice scientist Tom Wagner told reporters in describing the phenomenon.
The ice melt area expanded from 40 percent to nearly 97 percent over the span of four days, said NASA scientists, adding that three separate satellites recorded the occurrence that they have yet to be able to explain.
“When we see melting in places that we haven’t seen before, at least in a long period of time, it makes you sit up and ask what’s happening?” said NASA chief scientist Waleed Abdalati.
Until then, scientists had only witnessed a 55 percent melt. Even Greenland’s coldest region, which is also its highest, experienced melting; according to ice core readings, that hasn’t happened since 1889 and only occurs about once every 150 years, The Associated Press reported.
Many scientists and environmentalists have, for years, believed that man-caused activities have contributed to global warming, a debate that has been given new life this summer as record heat blanketed – and continues to blanket – much of the nation.
NASA scientist James Hansen said earlier this month that the likelihood of such temperatures occurring from the 1950s through the 1980s was about 1 in 300, but that likelihood has increased to 1 in 10 today.
“This is not some scientific theory. We are now experiencing scientific fact,” he told AP.
Still, the results of the recent study by Kjaer and his team appears to have at least muddled the debate, for they do not jibe with earlier projections that Greenland’s ice caps – which would raise global sea levels by seven meters if all of it did melt – are on an unstoppable, man-caused course to extinction.
More droughts, heat waves coming?
“It starts and then it stops,” Kjaer told Reuters in reference to the periods of ice loss. “This is a break from thinking that it is something that starts, accelerates and will consume Greenland all at once.”
And, since the sudden melting phenomenon NASA witnessed last month, Greenland’s ice seems to be freezing again.
That said, Kjaer noted in the study that the polar nation’s ice sheet did not get bigger in the pause between the spurts of ice loss.
A panel of United Nations climate scientists still maintains that man-caused activities are creating warming conditions around the world. They say that’s being caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels, and that the activity will eventually lead to more flooding, rising seas, droughts and heat waves.
Authorities are now investigating the reason behind the explosion and the ensuing collapse of the house, but so far, they have not found any. The house was a two-story building that was located on Prospect Drive in Brentwood and it was razed to the ground due to the explosion. The collapse took place before noon on Tuesday and at that time several people were around the house, due to which the number of people injured was quite high. An 18-month-old toddler by the name of Rah-quan Palmer died in the collapse, while his parents, Christina Morgan, 23, and Rashamel Palmer, 28, were badly injured. Both Palmer and Morgan are still hospitalized along with their tenants, Calvin Harris, 23 and Irving Justiniano, 63.In addition to the occupants of the house, a State Farm Insurance agent and a plumber were also injured in the collapse because they were present at the house at that time to assess a recent claim submitted for flooding of the house. These two people are identified as 46-year-old Patricia Salegna-Maqueda and 48-year-old Michael Ray. A total of 11 people were injured outside the house. They include seven police officers, two firefighters and two neighbors. The injuries of the people outside the house were minor and they were released after getting treated from the hospital. One of the neighbors described a very tragic and chaotic scene when the house collapsed. “One of them came out, and his clothes were all ripped, his face was all bloody,” said Anthony Acevedo, according to a report by nbcnews.com. “The mother of the baby that came out, she was bloody and crying, and she kept screaming, ‘My baby’s in there, my baby’s in there.’”The firefighters promptly arrived at the scene to extricate people from under the rubble, but sadly, the toddler had already died when they got to him. The cause behind this house collapse is still being investigated, but it has been reported that the house was in a very bad condition and the owner had already been summoned for quite a few times for code violations.
Today
Technological Disaster
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Province of Orientale , [AngloGold Ashanti and Randgold Gold Mine, Mambasa territory]
About 60 miners died when a shaft in which they were working collapsed in a remote part of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a UN-backed radio station said on Wednesday. The miners were 100 meters underground when the accident occurred on Monday in Mambasa territory in Orientale Province. Authorities in the Central African nation were not immediately available to comment. Mining companies AngloGold Ashanti and Randgold operate in the region, which is known to be rich in tin and gold. Hundreds of thousands of people in eastern Congo make a living in artisanal mines, where safety precautions are almost nonexistent and accidents are common.
Holidaymakers and fishermen are worried about giant toxic jellyfish showing up in Korea’s coastal areas in record numbers this summer. A girl was killed earlier this month and more than 500 people have been stung by jellyfish in the seas around Busan this season. The southern resort island of Jeju saw more than 130 people stung. Although there have been reports in China and Southeast Asia of deaths caused by poisonous jellyfish, Korea was considered relatively safe from them. However, the scare is spreading following the recent surge in accidents, including the first death associated with jellyfish. “The number of jellyfish species that can be found in Korea is 124, and among them 100 are poisonous. Thus Korea is no longer a safe zone. Furthermore, the most frequently seen are Nomura’s jellyfish and moon jellyfish,” said Yoon Won-duk, a researcher at National Fisheries Research and Development Institute. According to Yoon, the one that killed the girl is most likely Nomura’s jellyfish. Last year, nuclear power plants in Scotland, Japan, Israel and Florida were forced to shut down because the free-moving animals were clogging the water inlets.The swarming of jellyfish has been predicted by many experts since early 2000. In 2002, Japan saw blooms of jellyfish in its coastal waters, and in 2009 Australian marine scientist Anthony Richard foresaw a near future in which marine biodiversity would be dominated by jellyfish. Experts give several causes to the somewhat sudden global increase of jellyfish, all of which have to do with the changing oceanic environment. Warmer temperatures caused by global warming, salinity changes, ocean acidification and pollution all help jellyfish thrive. “Not only higher ocean temperature but also overfishing and pollution have increased the jellyfish population. As the temperature rises even further, more jellyfish will be moving northward,” said Yoon. There are still some weeks left until the summer heat wanes, and in the meantime, beaches will still be the favorite destinations of people on vacation. If one is stung by jellyfish, a few measures can be taken to alleviate the situation. First, get the person out of the water and wash the spot immediately with seawater or running water. Do not rinse with vinegar unless stung by Jimble; it can reactivate stinging cells. Apply tetracycline cream to relieve itching and swelling and use ice packs to relieve sever pain or welts. Call 119 if the person displays signs of a severe allergic reaction.
Biohazard name:
Nomura s Jellyfish invasion (strongly toxic)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Nine people have died from a West Nile virus outbreak that infected 175 people in Dallas County, Texas, prompting officials to declare a state of emergency. The emergency was declared on Friday by Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, the county’s director of homeland security and emergency management. “This declaration will expand our avenues DisasterNew assistance in our ongoing battle with West Nile virus,” Jenkins said. “While we are busy doing everything we can to keep residents well informed and as protected as possible, we need your help.” Jenkins also said that planes would be spraying insecticide over areas most effected by the virus, which is spread by mosquitoes. He assured citizens that the insecticide is safe and that the planes will be precise in their spraying. Tarrant County has also received 146 reported cases of West Nile in the last few weeks. The county has not declared a state of emergency, though. Houston officials are warning residents of an increased threat of the virus. “Houston can definitely expect an increase in West Nile disease,” said Kristy Murray, an infectious disease specialist at the Baylor College of Medicine’s National School of Tropical Medicine, DisasterNews reports. “From mid-August through September is the big season here.”
Biohazard name:
West Nile virus outbreak
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.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
The death toll from twin earthquakes rose to 300, officials said Sunday, as rescue efforts in northwest Iran continued and more bodies were expected to be found. But some witnesses complained that the government was not aiding the efforts of residents and private agencies to rescue possible victims of Saturday’s tremors. “From the first minutes in the aftermath … the survivors rushed to unearth the dead and alive and injured and that rescue goes on,” said a witness in one of the affected towns. “But official rescues halted or seem to have stopped, as there is no hope of any alive to be unearthed and the number of Red Crescent rescue team is not big enough and few of them are trained enough.” Air-rescue operations were suspended hours after the earthquakes, one of them measuring a magnitude 6.2, struck as night fell and helicopters were unable to fly in the dark in the mountainous region. Much of the efforts now are said to be about providing food and shelter for the survivors. The quakes hit in a sparsely populated region, but entire villages were sent crumbling to the ground. Many others were partially damaged, and more than 2,000 people have been injured. Even with the relatively low population of the region, Naser Zargar, who heads the coroner’s office in the epicenter town of Ahar, told Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency, or IRNA, on Saturday that the death count could be over 1,000.The mayor of Varzaghan, one of the hardest-hit towns, said 12 villages in the region had been destroyed. Each of those villages had up to 1,000 residents and as many as a third may have been killed, he told IRNA. Many of the dead are women and children killed under the rubble of falling homes as the earthquake struck in late afternoon, a time when men were still outdoors working in this agricultural region. “Due to the traditional architecture of the villages, using clay bricks mixed with straw, rural areas have sustained most of the damage,” said Reza Sedighi, Ahar’s governor and head of the disaster relief center. He estimated that 25% of the public places, administrative buildings and people’s houses were damaged. The food and canned products that have been delivered to Ahar so far have been insufficient and the area is in desperate need of water, dried food and canned goods, he said. “People need tents and blankets as the weather is cold at night and they have to sleep under they sky, anticipating more tremors,” said Majan Laghaie, a reporter for the independent Shargh newspaper. “We visited many villages, five of them entirely heaps of rubble and debris. … People are shocked and still anticipating more tremors.” Ayatollah Shabestari, the provincial representative of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for two days of mourning. There was early criticism of the government’s response to the disaster, even as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Cabinet members sent their official condolences to people of East Azerbaijan province. On Saturday, as the nascent stages of rescue efforts were still underway, Turkish separatists in the region called in to an opposition TV station and complained of the slow response. They appealed to the governments of neighboring Turkey and Azerbaijan to send aid.
Iran has a deadly history of earthquakes. In 2003, more than 25,000 people were killed when a magnitude 6.6 quake struck the southeast part of the country. “Nowhere in the world does a 6 Richter scale earthquake kill so many people,” Iran’s leading seismologist, Bahram Akasheh, told a local news agency on Sunday. “The maximum number of the casualties should have been 10 injured. Due to the inappropriate constructions, our cities and villages are heavily damaged. It shows our crisis management has failed to strengthen the foundation of buildings. “We have predicted an over-7 Richter earthquake in the central or eastern … mountain ranges,” Akasheh said. “We should for sure anticipate for it in the future.” A former member of parliament, Gholamali Masoudi Rayhan, told the semi-official Iranian Labor News Agency, or ILNA, that there were also problems in how state media were covering the disaster.
Overcrowded hospitals in northwest Iran struggled to cope with thousands of earthquake victims on Sunday as rescuers raced to reach remote villages after two powerful quakes killed nearly 300 people. Thousands huddled in makeshift camps or slept in the street after Saturday’s quakes for fear of more aftershocks, 60 of which had already struck. A lack of tents and other supplies left them exposed to the night chill, one witness told Reuters. “I saw some people whose entire home was destroyed, and all their livestock killed,” Tahir Sadati, a local photographer, said by telephone. “People need help, they need warm clothes, more tents, blankets and bread.” The worst damage and most casualties appeared to have been in rural villages around the towns of Ahar, Varzaghan and Harees, near the major city of Tabriz, Iranian media reported. Tabriz resident Ahmad, 41, told Reuters his cousin living in a village near Ahar was killed and his body found. “Nobody knows what happened to his wife and two daughters,” aged 4 and 7, Ahmad said. “We fear that if rescuers don’t get to them soon, they will lose their lives too if they’re still alive.” But Iranian officials said rescue operations had ended by Sunday afternoon and that all those trapped beneath the rubble had been freed, Iran’s English-language Press TV reported.Many villages are hard to reach by road, hindering rescue efforts. Hospitals in Tabriz, Ardabil and other cities nearby took in many of the injured, residents and Iranian media said, and there were long queues of survivors waiting to be treated. “I wanted to go there last night to help but heard there was bad traffic and that it wasn’t safe enough,” Ahmad said. “People in those villages need help.” Abbas Falahi, member of parliament for Ahar and Harees, said people in some villages were still “in dire need of food and drinking water”, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported. “Despite the promises of officials, little first aide has been distributed in the region and most people are left without tents. If the situation continues, the toll will rise,” he said. Aidin, a Tabriz resident, said he went to give blood at a local hospital on Saturday and saw staff struggling to cope with the influx of patients. Most patients had been taken there by their families, he said, indicating a shortage of ambulances. Ahar’s 120-bed hospital was full, said Arash, a college student in the town. There were traffic jams on the narrow road to Tabriz as victims tried to reach hospitals, he said by telephone.
“People are scared and won’t go back into their houses because they fear the buildings aren’t safe.” The U.S. Geological Survey measured Saturday’s first quake at 6.4 magnitude and said it struck 60 km (37 miles) northeast of the city of Tabriz, a trading hub far from Iran’s oil-producing areas and known nuclear facilities. The second, measuring 6.3, struck 11 minutes later near Varzaghan, 49 km (30 miles) northeast of Tabriz. More than 1,000 villages in the area were affected by the earthquakes, Ahmad Reza Shaji’i, a Red Crescent official, told the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA). Some 130 villages suffered more than 70 percent damage, and 20 villages were completely destroyed, he said. “We saw some villages that were truly destroyed,” said Sadati, the photographer who was documenting the quake aftermath. “One good thing was that the earthquake happened during the day, so many people were not in their homes. If it had happened at night the casualties would have been far worse.” Close to 300 people were believed to be dead, said Reza Sadighi, Ahar’s local governor, Fars news agency said. National emergency head Gholam Reza Masoumi said 5,000 people are believed to be injured, according to ISNA.
Nearly 100 ambulances and 1,100 Red Crescent workers were deployed, Shaji’i said, along with 44,000 food packages and 5,600 tents for shelter. The relief agency had enough supplies and most residents in the area had access to clean water but Shaji’i asked residents to donate cash to the relief effort. Tehran officials sent condolences to the victims and declared two days of mourning in the province, ISNA reported. About 36,000 people in the quake-hit area have been given emergency shelter, Masoumi was quoted as saying by ISNA. Iranian lawmaker Mohammad Hassan-Nejad warned that if relief efforts did not speed up, the death toll would swiftly rise. “Relief groups have still not reached many villages, because in normal conditions some of these villages are several hours away,” he told ISNA. “Currently the roads are closed and the only way to reach these villages is by air.”
Photographs posted on Iranian news websites showed numerous bodies, including children, lying on the floor of a white-tiled morgue in Ahar and medical staff treating the injured in the open air as dusk fell on Saturday. Other images showed rescue workers digging people out of rubble – some alive, many dead. Twenty-eight year old Narges in Tehran said she saw dozens of people in a hospital waiting to donate blood for the victims. Iran is crisscrossed by major fault lines and has suffered several devastating earthquakes in recent years, including a 6.6 magnitude quake in 2003 that reduced the historic southeastern city of Bam to dust and killed about 31,000 people. Saturday’s quakes struck in East Azerbaijan province, a mountainous region that neighbors Azerbaijan and Armenia to the north. Buildings in Tabriz, the provincial capital, are substantially built and ISNA reported nobody in the city had been killed or hurt. Homes and business premises in Iranian villages, however, are often made of concrete blocks or mud brick that can crumble and collapse in a strong quake. Water, electricity, and phone lines in the area of Varzaghan are all down, further hindering rescue efforts, Iran’s English-language Press TV reported. Tabriz residents left their homes and crowded the streets following the two quakes, those in the city said. “Everyone was scared last night,” a resident said by telephone. “They set up tents and were sleeping in the streets and in parks.”
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Residents of the zone in northwestern Iran hit by powerful twin earthquakes described moments of terror and panic with birds crowing loudly in warning seconds before the ground shook. As the death toll rose Sunday to more than 250 with entire villages leveled, rescuers called off searches for survivors and turned their attention to caring for the 16,000 people left homeless.
By Arash Khamoushi, APIranians search the ruins of buildings after Saturday’s earthquake.
At least 20 villages were totally destroyed in the quakes on Saturday that were followed by some 36 aftershocks, state television reported. Ahmad Reza Shajiei, a senior government official in charge of rescue operations, said more than 5,000 tents have been set up to shelter the thousands of displaced who spent the night outdoors.
“The moment the earthquake hit, it was like a snake biting from underground. It was the worst experience of my life,” said resident Morteza Javid, 47, from Ahar.
“The walls were shaking and moving from side to side. It took about a minute before I could run out of the house,” he said. “Seconds before the earthquake, crows were making a lot of noise, but I didn’t understand why. It was only after the quake that I learned the crows were warning us.” Javid said he drove more than a dozen injured people to hospitals during the night.
State television said at least 250 died. The semiofficial Mehr news agency quoted a local official who put the toll at 277. State TV said 44,000 food packages and thousands of blankets have been distributed in the stricken area.
In Washington, the White House press secretary sent a message of sympathy for the victims.
“Our thoughts are with the families of those who were lost, and we wish the wounded a speedy recovery,” it said.” We stand ready to offer assistance in this difficult time.”
The U.S. and Iran are locked in a bitter fight over Tehran’s disputed nuclear program, which the West suspect is aimed at producing weapons. Iran denies the allegation.
The U.N. also issued a message of sympathy and offered aid.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported that Saturday’s first quake was magnitude 6.4 and struck 35 miles northeast of the city of Tabriz at a depth of 6.2 miles. State TV quoted local Crisis Committee chief Khalil Saei as saying the epicenter was a region between the towns of Ahar and Haris, about 350 miles northwest of the capital Tehran.
The second quake was a magnitude 6.3 and struck 11 minutes later, the USGS reported. Its epicenter was 30 miles northeast of Tabriz at a depth of 6.1 miles.
The quakes hit the towns of Ahar, Haris and Varzaqan in East Azerbaijan province, state television reported. In addition to 20 villages destroyed, more than 130 others sustained heavy damage, state TV said.
The aftershocks were felt in a wide region near the Caspian Sea, causing panic among the people.
Iran is located on seismic fault lines and is prone to earthquakes. It experiences at least one earthquake every day on average, although most are so small they go unnoticed. In 2003, some 26,000 people were killed by a magnitude 6.6 quake that flattened the historic southeastern city of Bam.
Television showed images of people being evacuated on stretchers, while others were treated for broken limbs and concussions. Dozens of families were sleeping on blankets laid out on the ground in parks. Some were crying, and others shivered from the cold in the mountainous region hit by the quake, near the border with Azerbaijan.
More than 1,100 rescuers worked through the night to pull out those trapped under rubble and to reach some of the more remote villages affected. Some 15 dogs were brought in to search for survivors.
By afternoon, state television reported that search operations had ceased. The government’s attention shifted to providing shelter to the homeless and removing debris from the buildings destroyed.
Officials said the search was ended relatively quickly because the remote area is sparsely populated.
Naimeh Alapour said she ran out of her house without the mandatory Islamic headscarf when she felt the earthquake. Alapour, 35, lives in Tabriz, the provincial capital, about 30 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake.
“I simply took my kid and ran down the steps. The elevator was out of service. I don’t know how I walked nine floors down. It felt like this was the end of the world,” she said.
Officials have announced two days of mourning in East Azerbaijan province.
Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said the government will allocate funds to rebuild the houses destroyed in the quake, aiming to complete the construction before the arrival of cold winter temperatures.
Najjar said the plans aim to construct buildings resistant to earthquake. Most of houses in rural areas are built of mud, and they can crumble when even a moderate quake hits.
According to Najjar, several foreign countries have offered assistance, but he said Iran doesn’t need outside help and can manage the situation. He did not name the countries.
BEIJING — A shallow 6.3-magnitude earthquake shook a remote area of China’s western region of Xinjiang, near the border with Tibet, on Sunday, the US Geological Survey said.
It was not immediately clear if there was any damage or casualties and rescue teams had been rushed to the mountainous quake zone to assess the situation, a local official told AFP.
The quake’s epicentre, at a depth of nine kilometres (5.6 miles), was about 280 kilometres east of Hotan town, USGS said. It struck at 6:45 pm (1045 GMT).
The China Earthquake Networks Centre measured it at 6.2-magnitude and put it at a deeper 30 kilometres, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.
“A rescue team and other officials are now on the way to the earthquake zone, which is in a mountainous area,” an official with the emergency office of Yutian county — also known as Keriya — told AFP.
“As of now, we haven’t received any news.”
The county is on the southern edge of China’s vast Taklimakan desert.
On Saturday, a quake measuring 5.3 hit Xinjiang, about 188 km from the town of Shache, according to the USGS.
Xinjiang is a vast region with a population of around 20 million, of whom some nine million are Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking, mainly Muslim ethnic minority.
A swarm of more than 150 earthquakes over two days last month caused a previously dormant volcano to erupt beneath the Pacific Ocean, a scientist said Monday. The eruption of the Havre Volcano, about halfway between New Zealand and Tonga, is believed to have caused a floating island of pumice larger than 4,000 square miles that was encountered by a New Zealand navy ship last week. Cornel de Ronde, principal scientist of New Zealand’s Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, told Radio New Zealand the source of the pumice had been identified in cooperation with French researchers in Tahiti who monitor earthquakes in the southwest Pacific. “When they looked at their physical records they saw that on July 17th and 18th, there were some 157 earthquakes of magnitudes between 3.0 and 4.8,” he said. De Ronde said they occurred near the time of the first sighting of the pumice “raft.” When the institute looked at its database, it found the Havre volcano, which it had previously surveyed. It was a caldera volcano, like White Island off the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island, which erupted last week, but the Havre was not thought to have erupted before, he said. De Ronde said the pumice island was so light that it had floated several hundred kilometers from the volcano when it was encountered by the HMNZS Canterbury, which took samples last week. Scientists were also analyzing samples of rock ejected from Mount Tongariro, on New Zealand’s North Island, to try to find out why it erupted a week ago for the first time in 115 years.
Two major grass fires are burning in Lake County this weekend, according to state fire officials. The Walker fire, at Walker Ridge and state Highway 20 near the Colusa County border, has consumed around 400 acres, some of them in Colusa County, Battalion Chief Julie Hutchinson said. The fire, reported at 3;49 p.m., is in a fairly remote rural area dominated by oak woodland, Hutchinson said. The second fire, however, is much larger and is threatening inhabited areas. The Wye fire, reported just after 4 p.m., is burning on around 5,000 acres in the area of state Highways 20 and 53. The fire is threatening Spring Valley, an unincorporated community with a reported population of more than 800 people, and reidents in the area have been ordered to evacuate, Hutchinson said. One structure has been lost, but Hutchinson could not confirm whether it was a home. Both fires remain uncontained, and the causes remain under investigation. Around 100 fire personnel are on the scene of the Walker fire, and another 200 to 300 at the Wye fire. Hutchinson said there have not been reports of strong winds, but high temperatures have left the vegetation in the area very dry. “We’ve had a week or more of really high temperatures accompanied by a winter with very little rainfall, so the vegetation has all been very dry, very drought stressed,” Hutchinson said.
The Canary Islands are battling forest fires that have caused around 4,700 people to evacuate their homes. Spanish firefighters are struggling to contain the blazes as high temperatures and strong winds spur on the flames. A statement issued to reporters said that officials were “finding it difficult to limit the spread of fire”. “We are living through hell, we have asked the central government for more resources with which to fight the fire,” said Casimimo Curbelo, local government leader of La Gomera. The fires are the worst the Islands, which are located off the coast of Morocco, have experienced in at least a decade, and follow the driest winter in 70 years.
A massive 400-foot deep sinkhole that has opened up in a Louisiana bayou has swallowed all of the 100-foot trees in the surrounding area and led to mandatory evacuations.
About 150 people have been ordered to leave their residences after the 400-sqaure-foot gaping hole opened in Assumption Parish amid fears of potential radiation leaks and natural gas explosions.
But despite the authorities enacting the mandatory evacuation, most people have decided to stay following allegations of a cover-up and industrial mis-management from the owners of a nearby salt cavern.
Diesel sheen is seen on the water in an aerial view of the sinkhole. State officials said on that small amounts of diesel hydrocarbons were found in swamp water where an acre of swampland liquefied over the last week
As state scientists monitored the toxicity of naturally occurring radiation at a slurry hole in Assumption Parish, residents said Thursday they were furious with their public state officials because they think they have been withholding information.
The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality said the slurry hole near Bayou Corne is near areas that have been used for oil and gas exploration. Low levels of radioactivity may be remaining from the work, though not at harmful levels, officials say.
‘Out of abundance of caution and because of the ongoing incident, I have decided to further enhance our monitoring efforts,’ DEQ Secretary Peggy Hatch said in a statement.
Officials said the first set of 15 samples from the area show that there are no detectable levels of naturally occurring radioactive material on the surface of the sinkhole and Hatch says they’re confident residents aren’t at risk for exposure.
Bubbles come to the surface where pipelines come across Bayou Corne and a pipeline sign is seen on the right
Department spokesman Rodney Mallett said such material tends to accumulate in low levels on equipment used to drill for oil and gas.
Gas bubbles have been erupting in the area for weeks. Residents have been especially alarmed at the possibility of a natural gas explosion after 28 residents in Grand Bayou had to evacuate their homes on Christmas 2003 because natural gas was seeping from a salt dome storage cavern and bubbling up into water wells.
Residents have also been reporting earthquakes but despite a battery of tests conducted by federal, parish and local officials, no one has been able to figure out the source of the tremors.
Randy Rousseau, who lives in Grand Bayou and owns a body shop in Belle Rose, said he’s noticed tremors for years. He eventually moved out of his house because he didn’t feel safe and has been unable to sell it because the property value plummeted after several small sinkholes opened up in his yard.
The massive sinkhole has caused the governor to order the evacuation of 150 residents from the parish
Scientists said at a community meeting Tuesday the sinkhole might be related to a brine cavern owned by Houston-based Texas Brine Co. contained within an underground salt dome.
It has been reported that local officials at Texas Brine have known since at least January 2011 that there have been problems with the structural integrity of a brine cavern that was plugged in June 2010. Officials did not mention those issues at the meeting.
‘It’s what I’ve been saying all along, that they’ve been hiding things,’ Rousseau said. ‘I think our local officials are trying to do the best they can, but I think they’re being hindered by the higher-ups hiding things.’
Rousseau said he was especially worried after a parish official had him fill out a form asking him to list his next of kin Thursday morning.
‘That’s a little disturbing to me. They said it’s in case they can’t reach us to evacuate. But I mean, come on. They can reach everyone,’ he said.
Rep. Joe Harrison, R-Napoleonville, said he wants more transparency and answers from the Office of Conservation. He said he had no idea about structural issues within the brine cavern until he read about them in the paper.
Residents were told it will be at least 40 days before they get definitive answers about an enormous sinkhole that opened up in Assumption Parish
‘There is a serious lack of competence now in the state, and we knew nothing. Nothing. Why did they close the mine? We didn’t get any answers. It’s a real lack of competence now,’ Harrison said.
Sonny Cranch, spokesman for Texas Brine, said they’re continuing to monitor the area for any changes.
‘We’ve installed booms around the perimeter of the sinkhole to contain any floating contaminants, the diesel, anything else,’ Cranch said.
Dr. Madhurendu Kumar, director of the state Department of Natural Resources’ oil and gas division, said the sinkhole could have been caused by structural problems within the salt dome that sits underneath it.
The wall of salt between the brine cavern and the salt dome might be thinner than experts were led to believe, he said.
He said this sinkhole was unusual because it sits on the edge of the dome, when sinkholes normally sit right on top.
Some residents in the area said that they had been experiencing tremors for years before the enormous sinkhole opened up
Officials said the sinkhole, which has swallowed up and liquefied a 372-foot wide circle of swampland, has not grown in size since Saturday.
The owners of four natural gas pipelines nearby were asked to depressurize and vent off their pipelines as a precaution after the slurry area bent a 400-foot-long section of pipeline.
Governor Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency Friday in Assumption Parish and ordered an immediate evacuation of 150 homes and several businesses. The evacuation remains in effect.
Officials said on Friday it will be at least 40 days before they get definitive answers about an enormous sinkhole that opened up in Assumption Parish.
Mark Cartwright, president of United Brine Services, a subsidiary of Texas Brine Co., said the company spent the last week ‘intensely focused’ on an emergency response as they try to figure out the cause behind a sinkhole near Bayou Corne.
Low levels of radioactivity may be emanating, though not at harmful levels, officials said
Cartwright said they’ll be drilling a relief well to investigate a brine cavern they own, which is housed within the Napoleonville salt dome. It will take at least 40 days to drill the well, and scientists have speculated that the 372-foot-wide and 422-foot-deep sinkhole might be related to structural problems within the cavern, he said.
‘Our efforts are going to be more focused on diagnostics, and looking into what caused this event,’ Cartwright said at a press conference in Gonzales.
Commissioner of Conservation Jim Welsh ordered the company Thursday to drill a well and investigate the salt cavern and ‘further evaluate potential causes of the subsidence near its well site,’ as well as obtain samples of cavern content.
Cartwright said the company was just as shocked as anyone else when the sinkhole erupted last Friday, swallowing up an acre of bald cypress trees and leaving diesel fumes and slurry water in its wake.
A menacing thunderstorm spawned a tornado that touched down near Nuevo this afternoon. The tornado downed up to twelve power-lines prompting authorities to shut down both directions of the Ramona Expressway while So Cal Edison removed and repaired the damage. “There are no reported injuries and one vehicle is stranded with the driver trapped while So Cal Edison takes care of the live lines in the roadway,” Riverside County Fire Department spokeswoman Melodie Hendrickson said. A total of six occupants in the single vehicle that was temporarily stranded were assisted to a safe location at approximately 5:20 p.m., according to a Riverside County Fire Department report.
Residents had to evacuate about 10 homes after torrential rain caused flooding in the Christchurch area on Sunday night. Christchurch City Council’s civil defence manager Murray Sinclair said Dallington was particularly bad, as was St Albans, where Dudley Creek had burst its banks. He said contractors had been putting sandbags on roads in Lyttelton to divert water away from properties and people had evacuated around 10 properties in Lyttelton, Sumner and Akaroa after they flooded. Earthquake-damaged roads in the eastern suburbs were vulnerable to surface flooding because the drains were not taking the water away as effectively as they used to, he said. Dozens of homes were threatened by flash flooding in Lyttelton, after a retaining wall burst. Residents said the wall at the top of Canterbury Street was washed out after a build up of shingle and rocks blocked storm water drains, causing a flash flood on Sunday night. Rowena Laing described seeing a “river of water” washing down a nearby street, Fairfax reports. Firefighters managed to divert the water away from homes. The New Zealand Transport Agency is urging drivers to take care on State Highway 83 from Pukeuri to Duntroon and SH79 from Geraldine to Fairlie due to flooding. And in the North Island, SH29 about 17km west of Auckland near Ruahihi Rd has been reduced to one lane due to a slip on Sunday. Motorists are advised to avoid using this road. More heavy rain is expected to hit Canterbury and eastern Otago on Monday and Tuesday as a front moves slowly across the area. More than 100mm may fall in some places on top of what is already “a very sodden situation”, the Metservice website said. “Members of the public are advised that streams and rivers may rise rapidly and there may be areas of flooding and slips.” Rain or showers are expected across most of the country on Monday.
The Palisades nuclear plant in southwestern Michigan has been removed from service to repair what officials said is a “very small, very minor” cooling water leak. No radioactive materials were released, spokesman Mark Savage said Sunday. The leak was being repaired inside a containment building at the plant in Covert Township, southwest of Grand Rapids. “Palisades is taking this conservative measure at this time because of our unrelenting commitment and focus on nuclear safety,” Savage said in Sunday morning in a release. “Palisades will be returned to service when repairs are completed.” Officials had been monitoring the leak for a month. Cooling water is used to cool off components of a nuclear reactor by picking up and carrying heat from the reactor. The plant’s reactor was shut down June 12 to repair a leak in a refueling water storage tank and was back online by July 11. “Shortly after that we noticed slowly increasing levels of this (cooling water) leakage,” Savage told The Associated Press on Sunday afternoon. Shutting down the plant drops radiation levels in the containment building and allows workers to safely repair the leak, he added. Palisades has been designated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as one of the nation’s four worst-performing nuclear plants, and it’s come under increasing public and federal scrutiny recently. New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. owns the plant and says it’s working to improve the plant’s safety culture. Last month, Michigan health officials reminded people who live, work or visit within 10 miles of Palisades to have potassium iodide pills on hand. The pills may prevent illnesses associated with radioactive iodine should an accident occur. The Michigan Department of Community Health makes the pills available for free to people near the plant and the state’s other nuclear power plants.
Two cases of cutaneous anthrax have been confirmed in Lianyungang of east China’s Jiangsu Province, reported a spokesman for the Ministry of Health on Monday. Skin irritations were found among seven villagers in Lianyungang, said Deng Haihua, the spokesman said at a press conference here. The symptoms of the other five villagers were not typical, but they have also been placed under medical observation, he said. All seven villagers are in stable, non-serious conditions, he added. The infected villagers were believed to have taken part in killing a sick cow. Cutaneous, or skin, anthrax is the least serious form of the disease. It is usually contracted when a person with a cut or sore on their skin comes into direct, unprotected contact with anthrax spores on a sick or dead animal. The provincial health department responded shortly after the events were reported. Medical teams were sent to treat the villagers and sanitise the farm and their residences, Deng said. Health departments will raise the monitoring level on anthrax and help educate local people about the disease, he said. Agricultural departments were also informed of the events, he said. “We will closely follow the development of these cases and make sure the disease is under control,” he said.
Biohazard name:
Anthrax (cutaneous)
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.
Fifteen cholera cases have been confirmed in Kathmandu district since the onset of monsoon. Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Disease Hospital has confirmed 14 cases, while one case is reported in Kanti Children’s Hospital. Contaminated water is the main cause of cholera and diarrhoea in Kathmandu, doctors said. The cholera patients, between three and 88 years of age, were from Teku, Tahachal, Kalimati, Swayambhu, Baneshwor, Rabibhawan, Dallu, Bhimsengola, Kalanki and Pinglasthan in Kathmandu, the hospitals involved in the patients’ treatment reported. According to Dr Indra Prasad Prajapati, the hospital director, cholera cases have gone up this year compared to corresponding periods in the preceding years. “Only eight cases were reported last year during this time,” the director said and feared of focal outbreak if the number kept on rising. However, the epidemic could be limited to small focal area with people drinking the same contaminated water, Dr Prajapati said. He further said that three of the total cholera cases were based in Swayambhu. Dr Prajapati said leakage of drainage pipes and water pipelines is mainly responsible for the contamination of water. The contaminated water causes waterborne diseases like cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, typhoid, cholera, worm infection and jaundice. The doctor suggested to boil, double filter and to treat water with chlorine before drinking it. He also urged the government to disseminate awareness messages and repair the drainage and water supply system at the soonest. A total of 2,167 patients were diagnosed with gastrointestinal infections, including diarrhoea and dysentery in 2010/11 and 1,712 in 2011/12, according to hospitals. A miking campaign to make people aware of waterborne diseases is under way at high risk places, director of Kathmandu District Public Health Office (DPHO), Mahendra Prasad Shrestha, informed. “We are also holding a multi-sectoral meeting with Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited (KUKL), Department of Water Supply and Sewerage, the Local Development Minister and others,” DPHO director Shrestha said. He further said that they have further asked the KUKL to increase the amount of chlorine in drinking water for water purification.
Emergency relief officials and doctors deployed to flood devastated communities in the Philippines Sunday to prevent outbreaks of disease as the death toll jumped to 85.
The flooding that submerged 80 percent of Manila early in the week has largely subsided but more than 150 towns and cities around the capital remain under water, affecting more than three million people. Amid the ongoing relief operation, the weather bureau warned of a low pressure area developing some 850 kilometers (528 miles) to the east in the Pacific Ocean that could turn into a storm and bring more rain. Many provinces around Manila remained inundated as overflowing dams continued to release water, the national disaster coordinating agency said. Relief workers were dealing with “clogged pipelines and trash everywhere. Sanitation has emerged as a key problem,” Red Cross secretary general Gwendolyn Pang told AFP. “We have deployed health officers in evacuation centres and in flood-hit communities with the likelihood of diseases erupting.” The health department said water purification tablets were being distributed, while mass immunizations were being carried out to prevent an outbreak of diseases such as flu. Of particular concern is a possible outbreak of leptospirosis, caused by exposure to water contaminated by rat urine, which infected 3,300 people and claimed some 250 lives in the aftermath of similar flooding in 2009. “Many may have escaped the floods, but many could still die from leptospirosis or other diseases,” Ramos said. The Red Cross put up huge rubber bladder tanks for clean water, while local officials sent portable latrines to packed evacuation centers. Food packs were also rushed to some 770,000 people displaced by flooding. Civil defense chief Benito Ramos said more than half of them were living in dire conditions in 948 evacuation centers — mostly schools and churches converted into temporary shelter areas. But in a town north of Manila, at least one family had set up camp on top of elevated tombs at a cemetery as they waited for aid, illustrating the extent of the crisis. In all, more than three million people in 167 towns and 16 cities were affected by the heavy rains and floods, the disaster agency said. “Many have returned to their homes as the waters subsided, but it is far from a normal situation,” Ramos said. “We are trying to help them return to their normal lives with a massive clean-up operation. There is muck everywhere, and it would take some time.” Ramos said the death toll rose to 85 on Sunday from 66 the previous day, with most of the casualties due to drowning. The floods were caused by seasonal southwest monsoon that brought an unusual amount of rainfall over Manila and nearby areas, causing dams and river systems to overflow. If the new low pressure disturbance develops into a major storm, it would bring more misery, Ramos warned.
A truck driver was yesterday quarantined at Mombasa’s Aga Khan Hospital on suspicion he was infected with the deadly Ebola virus. The man only identified as Moses, 61, is said to have been in Kampala as from August 3, and arrived yesterday in Mombasa with symptoms resembling those of Ebola. According to Coast provincial director of Public Health and Sanitation Anisa Omar, the man had symptoms of fatigue, sore throat and fever, prompting doctors to seclude him from the rest of the patients at the hospital. “It’s true the man was in Kampala from August 3 and when he arrived, he developed the symptoms. He decided to seek medical attention at the hospital where he was isolated from the other patients after being examined by the doctors,’ Omar said. Anisa said the patient’s blood samples have been taken to the Kenya Medical Research Institute in Nairobi. She however allayed fears of the virus spreading to other parts of the region saying the situation is under control. This comes a week after Public Health Minister Beth Mugo assured the country that the government was doing all it can to shield Kenyans from the deadly virus. Ebola kiled 14 people in Western Uganda two weeks ago.
Biohazard name:
Ebola (susp.)
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.
Suspicious0bservers LAST Quake Watch & Explanation: http://youtu.be/SMiHsOYwdCs
[We had 4 Significant Magnitude Earthquakes During the Last Watch, Luckily None Caused Damage]
Other Earthquake Forecasters: Concurrence & Background
Shellfish collected from a large area of central and south Puget Sound contain enough Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP) biotoxin to make people sick. So, the Washington State Department of Health has closed recreational shellfish harvest in Jefferson, Island, Snohomish, Kitsap, King and Pierce Counties. Commercially harvested shellfish have been thoroughly tested and should be safe to eat. Warning signs are posted at beaches used by recreational shellfish harvesters to warn people not to collect shellfish from the closed areas. The closures include clams, oysters, mussels, scallops, geoduck, and other species of molluscan shellfish. Crab is not included in the closure, but “crab butter” should not be eaten. The PSP toxin is produced by algae that are often more common during the warmest months of the year. People can get very sick from eating shellfish contaminated with the toxin. Marine biotoxins are not destroyed by cooking or freezing. Symptoms of PSP can appear within minutes or hours and usually begin with tingling lips and tongue, moving to the hands and feet. This is followed by difficulty breathing, and potentially death. Anyone who has eaten shellfish and begins having these symptoms should get medical help immediately. A person can’t tell if PSP is present by looking at the water or shellfish. For this reason, the term “red tide,” which is often used for PSP, is misleading and inaccurate. PSP can only be detected by laboratory testing.
Biohazard name:
Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP)
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.
Thousands of dead fish are washing ashore along the Texas coast from the Colorado River to Galveston Island and Parks and Wildlife biologists suspect low oxygen levels off shore may be to blame. What tides are bringing in on Jamaica Beach is making people pause. “I hope it’s nothing major,” said Mark Gannon, who took his family to the beach Sunday. “I hope the water is safe.” Thousands of dead shad litter the sand. “Any idea what it is?” asked Gannon’s wife Alexia. Her children tried to explain the problem. “At night time, the waves pull up really far so the fish can’t handle that, so they get up on the shore,” said Abby Gannon. Authorities said the answer is not so simple. Biologists with the Parks and Wildlife Department began testing ph, saline and oxygen levels in water samples taken along the coast. “When something’s affecting one [fish] then usually a lot of them are being affected at the same time because it’s such a big group [swimming in schools] together,” said Steven Mitchell of Texas Parks and Wildlife. He suspects low oxygen in the water is a problem. However, he won’t know for sure until biologists are able to test water up to 10 miles off shore. That could take several days. Meanwhile, there is no threat to people on the beach, authorities said. Still, people like the Gannons said their plan to spend the children’s final week of summer vacation on the beach could change a bit. “I imagine as it gets warmer the smell [of the dead shad] will get stronger and we will likely want to go home,” Alexia Gannon said.
Biohazard name:
Mass. Die-off (fishes)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
After more than three decades without a case of anthrax in Colorado, the lethal bacterial disease has come back to an unusual extent on at least one Logan County ranch. After initial reports of one cow death last week, Veterinary Practice News reported Friday, the death of nearly 60 cattle from the anthrax bacillus. The one cow fatality from early last week has been laboratory-confirmed to have died from anthrax by the Colorado State Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. According to the report, officials said they are certain “beyond a reasonable doubt,” based on the clinical signs, that the other cattle died from anthrax as well. The Colorado Department of Agriculture quarantined the affected ranch last week and because no cattle left the Logan County ranch in the months before detection of the clinical signs of anthrax, infected cattle likely did not enter the food chain. Colorado State Veterinarian, Dr. Keith Roehr says drought conditions may have created a favorable environment for bacterial growth; however, he is confident that the outbreak has been contained. The moderator for the International Society for Infectious Diseases website, ProMED mail says, “With this very high number of affected animals on the one Logan County ranch, neighboring ranches up to 5 miles out are at immediate risk from biting flies with contaminated mouthparts. In fact, ranches up to three counties out should be on full alert.”Anthrax is a pathogen in livestock and wild animals. Some of the more common herbivores are cattle, sheep, goats, horses, camels and deers. It infects humans primarily through occupational or incidental exposure with infected animals of their skins. Anthrax is caused by the bacterium, Bacillus anthracis. This spore forming bacteria can survive in the environment for years because of its ability to resist heat, cold, drying, etc. this is usually the infectious stage of anthrax. When conditions become favorable, the spores germinate into colonies of bacteria. An example would be a grazing cow ingests spores that in the cow, germinate, grow spread and eventually kill the animal. The bacteria will form spores in the carcass and then return to the soil to infect other animals. The vegetative form is rarely implicated in transmission. There are no reports of person-to-person transmission of anthrax. People get anthrax by handling contaminated animal or animal products, consuming undercooked meat of infected animals and more recently, intentional release of spores. There are three types of human anthrax with differing degrees of seriousness: cutaneous, gastrointestinal and inhalation.
At least 10 people were killed and dozens injured after the earthen wall of a reservoir collapsed in eastern China, flooding a rural area, state media said Sunday.
The 29-metre (96-foot) wall, part of a reservoir in Zhejiang province, collapsed early Friday, following heavy rainfall after Typhoon Haikui passed through the area, the China Daily newspaper said.
The paper put the death toll at 10 while the official Xinhua news agency said Saturday that 11 people died and 27 were injured.
Local officials in Shenjiakeng village, where the accident took place, could not be immediately reached for comment.
The collapse flooded a “large area” of the village with water and silt, affecting 80 families and damaging at least a third of homes, China Daily said.
Haikui, now a tropical storm, had previously killed at least six people and continues to bring heavy rain to parts of eastern China, Xinhua has reported, quoting government statistics.
In Komatsu city Ishikawa, more than 10,000 earthworms found dead in a parking lot. Ishikawa prefecture is facing Japan / Korea sea.
Mr. Kobayashi is living near the parking lot. He comments he found earthworms dead in the evening of 8/5/2012. It kept increasing and now it’s scattered around in the 250 m2 of the area.
There are about 500 dead worms in the space for one car. Because 16 cars can park there, more than 10,000 worms are dead in the whole area including the passageway.
Former director of insects museum visited the place to comment it is rare to see this many worms dead at once. It’s an ordinary type of earthworm. He assumes they came from the near greenery to the parking lot for water because of the intense heat and died there.
Citizens nearby the area talks, “I haven’t seen such a thing. Is this because of the intense heat ?” or “It may increase more.”
Nearly 14,000 households in northeast Sacramento were rolling in darkness Sunday evening for 2 1/2 hours as SMUD struggled to restore power to the affected customers. SMUD spokesman Clint Swett said an equipment problem at a Citrus Heights area substation caused the outage that affected people from Carmichael to Citrus Heights. The outage was first reported at 5:30 p.m., and power was restored by 8 p.m. Swett said it was premature to speculate whether the power failure was caused by the heat. Sacramento topped out at 104 degrees Sunday afternoon. “When we have a power outage, we do our best to restore power first and then investigate what happened,” Swett said.
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Tests have revealed that magma is bubbling higher than usual in Mount Tongariro, which means further eruptions are more likely.
A series of samples have been tested since the volcano’s Te Mari crater erupted on Monday night, but the latest results give the greatest insight.
“We’re now convinced that the likelihood of this just being a one-off has decreased,” GNS vulcanologist Nico Fournier said.
“But it doesn’t mean it’s just about to blow and go pear-shape.”
The results detected sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide in the steam plume, which indicated that magma was closer to the surface than it usually was, Fournier said.
It was unclear how high the magma was – it could be anything from meters to kilometers, Fournier said.
If a magmatic eruption did occur then it wouldn’t necessarily be significant, he said. It could result in a lava flow or it could lead to a series of explosions.
“It doesn’t mean it could be a massive eruption, it could be passive,” Fournier said.
It was also likely that Monday night’s eruption could be followed by a series of steam eruptions, or no activity at all, Fournier said.
Civil Defense, along with a number of other organizations including the Department of Conservation, would continue to monitor the volcano’s activity.
There was no new advice or warnings that stemmed from the latest development, a Civil Defence spokesman said.
There was about 2100 tonnes of sulfur dioxide being emitted from the volcano per day.
That was above average and the highest sulfur dioxide emission rate for any New Zealand volcano, however it wasn’t unexpected considering the amount of steam and gas which was being emitted, a GNS spokesperson said.
Further visual observations were being undertaken today.
Scientists would also be obtaining gas and water samples from the nearby Ketetahi hot springs and some of the rocks which were ejected from the crater and which damaged the Ketetahi hut.
The volcano was still ejecting steam and gas this morning while tremors continued to shake the earth below it, Fournier said.
Meanwhile, a 4.7 magnitude earthquake in the Bay of Plenty this morning has had no impact on White Island, which erupted on Tuesday night.
White Island tended to have volcanic episodes which lasted a few months to a few years, so this could just be the start of more to come, Rosenberg said.
Wellington, Aug. 10 (Xinhua-ANI): A floating mass of the volcanic rock, pumice, reportedly covering 25,000 square km, has been found floating in the South Pacific, indicating a third volcano is active near New Zealand.
The New Zealand Defense Force (NZDF) said Friday the floating pumice, measuring 250 nautical miles long and 30 nautical miles wide, was first spotted by a New Zealand air force Orion on a maritime patrol from Samoa to New Zealand.
The Orion relayed the information to New Zealand navy vessel HMNZS Canterbury, which spotted the pumice late Thursday about 85 nautical miles west southwest of Raoul Island, one of the Kermadec Islands that lie 750 to 1,000 km northeast of New Zealand.
Lieutenant Tim Oscar, a Royal Australian Navy officer on exchange with the Royal New Zealand Navy, described the pumice as “the weirdest thing I’ve seen in 18 years at sea.”
“The lookout reported a shadow on the ocean ahead of us so I ordered the ship’s spotlight to be trained on the area,” Oscar said in the NZDF statement.
“As far ahead as I could observe was a raft of pumice moving up and down with the swell,” he said.
“The rock looked to be sitting 2 feet (60 cm) above the surface of the waves, and lit up a brilliant white color in the spotlight. It looked exactly like the edge of an ice shelf.”
Oscar said he had been briefed by a volcanologist from New Zealand’s Institute of Geological and Nuclear Science (GNS Science) the previous day when the ship encountered another area of pumice from an undersea volcano.
“I knew the pumice was lightweight and posed no danger to the ship. Nonetheless it was quite daunting to be moving toward it at 14 knots. It took about three to four minutes to travel through the raft of pumice and as predicted there was no damage,” he said.
“As we moved through the raft of pumice we used the spotlights to try and find the edge – but it extended as far as we could see. “
HMNZS Canterbury was en route to Raoul Island with a party of GNS scientists aboard at the time.
The Commanding Officer, Commander Sean Stewart, changed course to intercept the pumice and retrieve samples, which would be analyzed to determine which volcano they came from, said the statement.
According to GNS Science, the underwater volcano, Monowai, had been active along the Kermadec Arc and the pumice could be a result of that activity, said the NZDF statement.
The find comes after eruptions from Mount Tongariro, in New Zealand’s central North Island, late Monday and White Island, a marine volcano about 50 km off the east of the North Island, two days later.
The GNS scientists aboard the Canterbury believed the volcanic activity of Tongariro, White Island and along the Kermadec arc was unrelated, said the NZDF statement. (Xinhua-ANI)
Tongariro volcano has remained calm. GNS scientists measured elevated levels of SO2 and other volcanic gasses, which suggests that magma is accumulating beneath the volcano.
It is possible, that the Aug 6 eruption was only a precursor to a pending magmatic eruption, which could even be large, if the size of initial phreatic activity is in proportion to the proper magmatic eruption.
Weak ash emissions continue at White Island, producing a weak plume rising a few 100 m.
Other updates from the rest of the world include the usual candidates who have not shown much new or surprising activity:
Popocatépetl in Mexico: During the past 24 hours, 17 weak explosions occurred, and a constant steam and gas plume is rising. Glow is visible at night.
Fuego volcano: The lava flow towards Barranca Taniluya is active and reaches 200 meters length, producing small avalanches. 3 explosions were counted by the observatory yesterday and reached heights around 400 m.
Santiaguito / Santa Maria (Guatemala) produced a hot lahar yesterday at 21:50 h local time which drained large amounts of volcanic material and blocks. It lasted 15 minutes during which the windows of the observatory were vibrating.
Tungurahua volcano: The volcano has moderately strong seismic activity with phases of tremor frequently visible, related to fluid movements. No reports of recent explosions. Direct observations have been difficult due to bad weather.
El Hierro volcano: slightly increased number of quakes during the past days, including a shallow (3 km) M2.4 event on 8 Aug in the central part of the island.
A slightly increased tremor is visible at Stromboli in the Eolian island today suggesting that activity is higher today.
At nearby Etna, tremor continues to be low and glow at night is currently not visible from Bocca Nuova, suggesting that explosions, if any, are weak.
In Iceland, Askja volcano has been showing increased signs of unrest including higher than background levels of tremor, as Diana Barnes remarked on VolcanoCafe.
A comment on rumors about elevated tremor on Santorini volcano was posted as well. It is interesting to note that “tremor” usually starts in the morning and ends at night.
Finally, Sakurajima volcano in Japan produced 2 moderate to weak explosions so far today. VAAC Tokyo alerts of ash plumes rising 2.4 and 2.1 km, respectively.
10.08.2012
Non-categorized event
Other
Pacific Ocean – West, [About 620 miles northeast of Auckland]
A mass of small volcanic rocks nearly the size of Belgium has been discovered floating off the coast of New Zealand. The stretch of golf-ball-size pumice rocks was first spotted this week by a New Zealand air force plane about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) northeast of Auckland. The rocks stretch for about 26,000 square kilometers (10,000 square miles). A navy ship took scientists to the rocks Thursday night. Naval Lt. Tim Oscar says the rocks appeared a brilliant white under a spotlight, like a giant ice shelf. He says it’s the “weirdest thing” he’s seen in 18 years at sea. Scientists say the rocks likely spewed up in an eruption by an underwater volcano. They don’t believe the eruption is connected to the onshore ash eruption this week of another volcano, Mount Tongariro. Officials say the small rocks pose no danger to shipping. The Defence Force says the mass of rocks stretches 250 nautical miles by 30 nautical miles.
Approaching a string of days with highs in the 90s, meteorologists and forecasters would probably quote official records and use specific examples of sizzlingly high temperatures to describe this sweltering summer. But for city residents such as 19-year-old Cadence Noble, one word will do: “Hot,” Noble said. “It’s been hot.” The metro area had seen 53 days this year with the high temperature at or above 90 degrees. With a high of 98 on Thursday — which tied the all-time high for the date — that streak reached 54, forecasters said. The record for days in the 90s is 61, which was set in 2000. With temperatures for the next couple of days projected in the mid- to upper 90s, forecasters said there’s a good chance the previous record will be broken. In addition to the heat, forecasters for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said the recent heavy haze, caused by wildfire smoke from Montana and the Pacific Northwest settling over metro Denver, has negatively affected air quality. The air-quality index for Denver was listed as “moderate” Thursday afternoon, meaning that unusually sensitive people should consider reducing prolonged or heavy exertion. “At these concentration levels, it’s more of an annoyance with the low visibility it creates, but it hasn’t risen to the point where it causes health effects,” said Emmett Malone, an air-quality meteorologist for the state. “As thick as this haze is, we’ll be close to or under it until tomorrow,” Malone added. Noble, who works at a restaurant on the 16th Street Mall, said she has been trying to beat the summer heat by taking advantage of air conditioning and frequenting local water parks. And while the heat does get to her, Noble said, she grew up in the East, where summers aren’t only hot but humid.
Boats were blown on shore at Little Manly Beach, a roof was ripped off and planes at Sydney airport were delayed as Sydney was hit by strong winds today. The winds reached as high as 106km/h on Sydney Harbour, the strongest gusts in at least six years. And they reached 111km/h at the highly exposed station of Wattamolla in the Royal National Park. All Sydney ferry services between Manly and Circular Quay had been suspended because of large swells, the Transport Management Centre said. A Sydney airport representative said gusts of up to 75km/h were “causing delays of up to 60 minutes at the domestic terminal”. International flights were not affected. A State Emergency Service (SES) representative said there were reports that a roof had been blown off St Paul’s Catholic school at Manly. And a fallen tree had crushed an unoccupied car in Ingleburn.
There had not been any reports of injuries. Sydney and Wollongong, in the Illawarra region of NSW, were the worst hit. The electricity network Ausgrid electricity said winds had left Sydney homes and businesses without power. Ausgrid representative Kylie Yates said emergency crews were scrambling to restore power. “As soon as we restore power in one area we seem to lose power in another,” she told Macquarie Radio. Branches falling on powerlines were the main problem. She said 7000 homes had lost power. Cronulla, Narrabeen, Mona Vale, North Curl Curl, Belrose, Riverwood and Asquith had been affected by power losses, she said. The winds are drawing a bitterly cold air mass over the state and cold winds are making the city feel close to freezing. Sydney’s temperature fell below 8 degrees this morning, but the relentless winds have made it feel closer to 3 degrees. “Wind chill will have the tendency to drag the temperature down,” Bureau of Meteorology duty forecaster Dmitriy Danchuk said this morning. “For Sydney for today we’re expecting temperatures within the 13 to 16 degrees range, but in the middle of the day I wouldn’t be surprised if it feels like temperatures slightly above zero.” The New South Wales ski resorts have had widespread falls of 20-40 centimetres of snow during the past 48 hours, with Perisher gaining more than 50 centimetres.
Showers and thunderstorms are tearing through the Carolinas Thursday. Heavy rain and strong winds are responsible for knocking down several trees. According to the South Carolina Highway Patrol, a tree fell on Interstate 85 northbound in Greenville County at the 54 mile marker. All lanes were blocked and traffic backed up for several miles. Numerous trees fell along the Pelham Road corridor, including one that fell on a man home in the Brookfield sub-division. Another tree crashed through a small fence at Christ The King Lutheran Church. Several trees knocked down powerlines along Rolling Green Circle in Greenville County. 7 On Your Side has received several other reports of trees and flooding blocking roadways. Firefighters say a home in Tryon caught fire after being struck by lightning. Thousands are without power according to Duke Energy.
A Forest Service campground has been closed, and residents of two homes were warned about increased danger as a forest fire grew in southern Lake County near the Nevada border. The word went out late Wednesday to evacuate the Dog Lake Campground, where there are an estimated 20 campsites. Residents of two privately owned residences within the Fremont-Winema National Forest were warned of potential dangers. The structure in greatest jeopardy was a fire lookout tower, which had gotten a protective wrapping, Forest Service spokeswoman Lisa Swinney said Thursday. The Barry Point fire area had grown to about 3 square miles. The daily fire report said it had a high potential to spread. At midday, Swinney said, there was no accurate containment estimate. Lightning that started over the weekend set off dozens of fires in Oregon, some of which grew to significant size or complexity. As with the Barry Point fire, just north of Nevada, many were along the state’s borders. Southwest of Medford, along the Oregon-California border, the Forest Service said crews were struggling to get a hold on a complex of small fires centered on the Red Buttes Wilderness area. It said the fire was spreading in “extremely steep and heavily forested terrain,” on about half a square mile of terrain _ about 340 acres. Video shot from the air showed standing dead trees, or “snags,” from the last big fire in the area, in 1987. The Forest Service said more firefighters were being pressed into service. To the east, a large fire from Nevada crept north into Harney County. The fire area totaled nearly 200 square miles, and its potential for growth was rated as extreme. Along the Idaho border in the far eastern part of the state, firefighters said they had established containment lines around an 8-square-mile fire south of Vale. In Central Oregon, a 2-square-mile fire near Sisters that briefly threatened a subdivision earlier in the week was expected to be contained Thursday. A disintegrating tire on a tanker headed for the Lakeview-area fire caused concern Wednesday at the Medford airport. The DC-7 tanker took off with a load of retardant. Workers noticed pieces of the tire on the runway, and a pilot on another tanker saw the tire was damaged but still inflated. After dropping its load of retardant, the tanker returned to Medford and landed safely, as firefighters kept watch.
(Reuters) – The death toll attributed to the storm Ernesto rose to six on Friday although it continued to weaken as it passed through Mexico’s eastern Veracruz state.
Three members of one family were killed on Thursday night when a tree fell on their pick-up truck about 60 miles southwest of Veracruz city, according to a state civil protection official. A fourth family member, a six-year-old child, was also injured in the accident.
Ernesto is blamed for causing torrential rains and flooding in nearby rivers.
According to local officials, three other people died earlier on Thursday — one in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, after falling while working on home repairs; and two more who drowned in next-door Tabasco state.
Three major oil-exporting ports in the Gulf of Mexico were re-opened on Friday morning as the storm no longer posed a risk to ships leaving installations in Coatzacoalcos, Cayo Arcas and Dos Bocas, which ship most of Mexico’s crude oil exports.
Flooding could damage agriculture in southern Veracruz, a major corn producing area, according to Federico Assaleih, president of the state’s agriculture council.
“We have received reports that some (corn) plantations were flooded yesterday,” said Assaleih, but he added that the extent of crop damage would not be known for several days.
Ernesto, which the U.S. National Hurricane Center said dissipated on Friday morning, made landfall on Mexico’s Yucatan coast late on Tuesday as a Category 1 hurricane.
(Reporting By Liz Diaz; Additional reporting and writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Tropical Storm Ernesto crossed the coast of the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, sending wind gusts and showers across the state of Veracruz, home to some of Mexico’s busiest ports and oil installations. The storm, with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph, made landfall in the early afternoon close to the port city of Coatzacoalcos. Ernesto was heading west over southern Mexico at a speed of about 10 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said in its 5 p.m. EDT advisory. Mexico’s government downgraded a hurricane warning for the coast of Veracruz to a tropical storm warning. The hurricane center said it expects further weakening as Ernesto moves over mountainous terrain in the next day or two. However, torrential rain and flooding was expected in Veracruz and authorities reported three deaths. Officials from state-run oil company Pemex said there were no reports of disruptions to facilities in the region, which include the Minatitlan refinery, producing 185,000 barrels of crude per day. The eye of the storm passed the oilfields of Cantarell and Ku Maloob Zaap, which account for just over half of Mexico’s oil production of about 2.5 million bpd.
Coatzacoalcos is home to one of Mexico’s key oil exporting ports, which has been closed since Wednesday along with Cayo Arcas and Dos Bocas. Almost all of Mexico’s crude oil exports, which totaled 1.425 million bpd in June, are shipped to refineries on the Gulf Coast of the United States from the three ports. Authorities in Veracruz said they were preparing emergency shelters, if needed, in the flood-prone and densely populated state. The small Mina-Coatza airport, between Minatitlan and Coatzacoalcos, was closed on Thursday and waves of 13-20 feet were reported along the coast. Ernesto is forecast to plow through Veracruz state and into central Mexico on Friday as a tropical depression. The storm previously made landfall on Mexico’s Yucatan coast late on Tuesday as a Category 1 hurricane, the lowest on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, before being downgraded to a tropical storm on Wednesday. Two people drowned and about 100 houses were damaged as the storm swept through the swampy state of Tabasco toward the Gulf of Mexico, according to local officials. One person died in Coatzacoalcos after falling while working on home repairs, an official from the local Red Cross unit said. The storm spared major tourist areas on the peninsula from a direct hit and landed in sparsely populated low-lying jungle, near the port town of Mahahual, 40 miles north of Chetumal, the capital of Quintana Roo state. Ernesto passed well south of the major tourist resort of Cancun, which saw only heavy rains. About 2,500 people were evacuated from Chetumal up the coast to Tulum in an area known for its scuba diving and ecotourism attractions. Rainfall of 3 to 6 inches, and possibly 15 inches in some areas, was expected in the states of Tabasco, Veracruz, Puebla and northern Oaxaca through Friday, the center said.
A rare summer storm blasted the Arctic this week, beginning off the coast of Alaska, and moving over much of the Arctic Sea for several days before dissipating.
Although the storm itself was uncommon — NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., estimates that there have only been about eight similarly strong August storms in the last 34 years — the real news behind the meteorological event is the stunning Aug. 6 photo taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The cyclone is spinning toward the North Pole, with Greenland visible in the bottom-left of the image. Scientists are left speculating what the impact of such a storm could be.
From NASA:
Arctic storms such as this one can have a large impact on the sea ice, causing it to melt rapidly through many mechanisms, such as tearing off large swaths of ice and pushing them to warmer sites, churning the ice and making it slushier, or lifting warmer waters from the depths of the Arctic Ocean.
“It seems that this storm has detached a large chunk of ice from the main sea ice pack. This could lead to a more serious decay of the summertime ice cover than would have been the case otherwise, even perhaps leading to a new Arctic sea ice minimum,” said Claire Parkinson, a climate scientist with NASA Goddard. “Decades ago, a storm of the same magnitude would have been less likely to have as large an impact on the sea ice, because at that time the ice cover was thicker and more expansive.”
More information on the abnormal Arctic weather this summer can be found here, courtesy of the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Summer storms hammered the Tri-State area and created flash floods for some. Cars were washed away and drivers rescued in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. It could be an even worse situation on Friday with more rain on the way. Tow truck drivers were still trying to rescue a stranded SUV as the water was slowly receding around it. According to officials it had been submerged and it wasn’t the only vehicle buried in the high water. “We winced one car out from the other side, it was a Mini Cooper, and winced that to the other side of Route 9, the water was over the roof,” a tow truck driver said. Law enforcement used boats to search for vehicles they might have missed in the high water, and this was after several rescues. What happened in the area was a classic flash flood. At around 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, heavy driving rains caused storm drains to fill and in a matter of minutes the ramp connection 440 North to Route 9 South was flooded. “Reports were that there were cars trapped in the water with people trapped in the car. We arrived on scene, we had three cars submerged, we had one lady up to her knees, she was on the roof of the car, the water was up to her knees,” a firefighter said. They rescued her and there was a Good Samaritan who rescued two other motorists from their cars. What is left now is the damage to the cars from the flooding, and the detours that were caused into the evening.
Yesterday AVN received a tip from a reliable source with knowledge of adult video production in Europe who said that there is currently an outbreak of syphilis in Budapest. AVN was able to corroborate the tip with Sandy’s Models and Brill Babes, 2 of the biggest modeling agencies in the Hungarian capital. The infection is widespread enough that all production has been put on hold in Budapest until 21 Aug 2012. “There is some serious situation here in Budapest,” Cameron of Sandy’s Models told AVN. “Yesterday – 7 Aug 2012 – the Labor [department] sent a warning e-mail that they found that [the number of people infected with syphilis has] dramatically increased.” AVN Hall of Famer Rocco Siffredi, who’s based in Budapest, told AVN Tuesday that “today the number of people infected is 21 and the outbreak is not over!” Both Cameron and Eszter of Brill Babes put the number of syphilis infections at 18 (14 females and 4 males), with 8 female performers receiving positive results on Monday [6 Aug 2012] alone. “All the models go to double syphilis check from yesterday – 7 Aug 2012, and the whole business stops till – 21 Aug 2012,” Eszter of Brill Babes told AVN. “After the 21st everyone should retest again, and only the totally clear people are able to work in the future. Maybe the break will take longer; we’ll see.” It’s not known at this point where the infection originated, but Siffredi pointed out that many foreign performers come to Budapest to shoot, and that he suspects the infection came from somewhere else. “The big problem is that not only local performers are involved but also Czechs and Russians where we believe that this all think start [sic],” he said. AVN will be following this story as it develops.
Biohazard name:
Syphilis
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 first case of deadly Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever has been confirmed from a private hospital in Karachi, whose lab analysis confirmed that the patient was suffering from the viral disease, officials said on Thursday. The Sindh Dengue Surveillance Cell officials confirmed that the patient, whose name was not disclosed, was admitted to a private hospital in Karachi with symptoms of Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever. His test from another private hospital confirmed that he was suffering from the disease. Sources in the provincial health department said the patient’s name was Jumma Khan, whose age was between 40 and 45 years and he belongs to Karachi. He was being treated at a local private hospital after testing positive for the Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic fever. According to World Health Organisation (WHO), CCHF is a severe disease in humans, with a high mortality rate. Fortunately, human illness occurs rarely, although animal infection may be more common. The WHO says the disease has been prevalent in Pakistan, especially in the Balochistan province, since 2000 and over last two years, caused the deaths of several people.
Biohazard name:
Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF)
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.
At least 10 people admitted to the Sukraraj Tropical and Disease Control Hospital in Nepali capital Kathmandu have tested positive for cholera. The hospital laboratory said Vibrio Cholera belonging to 01 Ogawa stereotype was detected in all the patients. Doctors at hospital attributed the spread of cholera and diarrhea infection in Kathmandu to contaminated water, according to Saturday’s Republica daily. “Most of the patients who came to the hospital said that they had drunk water supplied by Kathmandu Upatyaka Kahanepani Limited without boiling or treatment,” Tulsha Adhikari, a nursing staff said. She said whole families had been infected and some were brought to the hospital by their neighbors as all family members were sick.
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.
It might look like a scene from a horror film but this is the breathtaking natural phenomenon which has met tourists at a popular French beauty spot.
The stunning scenes in Camargue, southern France, may look very dramatic but are actually thought to be caused by the high levels of salt within the water.
The bizarre sight was captured by photographer, Sam Dobson, from Moscow in Russia.
The natural phenomenon, which has seen salt levels turn water red, has had a breathtakingly beautiful – and eerie - effect on wildlife
It’s a stretch of road where not much has changed, at least in Willard Hebbe’s lifetime. “A few bicyclists out here,” said Hebbe. “They like to come out here and ride, but it’s just a country road out here.” It’s a road Hebbe knows well, which is why what he drove by Thursday stood out. “I saw a truck in the driveway, kind of strange and unusual,” said Hebbe. Strange because, the fence usually hiding it from view was ripped right out of the ground. “After awhile we had two or three fire trucks and an ambulance and a tow truck,” Hebbe added. That’s when Hebbe’s daughter Kristin started taking pictures, capturing much more than a wrecked truck. The driver’s off road ride finally ended when the truck slammed into the corner of a nearby house ending one accident and starting another. “Evidently there was a swarm of bees in the house and the bees attacked the guy getting out of the truck,” explained Hebbe. The swarm stung not only the driver, but several others, including the homeowner who tried to pull him to safety. The attack makes five in the past week for Travis County. They started last Friday with two attacks near Koenig and Lamar. Another swarm struck north Austin off Croslin Street. The worst was Wednesday in Plugerville, when bees stung a man more than 300 times. Thursday’s swarm wasn’t even the biggest. A bee wrangler said the hive was just a few years old. “I don’t know what’s up with all these bees,” smiled Hebbe. “I don’t think these are related to those bees, but don’t really know for sure.” What Hebbe does know, he’ll be keeping an eye out for all things that buzz. Travis County EMS says the driver of that truck was taken to Seton Williamson Hospital. The man is expected to make a full recovery.
Biohazard name:
Bees attack
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
A deadly disease that hasn’t been seen in Colorado for 31-years has been found in the northeast part of state. The Colorado Department of Agriculture is currently investigating an anthrax case in Logan County; one deceased cow is confirmed to have been infected with the disease, approximately 50 dead cattle are suspected to have been exposed. One location has tested positive and adjacent ranchers are being notified. No cattle left the location prior to the quarantine. No cattle entered the food chain. “The risk is minimal outside the affected ranch. We believe, at this point, that anthrax is confined to that specific premises,” said State Veterinarian, Dr. Keith Roehr. “Colorado has not had an anthrax case in 31 years but anthrax outbreaks are not uncommon in the Western United States. We are dedicated to providing the necessary response to ensure that the investigation works quickly to limit the spread of this disease.” The premises has been quarantined and people, cattle, and equipment that may have come into contact with anthrax are being monitored during this investigation. “Our focus is on the potential for human exposure,” said Dr. Tony Cappello, district public health administrator for the Northeast Colorado Health Department.
“We are currently conducting our own public health investigation and contacting individuals that have been involved with the livestock. Anthrax is not spread from person to person and exposure is limited only to those who had contact with the affected cattle or the immediate area.” Anthrax can develop naturally in soil; the spores can become active in association with periods of marked climatic or ecologic change such as heavy rainfall, flooding or drought which can then expose the anthrax spores to grazing livestock. Outbreaks of anthrax are commonly associated with neutral or alkaline soils. In these areas the spores apparently revert to the vegetative form and multiply to infectious levels so that cattle, horses, mules, sheep and goats may readily become infected when grazing such areas. Anthrax is a serious disease because it can cause the rapid loss of a large number of animals in a very short time. Often, animals are found dead with no illness detected. Appropriate carcass disposal is being used to prevent further soil contamination. Producers should consult their veterinarians and vaccinate their livestock, if deemed appropriate. Humans or animals can become infected by coming in contact with infected animals, soil or water. Anthrax infection can be treated with antibiotics, especially if caught in the early stages.
Biohazard name:
Anthrax (cow)
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 number of people taken to hospitals by ambulance due to heatstroke in the week through Sunday more than doubled from the preceding week to 5,467, preliminary data showed Tuesday. The figure, up from 2,622 in the week to July 15, hit the highest for a single week this summer, according to the data released by the Fire and Disaster Management Agency. Deaths caused by heatstroke increased to 13 from five in the preceding week. Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture had the most victims, with ambulances called for 388 people each. They were followed by 382 in Aichi Prefecture and 372 in Osaka Prefecture. People aged 65 or older accounted for 45.9 percent of the total. Since the agency started this year’s survey on May 28, 11,116 people were taken to hospitals as of Sunday. Twenty-three people have died. The rise in heatstroke cases reflects the smothering heat wave, with temperatures of 35 degrees or higher observed in many places for the four days from July 16, agency officials said. In Tatebayashi, Gunma Prefecture, the mercury shot up to 37.6 on July 16 and to 39.2 the following day, according to the Meteorological Agency.
Ten people were killed and 38 others went missing as incessant rains battered Uttarakhand today triggering landslides, cloud bursts and flash floods which flattened homes and stranded hundreds of pilgrims with the Chardham Yatra coming to a grinding halt. The Garhwal region bore the brunt of the natural calamity. The state government has sounded a high alert after the MET department’s warned of very heavy rains and sought the help of the army to mitigate the sufferings of the people. Nineteen labourers of the state-run UJVN Ltd’s Assi Ganga hydel project went missing following a cloud burst in the upper hills of Uttarkashi district. Similarly, 19 other people also went missing from Gangori, Dunda, Uttarkashi town and Barkot areas in the district. “We have launched a manhunt to trace the missing people,” said R Rajesh Kumar District Magistrate Uttarkashi. Elsewhere in the state, 10 people were killed in different incidents following heavy rains during the past 24 hours, said sources in the Disaster Management and Mitigation Centre (DMMC) here.
In the disaster-prone Uttarkashi district, flash floods hit several low-lying areas creating havoc there. At least three jawans of the fire brigade department and two others were killed at Gangori area even as Chardham yatra to Gangotri and Yamunotri remained suspended for the second day today. In Gangori area of Uttarkashi, Bhagirathi is flowing above the danger level with people being evacuated to safer areas. Nearly 30 homes were washed away in the floods with the Gangori bridge also collapsing. “We have now reports that three jawans of the fire brigade and two others were killed in Gangori,” said state disaster management minister Yashpal Arya. Two more people were killed in Dunda area of Uttarkashi district. While two children were killed in a house collapse at Kararnprayag area of Chamoli district early today, another child was washed away in flash floods at Pokhri area of the district where landslides continue to hit blocking highways leading to Badrinath.
Hundreds of Badrinath pilgrims were stranded at various places at Patalganga, Lambagar and Birahi due to fresh landslips. The yatra for Kedarnath shrine was also suspended, the sources said. The government has launched relief and rescue operations but heavy rains were hampering them, top officials said. Food packets are being sent to the affected people. Nearly 250 families have already been taken to safer areas in different areas of Uttarkashi and Chamoli districts. Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna was monitoring the situation and has asked the concerned authorities to launch rescue and relief operation in the disaster-hit areas. He also asked concerned officers to reopen roads leading to pilgrim shrines so that the stranded pilgrims can go home. Bahuguna also asked the special Chardham cell set up at the secretariat to send him a daily report regarding the situation in the Garhwal region. The CM said his government would provide food and other essential items to the stranded pilgrims. Landslides are common in fragile hills of Garhwal region.
Serious sandstorm hit the entire country Friday with the wind speed measuring about 90km/hr and visibility falling below 500m. According to Director of Weather Forecast Mohammed Karam, the weather is the outcome of winds blowing from the East and high altitude concentration on the North Arabian Peninsula that closes the atmospheric pressure lines. Karam anticipates the weather will be stable by Saturday. He also said the northwesterly wind will continue in moderate speed measuring 40 km/hr and later transform to moderate light northeasterly winds measuring 25-40km/hr until the end of the week, and then the weather will become stable. He urged elderly people and those suffering from allergies and breathing difficulty to be extra cautious and wear masks while reducing their outings to avoid complications. Meanwhile, the Director of Operations at Kuwait International Airport Essam Al-Zamen disclosed that aviation events are continuing as expected, indicating the bad weather has no effect on activities there. He reiterated that landing and departure of planes take place as scheduled, even though the visibility is about 400m.
Firefighters in Russia’s Siberia had extinguished 45 forest fires covering 522 hectares of forest in the past 24 hours, but 131 wildfires were still burning on the area of almost 15,000 hectares, the regional forestry department said Friday. A total of 29 wildfires covering an area of more than 5,000 hectares were localized, and 14,948 hectares of forest continued to burn in the Krasnoyarsk Krai, Tomsk Region, Tuva, Khakassia and Irkutsk Region. Some 3,000 people, 412 units of fire-fighting equipment and 24 aircrafts have been mobilized to fight the blazes, which are believed to be caused by hot and dry weather in the region where the temperature reaches 35 degrees. Reports said the wildfires posed no threat to populated areas or industry.
A wildfire whipped by gusty, southerly winds swept through rural woodlands north and south of Oklahoma City on Friday, burning several homes as firefighters struggled to contain it in 113-degree heat. Oklahoma’s emergency management officials said 25 structures had burned east of Noble, including a handful of homes, and several homes near Luther, north of Oklahoma City, were threatened. Hundreds of residents were told to leave their homes as flames spread through treetops. The state Highway Patrol closed part of the main highway between Oklahoma City and Tulsa because of the Luther-area fire, which may have been deliberately set. Local deputies were looking into reports about passengers in a pickup truck who were seen throwing out newspapers that had been set on fire. “I loaded the kids up, grabbed my dogs, and it didn’t even look like I had time to load the livestock, so I just got out of there,” said Bo Ireland, who lives a few miles from where the Noble-area fire started. “It looked to me that, if the wind shifted even a little bit, I would be in the path of that fire. It was just too close.” There were no immediate reports of injuries or livestock losses. Dayle Bishop stood in a convenience store parking lot about 2 miles away from his house, saying he was pessimistic about his home’s chances. “I know it’s gone,” said Bishop, who works nights as a nurse. “Didn’t even have time to get anything out.” But he noted “it’s just stuff,” and said he may not have made it out of his home had a woman not knocked on his door and woken him up.
Charles Wright was with his daughter, Christina, along with their cat, at a makeshift evacuation center doubling as a staging area for fire engines, ambulances and other emergency equipment. He said law enforcement ordered them to leave their home in Norman. “Praying for miracles. Praying for the best, that’s all we can do,” said Wright, who managed to pack some clothes, jewelry and legal papers before fleeing. Ruth Hood splashed water onto two Chihuahua puppies that she grabbed along with several other animals and her children, and left as flames burned in her neighbor’s yard. She said she couldn’t be sure her home would survive. “No guarantee,” Hood said. With the ongoing drought, high temperatures and gusty winds, it took little for fires to begin and spread — and there was little crews could do to fight them. “It’s difficult for the firefighters to get into the area because it’s heavily wooded on either side of the smaller roads. When the winds are blowing 25 mph it just blows the embers and fireballs across the roads as if they weren’t even there,” said Jerry Lojka with the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management. At mid-afternoon Friday, the temperature at nearby Norman was 113. Winds were from the south and southwest at 14 mph, gusting to 24 mph. “I can tell you the temperatures and the wind are not helping the situation at all. Some homes have been lost in the fire unfortunately, but we don’t know how many,” said Meghan McCormick, a spokeswoman for the Cleveland County Sheriff’s office.
Russell Moore, 53, who lives in the Noble area, said he was outside in his yard when a sheriff’s deputy drove down the road and told people to leave. He and his son went to a shelter set up at Noble City Hall, but planned to go to his daughter’s home in Norman. “About all we saw was smoke and a little bit of ash raining down from the sky,” Moore said. “Everybody was piling into their vehicles and leaving as we were.” Lojka said an Oklahoma National Guard helicopter has been dispatched to a fast-moving blaze in Luther, northeast of Oklahoma City. He also said helicopters were helping ground crews with a fire near Mannford and Drumright in Creek County. Helicopters from the National Guard and the Bureau of Indian Affairs were fighting a fire in Creek County. The Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office said it was investigating reports that someone in a black pickup truck near Luther was tossing out newspapers that had been set on fire. The blaze and smoke led the Oklahoma Highway Patrol to shut down part of the Turner Turnpike, which carries Interstate 44 between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Traffic was rerouted onto old U.S. Route 66, the famed two-lane highway that crisscrosses Oklahoma. The state was monitoring 11 fires in all Friday afternoon. Gov. Mary Fallin announced a statewide burn ban as the fire danger heightened. She previously had announced a state of emergency for all 77 counties due to the extreme drought.
As a wildfire’s flames raced to the edge of Lame Deer’s town limits, police drove the streets with loudspeakers blaring orders for residents of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation community to grab their most important belongings and get out. Buses were waiting to carry people from danger area, which on Thursday night suddenly meant the entire town of 2,000. Desi Small-Rodriguez, a volunteer with the tribe’s disaster and emergency services department, recalled the chaotic scene as the Chalky Fire threatened to burn down the seat of the southeastern Montana reservation. “A lot of people were walking with their belongings, getting on buses, trying to find rides, getting out as told,” Small-Rodriguez said Friday. About 250 people stayed at a Red Cross shelter 25 miles away at the St. Labre Mission. Others took shelter with friends and relatives on other parts of the reservation. Those with no place to go camped out on lawns in nearby communities, or they just refused to leave. The fire had already burned two homes earlier in the day, then wind from a cold front whipped up the flames and drove the fire straight toward town. Things looked grim to Carol Raymond, Rosebud County’s head of disaster and emergency services, who had driven from Forsyth to see firsthand what was happening. “I figured the whole town of Lame Deer would go up in flames,” Raymond said. Firefighters worked overnight trying to keep the flames back. At one point early Friday, the fire jumped Highway 212, but firefighters contained it with a back burn of the surrounding area, and the wildfire skirted around town without destroying any buildings or causing any injuries, Small-Rodriguez said. On Friday, the smoke was choking the town, but rain was assisting firefighters. A red-flag warning was to be in effect until evening, and firefighters prepared for gusty winds and possible thunderstorms. The mandatory evacuation remained in effect.
The state is sending firefighters and managers to help battle a 1,000-acre wildfire in the southeast corner of Washington. Other firefighters also are trying to contain a 10,000-acre wildfire in central Washington. The new fire broke out Thursday afternoon five miles south of Asotin and is burning grass, brush and wheat. The state Emergency Operations Center at Camp Murray has been activated to coordinate state assistance. Overnight winds forced firefighters to retreat at the central Washington fire as it grew to 10,000 acres – more than 15 square miles. Spokesman Dan Garner at the incident management center at Brewster High School says no structures are threatened. The fire broke out Wednesday near Pateros and Brewster. It’s burning grass, brush, scattered timber and some wheat land.
OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – Wildfires burned out of control on Friday in Oklahoma, destroying homes and shutting down highways in a state that has suffered 18 straight days of 100-plus degree temperatures and persistent drought.Emergency officials counted 11 different wildfires around the state, with at least 65 homes destroyed in parched areas north and south of Oklahoma City and south of Tulsa.
Oklahoma joins several states that have been plagued by wildfires this summer, including Colorado, Arkansas and Nebraska. Fires are being fed by a widespread drought.
Nearly two-thirds of the contiguous United States was under some level of drought as of July 31, according to the Drought Monitor, a weekly report compiled by U.S. climate experts.
Interstate 44, historic Route 66 and state highways were closed, but no deaths were reported in the Oklahoma fires.
Low humidity, strong southerly winds and drought conditions enabled the wildfires to spread quickly across treetops, said Michelann Ooten, deputy director of the state’s Office of Emergency Management.
“It’s just a very difficult situation we’re facing that’s all weather related,” Ooten said.
Governor Mary Fallin, who earlier in the day invoked a statewide ban on outdoor burning after declaring a state of emergency for the state’s 77 counties, told Reuters fire conditions may be worse on Saturday.
“The fire danger might be even higher,” she said.
Oklahoma has contacted neighboring states for help, but they are contending with their own wildfire threats and no out-of-state help is on its way, she said.
“There’s fires in Arkansas. There’s fires in Kansas and Texas. Everybody else is on high heat alert,” she said.
The heat in Oklahoma City, the state capital, has reached historic levels.
On Friday, Oklahoma City tied its all-time record for the highest temperature ever recorded when the thermometer reached 113 Fahrenheit (45 Celsius), a mark last recorded in the Dust Bowl days in 1936, according to the National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma.
Volunteer fire departments have made a public plea for Gatorade donations to keep their crews hydrated in the scalding conditions.
(Reporting by Steve Olafson; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Lisa Shumaker)
After a lull in the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, Tropical Storm Florence formed on Saturday, joining Ernesto as both moved west on paths that could eventually take them to the U.S. coast.
It was still in the deep Atlantic, but on a path towards the Caribbean.
Ernesto was packing sustained winds of 50 mph and should pass south of Jamaica on Sunday, the center stated. “Ernesto is forecast to become a hurricane … in a day or two,” it added.
After Jamaica, which issued a tropical storm warning, Ernesto will likely head toward Grand Cayman, arriving Monday, and then Cancun/Cozumel in Mexico on Wednesday, weather.com reported.
Weather.com added it was “unclear whether Ernesto poses a threat to the U.S. late next week.”
On Friday, the storm swept over the tiny island of St. Lucia.
Businesses and government offices were ordered closed until noon on St. Lucia as Ernesto passed over the island, churning up 12-foot waves a few miles off its north shore.
It moved so quickly that St. Lucia got less than an inch of rain and there were no reports of damage or injuries.
August and September are usually the most active months of the Atlantic-Caribbean hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30.
Prior to Ernesto forming on Thursday, the last Atlantic tropical storm was Debby more than a month ago. It drenched Florida and eight deaths were tied to the storm.
U.S. government forecasters in May predicted a “normal” 2012 season, saying 9-15 named storms could be expected. Between 4-8 of those were predicted to become hurricanes.
Continuous heavy rainfall, cloud burst, and landslides have killed 10 in various parts of Sub-Himalayan region of Uttarakhand. At least 53 persons have been reported missing so far in flash floods and swallon rivers.
The pilgrims of the Chardham were stranded in the midway at various places and government has implemented temporary closure on the annual Char Dham pilgrimage until the situation becomes under control, official said on Saturday.
Due to heavy rains, the rivers have swollen and land sliding have increasing causing havoc among the localities and pilgrims. The pilgrims were stranded on way to Gangotri, Yamunotri, Badrinath and Kedarnath – the four points of pilgrimage.
According to official report, three fire fighters were killed in Gangotri due to heavy rains. A bridge was also washed away here and over 40 houses submerged in the overflowing Bhagirathi river.
Garhwal was the worst hit area, report said.
Two deaths were reported from Chamoli after two children died in a roof collpase. A child was swept away in Pokhri.
Uttarkashi has also been hit by flash floods.
Officials said following warnings of “more and severe rains” in the next two days, the Disaster Management and Mitigation Centre is on high alert and Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna was monitoring the situation.
Water level of Bhagirathi and Ganga rivers is also on the rise. The Uttarakhand government has issued red alert in areas along the river Ganga.
As many as 22 people were on Friday trapped in flash floods in Jammu region, prompting the authorities to sound an alert in the region. “A flash flood alert has been sounded in Jammu. Due to heavy overnight rains, various rivers in Jammu region are flooded…22 people and large number of cattle are trapped in the flash floods in Ujh and Tawi rivers,” an official said. Of the 22 people, 15 are trapped in Ujh river at Khadwal area in Kathua district and two each in Mayachak, Nagri, Sujanal (Satwari) and Muthi areas, he said. A rescue operation has been launched for those trapped in the flash floods, triggered by intermittent overnight rains in Jammu, Kathua and Udhampur districts, the official said. The water level in Chenab, Tawi, Ujh and Basantar rivers are nearing the danger mark, officials said, adding that people living in low-lying areas have been alerted and warned of flash floods. They have also been asked to keep away from banks of the flooded rivers.
Public Service Company of New Mexico said nearly 3,000 customers on Santa Fe’s south side were without electric power for more than two hours Friday evening after lightning struck the local power grid. Spokesman Frederick Bermudez said he couldn’t pinpoint where the lightning hit but said it knocked out power from 5:35 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. to 2,916 homes, businesses and institutions in an area bounded by St. Michael’s Drive on the north, Old Galisteo Road on the south, Old Pecos Trail on the east and Entrada de Santiago on the west. Much of Santa Fe was pounded by heavy rain with lightning and sudden high winds late Friday afternoon, suddenly swelling the Santa Fe River and other areas with swift flows of storm water. A driver on St. Michael’s Drive reported seeing thin funnel cloud on the horizon at about 5:45 p.m. “It was probably a dust devil, but we’ve been seeing that a lot this year,” said Brian Guyer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque. “We’ve had some strong winds in Santa Fe today.” Guyer said the peak wind speed recorded at Santa Fe on Friday was 41 mph. Between two-tenths and four-tenths of an inch of rain fell — not a lot by most standards but what Guyer said was the heaviest rain the city has seen so far this summer. “You had a ton of lightning, some around the Plaza and a lot of lighting strikes up in the foothills,” he said. “It’s still dry, so it wouldn’t surprise me if we might see some fires by tomorrow.”
Hundreds of people residing near Beas river have been evacuated to safe places after flash flood caused by torrential rain over Dhundi peaks at south portal of Rohtang tunnel flooded the Seri rivulet, a tributary to Beas river, on Friday at 8pm. People living close to river between Palchan and Kullu are being evacuated and traffic on national highway has been stopped. Till last report received from Palchan (near Dhundi) at 10.30pm, level of the river was rising continuously and police were evacuating the people from Bahang village, 6km from Manali. According to police, there is no report of any casualty. Sandeep Kumar, a resident of Bahang village, said people are trying to save the household accessories amid chaotic atmosphere and conditions have become even worse after power failure. “Everything was normal till late evening but the situation changed suddenly after 8pm when river water, mixed with sludge, started engulfing its banks. People are risking their lives to remove the household stuffs,” he said. An engineer working with a hydel project near Palchan said over phone that roaring sound of river is shaking the foundation of the houses. “Nobody is going to sleep tonight. Villagers have gathered at many places and are guarding the river banks with floodlights,” he said. According to villagers it is a cloudburst which might have caused devastation at its source on mountains. Kullu deputy commissioner Amitabh Awasthi said , police are patrolling the river banks and have directed people to move to safe places. “We have closed the traffic on national highway. We shall keep an eye on the situation throughout the night,” he said.
FLOODS which hit parts of North Korea in the past few weeks have killed 169 people and left 400 missing, the state news agency announced on Saturday, sharply updating earlier casualty figures.
The floods and torrential rain between late June and the end of July also made 212,200 people homeless and washed away or inundated 65,280 hectares of cropland, the agency said.
United Nations agencies have visited the worst-hit areas to assess aid needs and the World Food Program (WFP) is sending an initial shipment of emergency food aid.
North Korea suffered a famine in the 1990s that killed hundreds of thousands and still struggles to feed its people even in normal times.
It had been estimated by UN agencies, even before the current deluge, that three million people would need food aid this year.
More than 8600 houses were destroyed and another 43,770 swamped, and more than 1400 schools, hospitals and factories collapsed, the news agency said.
Official media had previously reported 119 deaths, with 84,000 people made homeless and 45,370ha of farmland damaged.
The WFP said its initial assistance would provide victims with an initial ration of 400 grams of maize a day for 14 days, after the UN assessment mission found considerable damage to maize, soybean and rice fields.
The mission has said immediate food aid is needed for residents of the worst-hit counties such as Anju and Songchon in South Pyongan province and Chonnae in Kangwon province.
It also stressed that tens of thousands of families urgently need clean drinking water to prevent disease.
Wells had been contaminated by overflowing latrines, creating a high risk of a diarrhoea outbreak, while floods had damaged water sources and pumping stations.
Citing North Korean government figures, the UN mission said about 50,000 families would need purification tablets or other help to secure clean water.
The UN children’s fund UNICEF has ordered 10 million tablets along with other materials. Drugs and IV fluids were also badly needed.
The assessment mission said on Thursday a hospital in Chonnae county had already seen a fourfold rise in diarrhoea cases.
“In general, unless … needs are addressed, rapid increase in diarrhoea, skin infection and respiratory infections could occur,” it said in a report.
Outdated and inefficient agricultural practices, along with a shortage of fertiliser and diversion of food to the military, have contributed to the annual food shortages.
Mountainous North Korea is also short of arable land. Widespread deforestation, partly to clear land for crops, has made the impoverished nation increasingly prone to serious flooding which ends up washing away the harvest.
In February, the US reached a deal to offer North Korea 240,000 tonnes of food in return for a freeze on nuclear and missile tests.
But the plan was scrapped after Pyongyang’s failed rocket launch in April, seen by the US and its allies as an attempted ballistic missile test.
At least 10 people admitted to the Sukraraj Tropical and Disease Control Hospital in Nepali capital Kathmandu have tested positive for cholera. The hospital laboratory said Vibrio Cholera belonging to 01 Ogawa stereotype was detected in all the patients. Doctors at hospital attributed the spread of cholera and diarrhea infection in Kathmandu to contaminated water, according to Saturday’s Republica daily. “Most of the patients who came to the hospital said that they had drunk water supplied by Kathmandu Upatyaka Kahanepani Limited without boiling or treatment,” Tulsha Adhikari, a nursing staff said. She said whole families had been infected and some were brought to the hospital by their neighbors as all family members were sick.
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.
Five children in South Waziristan have died from measles during the past week, an official said. “Non-availability of measles vaccines has become a big problem and if the desired vaccines were not made available, the situation could slip out of hand,” Dr. Azmat Hayat Khan, agency surgeon, told Central Asia Online August 3. Measles has affected about 400 children, of whom about 100 were hospitalised, he said. He warned of an outbreak throughout the agency if medics failed to immunise children immediately. Letters regarding the unavailability of measles vaccine have gone to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) directorate of health, he said, expressing hope the vaccine would become available in a few days. The Taliban have refused to allow polio vaccination in areas of South Waziristan they control, endangering more than 157,000 children below age 5, he said. The directorate has received the agency surgeon’s letter and is sending vaccines to South Waziristan, FATA Health Director Dr. Fawad Khan said. “We have also started vaccination in Mohmand, Bajaur and Khyber agencies, where measles had killed several children besides sending hundreds to hospitals,” he said.
Biohazard name:
Measles (fatal)
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.
MessageToEagle.com – Two of three key signs of changes expected to occur at the boundary of interstellar space have changed faster than at any other time in the last seven years, according to new data from NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft.
For the last seven years, Voyager 1 has been exploring the outer layer of the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself.
In one day, on July 28, data from Voyager 1′s cosmic ray instrument showed the level of high-energy cosmic rays originating from outside our solar system jumped by five percent.
During the last half of that same day, the level of lower-energy particles originating from inside our solar system dropped by half.
However, in three days, the levels had recovered to near their previous levels.
A third key sign is the direction of the magnetic field, and scientists are eagerly analyzing the data to see whether that has, indeed, changed direction.
Scientists expect that all three of these signs will have changed when Voyager 1 has crossed into interstellar space.
A preliminary analysis of the latest magnetic field data is expected to be available in the next month.
“These are thrilling times for the Voyager team as we try to understand the quickening pace of changes as Voyager 1 approaches the edge of interstellar space,” said Edward Stone, the Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.
“We are certainly in a new region at the edge of the solar system where things are changing rapidly. But we are not yet able to say that Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space.”
Click on image to enlargeVoyagers in the HeliosheathThis artist’s concept shows NASA’s two Voyager spacecraft exploring a turbulent region of space known as the heliosheath, the outer shell of the bubble of charged particles around our sun. After more than 33 years of travel, the two Voyager spacecraft will soon reach interstellar space, which is the space between stars.
Our sun gives off a stream of charged particles that form a bubble around our solar system known as the heliosphere. The solar wind travels at supersonic speeds until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock. That part of our solar system is shown in dark blue. Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock in December 2004 and Voyager 2 did so in August 2007.
Beyond the termination shock is the heliosheath, shown in gray, where the solar wind dramatically slows down and heats up. Outside those two areas is territory dominated by the interstellar wind, which is blowing from the left in this image. As the interstellar wind approaches the heliosphere, a bow shock forms, indicated by the bright arc.
The Voyagers were built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which continues to operate both spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The Voyager missions are a part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Click on image to enlargeBubbles and Cosmic Rays at the Edge of the Solar SystemThe latest data from the Voyager spacecraft indicate the edge of our solar system is much different from what was previously imagined. This resulted in a new computer model that shows the edge of our solar system is not smooth, but filled with a turbulent sea of magnetic bubbles.
The heliospheric boundaries are very important in shielding the inner solar system from the galactic cosmic ray flux. The heliopause, the last region that separates us from the rest of the galaxy, acts more like a membrane that is permeable to galactic cosmic rays than a shield that deflects those energetic particles.
The galactic cosmic rays slowly wander into the heliosphere and can get trapped in the sea of magnetic bubbles. Eventually they access the solar magnetic field lines that connect back to the sun, and can move quickly towards the sun and Earth. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab
The levels of high-energy cosmic ray particles have been increasing for years, but more slowly than they are now.
The last jump — of five percent — took one week in May. The levels of lower-energy particles from inside our solar system have been slowly decreasing for the last two years. Scientists expect that the lower-energy particles will drop close to zero when Voyager 1 finally crosses into interstellar space.
“The increase and the decrease are sharper than we’ve seen before, but that’s also what we said about the May data,” Stone said.
“The data are changing in ways that we didn’t expect, but Voyager has always surprised us with new discoveries.”
Voyager 1, which launched on Sept. 5, 1977, is 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun.
Voyager 2, which launched on Aug. 20, 1977, is close behind, at 9.3 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) from the sun.
“Our two veteran Voyager spacecraft are hale and healthy as they near the 35th anniversary of their launch,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena.
“We know they will cross into interstellar space. It’s just a question of when.” MessageToEagle.com
TEN secondary school teachers at the weekend died of food poisoning, and several others hospitalised in Katsina. Investigations by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) showed that the incident occurred at a workshop organised by the state Ministry of Education for some 650 teachers at Government Day Secondary School (GDSS), Kofar Yan’daka, Katsina. It was gathered that soon after taking their lunch, supplied by a popular corporate caterer on the fateful day, some of the teachers were vomiting and afflicted by diarrhoea, as a result of which they were rushed to the Federal Medical Centre, Katsina and the Police Clinic for medication. Ten of the affected teachers were said to have died as a result of the infection. When contacted, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Alhaji Khalil Musa, said: “I cannot comment on the issue now, because it is yet to be reported to the state government. I don’t want to pre-empt the government on the issue.” The state Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), ASP Abubakar Ibrahim, who confirmed the incident, said that only one teacher died, while 19 others were hospitalised. He said that 12 of the affected teachers had already been discharged from the hospitals, while seven others were still on admission at the Federal Medical Centre and Katsina Police Clinic. He said the police had already collected sample of the food supplied by the caterer for clinical analysis. All the victims are receiving treatment at various medical centres, while officials declined to comment on the number of casualties that were brought to the centres.
Biohazard name:
Mass. Food Poisoning
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.
Agro-pastoralists farmers in Loima District in Turkana County have suffered huge losses on their farms from massive locust invasion in the region. The farmers at Kang’ilita Irrigation Schemes in Loima district have decried the invasion as a major setback to their economic sustainability despite their recent devoted engagements into farming. They said raised fear of low crop yields in the coming harvesting season as a result of the unprecedented invasion. Ms Pauline Nakali, a farmer, said that her farm has been extensively damaged by the locust pest and could hardly think of ways to regain the loss. “We are experiencing big loss of crops to locust invasion and that we expect low yield this season since our farms have been destroyed by the pest,” Ms Nakali said. She appealed to the government and donor partners to intervene and salvage the situation before it goes out of hand. But the Rift Valley Director of Agriculture Leonard Nyambuya told farmers that the Ministry of Agriculture and the development partner Food Agriculture Organizations (FAO) would send experts to tackle the pest. Mr Nyambuya said the ministry and the donor partner will provide insecticide to fight the pest. He said experts from the directorate of crop and pest in the ministry will supply appropriate chemicals and insecticides to get rid of the pests. “We are immediately sending the experts to assess the damage caused by the pest before we swing to action to eradicate it,” Nyambuya said. The director who addressed farmers’ field schools in Kangilita irrigation scheme directed the Field extension officers to assess the damage caused by the pest. The FAO officials Dr Paul Omanga said his organisation would assist the farmers to fight the prevailing pest problems in the area so that farmers achieve good yields.
Biohazard name:
Locust Invasion
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Large numbers of jellyfish have been swarming near nine thermal power plants on Ise Bay. Chubu Electric Power Co. estimates that there are close to 24,000 tons of the sea creatures swimming around the area, twice the usual level and the second-most recorded in the past decade. Measures are being taken to ensure the jellyfish don’t clog the power plants’ water intakes and disrupt their operations. Chubu Electric launched a research project in 1999 to predict the number of jellyfish in Ise Bay. They discovered that most jellyfish larvae transform into polyps in three major areas: near the port of Nagoya; along the coast of the Chita Peninsula from Tokoname to Morozaki, Minamichita, in Aichi Prefecture; and along the coast of the Shima Peninsula from Matsusaka to Toba in Mie Prefecture. Every winter, the research group collects samples of polyps and compares them with past results to predict how many larvae will develop into adult jellyfish in the following year. Last winter’s findings indicated the number this year would be 1.5 to 1.8 times higher than usual. “We don’t know the reason why the number is so high this year, but we need to monitor the situation closely,” said Minoru Hamada, 46, an assistant project manager in Chubu Electric’s technology development department.
If jellyfish block the water intake, a power plant can’t draw enough water from the sea to cool the steam used to turn the turbine, and the plant has to reduce its electricity output. Each plant has adopted various measures, including putting up nets, to stop the jellyfish from swimming too close, but this is only effective when dealing with small numbers. It is not enough to prevent large amounts of jellyfish from swimming in all at once. The number of jellyfish near the thermal power plants usually peaks in July, August and September. However, this year they started gathering around the plants in May, resulting in reduced electricity output at three of the plants for a total of nine days. They were the Hekinan plant in Hekinan, Aichi Prefecture, the Shin-Nagoya plant in Nagoya and the Kawagoe plant in Kawagoe, Mie Prefecture. It’s a pressing problem for Chubu Electric because it has become increasingly dependent on thermal energy since its Hamaoka nuclear plant has been shut down over quake and tsunami fears. “The effect of the jellyfish isn’t fully known yet, but it can have a serious impact on electricity output if they keep increasing, especially during this season when there is high electricity demand,” a Chubu Electric official said. “We need to monitor the jellyfish further and take actions swiftly if necessary.”
Biohazard name:
Jellyfish invasion
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
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In recent years, scientists, first responders and utilities have been preparing for “The Big One,” that inevitable quake that will rock Southern California to its core. It’s coming. For sure. They just don’t know when.
But the U.S. Geological Survey and Caltech have been on the ball, working from a likely scenario, a simulated “Shakeout” (see video after the jump) that would have a 7.8 quake hitting greater L.A. It would be deadly, destructive and put us in the dark for days, if not weeks.
Unfortunately, a 7.8 might now be too low of an estimate for The Big One:
Simulations for the magnitude 7.8 “ShakeOut” earthquake on the southern San Andreas fault, developed by the Southern California Earthquake Center ShakeOut Simulation workgroup. Simulation by Rob Graves, URS/SCEC. Visualization by Geoff Ely, USC/SCEC.
Scientists said the Indonesian rocker was larger than they ever thought such a quake “could be,” according to Caltech. It was a “intraplate strike-slip quake,” similar to what would happen at San Andreas, where much of California, from Baja to San Francisco, is moving north as the rest of America moves south.
In Sumatra, scientists found that this was not only the biggest strike-slip fault temblor ever, but that it set of a series of right-angle ruptures that amplified the shaking, like a block of ice cracking up in the heat.
And yes, it could happen here. The research, published last week in the journal Science Express, argues:
The new details provide fresh insights into the possibility of ruptures involving multiple faults occurring elsewhere–something that could be important for earthquake-hazard assessment along California’s San Andreas fault, which itself is made up of many different segments and is intersected by a number of other faults at right angles.
Lingsen Meng, lead author of the Caltech research:
If other earthquake ruptures are able to go this deep or to connect as many fault segments as this earthquake did, they might also be very large and cause significant damage.
The USGS, of course, is begging Southern Californians to prepare for our “mega-earthquake,” as academics called the Indonesian shaker. You know, flashlights, batteries, radios, water, nonperishable food. All that good stuff.
A volcano in Sakurajima in southern Japan has erupted, spewing volcanic ash onto Kagoshima City. The eruption at one of Japan’s most active volcanoes caused ash to cover roads. Residents of Kagoshima donned face masks to protect themselves while sweeping away the ash. The volcano has erupted over 600 times this year and is expected to continue its intermittent eruptions. Currently, the volcano warning there is at level three out of a possible five levels. A level five would mean that the residents living near the crater would have to be evacuated, while level three warns people not to approach the volcano.
ST LOUIS MO
TULSA OK
PEACHTREE CITY GA
MOUNT HOLLY NJ
CHARLESTON SC
GREENVILLE-SPARTANBURG SC
WILMINGTON NC
NEWPORT/MOREHEAD CITY NC
JACKSONVILLE FL
WAKEFIELD VA
BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC
RALEIGH NC
The number of people taken to hospitals by ambulance due to heatstroke in the week through Sunday more than doubled from the preceding week to 5,467, preliminary data showed Tuesday. The figure, up from 2,622 in the week to July 15, hit the highest for a single week this summer, according to the data released by the Fire and Disaster Management Agency. Deaths caused by heatstroke increased to 13 from five in the preceding week. Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture had the most victims, with ambulances called for 388 people each. They were followed by 382 in Aichi Prefecture and 372 in Osaka Prefecture. People aged 65 or older accounted for 45.9 percent of the total. Since the agency started this year’s survey on May 28, 11,116 people were taken to hospitals as of Sunday. Twenty-three people have died. The rise in heatstroke cases reflects the smothering heat wave, with temperatures of 35 degrees or higher observed in many places for the four days from July 16, agency officials said. In Tatebayashi, Gunma Prefecture, the mercury shot up to 37.6 on July 16 and to 39.2 the following day, according to the Meteorological Agency.
WASHINGTON — From highways in Texas to nuclear power plants in Illinois, the concrete, steel and sophisticated engineering that undergird the nation’s infrastructure are being taxed to worrisome degrees by heat, drought and vicious storms.
On a single day this month here, a US Airways regional jet became stuck in asphalt that had softened in 100-degree temperatures, and a subway train derailed after the heat stretched the track so far that it kinked — inserting a sharp angle into a stretch that was supposed to be straight. In East Texas, heat and drought have had a startling effect on the clay-rich soils under highways, which “just shrink like crazy,” leading to “horrendous cracking,” said Tom Scullion, senior research engineer with the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. In Northeastern and Midwestern states, he said, unusually high heat is causing highway sections to expand beyond their design limits, press against each other and “pop up,” creating jarring and even hazardous speed bumps.
Excessive warmth and dryness are threatening other parts of the grid as well. In the Chicago area, a twin-unit nuclear plant had to get special permission to keep operating this month because the pond it uses for cooling water rose to 102 degrees; its license to operate allows it to go only to 100. According to the Midwest Independent System Operator, the grid operator for the region, a different power plant had had to shut because the body of water from which it draws its cooling water had dropped so low that the intake pipe became high and dry; another had to cut back generation because cooling water was too warm.
The frequency of extreme weather is up over the past few years, and people who deal with infrastructure expect that to continue. Leading climate models suggest that weather-sensitive parts of the infrastructure will be seeing many more extreme episodes, along with shifts in weather patterns and rising maximum (and minimum) temperatures.
“We’ve got the ‘storm of the century’ every year now,” said Bill Gausman, a senior vice president and a 38-year veteran at the Potomac Electric Power Company, which took eight days to recover from the June 29 “derecho” storm that raced from the Midwest to the Eastern Seaboard and knocked out power for 4.3 million people in 10 states and the District of Columbia.
In general, nobody in charge of anything made of steel and concrete can plan based on past trends, said Vicki Arroyo, who heads the Georgetown Climate Center at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, a clearinghouse on climate-change adaptation strategies.
Highways, Mr. Scullion noted, are designed for the local climate, taking into account things like temperature and rainfall. “When you get outside of those things, man, all bets are off.” As weather patterns shift, he said, “we could have some very dramatic failures of highway systems.”
Adaptation efforts are taking place nationwide. Some are as huge as the multibillion-dollar effort to increase the height of levees and flood walls in New Orleans because of projections of rising sea levels and stronger storms to come; others as mundane as resizing drainage culverts in Vermont, where Hurricane Irene damaged about 2,000 culverts. “They just got blown out,” said Sue Minter, the Irene recovery officer for the state.
In Washington, the subway system, which opened in 1976, has revised its operating procedures. Authorities will now watch the rail temperature and order trains to slow down if it gets too hot. When railroads install tracks in cold weather, they heat the metal to a “neutral” temperature so it reaches a moderate length, and will withstand the shrinkage and growth typical for that climate. But if the heat historically seen in the South becomes normal farther north, the rails will be too long for that weather, and will have an increased tendency to kink. So railroad officials say they will begin to undertake much more frequent inspection.
Some utilities are re-examining long-held views on the economics of protecting against the weather. Pepco, the utility serving the area around Washington, has repeatedly studied the idea of burying more power lines, and the company and its regulators have always decided that the cost outweighed the benefit. But the company has had five storms in the last two and a half years for which recovery took at least five days, and after the derecho last month, the consensus has changed. Both the District of Columbia and Montgomery County, Md., have held hearings to discuss the option — though in the District alone, the cost would be $1.1 billion to $5.8 billion, depending on how many of the power lines were put underground.
Even without storms, heat waves are changing the pattern of electricity use, raising peak demand higher than ever. That implies the need for new investment in generating stations, transmission lines and local distribution lines that will be used at full capacity for only a few hundred hours a year. “We build the system for the 10 percent of the time we need it,” said Mark Gabriel, a senior vice president of Black & Veatch, an engineering firm. And that 10 percent is “getting more extreme.”
Even as the effects of weather extremes become more evident, precisely how to react is still largely an open question, said David Behar, the climate program director for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. “We’re living in an era of assessment, not yet in an area of adaptation,” he said.
He says that violent storms and forest fires can be expected to affect water quality and water use: runoff from major storms and falling ash could temporarily shut down reservoirs. Deciding how to address such issues is the work of groups like the Water Utility Climate Alliance, of which he is a member. “In some ways, the science is still catching up with the need of water managers for high-quality projection,” he said.
Some needs are already known. San Francisco will spend as much as $40 million to modify discharge pipes for treated wastewater to prevent bay water from flowing back into the system.
Even when state and local officials know what they want to do, they say they do not always get the cooperation they would like from the federal government. Many agencies have officially expressed a commitment to plan for climate change, but sometimes the results on the ground can be frustrating, said Ms. Minter of Vermont. For instance, she said, Vermont officials want to replace the old culverts with bigger ones. “We think it’s an opportunity to build back in a more robust way,” she said. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency wants to reuse the old culverts that washed out, or replace them with similar ones, she said.
Ms. Arroyo of Georgetown said the federal government must do more. “They are not acknowledging that the future will look different from the past,” she said, “and so we keep putting people and infrastructure in harm’s way.”
Matthew L. Wald reported from Washington, and John Schwartz from New York.
Residents were asked to evacuate from a rural area in southern Montana Thursday as a 5-square-mile wildfire approached the edge of a spread-out subdivision. County workers and firefighters were going door to door asking people to leave along a five-mile stretch of Shane Creek Road south of Columbus, officials said. The voluntary evacuation covered roughly 10 houses in Stillwater County, according to a hotline set up by the county. Shane Creek resident Shane Fouhy said he was packing some belongings, setting out sprinklers to water down his house and yard and heading into Columbus to stay with relatives. “I’ve been out all morning watering and the wind is kind of whirling,” he said. “It’s burning in all directions.” Paula Short with the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation said the Skibstad Fire was burning in grass and timber and had approached within two miles of houses along Shane Creek Road. Residents of more than 100 houses were put on notice that they, too, might have to go. Firefighters were trying to hold the fire along a nearby ridge top to keep it from reaching the houses, Short said. But they were braced for the blaze to spread amid hot, dry conditions and winds of 5 to 10 miles per hour. Columbus High School was set up as a shelter for evacuees. Some structures were confirmed burned; how many and whether any were houses remained unclear. The fire started Wednesday evening in a secondary building on Skibstad Road and quickly spread across the surrounding landscape. It was pushed to the south by the wind, eventually reaching into areas of Carbon County. A heavy air tanker and several smaller aircraft were providing support to at least 60 firefighters with more personnel en route, Short said.
More federal firefighters were being deployed to bone-dry Nebraska, where a huge wildfire is threatening more structures and two smaller fires are still out of control. The handful of people living in Sparks, a gateway to canoeing and tubing on the Niobrara River, were on alert for possible evacuation. A 14-mile stretch of the valley already has been evacuated. While a cold front is expected to provide some relief, highs Wednesday will still be in the mid-90s. The front may also bring some rain, but major storms aren’t likely to develop near the fire. Plus, storms could also bring lightning and spark new fires. Hot, windy weather on Monday helped the main Fairfield Creek Fire expand to 58,000 acres, or nearly 92 square miles. Two other smaller fires about 20 miles east of the main fire had burned more than six square miles. And Tuesday’s high temperature again topped Officials estimate the fires, which have already destroyed at least 10 homes, are about 25 percent contained. Some 200 federal firefighters were being sent to join the more than 300 crews already on the front lines. Four helicopters are also fighting the fires, and three firefighters have been injured. Much of the fire-swept land near the river is rugged, forested and populated with cabins, so only 17 residences had been evacuated as of Tuesday morning.
A much expected downpour bypassed Beijing Wednesday but battered the neighboring city of Tianjin, flooding many downtown streets and vehicles. As of 11 a.m. Thursday, the maximum precipitation had exceeded 300 millimeters, Tianjin’s meteorological center said in a press release. It said the city proper received an average rainfall of 147 mm, while the outer Xiqing district, one of the worst-battered areas, received 309.8 mm. The local fire prevention bureau sent 190 fire engines and 1,140 rescuers to help rescue flood stranded vehicles and pedestrians. The rain had largely stopped by midday, but the center issued another orange alarm at 11:10 a.m., warning residents of a further rainstorm. The downpour has paralyzed traffic in downtown Tianjin, drowning many roads. Dozens of vehicles were stranded on Baidi road in Nankai district after their engines died in the flood. Many pedestrians complained they had to trek in knee-deep water. In some sections of Xianyang Street, flood water was waist deep. On the badly flooded Friendship Road in Hexi district, five workers kept watch next to sewage wells whose manholes had been removed for faster drainage.The rain disrupted air traffic at Tianjin’s airport, where 20 flights were canceled and 34 delayed.8 The first flight, an incoming flight from Shanghai, landed in Tianjin after the rain subsided at 11:32 a.m., and the first departing flight took off at 12:08 p.m., according to the airport’s official website. Railway transportation, however, was largely unaffected, including the express rail link to Beijing, the city’s railway authorities confirmed. Vegetable prices were up at the city’s major wholesale markets Thursday. “Each kilo is at least 0.4 yuan — about 30 percent — more expensive than yesterday,” said Cui Hongqing, a wholesaler at Hongqi Market. Cui predicted further price hikes Friday as the rain devastated crops and increased transportation costs. China’s capital Beijing was on guard against heavy rain Wednesday, fearing a repeat of Saturday’s mayhem. Saturday’s downpour, which the local weather bureau described as the “heaviest in 61 years,” killed at least 37 people — some were drowned in private cars. Many office workers were allowed to go home early Wednesday for safety considerations, and city authorities bombarded mobile phone subscribers with text message warnings of an imminent downpour. The much expected rain, however, did not fall in Beijing. The capital was still overcast Thursday, as the central weather bureau has forecast rain in seven northern China provinces and municipalities, including Beijing, over the coming three days.
……………….
Summer Storms to Create New Ozone Holes as Earth Warms?
More storms may trigger ozone depletion in populated areas far from the Poles.
A thunderstorm rumbles through Kansas (file picture).
Summer storms may create new holes in our protective ozone layer as Earth heats up—bringing increased solar ultraviolet radiation to densely populated areas, a new study says.
What’s more, if more sunlight reaches Earth, skin cancer could become the new marquee risk of global warming.
In a recent series of research flights over the United States, Harvard University atmospheric chemist James Anderson and colleagues found that summer storms often loft water vapor into the stratosphere.
“It was an unequivocal observation,” he said. “We had a number of flights, and this was an abiding feature” of the storms.
Under the right conditions, this water vapor could trigger chemical reactions that deplete the ozone layer, which prevents harmful ultraviolet rays from reaching Earth’s surface, the study says.
Even small reductions in the ozone layer can make people more susceptible to skin cancer and eye damage, experts say.
The finding concerned Anderson, whose research in the 1980s and ’90s played a pivotal role in establishing the Montreal Protocol. The international treaty phased out the production of ozone-depleting chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were found in a variety of products, including hairsprays and refrigerators.
CFCs produce a form of chlorine that degrades ozone particles in the stratosphere, most signifcantly over the Arctic and Antarctic.
Subsequent studies in the Arctic and in the laboratory revealed that both temperature and water vapor concentrations are crucial in a chemical reaction that makes chlorine attack ozone.
Now, the new observations over the United States suggest summer storms create the same combination of temperature and water vapor conditions at mid-latitudes. (Interactive Map: Global Warming Effects.)
“We essentially have the chemistry that’s present in the Arctic that is clearly very potent for destroying ozone,” Anderson said.
The findings, published today in the journal Science, calculate ozone loss at a rate between 4 and 6 percent per day in water vapor-rich areas of the stratosphere. The effect could persist for several weeks after a storm, he added.
What worries Anderson most is where and when this phenomenon appears to occur.
“It is not ozone loss in Antarctica and the Arctic under winter conditions. It is an attack on the ozone layer in the summer over populated regions of the Northern Hemisphere,” he said.
Simone Tilmes, an atmospheric chemist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, views the new findings with caution.
Research does indicate that more water vapor in the stratosphere will lead to greater ozone loss under the right conditions, said Tilmes, who was not involved with the current research.
But the study found no direct evidence of a simultaneous observation of water vapor and the presence of destructive chlorine, she said.
“This raises attention,” she said, emphasizing that more research is needed to determine if such ozone depletion will occur.
Study leader Anderson and colleagues acknowledged that they haven’t yet measured the ozone-destroying chlorine in the North American stratosphere.
However, he noted that, though chlorofluorocarbons are no longer released into the atmosphere, the compounds already there can persist for decades.
If there’s a silver lining to the research, it’s that the results could have a tangible impact on people’s behavior, Anderson said.
Unlike with the “out of sight, out of mind” nature of melting glaciers and carbon dioxide and methane emissions, he said, “most people know that skin cancer is highly prevalent and increasing its frequency.”
If the new findings are confirmed, people may see a direct link between climate change and their health.
That, he said, “might spur them to “step up and take responsibility for what is actually occurring.”
A possible tornado touched down in Elmira, N.Y., late Thursday, damaging buildings, toppling trees and bringing down power lines. The authorities said some people were trapped in their cars when the storm struck around 4 p.m. There were no reports of serious injuries. Emergency officials in Chemung County said there was “significant damage” in Elmira. The National Weather Service said that there were unconfirmed reports that a tornado had touched down. Severe weather moved across Ohio and Pennsylvania on Thursday afternoon, and into New York and New England, bringing heavy rain and in some cases, strong winds and hail. In the New York metropolitan area, weather officials said that the storm moved in shortly after 7 p.m. The hardest hit areas were northwest of the city in Westchester County and in parts of Connecticut, where there were multiple reports of downed trees and power lines. The highest measured wind gusts in the area were 60 miles per hour, near the Tappan Zee Bridge, officials said. Around 8 p.m., wind gusts of up to 54 miles per hour were reported at Kennedy International Airport, weather officials said. Hundreds of flights were delayed because of the storm. Amtrak also reported delays. Late Thursday, tens of thousands of people in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut were without power.
Today
Landslide
Vietnam
MultiProvinces, [Provinces of Tuyen Quang and Ha Giang]
Disaster officials and state media in Vietnam say landslides and flash floods triggered by Typhoon Vicente have killed seven people, including three in a single family, and left three others missing. Official Lai Thanh Huyen of Tuyen Quang province in northern Vietnam said Friday that landslides following heavy rains buried a 28-year-old woman, her five-year-old daughter and four-month-old son early Thursday while they were sleeping in their home. The Tuoi Tre newspaper reported that landslides killed four people in the neighboring province of Ha Giang. It says flash floods have left three other people missing elsewhere in the region. Vicente injured dozens and grounded planes in Hong Kong earlier in the week.
Minister of Local Government and Community Development Dato Sri Wong Soon Koh yesterday confirmed that there is a cholera outbreak in Bintulu. Speaking to reporters after a briefing by officers from the state Health Department at his office here yesterday, he said the department detected the outbreak on July 14 after a case was confirmed positive with Vibrio Cholerae. “Since July 14, the state Health Department declared there is an outbreak detected in Bintulu. Since then, the state Health Department initiated its investigation to trace all the suspected symptomatic cases. Anyone coming down with diarrhoea and vomiting will be investigated to check whether it is cholera or not,” he added. Based on investigation by the department, the outbreak was believed to have started when three groups of regatta participants from Rumah Gawan, Kampung Jepak and Kampung Hilir in Sebauh, Bintulu used water from Kemena River to wash plates, fish and their hands. “The bacteria from the river had contaminated the food and the hands of the people during the regatta and then continuously spread from person to person and contaminated food and drinks. Now the state Health Department is also suspecting that it is spread from Ramadan Bazaar due to contaminated food and drinks,” he added. He noted that as of yesterday, the department had received 140 cases – 33 positive for cholera, 55 negative and 52 cases still pending result. The youngest patient was one year 11 months old while the oldest was 84 years old. The department also detected nine cases with Vibrio Cholerae but without any symptom. As of yesterday, 177 people had been screened for signs and symptoms of acute gastroenteritis and were given doxycycline, an antibiotic.On the outbreak, Wong said it was still spreading in Bintulu with 11 localities declared positive for cholera; Rumah Panjang Gawan at Sungai Sebauh, Kampung Jepak, Kampung Sebauh Hilir in Sebauh, Rumah Usah in Sungai Segan, Setinggan Mozako, Kampung Assyikirin, Kampung Sinong in Jalan Masjid, Setinggan Hock Peng Tanjung Kidurong, Batu 10, Jalan Bintulu/Miri, Kampung Baru and Kirana Palm Oil/Brightwood Quarters, Kemena Industrial Estate. “The state Health Department will continue to take all samples from Sungai Kemena and its tributaries as well as food sampling from Ramadan Bazaar and houses. Besides that, the state Health Department will intensify diarrhoea and vomiting surveillance in all health facilities in Bintulu and issue cholera alert to all government, private health facilities in the state whereby when there is increase in number of admission, the state Health Department will investigate whether it is cholera or not,” he said. Wong said attention would also be given to all food handlers in the Ramadan Bazaar in Bintulu to ensure that they meet the department’s health standards, which also requires them to go for cholera screening. “Once they are cleared from the disease, they will be issued health cards and they must bring the health cards with them when they operate the stalls. If they refuse to go for screening, they will be asked to close down their stalls,” he added. For the convenience of the public, a screening centre is opened at the old Bintulu health clinic from 8am to 10pm every day. The department is also using Bintulu Hospital for isolation of severe cases while mild cases and asymptomatic cases would be treated at the national service camp in Samalaju in Bintulu. Wong appealed to the public to give their fullest cooperation to the department to ensure that the outbreak could be contained.
Biohazard name:
Vibrio Cholera Outbreak
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.
Sixteen people are reported dead in Uganda from a mystery illness. The Uganda publication UG Pulse reports that a strange illness, cause unknown, is spreading in the Kibaale district in western Uganda. The District Health Officer, Dr. Dan Kyamanwa, stated that 11 of the deaths were from the same family in the Nyamarunda Sub County. A twelfth death was a health officer. There are also reports of the illness appearing in the clinical officer who treated the family from Nyamarunda and a driver who transported the deceased. Kyamanwa says that symptoms of the illness include high fever, vomiting, diarrhea and systems failure. Death occurs within four to seven days.The Ugandan government is reportedly sending a team of experts to investigate the outbreak.
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.
Lifeguard services provided by the department of tourism were called upon to carry out a multiple rescue operation on Thursday at Benaulim after a fishing boat with 12 crew members ventured out to the sea and capsized. The incident report stated that lifeguards were continuously observing the boat that had left at 7.20am when they saw it suddenly capsize when it was hit by a huge wave about 200m from the shore. Nine crew members were secured by the lifeguards on jet-ski boats and brought to shore while three managed to swim to safety. No injuries were reported. But as two victims Santan Fernandes and Menino Fernandes had shallow breathing, they were shifted to Hospicio hospital, Margao.
Hundreds of fish have gone belly-up in the Swan River and others are slowly dying as the latest toxic algal bloom to hit the river takes it toll. The Swan River Trust is responding to sightings of the dead and sluggish fish near the Ascot Waters marina. Elevated levels of the microalgae Karlodinium veneficum, which is potentially toxic to fish, have been detected in the area over the past few weeks. A similar outbreak in June killed more than 2,500 fish in a 13km stretch of the river from Bassendean to West Swan. Principal scientist with the trust Kerry Trayler said the free-floating microalgae were known to affect the capacity of fish to extract oxygen from the water. She said while the algae was not toxic to humans precautions should be taken in relation to the dead or dying fish. “The Department of Health advises that people should not swim in, or fish in, water with dead and decomposing fish. They should also keep pets and other animals away from the fish because they may contain high levels of bacteria,” she said. “Sluggish and dead fish should also not be collected and used for bait or consumption because of the risk of high levels of bacteria.”
Biohazard name:
Karlodinium veneficum (HAB)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
Today
Biological Hazard
USA
State of Kansas, Overland Park [South Lake Park, 7601 W. 86th St]
Kansas health officials have strengthened their alert about toxic blue-green algae in the pond at South Lake Park, 7601 W. 86th St. City officials said an earlier “advisory” has been upgraded to a “warning,” so people and pets should not drink the water. Any fish caught there should be rinsed with clean water, and only the filet portion should be eaten. Pets should not eat dried algae, and people and animals should be rinsed with clean water if they come in contact with lake water.
Biohazard name:
Blue-Green (cyanobacteria) Algae bloom
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Health authorities are warning residents and visitors to Kitsap Lake in West Bremerton that high levels of a toxic blue-green algae have been discovered in the water. If ingested in sufficient quantities, a toxin produced by the algae can make people sick and potentially kill pets, fish, waterfowl and livestock, said Jim Zimny, water quality specialist with the Kitsap Public Health District. Water samples taken Tuesday from Kitsap Lake showed levels of the toxic compound to be 6.7 micrograms per liter. Warnings are posted when the level exceeds 6.0. Signs have gone up at public access areas and on roads around the lake, Zimny said. Weekly tests will be conducted until the algae blooms subside. People are advised to avoid drinking the water or swimming in the lake, especially in areas where the algae have concentrated. Avoid eating any fish caught during the bloom. Pets should be kept back from the water. Zimny asks people to call the health district if they see large numbers of dead fish, unexplained illness in a dog or cat or if someone entering the water suffers a physical reaction, such as a rash or illness.
Biohazard name:
Blue-Green (cyanobacteria) Algae bloom
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
Today
Biological Hazard
Malaysia
State of Preak, loc:Kampung Sg Dua [Sungai Bentong River]
Residents in Kampung Sg Dua near here are worried after finding dozens of fish in Sungai Bentong dead. Village chief Wong Fan Chong said they believed it was due to pollution and hazardous waste from an industrial estate nearby. “We are not alleging that the factories are dumping their waste into the river but surely, there is a reason why the fish are dead,” he said. He urged the authorities to conduct an investigation into the matter, adding that if test results showed it was due to waste pollution, guilty parties must be punished. Wong said there were previously cases of fish dying in the river but of late, the number had increased. “For the time being, I have told all villagers to stop fishing or swimming in Sungai Bentong which flows into Sungai Dua near our village. “We are not sure whether the fishes are safe to eat,” he added. State Health, Environment and Local Government Committee chairman Datuk Hoh Khai Mun said he had instructed officers from the Environment Department to investigate the issue. “We will reveal the findings of the probe in due course,” he said, adding that the state government would not compromise on the safety of the people.
Biohazard name:
Mass. Die-off (fishes)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Dozens of beaches in Malaga province have played host to swarms or ‘blooms’ of jellyfish this summer, closing several beaches in Marbella and Estepona and administering more than 1,000 stings within a three-day period. Many bathers have been on the wrong end of the gelatinous varmint, whose sting causes a painful rash that can last for up to three days. According to Spain’s tourist office, the marine stingers are the venomous purple striped jellyfish. Their stings, although almost never fatal, have been known to cause severe allergic reactions. Here, the Olive Press looks at the different types of stingers in the Mediterranean, why they are becoming such a problem for bathers on the Costa del Sol and what can be done to protect yourself from eye-watering stings. Purple-striped jellyfish- aka mauve stingers: These increasingly common creatures have wreaked havoc on the Costa del Sol, causing the closure of a number of beaches. They are usually small but pack a powerful punch. Portuguese man o’ war – aka blue bottle: Although not technically jellyfish, these critters can deliver an agonising sting causing vomiting and fainting in some cases. They are usually found floating at the surface of the water with long, thin tendrils extending 10 metres. Fried egg jellyfish: A small but beautiful jellyfish which gets its name from its fried-egg shaped body. Its sting has little effect on humans. Moon jellyfish: One of the most common jellyfish in the world, these translucent creatures are often sold commercially as pets. The sting is harmless to humans. Compass jellyfish: With brown spots and a saucer-shaped bell, this jellyfish can often be found drifting on the sea surface. It can deliver a nasty sting.
Biohazard name:
Jellyfish invasion
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Blackleg normally kills livestock within 12 to 48 hours and is caused by the spore foaming, rod shaped and gas producing bacteria Clostridium chauvoei, which can live in soil for many years. The bacteria gains entrance to the animal through small punctures in the mucous membrane of the digestive tract. Animals begin showing signs of lameness, rapid breathing, loss of appetite and high fever. Shingairai Gudyanga said the spread of the disease has been fuelled by lack of adequate grazing caused by poor rainfall. This caused cattle to eat the roots of plants, a haven for the bacteria. “Most farmers in this area are reluctant to bring their livestock for vaccination and they do not report disease outbreaks,” she added. Blackleg is almost entirely preventable by vaccination. The department’s efforts to control disease are hampered because people eat the animals before tests can be done. “We fail to take smear samples because by the time we find out about deaths, only the bones of the dead animal are left, with the rest of the meat either sold or dried for consumption,” she said. “Our office is almost sure that two of the cattle died due to anthrax because when we examined the carcases, there was blood in the openings of the cattle, the mouth, ears and nose and they decayed faster than the others,” she said. “The community did not consume one of the cattle that I am referring to because it was in a terrible state, but ate the other one before it had rotted.” The District Head for Veterinary Services for Buhera South, Mr Mavhima, could not confirm nor deny the anthrax outbreak and said he would visit Mutiusinazita this week -end. “If it is anthrax, we will look into it and act on it swiftly,” he said.
Biohazard name:
Anthrax
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.
They may seem like furry little friends, those little squirrels, as they skitter through the forests, but researches have discovered otherwise. A bacterium known to cause ‘Q-Fever’ in humans has been detected in a high percentage rodents in Algonquin Park. A team of Laurentian University biology researchers, led by Canada Research Chair Dr. Albrecht Schulte-Hostedde have found evidence of the spread of the zoonotic bacterium Coxiella bernetii in wildlife in the park and say their findings suggest that some visitors to the park could be at risk of infection. According to a Laurentian University press release the bacterium was “detected in six out of seven species of wild rodents tested within the boundaries of Algonquin Park, including red squirrels, flying squirrels and deer mice. It was also found in flying squirrels in the Peterborough area, indicating that the bacteria may be widespread among these animal populations in Ontario.” The bacterium is a cause of Query fever, also known as Q-Fever, in humans.According to the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) website, “Human Q fever is primarily an occupational disease of farmers, abattoir workers, veterinarians, and laboratory workers.” The disease is a flu-like illness that often remains undiagnosed. In a minority of cases it can cause a clinical atypical pneumonia or hepatitis. If the disease becomes chronic, endocarditis and chronic hepatitis can develop. Chronic Q fever can be fatal, and is more likely to develop in immuno-compromised individuals and pregnant women. The OMAFRA website states, “In Ontario, Q-fever has occasionally been diagnosed as a cause of abortion in sheep and goats. Reported human cases have been associated with exposure to abortions in sheep and goats, and drinking unpasteurised goat’s milk.” “It can be transmitted reasonably easily among wildlife,” he said. “The suggestion is that people can get it from, like the Hantavirus, inhaling feces. Let’s say you have a cottage or a camp and sweep the corners. Any fecal material will dry and aerosolize, it goes up in the air and you inhale some of it.” In 2007, an outbreak in the Netherlands resulted in the infection of more than 2,000 people.Thousands of goats were culled. “There is a lot of interest in Europe now on how this pathogen is transmitted in the natural environment,” said Schulte-Hostedde. He says there is a hypothesis that ticks may be a cause of the spread of this pathogen. Schulte-Hostedde says he has spoken intensively to an Algonquin Park biologist who has indicted there have been no reports of people becoming ill with Q-Fever. “In terms of mortality I don’t think it’s going to kill anybody. There are no huge numbers of people reporting being ill,” he said. “We put the press release out not to alarm people but so that the public health authorities know that this bug is out there.” He says this might be quite large spread, and there are different strains of the infection, some that may be more dangerous than others. “We don’t know anything about the strain that we found versus what might be found on farms,” he said. He says after discussions with Public Health Ontario and the Public Health Agency of Canada, they are aware that it is out there and it is reportable at some levels. “They are aware that it happens on farms but there is no real work that is being done on Coxiella bernetii in the natural environment,” he said. “My point with the whole thing… it is just providing an awareness that there is a microbrobe that can make you sick so you should take some precautions.”
Schulte-Hostedde says he is in the process of returning to his initial studies and a zoonotics expert at the University of Guelph is hoping to attain OMAFRA funding to study this bacterium in a natural environment because there are still many questions to be answered, including whether this is being transferred from farm to the natural environment or vice versa; and whether the strains are the same. “It has an interesting history because it has been the subject of weaponization research in the United States,” he said. “That’s part of the sexy thing about this thing. It actually can infect people relatively easily, which is part of the history of human relationships with this bacteria.” He says in order to get the real story beyond the initial findings and the hundreds of animals tested, there is much more work to be done.
Biohazard name:
Q Fever (squirrels)
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.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is meeting with utility officials and state regulators as a wave of severe storms cross the state. The National Weather Service gave Cuomo a pre-emptive warning about the possibility that severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. Cuomo says he will meet Thursday with the leadership of Con Edison, the New York Power Authority, and the state Public Service Commission to make sure the New York City area is prepared. About 10,000 utility customers in western New York and Sullivan County northwest of New York City have lost power as New Yorkers are being warned of the possibility of severe weather. The power losses Thursday morning came as thunderstorms move eastward across the state. Most of the outages are in the Rochester area and in Cattaraugus County, south of Buffalo.
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Bambang Muryanto and Arya Dipa, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta/Bandung | Archipelago | Tue,
Mount Merapi, located in Yogyakarta, emitted high-pressure gas on Sunday afternoon that caused its crater wall to collapse and volcanic ash to fall on its western slope, as smoke billowed up to 1 kilometer into the sky.
As the gas discharge was not followed by other dangerous volcanic activity, the phenomenon was regarded as a small-scale volcanic eruption and the volcano’s alert status remained normal.
“Mount Merapi’s status remains normal because there was no dangerous volcanic activity,” said Volcanic Technology Development and Research Center (BPPTK) head Subandriyo on Monday.
According to Subandriyo, the incident was due to the accumulation of gas produced by the volcano’s magma. As the gas’ exit fumarole was too narrow, the volcano eventually released all the buildup of very high pressure gas by erupting, which caused the crater wall to collapse and this emitted a massive rumble.
“The incident can be called a small-scale ‘volcanic eruption’,” said Subandriyo.
In Bandung, West Java, Geological Disaster Mitigation and Volcanology Center head Surono said the collapse of the crater wall of Mount Merapi on Sunday was a natural process. The collapse was not due to an increase in volcanic activity of the most active volcano in Indonesia.
The lava dome collapsed because rocks and eruption material from the 2010 eruption were still not completely set and stable. “The force of gravity or the weight of the rocks has caused the crater wall to collapse,” Surono said in a text message on Monday.
The lava dome collapsed on Sunday at 6:02 p.m. local time. According to Surono, officers at the Babadan observation post, located more than 5 kilometers from the mountain park, heard a rumbling sound which was a result of the collapse.
They also observed smoke billowing at a height of 1,000 meters above the peak, slanting westward. Surono added that a slight ash cloud occurred, followed by the smell of sulfur. “Based on a report, a rain of ash took place in Jurang Jero and Srumbung. The smoke was not emitted from an eruption, but rather by the collapsed crater dome,” Surono said.
Surono urged residents living around the volcano to remain calm and not panic due to unclear rumors. “Information on volcanic activity can be obtained from the Yogyakarta BPPTK,” added Surono.
Subandriyo said the amount of gas pressure was unclear, as his office was unable to conduct the measurements. The crater emitted thick smoke mixed with gas and ash and rose up to 1 kilometer. Its shape resembled a pyroclastic flow.
According to Subandriyo, the phenomenon was the first after it erupted in 2010. “The volcanic magma is currently rich with gas. This did not occur before the 2010 eruption,” he said. He added that in the past month, the crater dome of the 2,800-meter tall volcano often collapsed because the structure of the dome was not yet stable and due to the drought.
He also called on residents living along the slope of the mountain to remain calm because the status remained remains normal. However, he has advised trekkers not to approach the peak as it was quite dangerous. “Climbers should only hike up to Pasar Bubrah,” said Subandriyo. Pasar Bubrah is located around 400 meters from the peak.
Yoto, a resident in Jengglik hamlet, Ngablak district, Magelang, Central Java, who was at the western slope of Mount Merapi, said he heard a loud rumble coming from the peak of the mountain on Sunday afternoon. “I heard the rumble at around 6 p.m.” he said.
According to him, the gas emission led to ash rain which lightly covered Purwosari hamlet, Ngablak village.
Jamin, head of Kali Tengah Kidul hamlet, Cangkringan, Sleman, Yogyakarta, located around 4 kilometers from the peak, said he also heard the rumble on Sunday afternoon.
However, the incident did not cause residents to evacuate due to the ash rain. “I heard the rumble, but residents remained calm. We are used to hearing these rumbles,” said Jamin.
Mount Merapi, located in Yogyakarta, emitted high-pressure gas on Sunday afternoon that caused its crater wall to collapse and volcanic ash to fall on its western slope, as smoke billowed up to 1 kilometer into the sky. As the gas discharge was not followed by other dangerous volcanic activity, the phenomenon was regarded as a small-scale volcanic eruption and the volcano’s alert status remained normal. “Mount Merapi’s status remains normal because there was no dangerous volcanic activity,” said Volcanic Technology Development and Research Center (BPPTK) head Subandriyo on Monday. According to Subandriyo, the incident was due to the accumulation of gas produced by the volcano’s magma. As the gas’ exit fumarole was too narrow, the volcano eventually released all the buildup of very high pressure gas by erupting, which caused the crater wall to collapse and this emitted a massive rumble. “The incident can be called a small-scale ‘volcanic eruption’,” said Subandriyo. In Bandung, West Java, Geological Disaster Mitigation and Volcanology Center head Surono said the collapse of the crater wall of Mount Merapi on Sunday was a natural process. The collapse was not due to an increase in volcanic activity of the most active volcano in Indonesia.
The lava dome collapsed because rocks and eruption material from the 2010 eruption were still not completely set and stable. “The force of gravity or the weight of the rocks has caused the crater wall to collapse,” Surono said in a text message on Monday. The lava dome collapsed on Sunday at 6:02 p.m. local time. According to Surono, officers at the Babadan observation post, located more than 5 kilometers from the mountain park, heard a rumbling sound which was a result of the collapse. They also observed smoke billowing at a height of 1,000 meters above the peak, slanting westward. Surono added that a slight ash cloud occurred, followed by the smell of sulfur. “Based on a report, a rain of ash took place in Jurang Jero and Srumbung. The smoke was not emitted from an eruption, but rather by the collapsed crater dome,” Surono said. Surono urged residents living around the volcano to remain calm and not panic due to unclear rumors. “Information on volcanic activity can be obtained from the Yogyakarta BPPTK,” added Surono. Subandriyo said the amount of gas pressure was unclear, as his office was unable to conduct the measurements. The crater emitted thick smoke mixed with gas and ash and rose up to 1 kilometer. Its shape resembled a pyroclastic flow. According to Subandriyo, the phenomenon was the first after it erupted in 2010. “The volcanic magma is currently rich with gas. This did not occur before the 2010 eruption,” he said. He added that in the past month, the crater dome of the 2,800-meter tall volcano often collapsed because the structure of the dome was not yet stable and due to the drought.
He also called on residents living along the slope of the mountain to remain calm because the status remained remains normal. However, he has advised trekkers not to approach the peak as it was quite dangerous. “Climbers should only hike up to Pasar Bubrah,” said Subandriyo. Pasar Bubrah is located around 400 meters from the peak. Yoto, a resident in Jengglik hamlet, Ngablak district, Magelang, Central Java, who was at the western slope of Mount Merapi, said he heard a loud rumble coming from the peak of the mountain on Sunday afternoon. “I heard the rumble at around 6 p.m.” he said. According to him, the gas emission led to ash rain which lightly covered Purwosari hamlet, Ngablak village. Jamin, head of Kali Tengah Kidul hamlet, Cangkringan, Sleman, Yogyakarta, located around 4 kilometers from the peak, said he also heard the rumble on Sunday afternoon. However, the incident did not cause residents to evacuate due to the ash rain. “I heard the rumble, but residents remained calm. We are used to hearing these rumbles,” said Jamin.
LOUISVILLE KY
WILMINGTON OH
CHARLESTON WV
MOUNT HOLLY NJ
STATE COLLEGE PA
LINCOLN IL
PADUCAH KY
KANSAS CITY/PLEASANT HILL MO
BLACKSBURG VA
WAKEFIELD VA
OMAHA/VALLEY NE
QUAD CITIES IA IL
HASTINGS NE
SIOUX FALLS SD
DES MOINES IA
CHICAGO IL
BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC
INDIANAPOLIS IN
NEW YORK NY
ST LOUIS MO
TOPEKA KS
SPRINGFIELD MO
Greece’s hottest day this year is forcing authorities to shut down the Athens Acropolis six hours before schedule in the interests of visitor health, the site’s guards said on Monday.
The country’s top monument was to shut down at 1100 GMT instead of its normal 1700 GMT closing time, a guard told AFP.
The ancient citadel is perched on a rocky plateau rising amid a sea of concrete in the Greek capital of over four million, offering precious little shade to thousands of tourists who visit it daily.
Temperatures in Athens were set to exceed 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 Fahrenheit) at the close of this year’s hottest week that earlier forced authorities to make air-conditioned halls available to the public.
The environment ministry said air pollution was also above warning levels in various parts of the capital as it warned people with respiratory problems and heart trouble to stay indoors.
Looking for relief from the heat over much of the Lower 48 states? Head to coastal Alaska where they are experiencing the coldest first half of July on record!
Through the first 14 days of July, the average temperature in Anchorage was 53.1 degrees factoring in daily highs and lows, which makes it the coldest first half of the month on record according to the National Weather Service in Anchorage.
Should this temperature trend continue, it could threaten the record for the coldest July ever, which occurred in 1920 and had an average temperature of 54.4 degrees.
Typically this stretch of time is the warmest of the year. Instead, temperatures in the city of Anchorage are running 5.3 degrees below average.
Somedays have even turned out colder than cities on the Arctic Coast such as Barrow. On July 12th, the high temperature topped out at 54 degrees in Anchorage, while temperatures soared to 62 in Barrow (a whooping 15 degrees above average.)
Not only has it been cool, but residents of the Alaska city haven’t seen much sunlight due to overcast skies and a persistent flow off the ocean. Rainfall through the first 14 days is running slightly above normal at 120 percent. But the clouds and cool temperatures have been the bigger story.
The reason for the cool weather along the coast has been due to jet stream position. Normally it will fluctuate northward sending storms into western Alaska and allowing ridging to build over the southern and central part of the state at times.
Well this summer it’s been consistently farther south sending storm after storm into the Gulf of Alaska, keeping a cool southeast flow of air aimed on the southern coast.
While heavy rain isn’t common with this kind of a storm track, the flow will keep clouds and cool temperatures in the offing as long as it persists.
Anchorage hasn’t been the only southern city feeling the chill. Homer, Alaska is running 5 degrees below normal for the month thus far while Palmer is running 3.8 degrees below average.
Residents of Anchorage and the southern coast shouldn’t expect any big warm ups anytime soon as this pattern of storms moving into the Gulf of Alaska looks to persist at least through next weekend.
Since early June, the Midwest and parts of the northern and central Plains have faced a devastating drought. The lack of substantial rainfall has had severe effects on corn production and has resulted in desertlike conditions for some areas. Paired with the recent heat wave, the situation has become a disaster for corn growers and has significantly driven down yields in the United States for 2012.
Some parts of the nation are better off than others when compared to a week ago, in terms of dryness and drought. However, some areas, including part of the corn belt, have gotten worse.
Waves of downpours have greatly eased the drought in portions of northern Florida and southern Georgia in recent weeks, while dry conditions have gotten worse in parts of the corn belt.
Even though the recent heat wave has ended, weeks of drought and days of 100-degree temperatures have already taken a toll on this year’s corn crop in a large part of the Midwestern United States.
Spotty downpours will grace northern and eastern areas of the corn belt into August, but not enough rain will fall on a large part of the corn belt, leading to a disaster.
A 640-acre wildfire on California’s Central Coast has forced evacuations of about 50 homes in rural San Luis Obispo County. State fire spokeswoman Tina Rose says the fire covering about one square mile was burning Monday in grass, brush and oak woodlands, forcing the evacuation of homes on Parkhill Road near Highway 58 about five miles east of the town of Santa Margarita, where an elementary school has been opened as a shelter. The evacuation order will remain in effect overnight. More than 200 firefighters are battling the blaze with help from six aircraft. It was 20 percent contained. Firefighters are being challenged by the fire’s location in very rough terrain. Wind gusts up to 21 mph are being reported in the area and temperatures were in the mid-70s.
A surfer struggles to keep upright on a large, rough wave off the Southern California shore at El Segundo Beach in El Segundo, Calif., Friday, Dec. 15. 2006. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
While Fabio should weaken as it heads northward in the eastern Pacific, Southern California will feel some impacts.
Fabio will encounter cooler Pacific water and stronger wind shear, causing the system to weaken into a remnant area of low pressure by Wednesday.
However, rough surf, increased clouds and spotty showers are in store for Southern California Wednesday night and Thursday as the remnants of Fabio move into Southern California or the northern part of Baja California.
Large swells up to 4-6 feet will be stirred by the remnants of Fabio.
Showers will be more likely in Southern California on Wednesday night, especially in the higher elevations. Flash flooding could be a concern in the Southern California mountains if any heavier downpours develop.
Clouds will increase with some spotty showers farther north across central California on Thursday.
17.07.2012
Tornado
Poland
Greater Poland Voivodeship, [Region of Pomerania (Tuchola Forest area)]
A freak wave of tornadoes ripped through northern Poland on Sunday, wrecking houses and swathes of forest and leaving one person dead and another 10 injured. Tornadoes are not unknown in the European Union’s largest eastern country but the scope and power of Sunday’s twisters was unusual and comes in a summer already marked by flash floods, hailstorms and gales. Some 1,200 rescuers were working to remove fallen trees, unblock roads and restore utilities in the hardest hit Baltic region of Pomerania. Trees were uprooted, buildings damaged and power lines downed, while some 550 hectares of woodlands in the Tuchola Forest area were flattened. “I saw a black column coming our way,” an injured inhabitant of the Wycinki village, whose farm was destroyed by the tornado told state television. “It carried everything away with it … birds, debris, sucked up water from the lake.” A caravan with a family of three inside was seen flying through the air in the village of Stara Rzeka and breaking into pieces upon landing, but its occupants suffered no serious injuries. “The sole fatality was a 60-year-old man in the Pomeranian village of Wycinki who was crushed to death by his collapsing summer cottage,” fire brigade spokesman Pawel Fratczak told Reuters by telephone. The tornadoes were the latest outburst of violent weather that has battered Poland since the start of the month with hailstorms, gales, cloudbursts and flash floods. Meteorologists categorising the twister as a class two tornado with wind velocity of up to 200 km/h.
Flooding and landslides caused by record torrential rain on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu have killed six people and left 20 missing. Rescue workers had been unable to reach some of the areas where people were believed to be buried under landslides, television reports said on Thursday. Authorities in the prefectural capital of Kumamoto ordered about 48,000 residents to flee the city. Blackouts hit about 10,000 households in Kumamoto and Oita prefectures, the Kyushu Electric Power Company reported. Railway services and motor traffic were suspended, Kyodo said, while some bullet train services were temporarily halted in the island’s north and centre. The Japan Meteorological Agency said rainfall in some parts of the island had reached levels that have “never been experienced”. It said hourly rainfall in the morning topped 120mm in Aso and reached 120mm in Ubuyama. The agency warned of more heavy rain and landslides in northern parts of Kyushu before the downpours move north to the main island of Honshu later on Thursday.
17.07.2012
Flash Flood
India
State of North Bengal, [Area of Teesta, Jaldhaka and Torsa river basins]
Flash floods hit North Bengal with three main rivers – Teesta, Jaldhaka and Torsha – flowing over the danger levels at several places and displacing nearly 2,000 people from their homes. State Irrigation Minister Manas Bhunia on Monday visited North Bengal to take stock of the situation. “Heavy rainfall in parts of North Bengal pose a serious threat to river embankments. The rivers with its origin in Bhutan have not been maintained properly in the past resulting in a rise in their river bed. The work to repair breached embankments has started,” Bhunia said. He will visit Nagrakata in Jalpaiguri on Tuesday where uninterrupted rainfall has played havoc. Bhunia said he has informed Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee about the situation over the phone. “Cooked food and tarpaulins have been distributed among those displaced,” he added. In the last three days, Jalpaiguri district has received 40mm, 102 mm and 81 mm rainfall, respectively, said disaster management department. During the same period, Darjeeling recorded 248 mm rainfall. Cooch Behar, too, has recorded heavy downpour in the last three days. The areas severely affected by rainfall include Nagrakata, Domohani, Fulbari, Hasimara. The administration is suspecting landslides.
Flood-battered Japan warily eyes typhoon
Fears it could heap further misery
AFP
Ukiha: Flood-battered southwestern Japan on Tuesday braced for a typhoon amid fears it could heap further misery on an area where at least 32 are dead or missing after record rainfall.
Typhoon Khanun was lashing the Amami island chain south of Kyushu where four days of torrential rain have sparked landslides and flooding, forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
Khanun – “jack fruit” in Thai – packing winds of up to 126 kilometres (78 miles) per hour, was moving west-northwest at 30 kilometres per hour and was expected to graze the west of Kyushu island through Wednesday afternoon, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
Tuesday brought a lull in the rainfall for most of the region as the weather agency said there was up to 9.2 centimetres (3.6 inches) of rain in the 24 hours to 4.20pm (0720 GMT) in the north of Kyushu.
In hard-hit Minamiaso in Kumamoto prefecture, more than 670 people remained unable to return to their homes on Tuesday afternoon because of landslide fears.
“We started reconstruction work on damaged roads yesterday, but workers have been forced to step aside repeatedly by occasional rains,” said local official Hideki Kuraoka.
“Even a small amount of rain could trigger mudslides and more downpours are expected this afternoon. We remain on high alert,” he said.
Kuraoka said even though forecasters did not expect a direct hit from the typhoon, it was still a worry.
“We cannot know what damage will be caused by the typhoon,” he said. “We are being extremely vigilant about it.”
Most of the 400,000 people who were ordered or advised to leave their homes were allowed to return after authorities began lifting evacuation orders on Sunday.
Roads in Aso city remained flooded and inaccessible.
Troops who were called in to help over the weekend on Tuesday continued their search for three people officially recorded as missing.
They recovered a man’s body from a ditch in Aso on Tuesday, raising the total death toll from landslides and floods across the affected area to 29.
“The body belongs to a man, 55, who was one of the missing people,” said a Kumamoto official.
Aso, which sits at the foot of a volcano, has seen more than 80 centimetres of rain over the last few days, triggering huge mudslides that swamped whole communities and killed at least 21 people in the city alone.
An AFP photographer who visited the city said some people who had been evacuated from their homes were seeking shelter in municipal buildings.
In scenes reminiscent of last year’s devastating tsunami, families sat on mats on wooden floors, or gathered around televisions to watch the latest forecasts.
Other parts of Japan were dealing with soaring temperatures as the first really hot days of the sometimes punishing Japanese summer took hold.
The weather agency said temperatures of 39.2 degrees Celsius (102.6 Fahrenheit) were recorded in Tatebayashi, north of Tokyo, and 37.5 degrees Celsius in Hachioji, a city in western Tokyo.
On Monday, a man in his 80s died in central Niigata prefecture apparently from heat stroke, while nearly 700 people were taken to hospital due to heat exhaustion, local media said.
With the vast bulk of Japan’s nuclear power stations offline in the aftermath of the tsunami-sparked Fukushima disaster, the country is being urged to cut down on electricity usage and the excessive use of air conditioners is being discouraged.
Dorset landslide: Two bodies found in car hit by tunnel entrance collapse near Dorchester
The numbers on Cuba’s cholera outbreak continued to grow over the weekend, with officials reporting 12 new confirmed cases, bringing the total to 170, and eight new suspected cases in the southeastern province of Granma. Cuba’s Public Health Ministry, in a statement published in the official news media on Saturday morning, declared that the outbreak was “decreasing” with 158 confirmed cases and three deaths confirmed. But the numbers provided by lead Granma province epidemiologist Ana Maria Batista during her appearance Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings on provincial television showed increases in all the categories. “The numbers show it is growing,” said Santiago Marquez, a physician in the Granma city of Manzanillo who has watched Batista’s nightly reports for more than a week and provided the details to independent journalists in Cuba and El Nuevo Herald. Batista reported 158 confirmed cholera cases in the province on Friday, 163 on Saturday – though her town-by-town breakdown added up to 164 — and six additional cases on Sunday for a total of 170, Marquez said.
She noted on Sunday that eight new cases of suspected cholera had been reported, and that 27 people were hospitalized on Saturday alone with diarrhea and vomiting, the key symptoms of the disease, according to the physician. More general cases of diarrhea and vomiting, which spike every summer with the rains and heat, rose from 5,680 in her Saturday report to 6,002 in her Sunday appearance, Marquez reported. About 97 percent of those already have recovered, she added. The number of Granma’s 13 municipalities where cholera has been reported rose from seven to nine, Batista noted. Appearing with Batista on provincial television Sunday, Deputy Director of Provincial Transportation José Mendoza González again advised residents to put off unnecessary travel in order to avoid spreading the disease. Cuban officials have repeatedly assured since early July that the cholera outbreak was under control and that the rising number of confirmed cases was because laboratories need a week or more to confirm a diagnosis of cholera. Dissidents and independent journalists have alleged that the cholera death toll stands at five to 15 but that the government has confirmed only three to avoid scaring tourists, one of the country’s main sources of hard currency. They have also reported cholera cases in Havana, Santiago de Cuba and other parts of the island.
The Health Ministry announcement published Saturday confirmed a few cases had been reported outside of Granma, but noted that all were people who had been in the province. It was not clear if the 158 cases it reported referred to all the island, or Granma province alone. Batista has made it clear her numbers are for the province only. The ministry announcement was only the national government’s second comment on the epidemic since July 3, when it confirmed three deaths and 53 cases caused by the bacteria Vibrio Cholerae but did not use the word cholera. Saturday’s statement did use the word.
This satellite image from Monday shows an iceberg, top center, breaking off from the Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland.
OurAmazingPlanet
A massive iceberg larger than Manhattan has broken away from the floating end of a Greenland glacier this week, an event scientists predicted last autumn.
The giant ice island is 46 square miles, and separated from the terminus of the Petermann Glacier, one of Greenland’s largest.
The Petermann Glacier last birthed — or “calved” — a massive iceberg two years ago, in August 2010. The iceberg that broke off and floated away was nearly four times the size of Manhattan, and one of the largest ever recorded in Greenland.
Although the new iceberg isn’t as colossal as its 2010 predecessor, its birth has moved the front end of the massive glacier farther inland than it has been in 150 years, Andreas Muenchow, an associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware, said in a statement.
Jason Box, a scientist with Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar Research Center, has also been monitoring the Petermann Glacier and in September 2011 he told OurAmazingPlanet that a growing crack likely would sever the glacier once warmer weather took hold during the summer months.
“We can see the crack widening in the past year through satellite pictures, so it seems imminent,” Box said at the time.
Muenchow said that the newest ice island broke away on Monday morning (July 16).
Although iceberg birth is a natural, cyclical process, when the process speeds up, there are consequences.
The floating ends of glaciers, known as ice shelves, act as doorstops. When these ice shelves suddenly splinter and weaken or even collapse entirely, as has been observed in Antarctica, the glaciers that feed them speed up, dumping more ice into the ocean and raising global sea levels.
“The Greenland ice sheet as a whole is shrinking, melting and reducing in size as the result of globally changing air and ocean temperatures and associated changes in circulation patterns in both the ocean and atmosphere,” Muenchow said.
NASA has released still images of a red sprite which Expedition 31 Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured April 30, 2012:
“‘Red sprites are short-lived, red flashes that occur about 80 kilometers (50 miles) up in the atmosphere. With long, vertical tendrils like a jellyfish, these electrical discharges can extend 20 to 30 kilometers up into the atmosphere and are connected to thunderstorms and lightning.”
These images of a red sprite were captured with a digital camera by Expedition 31 astronauts on the International Space Station as they traveled southeast from central Myanmar (Burma) to just north of Malaysia. The still images are part of a time-lapse movie collected from 13:41 to 13:47 Universal Time on April 30, 2012. View the footage here.
The sprite occurs about 6 seconds into the video, above a bright, wide lightning flash in the upper right quadrant.
Red sprites are difficult to observe because they last for just a few milliseconds and occur above thunderstorms-meaning they are usually blocked from view on the ground by the very clouds that produce them. They send pulses of electrical energy up toward the edge of space-the electrically charged layer known as the ionosphere-instead of down to Earth’s surface. They are rich with radio noise, and can sometimes occur in bunches.
For decades, pilots reported seeing ephemeral flashes above storms, but it was not until the 1990s that scientists were able to verify the existence of these electrical discharges. A sprite was first photographed by accident from an airplane in 1989, and observers on the space shuttle captured several more images with low-light cameras in 1990 and in subsequent missions. Viewers on the ground can occasionally photograph sprites by looking out on a thunderstorm in the distance, often looking out from high mountainsides over storms in lower plains.”
Dozens of pet birds smuggled from southern China into Taiwan tested positive for the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus and were destroyed, Taiwanese authorities said Tuesday. The smuggler bought the 38 birds in the Chinese city of Guangzhou and was caught at the Taoyuan international airport in northern Taiwan when he returned via Macau earlier this month, said the Centers for Disease Control. The birds later tested positive for the H5N1 virus and were killed, it said, adding that nine people who had contact with the birds had not shown any flu symptoms during a ten-day screening. Taiwan has no recorded cases of the deadly H5N1 strain, although in 2005 health authorities said eight pet birds smuggled from China tested positive for the strain and destroyed. The island has reported several outbreaks of the H5N2 bird flu, a less virulent strain of the virus, in recent years. China is considered one of the nations most at risk of bird flu epidemics because it has the world’s biggest poultry population and many chickens in rural areas are kept close to humans.
Biohazard name:
H5N1 – Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus
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.
Symptoms:
Status:
confirmed
17.07.2012
Biological Hazard
USA
State of California, [Leucadia and Encinitas, Encinitas beaches]
Diesel sheen is seen on the water in an aerial view of the sinkhole. State officials said on that small amounts of diesel hydrocarbons were found in swamp water where an acre of swampland liquefied over the last week
Bubbles come to the surface where pipelines come across Bayou Corne and a pipeline sign is seen on the right
The massive sinkhole has caused the governor to order the evacuation of 150 residents from the parish
Residents were told it will be at least 40 days before they get definitive answers about an enormous sinkhole that opened up in Assumption Parish
Some residents in the area said that they had been experiencing tremors for years before the enormous sinkhole opened up
Low levels of radioactivity may be emanating, though not at harmful levels, officials said
MessageToEagle.com – Two of three key signs of changes expected to occur at the boundary of interstellar space have changed faster than at any other time in the last seven years, according to new data from NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft.
Since early June, the Midwest and parts of the northern and central Plains have faced a devastating drought. The lack of substantial rainfall has had severe effects on corn production and has resulted in desertlike conditions for some areas. Paired with the recent heat wave, the situation has become a disaster for corn growers and has significantly driven down yields in the United States for 2012. 
A surfer struggles to keep upright on a large, rough wave off the Southern California shore at El Segundo Beach in El Segundo, Calif., Friday, Dec. 15. 2006. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
