BOISE – Gov. Butch Otter is using Idaho’s reputation as a 2nd Amendment friendly state to try and lure out-of-state businesses.
Lawmakers on the national, state and city level across the country have, or are talking about, creating stricter gun laws in the wake of tragedies like what happened last year in Newtown, Conn. The creation of those laws is driving some gun and ammunition manufacturers to consider relocating their businesses.
The governor sent a letter in April to 79 businesses in 28 states, personally inviting them to do business here in Idaho. Intacto Arms in Boise agrees with what the governor is doing.
A handful of employees run the boutique firearms manufacturing company that specializes in small quantity, but high quality weapons for its law enforcement and military customers.
“More than anything, I mean, Idaho is just a firearm friendly state. I mean it’s built around the outdoors and guns are just a way of life here,” said Cooper Kalisek, President of Intacto Arms. “It’s as pro-gun as it gets.”
Kalisek opened the company in 2009. “It was something I was always interested in,” he said.
He says he lies awake at night thinking about what’s happening to his industry.
“Some of the largest firearms manufacturers that created this business are based in no longer friendly states,” said Kalisek.
He’s talking about companies in Colorado and Connecticut that are looking to other states to set up shop. Gov. Otter and the Idaho Department of Commerce also see what’s going on.
BOISE — A spokesperson for the Idaho Humane Society says one of the 64 pit bulls brought to Boise for care Monday night had to be euthanized.
Credit: Adam Worthington/ KTVB
The pit bulls were found at the scene of a triple murder in southeastern Idaho. They were loaded into trailers and truck beds Monday and taken to Boise.
Idaho Humane said the dogs are in very poor condition. The majority of the dogs are underweight and suffering from malnutrition. Many of the dogs had open lacerations and extensive scarring from old wounds. Many are suffering from skin, eye, and ear ailments resulting from neglect of their basic care. A few dogs have old injuries of broken bones that were left untreated.
Hannah Parpart, Idaho Humane Society, said one of the dogs was having seizures and was euthanized Tueday morning.
Despite their obvious neglect and poor treatment, the Idaho Humane Society found the majority of the dogs to be friendly and accepting of handling by people.
Investigators believe the dogs were part of a dog fighting operation at a rural ranch outside Holbrook in Oneida County. Police discovered the bodies of two men and one woman at the property last Friday. The search continues for the suspect. Cash and several dozen marijuana plants were also found at the home.
Law enforcement requested the dogs be moved to the Idaho Humane Society in Boise because it is the largest Humane Society in the state. Once the pit bulls arrive, veterinarians will begin administering any necessary medical treatment.
“Sixty-four dogs, kind of triaging them all at once and trying to assess all their medical needs at once, is going to be a challenge,” said Parpart. “And then finding space to house that many dogs at once as well.”
Parpart says the Idaho Humane Society had to relocate most of its adoptable dogs to its PetSmart adoption center to make room for the 64 pit bulls.
“Our staff is well prepared for dealing with a large number of animals and processing them through and giving them the medical attention they need, it just takes some shuffling of resources,” said Parpart.
Through this Friday, the Idaho Humane Society is reducing its adoption prices for dogs and cats by 50 percent to try and free up some space at the shelter.
Once the pit bulls are healthy, they will be evaluated for behavioral issues.
“We’re being realistic with these dogs knowing their backgrounds, but we’re definitely going to look at each dog individually to see, assessing them for adoptability,” said Parpart.
If the dogs are determined to be adoptable, Parpart says it will likely be sometime before that can happen.
11 pit bulls taken from Idaho dogfighting operation euthanized
Credit: Zach Stotland/ KTVB
by KTVB.COM
Posted on April 27, 2013 at 1:09 PM
Updated yesterday at 1:20 PM
BOISE — Three of the 63 pit bulls rescued from a murder scene at a dog fighting operation in southern Idaho have been transferred to a rescue organization in California, according to the Idaho Humane Society.
The move marks the first step in moving the dogs into the care of people who can rehabilitate them, according to humane society staff.
Credit: Idaho Humane Society
Picture here are two of first three pitbulls to be transferred to a Los Angeles Pit Bull rescue organization in the wake of tragic
Spokesperson Hannah Parpart says pit bulls Helena, Hershey, and Granny are headed to Angel City Pit Bulls, a nonprofit rescue organization dedicated to creating a better future for the breed in Los Angeles.
Photo of enclosure where dogs were found
Pilot Peter Roark with the nonprofit Dog is My Copilot organization was able to fly the pit bulls to Los Angeles on Friday.
Unfortunately, the future wasn’t so bright for several other dogs.
Parpart said 11 of the pit bulls had to be euthanized due to dangerous behavior.
“We knew right from the get-go that there was a group we’d have to euthanize,” Parpart said, describing their behavior as “hyper focused” on fighting other dogs, and saying staff felt they wouldn’t be safe in homes.
The good news: Parpart says the humane society is trying to clear about 11 to 12 dogs for local adoption, but most won’t be ready to go until next weekend.
Credit: Zach Stotland/ KTVB
Credit: Zach Stotland/ KTVB
Credit: Zach Stotland/ KTVB
“We’re still talking to people and doing the match-making business,” Parpart said.
Those who want to contact the humane society about the adoption should call: (208) 342-3508
In the meantime, the Idaho Humane Society is still trying to find rescue organizations throughout the United States to accept the remaining 40 dogs, which are expected to need further behavioral help and socialization.
Recently there have been many media outlets publishing articles on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation Tanks leaking Radioactive waste underground where they are located. Mixed with a deadly cocktail of nuclear waste and chemicals that not even those directly responsible and in charge of the safety protocol and maintenance of said tanks are sure of.
These p;ants like Nuclear Power Plants are subsidized with taxpayer monies. However, any upgrades or retrofitting that needs to be done must be paid for by the company itself, not taxpayer funds. Right off the nat the fact that company monies must be used to improve, repair or safeguard the facility for the security of the people that live in the surrounding areas, not to mention the soil and the underground water supply. A water supply that would concern areas outside of the immediate are of the Plant. The Colorado River being one of the sources in danger.
According to Wikipedia information available about the Colombia River Watershed, we are looking at waterways basins that empty into and mix with bodies of water all the way from Washington State to the Gulf Of Mexico.
We have Governor Inslee stating that there is no danger to the residents and yet there have been issues associated with the Hanford site since before 2010. That is 3 years of safety irregularities, leaks of dangerous radioactive waste not only into the ground endangering the water shed for millions of Americans both directly and indirectly situated near Hanford. Now they are trying to tell us that there is no danger to the public? According to the testimonies given in the videos provided below. It is indeed obvious that the leaks have been an ongoing problem that was made clear to both the management of the Plant and the DOE. Neither of which made any move to correct. Now we are expected to believe that there is no danger posed, yet the leaks and the danger to their exposure was never addressed, no one cared. SO now we are to believe the very same entities that have lied to us for well into 3 years?
How stupid do they actually think we are , exactly ?
If the testimony being given is to be believed then not only has our watershed been compromised, the air around the plant has been compromised as well. Contaminating the residents that live there and placing their children in danger.
The Nuclear Energy Plants and these Nuclear Waste Facilities are subsidized by taxpayer monies yet we have no say in vetting there safety practices. Nor do we apparently have any say in the approval process of these plants either. Recently the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved licenses to build two new nuclear reactors Thursday, the first authorized in over 30 years. They will be built in Georgia about 170 miles East of Atlanta. The location already contains two old reactors. Just what we needed …. more radioactive waste to be housed in these leaky sieves they call “Nuclear Reservation Plants”
This is madness and if it continues unchecked the contamination of Fukushima and Chernobyl will look like child’s play compared to the disaster in the making here in the US……..
Inslee says 6 underground tanks at Hanford leaking waste
by Associated Press and KING 5 News
Posted on February 22, 2013 at 2:37 PM
Updated yesterday at 5:12 PM
After meeting with Energy Secretary Steven Chu Friday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee says at least six underground single-shell tanks at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington are leaking, not one as reported last week.
Inslee called the latest development “very disturbing news” and called for a new action plan to remove the nuclear material.
“There is no immediate or near-term health risk associated with these newly discovered leaks, which are more than 10 miles from the Columbia River,” Inslee said in a news release. “But nonetheless this is disturbing news for all Washingtonians. One week ago, Secretary Chu told me there was one tank leaking. But he told me today that his department did not adequately analyze data it had that would have shown the other tanks that are leaking.”
The amount that is leaking varies from tank to tank, but Inslee did not have specific amounts.
Inslee says Chu blames the Department of Energy’s failure to catch the leaks on their inability to properly evaluate the data from the monitors. The leaking was so small over a short period of time that it was imperceptible. If they had looked at the data over a longer period of time, they would have detected the leaks earlier.
Chu said there will be additional evaluations and information released in the coming days.
The Columbia River is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America.[9] The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. It flows northwest and then south into the US state of Washington, then turns west to form most of the border between Washington and the state of Oregon before emptying into the Pacific Ocean. The river is 1,243 miles (2,000 km) long, and its largest tributary is the Snake River. Its drainage basin is roughly the size of France and extends into seven U.S. states and a Canadian province.
*****
Most of the Columbia’s drainage basin (which, at 258,000 square miles or 670,000 square kilometres, is about the size of France)[168] lies roughly between the Rocky Mountains on the east and the Cascade Mountains on the west. In the United States and Canada the term watershed is often used to mean drainage basin. The term Columbia Basin is used to refer not only to the entire drainage basin but also to subsets of the river’s full watershed, such as the relatively flat and unforested area in eastern Washington bounded by the Cascades, the Rocky Mountains, and the Blue Mountains.[169] Within the watershed are diverse landforms including mountains, arid plateaus, river valleys, rolling uplands, and deep gorges.
*****
In 2000, about six million people lived within the Columbia’s drainage basin. Of this total about 2.4 million people lived in Oregon, 1.7 million in Washington, 1 million in Idaho, half a million in British Columbia, and 0.4 million in Montana. Population in the watershed has been rising for many decades and is projected to rise to about 10 million by 2030. The highest population densities are found west of the Cascade Mountains along the I-5 corridor, especially in the Portland-Vancouver urban area. High densities are also found around Spokane, Washington, and Boise, Idaho.
*****
Several major North American drainage basins and many minor ones share a common border with the Columbia River’s drainage basin. To the east, in northern Wyoming and Montana, the Continental Divide separates the Columbia watershed from the Mississippi-Missouri watershed, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico. To the northeast, mostly along the southern border between British Columbia and Alberta, the Continental Divide separates the Columbia watershed from the Nelson-Lake Winnipeg-Saskatchewan watershed, which empties into Hudson Bay. The Mississippi and Nelson watersheds are separated by the Laurentian Divide, which meets the Continental Divide at Triple Divide Peak near the headwaters of the Columbia’s Flathead River tributary. This point marks the meeting of three of North America’s main drainage patterns, to the Pacific Ocean, to Hudson Bay, and to the Atlantic Ocean via the Gulf of Mexico.[174][175]
Further north along the Continental Divide, a short portion of the combined Continental and Laurentian divides separate the Columbia watershed from the MacKenzie-Slave-Athabasca watershed, which empties into the Arctic Ocean. The Nelson and Mackenzie watersheds are separated by a divide between streams flowing to the Arctic Ocean and those of the Hudson Bay watershed.[176] This divide meets the Continental Divide at Snow Dome (also known as Dome), near the northernmost bend of the Columbia River.[177]
To the southeast, in western Wyoming, another divide separates the Columbia watershed from the Colorado-Green watershed, which empties into the Gulf of California. The Columbia, Colorado, and Mississippi watersheds meet at Three Waters Mountain in the Wind River Range of Wyoming.[178] To the south, in Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming, the Columbia watershed is divided from the Great Basin, whose several watersheds are endorheic, not emptying into any ocean but rather drying up or sinking into sumps.[174] Great Basin watersheds that share a border with the Columbia watershed include Harney Basin, Humboldt River, and Great Salt Lake.[174] The associated triple divide points are Commissary Ridge North, Wyoming,[179] and Sproats Meadow Northwest, Oregon.[180] To the north, mostly in British Columbia, the Columbia watershed borders the Fraser River watershed. To the west and southwest the Columbia watershed borders a number of smaller watersheds that drain to the Pacific Ocean, such as the Klamath River in Oregon and California and the Puget Sound Basin in Washington.[174]
*****Please notice point number 15 which enters into the Colorado River Drainage Basin
The map below is of the Colorado River Watershed which stretches from Wyoming all the way down through Mexico. Touching on Wyoming, Colorado, UtahNevada, Arizona, New MexicoBaja Californis , Sonora Mexico
Below is a Map of the Colorado River basin from Colorado all the way to the Gulf of Mexico through New Mexico and Texas as indicated by the yellow line.
Six underground tanks that hold a brew of radioactive and toxic waste at the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site are leaking, federal and state officials said Friday, prompting calls for an investigation from a key senator.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said the leaking material poses no immediate risk to public safety or the environment because it would take a while — perhaps years — to reach groundwater.
But the leaking tanks raise new concerns about delays for emptying them and strike another blow to federal efforts to clean up south-central Washington’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where successes often are overshadowed by delays, budget overruns and technological challenges.
Department of Energy spokeswoman Lindsey Geisler said there was no immediate health risk and said federal officials would work with Washington state to address the matter.
Regardless, Tom Towslee, a spokesman for Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said the senator will be asking the Government Accountability Office to investigate Hanford’s tank monitoring and maintenance program.
Wyden is the new chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
State officials just last week announced that one of Hanford’s 177 underground tanks was leaking 150 to 300 gallons a year, posing a risk to groundwater and rivers. So far, nearby monitoring wells haven’t detected higher radioactivity levels.
******************************************************************************************************** Event – Public Hearing on Exposed Workers at Hanford Nuclear Site – Part I
Uploaded on Jan 9, 2010
Part I of the U.S. Department of Energy, Environment, Safety and Health, Public Hearing on Exposed Workers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation held February 3, 2000 at the Federal Building in Richland, WA.
Sound quality is poor due to on camera mic and bad acoustics.
Talk – Walter Tamosaitis – A Deep Concern on the Hanford Horizon: The WTP
Uploaded on Sep 11, 2010
Talk by Dr. Walter Tamosaitis, the Research and Technology Manager of Hanford’s Waste Treatment Plant, who was summarily terminated from his job after he raised safety issues associated with the design and operation of this nuclear facility
An 18-year-old woman who was raped by her brother’s friend, who pretended to be the victim’s own boyfriend, has had her rape conviction overturned by a California appeals court because of a 1872 law that says unmarried women are not legally protected from sexual assault by “impostors.”
As the UK’s Independent describes, Julio Morales sexually assaulted the sleeping victim in 2009 after she fell asleep alongside her boyfriend in a bed. The boyfriend then got up out of bed and left the apartment; Morales witnessed him leave. Later on that night, Morales entered the room and began raping the victim (while she was still asleep, as he was convicted of “rape of an unconscious person,” according to USA Today). During the rape, the victim thought Morales was her boyfriend — until light from outside the bedroom door revealed his face. The victim “pushed him away” and “began to cry and yell.”
Earthquakes can – of course – damage nuclear power plants. For example, even the operator of Fukushima and the Japanese government now admit that the nuclear cores might have started melting down before the tsuanmi ever hit. More here.
Indeed, American reactors may be even more vulnerable to earthquakes than Fukushima.
But American nuclear “regulators” have allowed numerous nuclear power plants to be built in earthquake zones (represented by black triangles in the following diagram):
Some plants are located in very high earthquake risk zones:
(Note: Ignore the long lines in the diagram … they represent the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, which present a huge danger of flooding nuclear reactors , but not an earthquake risk).
The NRC won’t even begin conducting its earthquake study for Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York until after relicensing is complete in 2013, because the NRC doesn’t consider a big earthquake “a serious risk”
Congressman Markey has said there is a cover up. Specifically, Markey alleges that the head of the NRC told everyone not to write down risks they find from an earthquake greater than 6.0 (the plant was only built to survive a 6.0 earthquake)
We have 4 reactors in California – 2 at San Onofre 2 at San Luis Obisbo – which are vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis
For example, Diablo Canyon is located on numerous earthquake faults, and a state legislator and seismic expert says it could turn into California’s Fukushima:
On July 26th 2011 the California Energy Commission held hearings concerning the state’s nuclear safety. During those hearings, the Chairman of the Commission asked governments experts whether or not they felt the facilities could withstand the maximum credible quake. The response was that they did not know.
Chesapeake Energy has a permit to frack just one mile from the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport. Whether that is cause for alarm, experts can’t say.
***
“Hydraulic fracturing near a nuclear plant is probably not a concern under normal circumstances,” [Richard Hammack, a scientist at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory] said. “If there is a pre-stress fault that you happen to lubricate there (with fracking solution), that is the only thing that might result in something that is (seismically) measurable.”
That’s not very reassuring, given that “lubrication” of faults is the main mechanism by which fracking causes earthquakes. (Indeed, the point is illustrated by the analogous fact that leading Japanese seismologists say that the Fukushima earthquake “lubricated” nearby faults, making a giant earthquake more likely than ever.)
And as Akron Beacon Journal notes, fracking is allowed with 500 feet of nuclear plants:
“We’re not aware of any potential impacts and don’t expect any,” said FirstEnergy spokeswoman Jennifer Young today. “We see no reason to be particularly concerned.”
***
[But] experts can’t say if the proposed well so close to two nuclear power plants is cause for concern.
***
DEP spokesperson John Poister told the Shale Reporter that there are no required setbacks specifically relating to a required distance between such shale wells and nuclear facilities, just a blanket regulation requiring a 500-foot setback from any building to a natural gas well.
REYKJAVIK (Reuters) – Icelandic authorities warned people in the north of the island on Thursday to prepare for a possible big earthquake after the biggest tremors in the area for 20 years.
The north Atlantic island, where almost 320,000 people live, is a hotspot of volcanic and seismic activity as it straddles a fault in the earth’s surface.
The Civil Protection Department said in a statement that recent small quakes in an area under the sea about 20 km (12 miles) off the north of Iceland had prompted it to issue a warning to local people.
It said such shocks, one of which was a magnitude 5.6, often led to stronger quakes. Warnings were issued when there were grounds to expect a natural or manmade event that could threaten health and human safety, it added.
“People are anxious because they don’t know what might happen,” said Amundi Gunnarsson, chief of the fire brigade in Fjallabyggd, one of the small towns in the area, and a member of the Civil Protection Department.
“At the same time, life goes on as usual. People are going to work and children are going to school, but everyone is on alert,” he told Reuters by telephone.
The coastal area in the north is home to several small towns and a population of several thousand people.
The biggest town in the north of Iceland, Akureyri, has a population of about 17,000 people, and lies roughly 100 km south of the seismic activity.
Geologist Benedikt Ofeigsson said houses in Iceland could typically withstand quakes of a magnitude about 7.
“Of course there could be some damage to in walls and concrete in such strong earthquakes, but what is important that houses have stood firm,” he told Reuters.
(Reporting by Robert Robertsson, writing by Patrick Lannin; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Keith Weir)
A magnitude 5 earthquake struck north of Cosenza in southern Italy early on Friday, and police said a hospital had been evacuated after cracks were found in its structure, but there were no reports of injuries. The quake hit at 1:05 a.m. (7.05 p.m. EDT on Thursday) about 6.3 km (3.9 miles) underground, north of Cosenza in the Pollino mountains area on the border of the southern regions of Calabria and Basilicata, according to data from the Italian Geophysics Institute (INGV). It said on its website that at least 14 other tremors followed the initial earthquake. An Italian police official told Reuters a hospital in the small town of Mormanno had been evacuated as a precautionary measure because some cracks were found in its structure. No injuries were reported, the official said. Italian news agencies reported scenes of panic in the hospital and said many inhabitants of Mormanno and surrounding towns had come out in the streets. Police and fire fighters are surveying the area for further damage, officials said.
Today
Earthquake
Iceland
North Atlantic Ocean, [North of the island (under the sea)]
Icelandic authorities warned people in the north of the island yesterday to prepare for a possible earthquake after the biggest tremors in the area for 20 years. The north Atlantic island, where almost 320,000 people live, is a hotspot of volcanic and seismic activity. The Civil Protection Department said in a statement that recent small quakes in an area under the sea about 20km off the north of Iceland had prompted it to issue a warning. It said such shocks, one of which was a magnitude 5.6, often led to stronger quakes
New model says they are connected underground and relieve pressure in each other
By Becky Oskin
OurAmazingPlanet
The past decade of eruptions of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano may have acted as a pressure-relief valve for neighboring Mauna Loa, according to a new model suggesting two of the planet’s biggest volcanoes connect deep underground.
Scientists know each of the two Hawaiian volcanoes has its own plumbing —separate, shallow magma chambers. Such chambers are the source of Kilauea’s rising lava lake, which is threatening to spill over. But 50 miles (80 kilometers) down, in a part of the Earth’s mantle layer called the asthenosphere, Mauna Loa and Kilauea are dynamically coupled, said Helge Gonnermann, a professor at Rice University in Houston, who is the lead author of a new study showing the link.
“It’s like groundwater in an aquifer or oil in an oil reservoir,” Gonnermann told OurAmazingPlanet. “We know that there is melt that extends beneath both volcanoes. Changes in pressure can be transmitted to both volcanoes.”
The Hawaiian Islands are hotspot volcanoes, formed as the Pacific plate moves over a plume of hot magma in the mantle. Pressure changes in the pooled magma in the mantle could rapidly affect both volcanoes, the model indicates.
The model helps explains some intriguing observations: When one volcano inflates, the other starts to bulge about six months later. At times, such as in 2005, both volcanoes inflate at the same, GPS data show
The study suggests that Mauna Loa’s and Kilauea’s opposing pattern — when one is active, the other is quiet — occurs because eruptions at one volcano release pressure in the other.
The model suggests Mauna Loa, which produced its most recent blast in 1984, had accumulated enough magma for another eruption, but its pressure was relieved by Kilauea’s heightened activity.
“The hypothesis coming out of this model is that if we hadn’t seen this increased activity at Kilauea, then we would not have seen this pressure relief,” Gonnermann said.
The summit of Kilauea has recently started inflating, giving the researchers a real-world test. “If Kilauea continues to inflate like it is right now, and if our model holds water, we should also see another period of inflation at Mauna Loa in about half a year,” Gonnermann said.
The scientists also hope to test the model in other hotspot volcanoes, such as those of the Galapagos.
The findings are detailed in the November issue of the journal Nature Geosciences.
The Kuril Island volcano named Alaid, in Russia’s Far East has begun spewing ash with the giant ash cloud rising to an altitude of up to 700 meters.
The Alaid Volcano is the tallest and northernmost volcano in the islands, with a crater which is approximately 1.5-km-wide.
The first signs of activity were recorded on October 7th when thermal anomalies were observed a cloud of steam appeared.
Volcanologists are issuing warnings regarding the likelihood of an eruption of ash emissions which may reach a height of 10-15 kilometers above sea level.
Voice of Russia, Russia 24
25.10.2012 03:12 AM
Australian Antarctic Territory in the Southern Ocean, Heard Island and McDonald Islands
One of Australia’s two active volcanoes seems to be erupting. We say seems because the volcano in question, on Heard Island, is located in the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean, 2000km north of Antarctica and closer to Africa than to Australia. That’s about as close to the middle of nowhere as it is possible to be. Heard Island and its neighbour MacDonald Island are Australian territories and are uninhabited, but each possesses an active volcano. Scientific expeditions venture there infrequently, due to conservation issues and the fact the islands have a wretched climate, are thousands of miles from anywhere nice and can only be accessed or supplied by ship. That means little attention is paid to the islands, with the satellite images such as the one below seldom acquired. But NASA’s Earth Observatory says the image and other analysis detected heat signatures on Heard Island’s 2475m Mawson Peak that suggest recent volcanic activity. “Although not definitive, this natural-color satellite image also suggests an ongoing eruption,” NASA writes. “The dark summit crater (much darker than Mawson’s shaded southwestern face) is at least partially snow-free, and there’s a faint hint of an even darker area—perhaps a lava flow—within. Shortwave infrared data (collected along with the visible imagery) shows hot surfaces within the crater, indicating the presence of lava in, or just beneath, the crater.” The Australian Government’s official Heard and McDonald Island website, which has a nifty .aq domain, reports eruptions on McDonald Island. In 1992. Heard Island’s remote location means any eruptions are unlikely to bother anyone, as the region has no history of colossal, world-shaking, events. Penguins and expeditions that plan to visit the islands are, however, in jeopardy. Two of the latter are scheduled for the near future. In 2013 a solo adventurer plans to sail to the islands and then kayak ashore.
A sudden, unexpected burst of high winds caused a controlled burn in the Croatan National Forest to get out of control and burn 21,000 acres this summer, according to a report on the fire. The U.S. Forest Service released its “Learning Analysis” of the fire that prompted road closures in the forest and affected the region for weeks with heavy smoke. The report shows that the controlled burn that began on June 14 to remove undergrowth and improve habitat for the red cockaded woodpecker in 1,567 acres went well at first. Subsequent burns on June 15 and June 16 also had no issues. However, the report cites a sudden burst of high winds during a 20- to 30-minute window around 2:30 p.m. on June 16 that sent embers across South Little Road outside of the controlled burn area as the reason behind the wildfire. The report shows that maximum winds had been up to only 15 mph, but that the wind suddenly picked up to 23 mph. “The winds that kicked up for that half an hour were what we suspect as contributing to us having a spot fire,” Barry Garten, acting district ranger for the Croatan National Forest, said on Thursday. “We did everything that we possibly could to make sure that everything was in good shape but when the wind comes up like that, a kind of anomaly of a wind that no one saw, it makes it difficult to keep everything in check.”
According to the report, a forest service helicopter spotted the new fire at about 3 p.m. June 16 and estimated its size at 50 to 75 acres. By 6 p.m., it had grown to 235 acres. Forestry officials opted not to fight the fire through the night of June 16, citing safety concerns, according to the report. By the morning of June 17, the fire had spread to 2,800 acres. The report lists that the controlled burn created a “smoke screen” that made detecting the wildfire difficult. The report also mentioned the importance of maintaining communication with the National Weather Service about weather conditions during controlled burns. The report, put together by eight forestry officials that were not directly connected to the fire, mentioned that the preparation, plan and practices established for controlled burns were followed and that officials took appropriate action once the wildfire started.
Colorado authorities said they were hoping to determine Wednesday how many buildings had been burned by a fast-moving wildfire that sprang up Tuesday afternoon. The blaze in south-central Custer County was quickly spread by 50 mph winds. The high winds prevented crews from fighting the fire from the air. Officials said the wildfire was ignited by a house fire in a subdivision south of Wetmore and that it had burned into “broken terrain” of relatively uninhabited areas of Custer and Pueblo counties. More than 300 homes have been evacuated, said Steve Segin of the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center. A separate wildfire in Estes Park has consumed 979 acres and was only partially contained, the National Park Service reported.
Sandy is expected to bring high winds, heavy rain and extreme tides to the eastern US seaboard
Hurricane Sandy has swept north over the Bahamas towards the US, having reportedly killed some 20 people as it tore through Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica.
Schools, offices, airports and bridges had closed across the Bahamas as residents stocked up on supplies.
Forecasters warn the storm could pose a major threat to the US East Coast.
Early on Friday, Sandy had dropped to a category one hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph (150 kph), said the US National Hurricane Center.
It was moving north at about 13 mph centred between Cat Island and Eleuthera in the central Bahamas about 185 miles south-east of Freeport on Grand Bahama Island.
Florida was already being lashed by heavy rain and high winds, with the coastal state being put under a tropical storm warning.
“We’re looking for tropical-storm force winds along the coast and then some very dangerous surf conditions over the next couple of days,” said James Franklin, the NHC’s chief hurricane forecaster.
“So we can’t really emphasise enough to keep people out of the water, the winds are going to be very strong.”
Some US broadcasters were already referring to Sandy as The Halloween Hurricane – or even Frankenstorm, due to the possibility of it blending with a winter storm over the United States – as it was expected to bring coastal flooding and power outages around All Hallow’s Eve – on 31 October.
The storm was expected to head north-west at a slower pace on Friday, getting gradually larger all the while.
Although it is forecast to weaken, the NHC said it would likely remain a hurricane during the next 48 hours.
Guantanamo battered
Earlier on Thursday Sandy had caused a storm surge leading to severe flooding along Cuba’s south-eastern coastline.
Civil emergency authorities revealed 11 people died as the storm lashed the communist island – nine of those in Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second-largest city.
TV footage of the popular tourist destination showed fallen trees, toppled houses and debris-choked streets.
More than 50,000 people had been moved from their homes in the city as a precaution.
Strong winds and rain also battered the US naval base and detention facility at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, confining some workers to their quarters, delaying a hearing and prompting a number of prisoners to be moved to safer accommodation.
Elsewhere, nine deaths were reported in Haiti – where much of the infrastructure remains in a very poor condition following a massive earthquake in 2010.
In Jamaica earlier, more than 1,000 people sought refuge in shelters as Sandy caused widespread power outages, flooded streets and damaged buildings.
One elderly Jamaican was killed when a boulder fell on his house.
A 48-hour curfew was imposed in the island’s major towns to deter the looting that had accompanied previous storms.
Forecasters warned the category one hurricane would grow in size
A man has been crushed to death by boulders as Hurricane Sandy sweeps across Jamaica, moving north to Cuba.
The category one hurricane struck the island on Wednesday, unleashing heavy rains and winds of 125km/h (80mph).
Schools and airports are closed, and a curfew has been imposed in major towns. A police officer was shot and injured by looters in the capital, Kingston.
A hurricane warning has also been issued in Cuba, where Sandy is expected to make its next landfall.
Moving at 22km/h, the hurricane struck Kingston on Wednesday evening and headed north, emerging off the island’s northern coast near the town of Port Antonio.
Sandy has prompted a hurricane watch in the Bahamas, while Florida has been placed on tropical storm watch.
“It’s a big storm and it’s going to grow in size after it leaves Cuba,” said forecaster Michael Brennan from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami.
Officer shot
The NHC predicts that Sandy could dump up to 50cm (inches) of rain across parts of Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and eastern Cuba.
“These rains may produce life-threatening flash floods and mudslides, especially in areas of mountainous terrain,” the centre warned in a statement.
More than 1,000 Jamaicans have sought refuge in shelters, with residents reporting widespread power outages, flooded streets and damages to buildings.
An elderly man was crushed to death by stones that fell from a hillside as he tried to get into his house in a rural village, authorities said.
Much of the island’s infrastructure is in a poor state of repair, and a lack of effective planning regulation has resulted in homes being built close to embankments and gullies.
“A part of the roof of my veranda just went like that [and] at least five of my neighbours have lost their entire roofs,” a resident of the coastal city of Iter Boreale told Reuters news agency.
Kingston prepares for the arrival of the hurricane
The country’s sole energy provider, the Jamaica Public Service Company, said 70% of its customers were without electricity.
Authorities have imposed a 48-hour curfew in all major towns. But looters in Kingston ignored the order and wounded a senior officer in a shooting, police said.
In some southern Jamaican towns, crocodiles were caught in rushing floodwaters, which carried them out of mangrove thickets, the Associated Press reports.
One big croc was washed into a family’s front yard in the city of Portmore, according to the news agency.
While Jamaica was ravaged by winds from Hurricane Ivan in 2004, the eye of a hurricane hasn’t crossed the island since Hurricane Gilbert in 1988.
Almost 50 people were killed by that storm, and the then Prime Minister, Edward Seaga, described the hardest hit areas near where Gilbert made landfall as looking “like Hiroshima after the atom bomb”.
Hurricane Sandy, which closed businesses and airports on Jamaica as it moved north in the Caribbean, may strike the U.S. East Coast next week with the potential to cause millions of dollars in damage.
Sandy’s top winds reached 85 miles (137 kilometers) an hour as it moved off the north coast of Jamaica and headed toward Cuba, according to a U.S. National Hurricane Center advisory at 8 p.m. New York time.
“The table is set for some pretty major weather,” said Henry Margusity, an expert senior meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania. “Is it going to be an epic storm or is going to be just your typical nor’easter? We will have the answers next week.”
Sandy is expected to cross Cuba overnight and the Bahamas tomorrow, according to the hurricane center. The storm may then move parallel to the U.S. East Coast and either be pushed into the Atlantic Ocean or pulled into the coastline.
A computer model based in Europe took the storm up Delaware Bay, while another by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had Sandy curve into Portland, Maine, Margusity said. Both events would take place early next week.
The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency said residents should monitor the storm’s progress.
Weather Patterns
One of the major weather patterns determining where Sandy will end up is the North Atlantic Oscillation, which is currently blocking weather systems moving off the U.S. The system may turn Sandy into the U.S. coast, Margusity said.
A storm on that potential track may do millions in damage from downed trees, power outages and flooding, he said.
Before then, Sandy is forecast to cross eastern Cuba and the Bahamas, where hurricane warnings have been issued, according to the hurricane center.
As much as 20 inches (51 centimeters) of rain may fall on parts of Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, the center said. Three inches are possible in Florida.
To contact the reporter on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net
ORLANDO BARRIA / EPAA boy plays next to firefighters in a flooded street amidst garbage that was dragged by the heavy rains in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic after Hurricane Sandy hit the country on Oct. 25, 2012. About 8,755 people have been forced to leave their homes due to heavy rains caused by Hurricane Sandy.
(WASHINGTON) — Much of the U.S. East Coast has a good chance of getting blasted by gale-force winds, flooding, heavy rain and maybe even snow early next week by an unusual hybrid of hurricane and winter storm, federal and private forecasters say.
Though still projecting several days ahead of Halloween week, the computer models are spooking meteorologists. Government scientists said Wednesday the storm has a 70 percent chance of smacking the Northeast and mid-Atlantic.
Hurricane Sandy in the Caribbean, an early winter storm in the West, and a blast of arctic air from the North are predicted to collide, sloshing and parking over the country’s most populous coastal corridor starting Sunday. The worst of it should peak early Tuesday, but it will stretch into midweek, forecasters say.
“It’ll be a rough couple days from Hatteras up to Cape Cod,” said forecaster Jim Cisco of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration prediction center in College Park, Md. “We don’t have many modern precedents for what the models are suggesting.”
It is likely to hit during a full moon when tides are near their highest, increasing coastal flooding potential, NOAA forecasts warn. And with some trees still leafy and the potential for snow, power outages could last to Election Day, some meteorologists fear. They say it has all the earmarks of a billion-dollar storm.
Some have compared it to the so-called Perfect Storm that struck off the coast of New England in 1991, but Cisco said that one didn’t hit as populated an area and is not comparable to what the East Coast may be facing. Nor is it like last year’s Halloween storm, which was merely an early snowstorm in the Northeast.
At least 1,250 families evacuated to safer ground as flash flood, triggered by incessant rains, hit the town of Buug, Zamboanga Sibugay, a military officer said here. Two families were also forced to flee their homes due to landslides near the mining village of Lamare, Bayog town in the adjacent province of Zamboanga del Sur Thursday. No one was hurt or injured during the incident as the two families managed to flee before huge chunks of crumbling earth destroyed their houses made of light materials. Capt. Alberto Caber, Spokesman of the Army’s 1st Division, said ground troops and civilian disaster response teams reported that the flood water swelled in the Barangay Poblacion – the town center of Buug and in the nearby village of Bula-an, prompting residents residents to flee to higher ground. “The flood water reached as [high] as five feet, prompting the rescue and evacuation Thursday of the affected residents in the area,” Caber said. He said local disaster officials on the ground reported that the flood was triggered by continuous rains since Wednesday night.
Local weather bureau of Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) said the incessant rain was triggered by the monsoon and enhanced by the tail ends of tropical storm Ofel. Close to 6,250 persons were evacuated by the rescuing police and military troops to the nearby Villa Castor Elementary School. Caber said no casualty was reported while local authorities have yet to assess the damage brought by the flood. Maj. Gen. Ricardo Rainier Cruz III, 1st Army Division chief, directed the military units located in the coastal areas to closely monitor the water level. “As the need arises, [we will] undertake rescue and retrieval operations jointly with the PNP, local officials and civilian volunteers,” Cruz said.
Today
Flash Flood
Turkey
Province of Gaziantep, [Gaziantep-Sanl urfa Highway]
Three people were killed early on Thursday in the province of Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey when a passenger bus was drifted in flood. The passenger bus was among several vehicles which were drifted by flood along the Gaziantep-Sanl urfa Highway after flash floods hit the city, said the report, adding that several people were also missing. Search and rescue teams were dispatched for searching for the missing people since the early hours of the day, said the report. The floods came during the holidays of Eid al-Adha (Feast of Sacrifice), a four-day Islamic holiday. Thousands of people were jamming the roads during the Eid to visit relatives, with authorities calling on drivers to be careful while driving.
Petty traders preparing for Hari Raya Haji shoppers had their business interrupted by flash floods. Lemang stall operators along Jalan Damansara had to wait for the floods to subside after heavy rain at 5pm yesterday before reopening for business. The flash floods also caused a 3km-long jam on the Sprint Highway from Section 16. Muslims are celebrating Hari Raya Haji today amid a forecast of heavy rain by the Meteorology Department.
As such, it is disturbing news that the ground beneath unit 4 is sinking.
Specifically, Unit 4 sunk 36 inches right after the earthquake, and has sunk another 30 inchessince then.
Moreover, Unit 4 is sinking unevenly, and the building may begin tilting.
An international coalition of nuclear scientists and non-profit groups are calling on the U.N. to coordinate a multi-national effort to stabilize the fuel pools. And see this.
Given the precarious situation at Unit 4, it is urgent that the world community pool its scientific resources to come up with a fix.
LOS ANGELES—The operators of the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant say a hydrogen leak is the latest problem to plague the troubled plant, but it was small and presented no risk to workers or the public.Plant operator Southern California Edison said in a statement Monday that the leak was discovered in a non-nuclear part of the facility Sunday and has been reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Orange County Register (http://bit.ly/RSeFa9) reports that hydrogen is used to cool electrical generators at the plant, and a pipe fitting will be replaced because of the leak.
The plant located between Los Angeles and San Diego hasn’t produced power since Jan. 31 because of excessive wear in its reactors, and it’s not clear when, or if, it will return to service.
A contained radioactive water leak detected at EDF’s Flamanville nuclear plant did not cause any damage to the environment or harm any employees, France’s nuclear safety watchdog ASN and EDF said on Thursday. The nuclear safety agency said on its website EDF had detected a leak in a water pipe that feeds the plant’s reactor 1 primary circuit late on Wednesday. It was stopped and did not cause any radioactive contamination. The incident was defined as a grade 1 incident on the international nuclear event scale (INES), where the maximum 7 is the most severe. There were 66 Level 1 incidents in 2011 in France according to the ASN.
Health experts have confirmed an outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus in the western district of Kabale after samples from two relatives taken to the Uganda Virus Institute tested positive. Police Thursday stopped the burial of Boaz Turyahikayo a lecturer at Uganda Christian University and his sister Mildrid Asasira after it emerged that their family had lost four people from a mysterious disease in just a month. The other two are Lillian Banegura their mother and an elder brother Bernard Rutaro who passed away early this month. Dr. Patrick Tusiime the Kabale district health officer said a team from the Ministry of Health and World Health Organization is on its way to oversee the burial of the two victims. The Marburg virus was last reported in Uganda in 2008. It carries symptoms similar to those of Ebola that include fever, vomiting and internal bleeding.
Biohazard name:
Marburg virus disease (MVD)
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.
Measles hasn’t been seen in the Saskatoon Health Region in the past 15 years, but Thursday the region is reporting a case of the disease. Parents of infants should to check their children’s vaccination records, said Julie Kryzanowski, the region’s medical health officer. About one in four children younger than two are not properly covered by the vaccine because their immunizations are not up to date, she said. “We’re at about 76 per cent coverage rate for children under two years with two doses, so public health will be calling parents of children who are behind with their measles vaccine,” Kryzanowski said. “We’ve set up extra drop in clinics in Saskatoon and some of the surrounding communities of our health region starting Saturday and running through next week.” Measles can be quite serious. “If somebody isn’t protected by immunization and they are exposed to a case of measles, over 90 per cent will be infected,” Kryzanowski said. “Whenever we see a single case of measles we are concerned about the risk of an outbreak because measles is so contagious.” While rare, there are cases seen across the country. “Most of the cases of measles that we do see in Canada are sporadic cases and usually attributed to travel internationally or people coming from overseas to Canada and bringing the measles virus with them.” The case here has been linked to a case in Prince Albert reported last month.
Biohazard name:
Measles
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 this visualization, the Gulf Stream is seen as the dark red current coming into the Atlantic from the Gulf of Mexico.
By Miguel Llanos, NBC News
A changing Gulf Stream off the East Coast has destabilized frozen methane deposits trapped under nearly 4,000 square miles of seafloor, scientists reported Wednesday. And since methane is even more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas, the researchers said, any large-scale release could have significant climate impacts.
Using seismic records and ocean models, the team estimated that 2.5 gigatonnes of frozen methane hydrate are being destabilized and could separate into methane gas and water.
It is not clear if that is happening yet, but that methane gas would have the potential to rise up through the ocean and into the atmosphere, where it would add to the greenhouse gases warming Earth.
The 2.5 gigatonnes isn’t enough to trigger a sudden climate shift, but the team worries that other areas around the globe might be seeing a similar destabilization.
USGS
Methane hydrate samples
“It is unlikely that the western North Atlantic margin is the only area experiencing changing ocean currents,” they noted. “Our estimate … may therefore represent only a fraction of the methane hydrate currently destabilizing globally.”
The wider destabilization evidence, co-author Ben Phrampus told NBC News, includes data from the Arctic and Alaska’s northern slope in the Beaufort Sea.
And it’s not just under the seafloor that methane has been locked up. Some Arctic land area are seeing permafrost thaw, which could release methane stored there as well.
An expert who was not part of the study said it suggests that methane could become a bigger climate factor than carbon dioxide.
“We may approach a turning point” from a warming driven by man-made carbon dioxide to a warming driven by methane, Jurgen Mienert, the geology department chair at Norway’s University of Tromso, told NBC News.
“The interactions between the warming Arctic Ocean and the potentially huge methane-ice reservoirs beneath the Arctic Ocean floor point towards increasing instability,” he added.
For thousands of years, permafrost has trapped Siberia’s carbon-rich soil, a compost of Ice Age plant and animal remains. But global warming is melting the permafrost and exposing the soil, causing highly flammable methane to seep out. NBC’s Jim Maceda reports.
He also noted, however, that “one of the big unknowns is the magnitude of rapid methane escape from the ocean floor, and how natural filter systems react and affect the future ocean, its environment and the climate.”
Another unknown is what caused the Gulf Stream changes, said Phrampus, an earth sciences PhD candidate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
“Multiple events can play a factor, such as changing sea level or an addition of cold/fresh water from the north,” Phrampus said, adding he was hopeful that the changes might be “reversible under their own influence.”
But, he added, “we need more data to resolve this, and we are currently investigating this process.”
(Source: Assumption Office of Emergency Preparedness)
BAYOU CORNE, LA (WAFB) -
A sharp tremor was recorded by USGS monitors just after 9 p.m. Wednesday at the site of the giant Louisiana sinkhole in Assumption Parish.
The giant sinkhole appeared in August near the Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou areas.
The Assumption Parish Police Jury says the tremor was large enough that the body wave phases could easily be identified. A body wave travels through the interior of the earth.
The preliminary location of the tremor was just SE of Oxy #3 cavern at a depth of 500m. There is no additional information specific to this seismic activity at this time.
The sinkhole is now about four acres in size.
Residents were forced from their homes on August third, two months after the bayous started bubbling. They are still evacuated from their homes.
The Assumption Parish, LA sinkhole continues to grow. The ground opened up on August 3, 2012 and residents were evacuated from their homes. The sinkhole, or slurry, is consuming land and trees.
Today
Unusual geological event
USA
State of Louisiana, [Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou areas, Assumption Parish]
A sharp tremor was recorded by USGS monitors just after 9 p.m. Wednesday at the site of the giant Louisiana sinkhole in Assumption Parish. The giant sinkhole appeared in August near the Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou areas. The Assumption Parish Police Jury says the tremor was large enough that the body wave phases could easily be identified. A body wave travels through the interior of the earth. The preliminary location of the tremor was just SE of Oxy #3 cavern at a depth of 500m. There is no additional information specific to this seismic activity at this time. The sinkhole is now about four acres in size. Residents were forced from their homes on August third, two months after the bayous started bubbling. They are still evacuated from their homes.
Officials say nine people have been slightly hurt in a chemical tank leak that restricted outdoor activities in a Southeast Texas city. Emergency authorities in Texas City lifted the shelter-in-place order shortly after 5 a.m. Thursday in a storage tank spill involving hydrochloric acid. Diane Tracy with New Jersey-based Dallas Group of America Inc. says company officials are investigating Wednesday night’s accident. Tracy says one Dallas Group employee, four workers with a neighboring transportation company and four firefighters were injured. Tracy says all nine victims were treated and released from a hospital. Homeland Security coordinator Bruce Clawson says the victims suffered acid exposure in the leak around 11 p.m. Wednesday. A shelter-in-place order was issued just before midnight Wednesday.
25.10.2012
HAZMAT
USA
State of California, Santa Monica [Lincoln and Ocean Park boulevards]
Fire crews have blocked off the parking lot outside Albertson’s grocery store in Santa Monica while a hazardous materials team investigates a low-level radioactive substance which was found inside a trash bin close by. The material was discovered Wednesday morning near the store on Lincoln and Ocean Park boulevards, according to reports. The store has not been evacuated but the parking lot has been blocked off. “We do have firefighters inside the Albertson’s doing radiation monitoring,” Santa Monica Fire Department Chief Mark Bridges told KNX Newsradio. “They are not getting any radiation readings inside the store, but outside we’re getting above-normal readings.” Bridges also confirmed that “low-level radioactive material”, thought to be medical waste, was found in a trash bin.
Earthquake swarms and a region-wide rotten egg smell recently reminded Southern California residents they live next to an active volcano field, tiny though it may be. At the time, scientists said the phenomena did not reflect changes in the magma chamber below the Salton Sea. But now, researchers may need to revise estimates of the potential hazard posed by the Salton Buttes – five volcanoes at the lake’s southern tip. The buttes last erupted between 940 and 0 B.C., not 30,000 years ago, as previously thought, a new study detailed online Oct. 15 in the journal Geology reports. The new age – which makes these some of California’s youngest volcanoes – pushes the volcanic quintuplets into active status. The California Volcano Observatory, launched in February by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), already lists the area as a high threat for future blasts. “The USGS is starting to monitor all potentially active volcanoes in California, which includes the Salton Buttes,” said study author Axel Schmitt, a geochronologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “With our results, I think this will further enhance the need to look into the system,” Schmitt told OurAmazingPlanet. Schmitt and his colleagues dated zircon crystals in the hardened lava of the buttes with a relatively new technique, a “helium clock” that starts ticking once the minerals begin cooling at the surface.
The National Science Foundation’s EarthScope project funds an extensive seismic imaging project in the Salton Sea that may soon reveal more information about what’s happening deep underground. “We’ll be looking with great interest to see what we can tell from the Salton Seismic Imaging Project,” said Joann Stock, a Caltech professor and an expert on the region’s volcanic hazards who was not involved in the new study. “I think (Schmitt’s study) is a great contribution,” she said. “It’s an area where we should be concerned. We know that there’s a lot of hot stuff down there,” she told OurAmazingPlanet. In August, an earthquake swarm shook the nearby town of Brawley. The USGS attributed the temblors to faults in the Brawley Seismic Zone. In September, a sulfurous stench emanated from the Salton Sea and wafted across the Inland Empire. The odor was tentatively linked to a fish die-off, but could also have been caused by volcanic gases, Stock said.
[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.]
Tsunami Information Bulletin in Aru Islands Region Indonesia, Indian Ocean
000
WEIO23 PHEB 120037
TIBIOX
TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 001
PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER/NOAA/NWS
ISSUED AT 0037Z 12 OCT 2012
THIS BULLETIN IS FOR ALL AREAS OF THE INDIAN OCEAN.
... TSUNAMI INFORMATION BULLETIN ...
THIS MESSAGE IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY.
THIS BULLETIN IS ISSUED AS ADVICE TO GOVERNMENT AGENCIES. ONLY
NATIONAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO MAKE
DECISIONS REGARDING THE OFFICIAL STATE OF ALERT IN THEIR AREA AND
ANY ACTIONS TO BE TAKEN IN RESPONSE.
AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS
ORIGIN TIME - 0032Z 12 OCT 2012
COORDINATES - 5.1 SOUTH 134.1 EAST
LOCATION - ARU ISLANDS REGION INDONESIA
MAGNITUDE - 6.7
EVALUATION
A DESTRUCTIVE WIDESPREAD TSUNAMI THREAT DOES NOT EXIST BASED ON
HISTORICAL EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI DATA.
HOWEVER - THERE IS A VERY SMALL POSSIBILITY OF A LOCAL TSUNAMI
THAT COULD AFFECT COASTS LOCATED USUALLY NO MORE THAN A HUNDRED
KILOMETERS FROM THE EARTHQUAKE EPICENTER. AUTHORITIES IN THE
REGION NEAR THE EPICENTER SHOULD BE MADE AWARE OF THIS
POSSIBILITY.
THIS WILL BE THE ONLY BULLETIN ISSUED BY THE PACIFIC TSUNAMI
WARNING CENTER FOR THIS EVENT UNLESS ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
BECOMES AVAILABLE.
THE JAPAN METEOROLOGICAL AGENCY MAY ISSUE ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
FOR THIS EVENT. IN THE CASE OF CONFLICTING INFORMATION...THE
MORE CONSERVATIVE INFORMATION SHOULD BE USED FOR SAFETY.
The CVGHM (or VSI) raised the Alert Level for Paluweh to ORANGE on 13 October based on ‘seismic and visual monitoring without specifying the activity; eruptive activity is most definitely on-going.
The Darwin VAAC has detected no ash plumes from Paluweh in the past 7 days.
Radar data from ERS-1, -2 and Envisat show a central uplift of about 10 mm per year near the Uturuncu volcano (dark red). The surrounding region shows a slower subsidence at a rate of about 2 mm per year (blue). Data were acquired 1992–2010. Scientists refer to the deformation pattern as the ‘sombrero uplift’. Credit: Y. Fialko, SIO/UCSD
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Geophysicists at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have identified a unique phenomenon in Altiplano-Puna plateau, located in the central Andes near the borders of Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
Magma underneath the Earth’s crust is forcing the ground up in one spot, and at the same time sinking the ground around it. The result is something the researchers have described as the “sombrero uplift,” after the popular Mexican hat.
According to their report on the phenomenon, published in the journal Science, the two UC San Diego scientists recorded uplift in the crust that measured about 0.4 inches per year for 20 years across an area 62 miles wide; the surrounding area sunk at a lower rate—about eight-hundredths of an inch.
“It’s a subtle motion, pushing up little by little every day, but it’s this persistence that makes this uplift unusual. Most other magmatic systems that we know about show episodes of inflation and deflation,” said Yuri Fialko, a professor of geophysics at UCSD and Planetary Physics at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.
Fialko and co-author Jill Pearse said the phenomenon was the result of a diapir, or a blob of magma, that rises to Earth’s crust like heated wax inside a lava lamp.
Using satellite data from European Remote Sensing (ERS) and Envisat missions, the geophysicists were able to study the uplift in great detail. In 2006, the team asked for the satellites to gather more data from their orbits over Altiplano-Puna.
“It was really important to have good data from different lines of sight, as this allowed us to estimate contributions from vertical and horizontal motion of Earth’s surface, and place crucial constraints on depth and mechanism of the inflation source,” Fialko said.
“Back in 2006, it looked like the satellites stopped acquiring data from the ascending orbits over the area of interest. Fortunately, ESA was very responsive to our requests, and generated an excellent dataset that made our study possible.”
“Satellite data and computer models allowed us to make the important link between what’s observed at the surface and what’s happening with the magma body at depth,” he added.
Fialko said the study’s findings could fuel future research around magmatic events, including the formation of large calderas. Although this diapir in the Altiplano-Puna plateau appears unlikely to cause such a phenomenon—the creation of large calderas, “supervolcanoes,” are highly destructive events that spew thousands of cubic kilometers of magma into the atmosphere. An event of this type would dwarf the Icelandic volcano eruption in 2011 that ejected large amounts of ash into the atmosphere and disrupted global air travel, Fialko said.
Diapirs have been known to exist before, but this new study is the first to recognize an active diapir currently rising through the crust. Fialko said a less prominent uplift phenomenon is taking place near Socorro, New Mexico.
The Altiplano-Puna plateau is a highly active area for magma and is part of a South American volcanic arc that extends along the northwest side of the continent. Experts have described the area as the largest known active magma body in Earth’s continental crust.
Source: Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
According to the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Manizales, an earthquake measuring 2.6 on the Richter scale occurred yesterday at 11:54 am. The communique also points out that the incident “is associated with rock fracturing within the volcanic edifice.” The volcano-tectonic earthquake occurred to the southeast of the main dome at a depth of 12.33 kilometers ( approx. 8 miles). Although the movement was felt in the district Tapias, rural zone of Ibagué, Eduardo Rodríguez, director of the Departmental Committee for Risk Management, confirmed that no emergencies have been reported thus far. The Cerro Machin volcano alert remains yellow. There have been three earthquakes reported in the vicinity of the volcano within a week. On Sunday two separate seismic occurrences were recorded at 9:32 and 9:35 pm with a magnitude of 4.6 and 3.9 on the Richter scale, respectively, located southeast of the main dome at a depth of 12 kilometers ( approx. 7 miles). The two municipalities which experienced the tremors are Cajamarca and Ibague.
The Klyuchevskoy volcano, the highest active volcano in Eurasia, has started erupting in Kamchatka, in the Russian Far East.
The luminescence over the volcano summit is evidence that glowing lava is flowing in the crater.
The volcano may start blowing out ash any moment now.
The Level of Concern Colour Code has been raised to Yellow, which is a potential danger warning for aircraft. The giant volcano last erupted from September 2009 to December 2010, and it began to again wake up in June this year. Klyuchevskoy volcano is 4,750 metres above sea.
A Japanese scientist has warned Mount Fuji is due for a “big-scale explosive eruption” that could affect millions of people and cause billions of dollars worth of damage.
It said the added pressure could have been caused by last year’s earthquake, which was followed a few days later by another large tremor directly underneath Fuji.
Professor Toshitsugu Fujii, the head of Japan’s volcanic eruption prediction panel, says an eruption could cause chaos and carnage all the way to Tokyo.
“Mount Fuji has been resting for 300 years now, and this is abnormal,” he told Saturday AM.
“It usually erupts in some form every 30 years.
“So the next eruption could be a big-scale explosive eruption.”
Ever since last year’s massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake off Japan’s north-east, the country’s meteorological agency has been keeping a closer eye on Mount Fuji.
Of even greater concern to the agency was a magnitude-6.2 quake right under the volcano a few days after the big one.
“It’s known that when a large earthquake happens, it can trigger a nearby volcano to erupt,” Professor Fujii said.
“That’s what happened 300 years ago, when Fuji erupted just 40 days after a big quake.”
If there is a large eruption, the government fears it could cause more than $30 billion in damage to public health and agriculture.
Ash accumulations in some areas could be as high as 60 centimetres.
Even Tokyo, 100 kilometres to the north-east, could be coated in volcanic ash.
“Volcanic rocks will fall near the mountain,” Professor Fujii said.
“Tokyo will be covered in a few centimetres of ash. Yokohama will be under 10 centimetres.
“Trains will stop, planes won’t fly and crops will fail.
“Millions will be affected.”
For the hundreds of thousands who live in the shadow of Fuji, an eruption is a constant worry.
Haruo Tomitsuka, a professional photographer who lives by a lake on the east side of the mountain, has been taking photos of Fuji for nearly three decades.
“I’m worried about an eruption, but mostly I worry it will change the beautiful shape of the mountain,” he said.
But for now Fuji remains a sleeping giant, and everyone living in the shadow of the national symbol is hoping the volcano’s slumber will long continue.
12.10.2012
Volcano Activity
Indonesia
East Nusa Tenggara, [Mount Rokatenda Volcano, Pulue Island]
Hundreds of local residents have been forced to evacuate as hot ashes spewed by Mount Rokatenda in Pulue Island, Sikka, East Nusa Tenggara on Thursday. “Volcanic ashes have reached four villages: Nitunglea, Rokirole, Kesokoja and Lidi. Our team has distributed masks and medicine for the residents,” Sikka disaster management agency head Silvanus Tibo said on Friday. Rokatenda’s volcanic activities have increased since Oct. 1, records show that there have been more than 50 volcanic earthquakes and 15 local tectonic earthquakes coupled with flames. The volcano’s last eruption was on March 23, 1985, with volcanic ashes reaching two kilometers above the mountain’s peak. Rokatenda also erupted during the period of Aug. 4 to Sept.25 1928. Nearly 6,000 people are currently living in four villages surrounding Mount Rokatenda.
The highest active volcano in Eurasia, Klyuchevskaya Sopka has started to erupt, officials with the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said. On the night of October 15, there was light seen over the summit of the volcano indicating a blowout of lava in its crater, Vesti.ru reports. Experts believe the release of ash to the height of 6 feet above sea level may start any moment. Lava flows on the slopes of the volcano are also expected. Yellow aviation color code has been assigned to the volcano to warn about the potential danger that the volcanic ash and gases may pose to aircraft engines. Nothing has been said about the possible threat to human settlements. The nearest settlement is 30 kilometers far from Klyuchevskaya Sopka. The last eruption of Klyuchevskaya Sopka took place from September 2009 to December 2010. In June this year, the giant began to wake up again.
SNOW has fallen across New South Wales and the ACT as a cold snap hits the region.
The unseasonal weather saw residents in areas including the Blue Mountains and southern tablelands waking up to snow on Friday.
There is also snow around Canberra, following the coldest October day there in more than 40 years. There was a maximum temperature of 8C in the Canberra area on Thursday, 11 degrees below the October average and the coldest since 1967.
Overnight snow fell in the hills between Canberra and Bungendore and in areas around Goulburn and Crookwell to the north.
The Bureau of Meteorology said many areas could see snow, frost and hail as the result of a low pressure system moving across NSW.
“We’ve had quite a few reports of snow. We’re expecting snow down to 700m over many parts of the state,” said meteorologist Julie Evans.
Sussex Inlet on the south coast experienced a thunderstorm about 4am on Friday, with “extensive small hail” falling, Ms Evans said.
“We do get this late season snow but it doesn’t happen very often,” she added.
“The last time was in 2008 when we saw snow in the Snowy Mountains and central tablelands in November.”
In some areas, the temperatures will struggle to reach double figures on Friday, with central western Orange seeing a high of 9C. On Saturday, temperatures will dip below zero with Walcha, in the state’s north, due to get a low of -4C.
The low pressure was expected to affect Sydney in the form of heavy rain on Friday, along with a “sharp increase in wind”, Ms Evans said.
Coastal areas will bear the brunt and surfing conditions were described by the meteorologist as dangerous.
On Saturday there is likely to be extensive frost up and down the tablelands but temperatures are set to improve across the state as the weekend progresses.
Ausgrid has warned residents in Sydney, the Central Coast and Hunter Valley to beware of powerlines that may have fallen as a result of the bad weather.
Ulladulla on the NSW south coast was hit by strong winds and rainfall.
The town saw 225mm of rain fall in less than 24 hours and there were gusts of 47 knots on Friday morning, approaching 90km an hour.
South of the town, heavy storms led to even higher falls, with 288mm at Burrill Lake in the same period.
In Sydney, large swells caused the cancellation of ferries between Manly and Circular Quay.
The Great Western Highway has been closed in both directions at Wentworth Falls due to heavy snow and black ice.
At least 19 people were killed and an estimated 1,500 fishermen are missing after tropical storms smashed into Bangladesh’s southern coastal islands and districts early Thursday, police said.
Police said at least 1,500 mud, tin and straw-built houses were also levelled in the storms that swept Bhola, Hatiya and Sandwip Islands and half a dozen coastal districts after Wednesday midnight.
At the worst-hit island of Hatiya, at least seven people were killed after they were buried under their houses or hit by fallen trees, said local police chief Moktar Hossain. More than 1,000 houses were flattened.
“More than 100 fishing trawlers, each carrying at least 10 fishermen, have been missing since the storm,” he told AFP, calling it one of the most powerful in decades.
Many fishermen are expected to have taken shelter in other remote islands in the Bay of Bengal or in the neighbouring Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest.
In the past, many fishermen thought to be missing from storms returned home to coastal villages a week or two later.
Four people were killed in Bhola, three each in Sandwip and Companyganj and two at Char Jabbar, police said.
The police chief of Bhola district, Bashir Ahmed, told AFP more than 500 fishermen were missing from the country’s largest island and at least 500 mud and straw-built houses were levelled by the sudden storm.
Bangladesh’s weather office forecast heavy rain in the coastal region and advised fishermen to take care near the shore, but there was no major storm warning.
“We only got the warning signal number three. But the storm was so powerful, the weather office should have hoisted the signal number seven or eight,” said Ahmed, referring to the intensity of the storm on a scale of ten.
“It caught the fishermen and coastal people by surprise. Till now we haven’t had any reports from the missing fishermen,” he said, adding the authorities had sent relief to thousands of affected people.
The provincial government of South Cotabato has ordered the evacuation of around 600 residents from three upland communities in Lake Sebu town following a series of landslides in the area since last week. Lawyer Hilario de Pedro III, acting Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (PDRRMO) chief, said Friday they decided to evacuate residents from sitios Bentung, Lemuti and Tokobokong in Barangay Lamlahak, Lake Sebu to avert a possible tragedy due to the threats of landslides in the area. He said the three communities are considered as high-risk or in a danger zone due to the “multiple landslides” that occurred in the area since September 28. A PDRRMO report cited that the landslides initially displaced 109 families in the area.
It said the incident was caused by almost a week of continuous rains that eventually triggered several ridges of the area’s barren mountain slopes to give in. “(The rains) generated earth cracks which caused the soil descent,” de Pedro said. John Lorca, PDRRMO’s disaster operations chief, said 25 families were also affected in another landslide that occurred in the area earlier this week. He said two houses were destroyed in the incident, which was caused anew by the heavy rains in the area. Lorca said that three to four hectares of the area’s mountains were deemed highly vulnerable to landslides due to the presence of ground cracks. De Pedro, who is also the acting provincial administrator, said 155 families or a total of 620 individuals have been evacuated from the affected communities. He said the provincial government initially delivered food and other relief items to the evacuees, who are currently taking temporary shelter at the village center in Lamlahak. The official said they initially requested the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) to conduct an assessment of the affected areas and determine whether it’s still safe for the residents to return there.
Significant damage from a possible tornado has been reported in Monroe County in northeast Mississippi. Law enforcement reported the roof of a home was removed with numerous trees downed about three miles south southeast of the town of Wren at around 7:04 p.m. Sunday. The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for northern Monroe County from 6:52 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., indicating that a rotating severe storm was located near Wren and or seven miles northwest of Aberdeen, moving east at 25 mph. Luckily, there have not been any reports of injuries. The severe storm was associated with a cold front that was moving across the state. Mississippi is approaching what is considered the state’s second severe weather season in the late fall. The month of November is historically the second most active month for tornadoes behind April. The state observes Severe Weather Awareness Day on Oct. 24. Statewide tornado drills will also be conducted.
Forecasters say strong winds spun up a small tornado in Mayfield. Only one injury was reported after the storm on Sunday, but property damage included the scoreboard toppled at War Memorial Stadium. Graves County Sheriff Dewayne Redmon said Lions Club Park was heavily damaged. National Weather Service meteorologist Rick Shanklin said an EF-1 tornado struck near the Mills Manor nursing home with winds of 105 mph. No residents of the home were hurt, but cars were moved about in the parking lot and car windows blew out. Graves County Emergency Management Director Jamey Locke said at least two businesses and about a dozen homes were damaged. A homeowner was injured when the storm blew the roof of another building into his house.
A small tornado damaged a farm in Lexington, about 70 miles east of Austin in Lee County. Cecil and Darene Rexroat’s home in lexington was hit hard Saturday night. “It was like a bomb went off,” said home owner Darene Rexroat. The damage is easy to see. The tin on the roof crumpled like paper. Limbs of a centuries old tree broken off and thrown around the yard. Glass shattered and scattered inside. “About 6:45, apparently, there was a tornado that came through here. We weren’t at home,” said Darene Rexroat. Dispatchers at the Lee County Sheiff’s Office said the tornado was small, and quickly disappated after touching the ground. The Rexroat home took most of the damage. “It was scary. It was scary not knowing what, what was damaged or how damaged or anything like that because we couldn’t get in because the electrical line was laying on the ground so we didn’t go anywhere near it,” said Darene. Rexroat says professionals will come look at the house monday. In the mean time, she and her husband will be hard at work. A task that will be made a little easier with the company of friends and neighbors. Helping the Rexroat’s find serenity and peace among the destruction.
An unkown disease showing symptoms of fever is now fast spreading in Tamu town, neighbouring Moreh on the Indo-Myanmar border. The disease is suspected to be dengue. An official of the National Vector Borne Disease Control Society, however, maintained that they have received reports about outbreak of an unknown disease showing symptoms of fever but no definite information about the particular disease has been received so far.
Biohazard name:
Unknown fever illness (Susp. Dengue)
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.
The most bizarre theory was from a man convinced Daleks had surrounded the city
By Lloyd Burr
News of the ‘Wellington hum’ has reverberated across the country with the local council inundated with calls on theories about the phenomenon.
The Wellington City Council says calls have flooded in since the noise was first reported in parts of the city three days ago.
The cause of the noise is still unknown but council spokesperson Clayton Anderson says there are several theories floating around.
“We’ve had around 20 phone calls and got around a dozen emails from around New Zealand from people speculating what it is,” he says.
One theory is that the Wellington sewerage pump station is reverberating through the pipes into people’s house.
Another caller said the work being carried out on the Mt Victoria Tunnel ventilation shaft could be producing a low-pitched hum.
The most bizarre theory was from a man convinced Daleks – fictional mutant aliens from the TV series Doctor Who – had surrounded the city.
But Daleks or not, it appears the noise is spreading with the council receiving its first call from a resident in Berhampore last night.
It takes the total to around 20 noise complaints from Mt Victoria, Mt Cook, Newtown, Berhampore and Karori.
“We’ve put the word out to our business units about what could potentially be making that noise and they’ve all come back saying it’s not us,” says Mr Anderson.
He says the council will continue to go out and monitor noise complaints.
Authorities in Bhaktapur’s Bode have culled more than 1500 chickens following a suspected outbreak of bird flu, health officials said. The outbreak of avian influenza initially killed 500 chickens out of 2000 at the poultry farm of a local Om Khadka. A meeting of health officials is underway at Bhaktapur to confirm whether the reported case is of bird flu.
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
Today
Environment Pollution
USA
Gulf of Mexico, [Location of Deepwater Horizon disaster]
The Federal On-Scene Coordinator for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in New Orleans issued a Notice of Federal Interest to BP and Transocean Tuesday. Coast Guard Capt. Duke Walker issued the NOFI following sample results from an oil sheen located in the vicinity of where the Deepwater Horizon drill rig exploded and sank more than two years ago. The sheen was first reported to the National Response Center Sept. 16 by BP based on satellite images from the 9th and 14th overpasses in the Mississippi Canyon, block 252, approximately 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. The sheen is not feasible to recover and does not pose a risk to the shoreline. The Coast Guard, in concert with BP and NOAA, has conducted regular assessments of the sheen by aircraft and boat since its discovery. The observed sheen size has varied over time depending upon the conditions present. Samples of the sheen were taken by Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit Morgan City Sept. 26 and sent to the Coast Guard Marine Safety Lab in New London, Conn. The Marine Safety Laboratory results indicate the sheen correlates to oil that originated from BP’s Macondo Well. The exact source of the sheen is uncertain at this time but could be residual oil associated with wreckage and/or debris left on the seabed from the Deepwater Horizon incident in 2010. The NOFI effectively informs BP and Transocean that the Coast Guard matched the sheen samples to the Deepwater Horizon spill or sunken drilling debris and that either party or both may be held accountable for any cost associated with further assessments or operations related to this sheen. The Gulf Coast Incident Management Team remains committed to the continued cleanup of the Gulf Coast and all shorelines affected as a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion. The FOSC is determined to continue response activities to remove all oil where it is technologically feasible, environmentally beneficial and safe for workers to perform recovery operations.
About 18,000 DTE Energy customers are without power after high winds blasted through southeast Michigan overnight. The outages include 7,000 customers without power in Wayne County, with the rest scattered throughout Macomb, Oakland and Washtenaw counties, DTE spokesman Scott Simons said this morning. “They should be back by sometime today,” Simons said. “It was high winds: gusts up to 45 miles per hour.” DTE provides electric power to 2.1 million customers throughout southeast Michigan. The power outage closed Detroit Public Schools’ Thirkell Elementary, 7724 14th Street, for the day today. National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Richter said today that the highest winds blew through between 8 p.m. and midnight Sunday. High gusts at 44 m.p.h. were clocked at Detroit Metro Airport at 9:52 p.m. Sunday and City Airport 10:42 p.m. “It was a really strong cold front that moved through, so we had a good burst of wind,” Richter said this morning from the agency’s White Lake Township office. “We’re going to have gusts about 25 m.p.h through most of the day today — considerably cooler today. It’s not going to get much warmer than what it is now.” Today’s high temperature is expected to reach 53 degrees, with a 30% chance of light showers across the region, he said. Temperatures will start to climb again on Tuesday, with a high of 60 degrees and a high of 70 degrees expected on Wednesday. Another front arrives with chances of rain Wednesday night and into Thursday, Richter said. Temperatures will drop again to highs around 60 on Thursday, then down to highs in the mid-50s for the weekend. “It’s going to be a little bit of a roller coaster ride,” Richter said.
At a meeting with New England commercial fishermen last December, physical oceanographers Glen Gawarkiewicz and Al Plueddemann from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) were alerted by three fishermen about unusually high surface water temperatures and strong currents on the outer continental shelf south of New England.
“I promised them I would look into why that was happening,” Gawarkiewicz says.
The result of his investigation was a discovery that the Gulf Stream diverged well to the north of its normal path beginning in late October 2011, causing the warmer-than-usual ocean temperatures along the New England continental shelf.
The researchers’ findings, “Direct interaction between the Gulf Stream and the shelfbreak south of New England,” were published in the August 2012 issue of the journal Scientific Reports.
To begin to unravel the mystery, Gawarkiewicz and his colleagues assembled data from a variety of sources and recreated a record of the Gulf Stream path during the fall of 2011.
First, they tapped into data collected by a program called eMOLT, a non-profit collaboration of fishing industry, research, academic and government entities, run by James Manning of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center. For more than a decade the program has recorded near-bottom ocean temperatures by distributing temperature probes to lobstermen.
Manning and scientists from WHOI, including Robert Todd and Magdalena Andres, analyzed a time series of temperatures from two eMOLT sites, OC01 and TA51, which were located over the outer continental shelf near the shelfbreak, and identified two events when temperatures suddenly increased by 6.2 and 6.7 degrees C, respectively, to highs of more than 18 degrees C.
“These are very dramatic events for the outer continental shelf, at least 2 degrees C warmer than we’ve seen since 2001,” says Gawarkiewicz. “Near-bottom temperatures of 18 degrees C on the outer shelf are extremely high for late autumn.” The maximum recorded temperature in December 2011 was the warmest bottom temperature recorded in 6 years of records at the OC01 site.
In typical years, the warm Gulf Stream waters only indirectly influence ocean currents and temperatures near the continental shelfbreak south of New England when eddies, called warm core rings, pinch off from the Gulf Stream and drift toward the outer continental shelf. Such rings normally drift past a site after a few weeks, and therefore cause only limited warming of the water on the outer shelf.
Gawarkiewicz and his colleagues collected additional data on water temperature and salinity from December 4, 2011 through January 4, 2012, from instruments on temporary test moorings placed 12 km south of the shelfbreak by the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The researchers compared those salinity measurements to historical data, and discovered that high salinity levels – consistent with the salinity of waters carried by the Gulf Stream – coincided with the warming periods.
The extent and duration of the two 2011 warming events combined with the high salinity observed by the researchers suggested the cause was not a transient warm core ring, but the Gulf Stream itself that carried warm, salty water to the outer shelf.
To solidify that finding, Gawarkiewicz received serendipitous help from students in the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) program at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, NC, who had deployed a surface drifter during the period coinciding with the two warming events. Drifters use satellites to transmit their positions roughly every six hours, key information for the WHOI scientists, who analyzed the drifter tracks and speeds.
“Drifters around the edges of warm core rings drift toward the continental shelf at about 1 knot,” Gawarkiewicz says. “But we saw the drifter cut across the slope towards the shelf at about 2.5 knots. It only took it eight days to travel from Cape Fear, North Carolina, to a point 40 miles south of Georges Bank, a total distance of 580 miles.”
The periods of high speeds for the drifters coincided with the records for high temperatures on the outer shelf, which told the scientists that the core of the Gulf Stream had diverted to 39.9 degrees N at 68 degrees W – 125 miles north of its mean position, further north than had ever been recorded by satellite altimeters at this particular longitude.
The temporary shift in Gulf Stream path observed last fall potentially has significant longer-term implications. Studies have shown that temperature increases of 2 degrees C have caused major shifts in silver hake populations, for example, and in spring 2012, migratory bluefish and striped bass were observed off the coast of Cape Cod much earlier than in previous years.
But, the scientists say, more research is needed to determine just how the Gulf Stream’s behavior in 2011 affected the continental shelf ecosystem and marine organisms.
It is unclear what might have caused this shift in the Gulf Stream path. It occurred shortly after Hurricanes Irene and Katia drenched the east coast with rain, and this might have impacted the Gulf Stream separation from the continental shelf near Cape Hatteras.
Another possibility is that a cold core ring, an eddy south of the Gulf Stream core, might have deflected the Gulf Stream. Further research will be necessary to determine exactly how and why this occurred, which will be helpful in the long term in predicting Gulf Stream motions.
In the meantime, Gawarkiewicz and his colleagues will be keeping an eye on what the Gulf Stream does this fall, with the hope of someday being able to predict such a shift. “We’re checking in from time to time to monitor it. We’ll be talking to the fishermen, and academics, and keeping an eye on things,” he says.
Fishermen David Spencer, Fred Mattera, and Norbert Stamps first alerted the researchers to the anomaly. Profile data were made available by the OOI, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and managed by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership. Tim Shaw and David Calhoun at Cape Fear Community College provided drifter data. WHOI scientists on this project were supported by the NSF, the Cooperative Institute for the North Atlantic Region, the Penzance Endowed Fund in Support of Assistant Scientists, and the Postdoctoral Scholar Program at WHOI.
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The 4.1 earthquake that jolted Yorba Linda on Wednesday afternoon appears to be an aftershock of the cluster of quakes that hit the region earlier this month, seismologists said.
The jolted area included southeastern Los Angeles County, Orange County and the Inland Empire. The quake occurred in about the same location of an earthquake doublet, two 4.5 quakes that occurred on Aug. 7 at 11:23 p.m. and Aug. 8 at 9:33 a.m. The area was also hit by a 4.0 quake on June 14.
Wednesday’s quake, which hit at 1:31 p.m., was located near the center point of the magnitude-5.5 Chino Hills earthquake that reverberated through the Los Angeles Basin in the summer of 2008, U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones told The Times.
Wednesday’s quake appeared to be located in the “Yorba Linda trend,” a seismic area identified by Caltech geophysicist Egill Hauksson in 1990, that might be a buried fault.
Many who felt the quake said it was relatively mild.
At Vinjon’s Kennel in Yorba Linda, the quake hit just as Carisa Feeney, 22, was giving a bath to a year-and-a-half-old boxer mix. When the quake delivered its single strong jolt, the dog leaped up in the tub –- and both quickly ran outside.
“I’m pretty much covered in water,” Feeney said.
Nancy Ferguson, who owns SGO Designer Glass in Old Town Yorba Linda, said, “We had a big jolt, just for a few seconds, then everything just kind of swayed.”
Ferguson, who has hundreds of pieces of glass on display in her store, said she holds her breath every time there’s an earthquake. “But nothing fell over today, so we’re feeling pretty lucky,” she said.
It is unlikely that the earthquake swarm that has hit Imperial County with hundreds of quakes since the weekend is related to Wednesday’s quake in Yorba Linda, Jones said.
Aug 29 (Reuters) – The southern California town of Brawley has taken the unusual step of declaring a state of emergency after a swarm of earthquakes rattled nearly 20 mobile homes off their blocks and forced a slaughterhouse to close, the mayor said on Wednesday.
It is uncommon for quake-hardy California cities to declare emergencies due to tremors, but Brawley mayor George Nava said the earthquake swarm is a unique case because it has lasted for days and caused millions of dollars in damage.
The cluster of relatively small quakes, which are caused by water and other fluids moving around in the Earth’s crust, began on Saturday evening and climaxed the next day with a 5.5 temblor, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The tremors were continuing on Wednesday and geologists say there have been hundreds in total.
Nava said leaders in Brawley, a city of 25,000 residents south of the state’s inland Salton Sea and 170 miles (275 km) southeast of Los Angeles, declared a local emergency late on Tuesday. Officials with surrounding Imperial County made a similar declaration on Wednesday.
Nineteen mobile homes were knocked off their blocks and their residents forced out, Nava said. The auditorium at Brawley Union High School has been damaged and closed off, and the National Beef slaughter plant in Brawley has been temporarily shut down due to damage, he said.
Local businesses have suffered millions of dollars in losses from closures and from customers staying away, Nava said. But he could not give an exact account of quake-related losses.
The Red Cross and local government agencies will offer services to residents on Friday and Saturday at a local center. The emergency declaration allows Brawley to receive more assistance from Imperial County, Nava said.
At one point, about 10,000 residents in the city were without power, and the quakes have also caused water line disruptions, Nava said.
“When you don’t have an AC or running water, it’s just not a good thing in this weather,” he said.
Jeanne Hardebeck, research seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, said earlier this week that the cluster of quakes is not a sign that a larger temblor is imminent. (Reporting By Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Tim Gaynor and Sandra Maler)
An unusual swarm of hundreds of mostly small earthquakes has struck Southern California over the last three days and shaken the nerves of quake-hardy residents, but scientists say the cluster is not a sign a larger temblor is imminent. The earthquakes, the largest of which measured magnitude 5.5, began on Saturday evening and have been centered near the town of Brawley close to the state’s inland Salton Sea, said Jeanne Hardebeck, research seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. Scientists were monitoring the earthquake cluster, which continued on Tuesday, to see if it approaches the Imperial Fault, about three miles away. A destructive and deadly earthquake of magnitude 7.0 struck on that fault in 1940, she said. “We don’t have any reason to believe that the (earthquake) storm is going to trigger on the Imperial Fault, but there’s a minute possibility that it could,” Hardebeck said, adding that the swarm of quakes was not moving closer to that fault.The Brawley quake cluster, which is caused by hot fluid moving around in the Earth’s crust, is different than a typical earthquake, in which two blocks of earth slip past each other along a tectonic fault line. After that kind of an earthquake of magnitude 5.5 or above, there is a 5 percent chance a larger quake will follow, Hardebeck said. But she added the same kinds of probability estimates were not possible with earthquake clusters caused by the movement of hot fluid. “We understand them even less than we understand normal earthquakes,” Hardebeck said, adding that scientists do not know why a cluster of earthquakes will occur at one time rather than another. The swarm led to jangled nerves in Brawley, a town of about 25,000 residents 170 miles southeast of Los Angeles near the border with Mexico. “It’s pretty bad. We had to evacuate the hotel just for safety,” Rowena Rapoza, office manager of a local Best Western Hotel, said on Sunday. There were two earthquakes on Sunday afternoon, one with a 5.5 magnitude and one measuring 5.3, Hardebeck said. Those were the largest quakes in the cluster amid hundreds of others, she said.
In the past, earthquake clusters have gone on for as long as two weeks, Hardebeck said. Before this recent cluster in Brawley, the last swarm of this size to hit the area was in 1981, she said. Earlier this month, a pair of moderate-sized earthquakes both registering a magnitude 4.5 struck the California town of Yorba Linda within 10 hours of each other, but no damage was reported. Yorba Linda, the birthplace of the late President Richard Nixon, is 145 miles northwest of Brawley.
Earthquake swarms continued Wednesday in Imperial County as the city of Brawley declared an emergency to deal with the damage. The swarm that began Sunday morning showed signs of slowing down Wednesday, with fewer quakes reported by the U.S. Geological Survey than on recent days. The magnitude of the quakes is also declining. There was scattered damage around Brawley, but officials have not yet compiled a full estimate of the costs. The Brawley City Council on Tuesday declared a local emergency, according to the Imperial Valley Press. More than 400 earthquakes greater than magnitude 1.0 have been recorded in Imperial County since Saturday evening, said U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Elizabeth Cochran. The largest were a 5.3 and a 5.5 about midday Sunday. Scientists say the reason is not fully understood, but there is a clue: Earthquake faults work much differently south of the Salton Sea than they do closer to Los Angeles. Take, for instance, the San Andreas fault as it runs through Los Angeles County. Itâs a fault where, generally speaking, two plates of the Earthâs crust are grinding past each other. The Pacific plate is moving to the northwest, while the North American plate is pushing to the southeast.South of the Salton Sea, the fault dynamic changes. The Pacific and North American plates start to pull away from each other, Cochran told The Times from her Pasadena office. (That movement is what created the Gulf of California, which separates Baja California from the rest of Mexico.) So Imperial County is caught between these two types of faults in what is called the âBrawley Seismic Zone,â which can lead to an earthquake swarm, Cochran said. The last major swarm was in 2005, Cochran said, when the largest magnitude was a 5.1. The largest swarm before last weekend’s occurred in 1981, when the biggest quake topped out at 5.8. Before that, there were swarms in the 1960s and 1970s. Brawley school officials told the Imperial Valley Press that Palmer Auditorium, a performance facility it manages with a local arts group, has been shut down after an inspection. âWe were told by engineers it needs to be shut down because there were huge structural damages,â school Supt. Hasmik Danielian told the paper. Crews would have a better idea of the total damage caused by the quakes in the coming days, said Maria Peinado, a spokeswoman for the Imperial County Public Health Department, but so far the list of affected structures includes about 20 mobile homes shifted from their foundations. The earthquakes also caused “cosmetic” damage to at least three buildings dating to the 1930s in downtown Brawley, said Capt. Jesse Zendejas of the Brawley Fire Department. A few displaced residents spent Sunday night at an American Red Cross shelter at the Imperial Valley College gymnasium, Peinado said.
The southern California town of Brawley has taken the unusual step of declaring a state of emergency after a swarm of earthquakes rattled nearly 20 mobile homes off their blocks and forced a slaughterhouse to close, the mayor said on Wednesday. It is uncommon for quake-hardy California cities to declare emergencies due to tremors, but Brawley mayor George Nava said the earthquake swarm is a unique case because it has lasted for days and caused millions of dollars in damage. The cluster of relatively small quakes, which are caused by water and other fluids moving around in the Earth’s crust, began on Saturday evening and climaxed the next day with a 5.5 temblor, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The tremors were continuing on Wednesday and geologists say there have been hundreds in total.Nava said leaders in Brawley, a city of 25,000 residents south of the state’s inland Salton Sea and 170 miles (275 km) southeast of Los Angeles, declared a local emergency late on Tuesday. Officials with surrounding Imperial County made a similar declaration on Wednesday. Nineteen mobile homes were knocked off their blocks and their residents forced out, Nava said. The auditorium at Brawley Union High School has been damaged and closed off, and the National Beef slaughter plant in Brawley has been temporarily shut down due to damage, he said. Local businesses have suffered millions of dollars in losses from closures and from customers staying away, Nava said. But he could not give an exact account of quake-related losses. The Red Cross and local government agencies will offer services to residents on Friday and Saturday at a local center. The emergency declaration allows Brawley to receive more assistance from Imperial County, Nava said. At one point, about 10,000 residents in the city were without power, and the quakes have also caused water line disruptions, Nava said. “When you don’t have an AC or running water, it’s just not a good thing in this weather,” he said. Jeanne Hardebeck, research seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, said earlier this week that the cluster of quakes is not a sign that a larger temblor is imminent.
29.08.2012
Earthquake
British Virgin Islands
Atlantic Ocean, [Between 94 to 108 kilometers of the Road Town]
A total of 104 earthquakes were observed in the last four days, British Virgin Islands area. The smallest was M2.0 and the strongest quake was M4.8 on the Richter scale. The center of the earthquake at a distance of 94 to 108 kilometers and the depth were between 5 and 90 kilometers.
South Dakota students are used to extreme cold and having classes called off because of winter blizzards, but the weather that caused their school day to be cut short Wednesday was intense for a different reason: the triple-digit temperatures. More than two dozen school districts across the state shut down early Wednesday as temperatures rose above 100 degrees, turning classrooms into saunas. “The major factor in the decision is the safety and welfare of students and staff members. It’s tough to learn in an environment when a room is 100 degrees,” said Eureka Superintendent Bo Beck, whose north-central South Dakota district joined others in dismissing students a few hours early because their classrooms lack air conditioning. Eureka and other districts have called off classes due to late-summer heat in past years, but school closures are more common in winter months when snow, frigid temperatures and howling winds make travel unsafe, Beck said. Scott Doering, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Aberdeen, said high temperatures Wednesday were expected to range from the low 90s in northeastern South Dakota to as high as 107 in the center of the state as a ridge of high pressure made the northern and central Plains area the nation’s hotspot.Some places in central South Dakota could break or come close to breaking records before temperatures start to drop to the 80s and lower 90s Thursday, Doering said. He said temperatures topping 100 sometimes persist in South Dakota, even into September. “It’s unusual, but not highly unusual,” he added, referring to Wednesday’s heat. Don Hotalling, superintendent for the Stanley County School District, said all students in Fort Pierre were being sent home at 1 p.m. because some classrooms are not air-conditioned. That problem will be solved after a new building is completed next year, he said. “With 106 degrees forecast for today, we knew it really was going to be miserable for some of the students,” Hotalling said. “With the humidity and the heat, it’s very uncomfortable. Not much learning is going to be going on later in the afternoon, when it gets hotter.” Stanley County eighth-grader Madison Bogue was happy her Fort Pierre school ended the day early. “It’s really awesome. It’s better than sitting in there all day,” the 13-year-old said. The district used fans to try to cool buildings Tuesday, when a lot of parents picked up their kids and took them home to beat the heat, Hotalling said. Staff encouraged students to drink plenty of water, but some students complained Tuesday of headaches, he said. Deputy state Education Secretary Mary Stadick Smith said she didn’t know how many schools were closing because of the heat, but at least two dozen schools from northeastern South Dakota to Rapid City in the west let radio and television stations know of early closures.
“Typically in South Dakota, schools are closed because of cold weather and blizzards that kind of thing, so it is a little unusual,” Stadick Smith said. Schools will not have to make up the missed time as long as they meet annual requirements for hours spent in classrooms, she said. The Rapid City Journal reported that schools in that city also were closing early because 15 of the 25 public schools do not have air conditioning. “When we start reaching temperatures above 90 degrees in classrooms, we have concerns as to trying to do something to relieve that stress on the teachers and the students that have been trying to work in those rooms,” Rapid City Area Schools Superintendent Tim Mitchell told the newspaper. Principal Robin Gillespie said teachers at Rapid City’s Wilson Elementary have been beating the heat with fans, low lights, water breaks and Popsicles. Many South Dakota residents seemed to take the heat in stride.
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Sparked by lightning in July, the Mustang Complex fire had burned 149,828 acres (60,633 hectares) of rugged terrain near Salmon, Idaho, by August 29, 2012. The fire burned in steep, inaccessible terrain.
By August 23, more than 1,106,545 acres (447,803 hectares) had burned in Idaho—more than any other state except for Oregon. By August 29, more than 7,277,838 acres (2,945,236 hectares) had burned throughout the United States in what has proven to be one of the most severe wildfire seasons in the last decade.
Crews dug in Wednesday against another round of Montana wildfires as evacuations were ordered ahead of blazes near Butte and Roscoe that authorities said threatened at least 130 houses. Searing heat set in across much of the drought-parched state, and gusting winds pushed flames through tinder-dry stands of timber and grasslands. The dangerous conditions prompted Gov. Brian Schweitzer to declare a statewide fire emergency. Eight large fires were burning on more than 73 square miles Wednesday, and more than 1,300 square miles already have burned in Montana this summer. Most of that destruction has been in the rain-starved eastern half of the state. Compounding residents’ woes are plumes of smoke pouring into mountain valleys from local fires and blazes in neighboring Idaho. The air quality has deteriorated most significantly in Hamilton, where it was listed as unhealthy by state officials. In Butte, Helena, Great Falls and Bozeman, officials downgraded the air quality to unhealthy for sensitive groups. About 10 miles south of Butte, the 19 Mile fire torched at least two homes and two outbuildings after growing to several square miles. Officials said the exact size was hard to determine because of all the smoke. Residents of the Whiskey Gulch and Friends Road area were told to evacuate Wednesday, after people living on Upper and Lower Radar Creek and Toll Mountain roads were advised to leave Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the fire, Mariah Leuschen with the U.S. Forest Service, said the evacuations covered roughly 150 people living in about 80 homes. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency put the figure higher – 275 people living in 103 homes, with another 100 to 110 houses put on pre-evacuation notice. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear. State officials sought and received federal help to pay for the effort against the fire. That authorizes FEMA to pay 75 percent of the state’s firefighting costs on the blaze, but does not provide assistance to individual homes or business owners.
A wildfire that broke out Tuesday afternoon in the Malheur National Forest spread to at least 2,500 acres before sundown, officials said. The fire ignited at about 2:30 p.m. near Parish Cabin Campground, about 10 miles east of Seneca. No injuries have been reported — as of late evening, the fire remained in the center of the forest and mainly was a threat to campgrounds and historic buildings in the immediate area, said Mike Stearly, information officer for Malheur National Forest. “It’s in some prime timber growth areas…the conditions are right,” Stearly said. He said the fire grew to between 2,500 acres and 3,000 acres through the afternoon and evening. Crews will be working through the night to fight the blaze, and spike camps have been set up. A Type 2 incident management team is coming in Wednesday morning, Stearly said. The goal is to hold the fire south of the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness. Firefighters and the Grant’s County Sheriff’s Department evacuated Parish Cabin Campground. Evacuees included a number of bow hunters in the area for archery season, Stearly said. The cause of the fire remains unknown.
Tropical Storm in USA on Wednesday, 29 August, 2012 at 07:29 (07:29 AM) UTC.
Description
Nearly 100,000 homes and businesses lost power after Hurricane Isaac landed in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Louisiana later Tuesday, local media reported. And among the homes and businesses being left without power, near half are in Orleans Parish, the reports said. Utility companies in the southwestern U.S. state on Tuesday morning started bringing in extra crews to help restore power in case strong winds bring down power lines. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu warned residents about the dangers of approaching downed power lines. “These are serious threats, as I have said many times, which can cause fatalities,” Landrieu said. State authorities have mobilized more than 4,100 troops, with 680 of them in Orleans Parish. A further 35,000 troops and almost 100 aircraft are available for mobilization, according to reports on the website of NOLA.com. The troops are assisting with the setting up of evacuation shelters, including a “mega-shelter” with about 2,500 cots in the inland city of Alexandria. Some 300 soldiers will work as bus drivers in Metairie, supporting the state departments of transportation and education. At a press conference on Tuesday, Luisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said the State National Guard posted 23 liaison teams with local governments, adding that 13 communications teams will deployed in the region, along with 921 security vehicles, 531 high-water vehicles, 40 aircraft and 74 boats.
In New Orleans, streets were flooding and up to 85% of residents were without power, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said. “One of the great challenges with this storm … is that it’s going so slowly … which means that it’s going to hover over us,” he told the Weather Channel on Wednesday morning. “The longer the rain and the greater the wind … (that) continues to concern us. That wind is really, really heavy, which is why it’s important you stay inside.” “We’re asking people to be patient,” he said. New Orleans, devastated by Katrina seven years ago to the day, was reporting 60-mph winds and drenching rains. Landrieu said about 1,000 National Guard troops are positioned in the city, working with police, firefighters and standing by for rescue operations. The historic French Quarter that forms the heart of New Orleans’ tourism industry appeared to have dodged the worst of Isaac. Downed tree limbs, minor flooding at intersections and a brief electrical outage overnight were the main problems confronting the residents who stayed , and stayed mostly indoors. “Honestly, man, it’s just been rain,” said Huggington “Huggy” Behr, manager of Flanagan’s Pub on St. Phillips, which stayed open through the night and served “about a dozen” patrons. “To us, we’ve seen the worst, so it’s business as usual.”
Southern Mississippi was still feeling the effects of the storm but emergency management officials along the coast said they got through the night relatively unharmed. No injuries or deaths were reported overnight in the coastal counties of Hancock or Harrison, which were two of the hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina seven years ago. The biggest worry overnight from Hurricane Isaac? “We’re in the process of picking two people up who got stranded by the water and they’re scared,” Hancock County Emergency Management Director Brian Adam said Wednesday morning. With sustained winds throughout the region topping out at about 40 mph, the main concern remains flooding from a constantly driving storm surge and what is expected to be prolonged rainfall for several days. In Harrison County, the rising waters knocked a boat off its moorings. County Emergency Management Director Rupert Lacy said the boat slammed into Popps Ferry Bridge, forcing officials to shut it down until crews can inspect the integrity of the bridge. The bridge is one of two connecting Biloxi from the mainland, but Lacy said it could be a long time before an inspection can be done. “We cautioned our public safety employees … that you don’t need to be out there if the winds are too high,” Lacy said.
Twelve people were killed and 10 were missing after a strong typhoon pounded South Korea Tuesday, uprooting trees, sinking ships and cutting power to almost 200,000 homes.
By early evening Typhoon Bolaven — the strongest to hit the South for almost a decade — had moved to North Korea, which is still struggling to recover from deadly floods earlier this summer.
Hundreds of flights in the South were grounded, ferry services were suspended and schools in Seoul and several other areas were closed.
Bolaven left a trail of death and damage in southwestern and south-central regions of the country, although it was little felt in central parts of Seoul.
Off the southern island of Jeju, the storm drove two Chinese fishing ships aground early Tuesday, sparking a dramatic rescue operation.
Coastguards wearing wetsuits struggled through high waves and then used a line-launcher to fire ropes to one ship, a coastguard spokesman said. The other boat broke apart.
Rescuers saved 12 people while six swam ashore, but 10 crew members are still missing, the spokesman said. Five bodies were recovered.
In the southern county of Wanju, a 48-year-old man was killed by a shipping container flipped over by gale-force winds, the public administration ministry said.
An elderly woman was crushed to death when a church spire collapsed onto her house in the southwestern city of Gwangju, while another elderly woman was blown off the roof of her home in the western county of Seocheon.
A workman fell from the roof of a hospital in the southwestern port of Mokpo. At Imsil county in North Jeolla province, a 51-year-old man died while clearing toppled trees.
In Yeongkwang county west of Gwangju, a 72-year-old man suffered fatal head injuries when his house wall collapsed. At Buyeo city in South Chungcheong province, a woman aged 75 died after falling due to strong winds.
A 77,000-tonne bulk carrier broke in two off the southeastern port of Sacheon but no casualties were reported, the public administration ministry said.
The transport ministry said all 87 sea ferry services had been halted. A total of 247 flights — 183 domestic and 64 international — have been cancelled since Monday.
The typhoon — packing winds of 144 kilometres (90 miles) per hour at one time — brought heavy rain and strong winds to southern and western areas. It toppled street lights and signs, shattered windows, uprooted trees and tore off shop signs.
The National Emergency Management Agency said 197,751 homes in Jeju and the southwest and south-central regions lost power.
A total of 83 people, mostly in the southwest, were evacuated from their homes and taken to shelters. Some 21 homes were damaged.
The US and South Korean armed forces called a temporary halt to a large-scale joint military exercise that began last week.
After sweeping up the Yellow Sea to the west of South Korea, Bolaven made landfall in North Korea in the early evening.
The impoverished nation is already struggling to recover from a devastating summer drought, followed by floods which killed 169 people, left about 400 missing and made 212,000 people homeless, according to official figures.
Weather officials said Typhoon Tembin was also threatening the Korean peninsula, and was forecast to be some 200 kilometres west of Jeju early Friday.
NEW ORLEANS – Hurricane Isaac pounded Louisiana with heavy rains and damaging winds Wednesday as forecasters said the storm surge and serious flooding will likely continue through the night.
USA TODAYHurricane Issac landed at 3:15 a.m. EST just west of Port Fourchon, about 60 miles south-southwest of New Orleans.
USA TODAY
Hurricane Issac landed at 3:15 a.m. EST just west of Port Fourchon, about 60 miles south-southwest of New Orleans.
Isaac was still maintaining Category 1 hurricane strength, but just barely, with sustained winds of 75 mph, the National Hurricane Center reported. It was located directly over Houma, La., which is about 45 miles southwest of New Orleans.
The storm was crawling to the northwest at just 6 mph. It is expected to weaken to a tropical storm later Wednesday.
Widespread flooding was reported in New Orleans and other coastal cities.
One of the worst hit areas was Plaquemines Parish, about 50 miles southeast of New Orleans, where water spilled over a levee. Isaac passed directly over the region of marshland, fishing towns and marinas, peeling off roofs and flooding some areas.
The northern part of the parish is ringed in by the area’s hurricane protection system of fortified levees and floodwalls. But stretches of it on the east bank of the Mississippi River and further south lie outside the protection system, making it vulnerable to storm surge and flooding, Parish Councilman Kirk Lepine said.
Isaac came up the western edge of the parish, lashing at the area with powerful winds and storm surge, Lepine said.
“It came in at the worse scenario we can imagine,” he said. “There’s nowhere for that water to go than here.”
Rescue efforts were focused Wednesday in the small enclave of Braithwaite, on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish. Sheriff Deputies there were conducting rescue missions of residents trapped in homes, as flooding from Isaac overtook the area, said Trooper Melissa Matey, a Louisiana State Police spokeswoman.
Braithwaite was under a mandatory evacuation order prior to Isaac but some residents chose to stay, she said.
Early Wednesday, state police troopers were escorting National Guard troops with high-water vehicles down to that area to help in rescue efforts, state police spokesman Capt. Doug Cain said. Many of the roads in the area had become impassable.
Flanked by marshes and water, low-lying Plaquemines Parish has been repeatedly hit by disasters – from Katrina to Gustav to the 2010 BP oil spill, Cain said. Isaac late Tuesday passed directly over the area, pummeling the parish with powerful winds and a strong storm surge.
“The geography of it makes it vulnerable,” Cain said. “But talk about a resilient people. They’ve been through this before, and they’re going to make it through this one.”
Isaac also forced the closures of major roadways throughout the area, including US 90 at the Jefferson Parish/St. Charles Parish line, the causeway over Lake Pontchartrain and LA-73 south of Plaquemines, he said.
Besides dealing with downed trees across roadways from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, state police also encountered residents who may have underestimated the storm, he said. Troopers kept busy throughout the night with highway accidents, broken down cars and several DWI arrests.
“People aren’t adhering to the warnings,” Cain said. “Today, we’re really encouraging people to shelter in place.”
The Federal Amergency Management Agency has staged supplies throughout the south in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas and South Carolina. At Mississippi’s Camp Shelby, FEMA has 54 generators and 256,000 ready-to-eat meals. At Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, FEMA has 1.2 million meals, 2,134 cots and 3,800 tarps.
Volunteer organizations such as the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army can provide 65,000 hot meals a day in Louisiana, FEMA said in its daily briefing report.
So far the 350 miles of levees and floodwalls surrounding and meandering through New Orleans were holding back storm surge water as designed early Wednesday, city spokesman Hayne Rainey said. The city had not received any reports of levee breaches or calls for rescues, he said.
Early reports from Isaac’s effects were far different from the events that unfolded around Hurricane Katrina— which slammed the region seven years to the day and led to levee breaches and mass flooding of the city. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rebuilt the levee and floodwall system in the New Orleans area to be much stronger at a cost of $14.45 billion.
“All reports are indicating the federal levees protecting the city of New Orleans are holding,” he said.
The storm landed at 3:15 a.m. ET just west of Port Fourchon, about 60 miles south-southwest of New Orleans, said the National Hurricane Center.
Isaac, upgraded from a tropical storm to a Category 1 hurricane midday Tuesday, first touched land in Plaquemines Parish, about 90 miles southeast of New Orleans on Tuesday evening before heading back over the Gulf of Mexico.
Because it is moving so slowly, the storm system could dump up to 20 inches of rain in some areas. The hurricane center said Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana could see peak surges of 12 feet.
In New Orleans, streets were flooding and up to 75% of residents were without power, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said.
“One of the great challenges with this storm … is that it’s going so slowly … which means that it’s going to hover over us,” he told the Weather Channel on Wednesday morning. “The longer the rain and the greater the wind … (that) continues to concern us. That wind is really, really heavy, which is why it’s important you stay inside.”
“We’re asking people to be patient,” he said.
New Orleans, devastated by Katrina seven years ago to the day, was reporting 60-mph winds and drenching rains. Landrieu said about 1,000 National Guard troops are positioned in the city, working with police, firefighters and standing by for rescue operations.
More than 470,000 homes and businesses have lost power, including 156,000 in New Orleans and 162,000 in the New Orleans suburbs, Entergy reported.
The company, which serves most of southern Louisiana, said its crews would begin restoring power as soon as sustained wind speeds fall below 30 mph.
“We expect outages to last several days,” the company said on its storm center website. “Severe weather conditions are expected across Louisiana and Mississippi through early Thursday morning.”
Officials in coastal Alabama were heading out Wednesday morning to assess damage from the storm.
“Right now, we are compiling our assessment teams,” said Paula Tillman, spokeswoman for the Baldwin County Emergency Management Agency. “As soon as it gets good and daylight, we’ll be sending them out.”
Some roads along the coast were closed because of flooding. “Those are down in those lower areas near Fort Morgan, right in the beach area,” Tillman said. “Those roads are pretty typical for flooding.”
At 6:30 a.m. central time, there had been no reports of injuries or deaths from the storm in Alabama. In Baldwin County, which includes the resort communities of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, 243 people were in two county evacuation shelters.
In Mobile, there was virtually no evidence of storm impact.
Officials were warning residents that flooding from storm surges and heavy rainfall expected with the storm could still pose a threat.
Southern Mississippi still has a long way to go before Hurricane Isaac moves past, but emergency management officials along the coast say they got through the night relatively unharmed.
No injuries or deaths were reported overnight in the coastal counties of Hancock or Harrison, which were two of the hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina seven years ago.
The biggest worry overnight from Hurricane Isaac?
“We’re in the process of picking two people up who got stranded by the water and they’re scared,” Hancock County Emergency Management Director Brian Adam said Wednesday morning.
With sustained winds throughout the region topping out at about 40 mph, the main concern remains flooding from a constantly-driving storm surge and what is expected to be prolonged rainfall for several days.
In Harrison County, the rising waters knocked a boat off its moorings. County Emergency Management Director Rupert Lacy said the boat slammed into Popps Ferry Bridge, forcing officials to shut it down until crews can inspect the integrity of the bridge. The bridge is one of two connecting Biloxi from the mainland, but Lacy said it could be a long time before an inspection can be done.
“We cautioned our public safety employees…that you don’t need to be out there if the winds are too high,” Lacy said.
Although Hurricane Isaac‘s path has shifted a small degree, officials state Monday morning that all advisories released by the Assumption Parish Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Service remain, to expect the eye wall of Isaac to pass “right over” the parish, home of Louisiana’s giant sinkhole. Hard rains are causing concerning flooding of low-lying areas and power outages.
“Please note that as predicted, this update still shows 75 mph winds in Assumption parish at 1:00 p.m. today,” officials reported at 5:45 a.m. Wednesday.
“The track has shifted a bit; however, all advisories released by the Assumption Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness remain.”
Tuesday evening, Assumption Parish officials state that the latest update put the track of Hurricane Isaac‘s eye wall “right over Assumption Parish.”
A hurricane’s eye wall is located just outside of the eye. The eye wall is where the most damaging winds and intense rainfall is found.
The eye is typically the most calm location. It passes a vulnerable area in the hurricane path before the worst damage hits, thus the cliche, “The calm before the storm.”
“By 6:00 a.m., we should be experiencing tropical storm force winds,” officials advised.
“At noon, the forecast shows we will experience the strongest winds as the forecast predicts the eye wall to be right over us at that time,” the parish alert stated.
Up to 20 inches of rain could pound the already vulnerable giant sinkhole in Louisiana.
Rains were anticipated to make “flooding of low lying areas a concern,” WAFB reports Wednesday.
Isaac’s core is expected to pass over the sinkhole area west of New Orleans with winds close to 80 mph.
Winds could gust up to 100 mph at times.
“The hurricane is expected to gradually weaken, but only after dumping 7 to 14 inches of rain across the state, with some places receiving up to 20 inches,” reports Associated Press Wednesday morning.
Jeff Morrow with the WAFB Storm Team says that high winds will also cause widespread power outages, and “if that happens find the battery operated radio and tune to Tiger Country 100.7 FM as we will be simulcasting our advisories there.”
Katrina haunts thousands of residents
In New Orleans, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said evacuations would not be ordered and told residents to prepare carefully and ride it out. Nevertheless, Monday and Tuesday, traffic was bumper to bumper heading out of New Orleans.
In those vehicles were people too hurt and fearful to risk unpredictability of high waters and no power at home, with only hours away from the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
By midafternoon Tuesday, 400 residents of Plaquemines Parish, where Isaac made landfall southeast of New Orleans, were calling a hurricane shelter in Belle Chasse home.
Arriving on the eve of Hurricane Katrina’s seventh anniversary, Isaac is the first hurricane to hit Louisiana since Ike in 2008.
Everything reminds you of Katrina. When the wind howls, I think of Katrina. I don’t think of Isaac,” explained CNN iReporter Eileen Romero, a student in New Orleans who survived Katrina in 2005 but lost everything during it.
Romero still lives in New Orleans, in a different neighborhood and in a house built in 1908.
After going out Tuesday to take photographs, she said, “I am not seeing people real concerned to be honest. I think there is a false sense of security.
“Everybody talks about how we party all the time. When hurricanes are coming, people have hurricane parties.”
Many residents of public housing apartments never returned after 2005.
“Where are the people who lived here prior to Katrina?” she asked. “I don’t think they have a place to come back to.”
Assumption Parish officials ordered a mandatory evacuation. Monday morning, officials there ask that people who remained in the area to “please abide by the curfew and remain sheltered in place.”
Isaac inundated low-lying areas along Mississippi’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday as hurricane-driven water rose several feet in some spots while thousands waited out the storm in shelters. Officials in Hancock and Harrison counties extended curfews until 9 a.m. to keep off roads until after the high tide passes at around 8 a.m. Harrison County emergency management director Rupert Lacy said the storm surge coupled with the high tide could lead to more extensive flooding. Lacy said coastal rivers also were beginning to rise from the rainfall. More than 15,000 people remained without power in coastal areas.
A flood warning has been issued for the Capital after torrential rain battered the city this afternoon. Thunder and lightning storms were accompanied by the heavy rains at around 2.30pm. Environmental Agency SEPA issued a flood alert and warned that standing water was likely to pose a hazard to drivers and urged travellers to check the Traffic Scotland website before setting out. A spokesman for SEPA said: “ Due to the showery nature of the rainfall, it is difficult to predict which areas are most at risk, however, the overall risk is expected to decline during the early hours of Thursday morning.”
Mississippi wildlife officers and National Guard soldiers rescued at least 75 people from Isaac’s flooding Wednesday in Hancock County, including an 88-year-old man who had a stroke as the storm dumped heavy rains on his isolated neighborhood in Pearlington, near the Louisiana state line. The stroke victim was the last person brought out of the neighborhood, about 7:30 p.m. CDT, and Mississippi National Guard 1st Sgt. William Maddox said the man’s house is about six miles off the main thoroughfare, U.S. Highway 90. Rescuers spent hours trying to reach him, attempting with several vehicles. A paramedic waded through chest-deep water to get to the house, and then guided a large military truck to the man. Maddox said the man appeared to be in stable condition and was taken care of by paramedics at the scene. It was not immediately clear whether the man would be taken to a hospital. With a steady rain falling, wildlife officers used small motorboats to rescue at least two dozen people in Pearlington, including several members of an extended family. More than a dozen National Guard soldiers also helped with the rescues, as did ambulance crews and other emergency responders.One of those plucked from a rural neighborhood that had become a lake was 63-year-old Dianne Burton. She told The Associated Press that she and members of her extended family didn’t leave before Isaac because they didn’t expect so much water. She has lived there 46 years and said the only other time the area flooded was during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “Everything is under water. We picked up the furniture and stuff, as much as we could. I can’t believe it. The road and everything was dry yesterday,” Burton said after officers deposited her, her 82-year-old mother, her 46-year-old disabled daughter and two grandchildren, ages 10 and 12, safely on dry land. Those rescued were put onto school buses and were taken to shelters on higher ground. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant said Wednesday afternoon that officers from the state Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks had rescued at least 58 people in Hancock County, which borders Louisiana. The rescue of Burton, her relatives and at least 20 other people was happening at the same time Bryant was doing a press briefing in Gulfport, and his initial figures didn’t include them.
Parts of Cumbria have been hit by flash flooding after a night of heavy rain. The west of the county appears to have been worst affected, with police and fire crews reporting cars partially submerged in the Egremont area. About 20 elderly residents were moved to an emergency shelter at Egremont Market Hall, after a power cut. Cumbria Fire Service said it received more than 100 calls for help, mainly involving requests for sandbags. Forecasters say the rain is now easing. Northern Rail services between Whitehaven and Barrow have been cancelled after a landslip near St Bees and some roads are only passable with care because of debris left by floodwaters. A spokesman for Cumbria Police said drains were unable to cope with the amount of water after the River Ehen and several becks in the Egremont area burst their banks. The Environment Agency said one flood alert remained in force for the River Ehen in Copeland. The police spokesman said: “We started getting calls from about 1am, mainly from people concerned that water was coming into their homes and asking for sandbags.”We also had calls from the fire and ambulance services asking for our assistance in reaching some areas and had to close some roads for a time. “The Egremont and Middletown areas appear to have had the worst of it.” Emma Jane Taylor said floodwater began entering her St Bees home shortly before midnight. She said: “We’ve had heavy rain here before, but it’s never been this bad before. “I alerted some neighbours, but within 30 minutes it was through my front door and coming up through my floorboards. “It’s lifted the block paving from my grandmother’s house nearby and was also coming through her French windows. “We just hope the rain doesn’t come back because the drains are full to the top and wouldn’t be able to take any more.” Wasdale Mountain Rescue volunteers also assisted the fire service to pump out several properties in the Egremont area. Earlier this week the rear of a four-storey house house in Egremont collapsed into the River Ehen after heavy rain.
A tornado touched down in an Ocean Springs neighborhood about 7:30 p.m. tonight, the Jackson County Emergency Management Agency said. While EMA officials said that initial reports indicated that the tornado knocked down trees and power lines, at least one witness told the Mississippi Press that at least one house was reported damaged. Two houses on East Simmons Bayou in Gulf Park Estates have sustained damage, according to Jackson County Sheriff Mike Byrd who is en route to the scene. Byrd said there were no injuries reported. “There’s extensive damage at two houses,” Byrd said. “There’s a roof off one house and a shed was taken away from another one. We have deputies on the scene assessing the situation. In addition to the tornado, Jackson County emergency officials announced waterspouts have been spotted at Miss. 57 and I-10, headed northeast.
A non-government group is urging Bayou Corne sinkhole area residents to use a new record log as a veteran radiation expert says Louisiana environmental officials are “in denial” over hazards posed by elevated radium levels that are actually fifteen times higher than the state limit, a “worst nightmare coming true,” according to an environmental attorney.
Stanley Waligora, a New Mexico-based radiation protection consultant and leading authority on health risks of naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) has confirmed that radium levels at Bayou Corne’s sinkhole are not within safe limits, but instead, roughly 15 times higher than the state’s acceptable level, according to one of the nation’s leading environmental attorney’s Stuart Smith.
State officials are saying NORM is is below hazardous levels, but the independent findings indicate other actions need to be taken, including residents using Louisiana Environmental Action Network’s report logs to record signs and symptoms of ill health.
The information about radium is buried in a state news release, poorly written, “and goes out of its way to downplay the results,” Smith said Wednesday.
This week, after state officials released the results of samples taken 80 feet under the surface of the growing, slurry-filled pit, Marco Kaltofen, a civil engineer and president of Boston Chemical Data Corp., noted those results posted by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, show elevated rates of NORM in the sinkhole.
NORM is a frequent byproduct of the oil and gas drilling process, creating wastes that industry has often then dumped improperly, according to Smith who specializes in this area of environmental law.
Kaltofen’s analysis of the situation in Bayou Corne includes:
“Radium in the body is absorbed because it is chemically similar to calcium. The normal maximum guideline level for radium in surface water is 5 picoCuries per liter, (pCi/L). The state’s testing found 82 pCi/L in the water of the growing sinkhole. Radium gives off alpha’ radiation. This form of radiation is extremely dangerous if inhaled or ingested, and less dangerous if exposed by skin contact.”
When radium decays, it produces the dangerous radioactive gas, radon. EPA warns that radon gas causes lung cancer, and exposure can be as hazardous to your lungs as a serious cigarette habit.
“Waligora said officials with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality need to launch immediate additional testing to ensure that the hazardous radium is not leaking into nearby groundwater and posing a threat to human health as well as livestock,” Smith has stated Friday.
Waligora’s recommendations come two days after Smith’s blog first reported that analysis of DEQ test results from Bayou Corne, posted by the LEANouisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), revealed elevated radium levels and airborne chemicals associated with highly volatile butane stored by Crosstex in a cavern near the sinkhole.
They also come two days after Homeland Security Louisiana announced that officials are stepping up around-the-clock emergency operations near Bayou Corne’s sinkhole, including extra Hazardous Materials & Explosive Units.
LEAN, after reporting lethal contaminants found in the sinkhole area, is urging residents to use the new report log it has for recording signs and symptoms of poisoning, as reported by the Examiner on Wednesday.
The Advocatereports Friday, “In two statements released Tuesday, LEAN noted air monitoring by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality since Aug. 4 over the sinkhole and in the neighborhoods near the sinkhole had picked up, depending on the location, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, other volatile organic compounds and components of natural gas.”
‘Worst nightmare coming true,’ says attorney
If the butane in the sinkhole vicinity exploded, it would meet, according to the National Terror Alert, the definition of a dirty bomb.
“I sought an analysis of the recent DEQ test results from Waligora, who since a stint as a nuclear weapons officer in the U.S. military has been teaching, consulting and testifying as an expert witness in radiation litigation for more than 45 years,” asserted Smith Friday.
He expressed concern that the state reported its findings of radium-226 and radium-228 as “below acceptable levels,” when in fact, the results were 15 times higher than the state’s own standard for soil contamination.
“Well, once again the Louisiana DEQ is in denial because they don’t know what to do about the radioactive contamination in the Bayou Corne subsidence,” Waligora wrote, adding the following findings:
There are immediate radiation dose concerns, not only cumulative toxin concerns.
“The release could reach the usable aquifer and contaminate drinking water along with livestock and irrigated crops,” Waligora says. “The DEQ must sample ground water to assess any transport. Airborne particulate might become entrained and cause contamination to be inhaled by the public. DEQ must collect air samples to assess the airborne radioactive particulate. Radon gas emanating from the radium could be inhaled by members of the public. DEQ needs to monitor airborne radon.
“A long range plan must be developed for remedial action. Funding should be provided by the oil companies that used the cavern for disposal,” asserted Waligora.
Waligora reports being concerned about DEQ understating of the Bayou Corne risks because of what he has witnessed in other cases handled by the troubled agency:
“This is reminiscent of the illegal waste disposal that was discovered several years ago at St. Gabriel. The community complained about illegal disposal of radioactive waste. DEQ sent a team to investigate who determined that there was no problem. Complaints continued and a second DEQ team investigated and again said that there was no problem. Finally, a legal action attracted the EPA who found widespread contamination. The responsible party had no worth so the site was cleaned up with Superfund support. The cleanup took over one year and cost over $1million. Quite a bit for ‘no problem.’”
Earlier this year, Smith joined the Louisiana Bucket Brigade in calling for the EPA to intervene and assume responsibility from DEQ because the agency was “overwhelmed and “in the back pocket of the businesses it’s supposed to be regulating.”
“Although company officials informed the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources in early 2011 of significant problems at the cavern, local residents and authorities were not told of the risk even after they began complaining this summer of shaking homes and noxious orders,” Smith says.
National Terror Alert (NTA) recently reported that due to recent terrorist events, people have expressed concern about a possible terrorist attack involving radioactive materials, possibly through the use of a “dirty bomb,” and the harmful effects of radiation from such an event.
“A dirty bomb, or radiological dispersion device, is a bomb that combines conventional explosives, such as dynamite, with radioactive materials inthe form of powder or pellets. The idea behind a dirty bomb is to blast radioactive material into the area around the explosion. This could possibly cause buildings and people to be exposed to radioactive material. The main purpose of a dirty bomb is to frighten people and make buildings or land unusable for a long period of time.
“In Bayou Corne, we are witnessing our worst nightmares coming true,” Smith asserted Friday. “It’s time for the EPA and other outside authorities to step in and make sure that proper testing is done and that emergency measures are carried out.”
The sinkhole, now the size of three football fields, shaped like an upside-down Superdome Stadium, and filled with liquid slurry is blamed on Texas Brine Co.’s failed salt cavern near Bayou Corne.
“There’s no excuse for allowing this new Louisiana catastrophe to get any worse,” Smith says.
Sources:The Advocate, Stuart Smith, Louisiana Environmental Action Network
A thief in Uganda has contracted Ebola after stealing the mobile phone of a hospital patient suffering from the potentially fatal infection.
Security and medical officials in Kibaale District, mid-west Uganda, told the Daily Monitor website that the man went into the isolation ward at Kagadi Hospital and stole a cellular phone from one of the Ebola patients.
The patient, who later died from the hemorrhagic fever, reported the theft.
Police began tracking the thief when he started using the phone, the Daily Monitor reported.
But by the time they found him he had gone to hospital with symptoms similar to those of Ebola.
He reportedly confessed to stealing the phone.
Kibaale District Health Officer Dr Dan Kyamanywa, told the Daily Monitor: “The suspect is admitted at Kagadi Hospital with clinical signs of Ebola.” “He is receiving medication. We have obtained samples from him,” Mr Kyamanywa added.
The Uganda Virus Research Institute is yet to release the results of the tests.
Texas bears the brunt of the outbreak, which has yet to peak, experts say
By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Aug. 29 (HealthDay News) — One of the worst outbreaks of West Nile virus to ever hit the United States continues to expand, with 66 deaths and 1,590 illnesses reported as of Tuesday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Cases have jumped 40 percent nationwide since just last week, the agency added.
Cases have now reached their highest level since the mosquito-borne virus was first found in the United States in 1999, agency officials said in a Wednesday press briefing.
While almost all states have reported at least one case of West Nile illness, over 70 percent of cases have come from six states — Texas, South Dakota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Michigan.
The outbreak has hit hardest in Texas, where nearly half (45 percent) of the total U.S. cases have been reported.
“The number of people reported with West Nile virus continues to rise,” said Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC’s Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases. “We have seen this trend in previous West Nile epidemics, so the increase is not unexpected,” he added. “In fact, we think the reported numbers will get higher through October.”
According to Peterson, of the cases reported so far, 56 percent are what is called neuroinvasive disease, when the virus enters the nervous system causing conditions such as meningitis or encephalitis. The remaining reported cases (44 percent) are non-neuroinvasive.
“These numbers represent a 40 percent increase of last week’s report of 1,118 total cases and 41 deaths,” Petersen said.
These numbers can be somewhat misleading since most cases of West Nile are non-neuroinvasive and are mostly unreported, the CDC said. That means that the number of unreported cases probably far exceeds reported ones.
Neuroinvasive disease is the most serious for of West Nile infection and these patients usually are hospitalized, Petersen said. The size of the outbreak is based on these cases since they are the ones easily identifiable, he added.
The only states that have not reported cases are Alaska and Hawaii, he said.
“Based on current reports, we think the number of cases may come close to, or even exceed, the total number reported in the epidemic years of 2002 and 2003, when more than 3,000 cases of neuroinvasive disease and more than 260 deaths were reported each year,” Petersen said.
The reasons for a major outbreak this year aren’t clear, Petersen said. The drought in Texas may have played a role, but there were probably other factors as well, he added.
The best way to avoid the virus is to wear insect repellant and support local programs to eradicate misquotes, Petersen said.
There is currently no treatment for West Nile virus and no vaccine to prevent it, he added.
Speaking at the press conference, Dr. David L. Lakey, Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services said that, “As I look at the data, I am not convinced that we have peaked.”
Since last week, there have been 197 new cases and 10 more deaths in Texas, Lakey said. “Those numbers will continue to go up,” he added.
Generally speaking, 80 percent of people who are infected with West Nile virus develop no or few symptoms, while 20 percent develop mild symptoms such as headache, joint pain, fever, skin rash and swollen lymph glands.
Less than 1 percent will develop neurological illnesses, such as encephalitis or meningitis, and develop paralysis or cognitive difficulties that can last for years, if not for life.
People older than 50 and those with certain medical conditions, such as cancer, diabetes, hypertension, kidney disease and organ transplants, are at greater risk for serious illness, according to the CDC.
There are no specific treatments for West Nile virus; the greatest risk for infection with West Nile virus typically occurs from June through September, with cases peaking in mid-August.
And because reporting lags behind actual infections, “we expect many more cases to occur and the risk of West Nile infection will probably continue through the end of September,” said Petersen.
Although most people with mild cases of West Nile virus will recover on their own, the CDC recommends that anyone who develops symptoms should see their doctor right away. The best way to protect yourself from West Nile virus is to avoid getting bitten by mosquitoes, which can pick up the disease from infected birds.
30.08.2012
Epidemic Hazard
USA
State of Colorado, [Cimarrona Campground, Archuleta County]
In the first confirmed case of bubonic plague in Colorado since 2006, an Archuleta County resident has tested positive for the disease. The last human case in Archuleta County, which borders on New Mexico, was in 1998. It is believed that the person contracted the plague during a family outing in the Cimarrona Campground northwest of Pagosa Springs, but the investigation is ongoing, according to a news release from the San Juan Basin Health Department. The gender and age of the victim were not released, the paper reported. In 2006, Colorado had four cases of plague, all in La Plata County, Joe Fowler, a disease-control nurse with the San Juan Basin Health Department said. Most human cases of plague tend to occur in rural areas in two regions — northern Arizona and New Mexico and southern Colorado or in California, southern Oregon and western Nevada. One human case has been reported in New Mexico so far this year – in a 78-year-old Torrance County man who contracted the disease in May, in what state health officials called the nation’s first human plague case of the yea
Biohazard name:
Plague
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
A camper near Pagosa Springs has contracted bubonic plague. The Durango Herald reports that the person contracted the plague during a family outing in the Cimarrona Campground. The San Juan Basin Health Department did not give the victim’s age or gender. Warning signs are being posted in the campground, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports an average of seven cases of plague each year across the country. Most human cases tend to occur in rural areas in the Southwest. Symptoms of plague begin two to six days after a person is bitten by an infected flea, rodent or cat. The plague can be successfully treated if diagnosed promptly.
Ouest Haiti Department reported new cases of cholera as aftermath of the tropical storm Isaac, but Public Health Ministry General Director Guirlene Raymond sustains that so far the numbers do not match outbreak ratings.
Dr. Donald Francis, Ministry official on the matter, said the percentage of cases remain stable. Early July official statistics from the initial 2010 outbreak says the death rate climbed to 7,418, while the WHO talks of more than 42,000 new cases this year, blaming low budget and the rain season which undermines anti-epidemic efforts. The specialists think that enforcement and continuity of health promotional programs, access to drinkable water, sanitation and hygiene will stall propagation. US investigators suggested in June as source of the outbreak two distinctive cholera breads, not just one as they originally announced. Earlier studies indicated as source a microorganism -already reported in Asia- introduced by Nepalese soldiers working for the Minustah (UN Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti). However, a group of geneticists from Maryland University have found a new breed, seemingly of local origin and thought unable to stimulate epidemics. V. cholerae 01/0139 is part of the common populace in streams and lakes in the Western Hemisphere. It may cause diarrheas but only in very few cases. Just two percent of Haiti 10 million population has access to clean water and the majority defecates outdoors and in water sources like rivers and next to their homes.
Biohazard name:
Cholera
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
The epidemic of measles in North Waziristan Agency claimed the lives of two minor girls in Danada Derpakhel area on Wednesday while dozens of infected children are being brought to the Miranshah Headquarters Hospital for treatment. Talking to INP, Agency Surgeon Dr Mohammad Sadiq said that dozens of measles infected children have been admitted to the Miranshah Headquarters Hospital for treatment, adding that measles vaccine is not available in the tribal region to control the infection. “Around 40 children are infected by measles in three weeks that are brought to the hospital for treatment and two minor girls fell prey to the infection in Danda Derpakhel area of the tribal region,” Dr Mohammad Sadiq said. He said that health department should initiate measures on war footing in the area to control the spread of measles in the tribal region where vaccines of measles are short.
The agency surgeon said that not only from North Waziristan but children infected by measles are being brought from across the border to Miranshah for treatment, adding that scarcity of vaccines was creating problem in controlling the spread of epidemic.
Biohazard name:
Measles (fatal)
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
State wildlife officials believe hemorrhagic disease killed several deer in Calhoun County and the cases are being treated as an outbreak. There also have been reports of the disease in Roane County, said Jeff McCrady, a wildlife biologist with the Division of Natural Resources. “I think it is probably positive, based on the outward appearance of the deer,” McCradysaid. “…We are proceeding as if it is.” Samples of lung and spleen tissue from the Calhoun County deer were sent to the University of Georgia for testing. The testing requires fresh samples. “Seeing a deer two days ago in this heat is too late. … It is not easy to confirm,” McCrady said. The disease, which is transmitted by gnats, causes deer to hemorrhage internally and dehydrate. Infected deer head to water and more than one carcass found near water indicates the disease’s presence. “Usually multiple deer is an automatic trigger in our minds that it is hemorrhagic disease,” McCrady said. Hemorrhagic disease cannot be transmitted to humans but “it can kill a fair number of deer,” he said. “We probably have it every year somewhere in the state, it’s not like it is a real rare thing,” There is no treatment for hemorrhagic disease. Most cases appear in late summer or early fall, several months after deer are bitten. The disease’s spread stops when freezing temperatures arrive.
Biohazard name:
Undefined Hemorrhagic disease (deer)
Biohazard level:
3/4 Hight
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans, but for which vaccines or other treatments exist, such as anthrax, West Nile virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, SARS virus, variola virus (smallpox), tuberculosis, typhus, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, yellow fever, and malaria. Among parasites Plasmodium falciparum, which causes Malaria, and Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes trypanosomiasis, also come under this level.
A new virus, dubbed “Heartland virus,” is being spread to people by ticks common in the Southeast, the CDC reports. The only known cases are two northwestern Missouri men who fell ill in 2009. Ticks had bitten both men, but they did not get better after treatment with antibiotics. Tests later showed that the men did not have any tick-borne bacterial diseases. But CDC researcher Laura K. McMullan, PhD, and colleagues did find something else: a previously unknown virus in the patients’ blood. “This virus could be a more common cause of human illness than is currently recognized,” they said. The two men, one age 57 and the other age 67, lived on different farms. The first had only a single tick bite. The second said that over a two-week period he’d received some 20 tick bites a day. Both men had fever, fatigue, diarrhea, and low levels of blood platelets and white blood cells. The symptoms are similar to those of ehrlichiosis, a relatively common tick-borne disease that is caused by bacteria. The first patient spent 10 days in the hospital. Two years later, he’s still feeling tired and often has headaches. At first he had memory problems and loss of appetite, both of which slowly got better. The second patient was in the hospital for 12 days. Over the next four to six weeks he had memory problems, fatigue, and loss of appetite. All of these symptoms went away and did not come back over the next two years.The new virus is related to a tick-borne virus recently discovered in central and northeastern China. That virus, called SFTSV, causes fever and loss of blood platelets. The most common ticks in northwestern Missouri, where the two men were infected with Heartland virus, are lone star ticks. These ticks are found throughout the Southeast and up the Atlantic coast to Maine. No ticks carrying Heartland virus have been found. It’s not clear whether a person infected with the new virus can spread it to another person, or whether a tick bite is necessary. “Although these two patients had severe disease, the incidence of infection with the novel virus and range of disease severity are currently unknown,” McMullan and colleagues write. They warn health professionals to be on the lookout for people who fall ill after getting tick bites and who do not get better after antibiotic treatment.
Biohazard name:
Heartland Virus (new strain)
Biohazard level:
3/4 Hight
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans, but for which vaccines or other treatments exist, such as anthrax, West Nile virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, SARS virus, variola virus (smallpox), tuberculosis, typhus, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, yellow fever, and malaria. Among parasites Plasmodium falciparum, which causes Malaria, and Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes trypanosomiasis, also come under this level.
Bexar County sources are calling it an outbreak of Salmonella poisoning at the Bexar County Jail. But jail administrators will only refer to these cases as “severe food poisoning”. The outbreak happened inside the main jail facility downtown. The number of inmates affected is between 70 and 100. Four men were sent to a local hospital for treatment. And as of today, three out of those four inmates had been treated and released. At this point, the jail is working with Aramark to figure out how happened. But our sources tell us they are closely looking at meat the inmates were served late last week. Since last Friday, all of the inmates at the main jail have been given Gatorade to help speed up the recovery process. Metro health has confirmed they are investigating a foodborne illness situation and the problem has been contained to the jail. Jail administrators have not received a complaint in the last day. So, they do believe the problem has been fixed.
Biohazard name:
Mass. Food Poisoning
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
confirmed
29.08.2012
Biological Hazard
India
State of West Bengal, [Swarupnagar in North 24-Parganas]
A team of Animal Resource and Husbandry Department (ARD) on Wednesday visited Swarupnagar in North 24-Parganas to collect blood samples of dead chickens as reports of widespread deaths of poultry were reported from the area, triggering fear of an outbreak of bird flu. In the last 22 days, around 50,000 chickens have reportedly died in the four blocks of Swarupnagar — Baduria, Kakrasuti, Lakshmikantapur and Nayabandh. “I am closely monitoring the situation and the blood samples have been sent to Belgachia government laboratory for test,” said Chief Medical Officer (Health) of North 24-Parganas Susanta Kumar Sil. ARD Minister Noor -E- Alam Chowdhury urged people not to panic and said the government is prepared to tackle any outbreak of bird flu. “Yes, birds have died, but there can be a number of reasons behind it. We are prepared to tackle any such outbreak,” he said. Senior officials said if the blood samples of the dead birds are found positive of Avian Influenza Virus (H5N1) then it would be sent to National Institute of Virology in Pune for confirmation. Positive result from Pune lab would lead to beginning of culling operation within three days. Rapid response teams will be formed to carry out surveillance of bird deaths, said an official. Lime and bleaching powder are being sprayed in the area as a preventive measure. Leaflets containing dos and don’ts are being distributed. “We have started an awareness campaign in the area and asked villagers to dispose of the carcasses of the birds in a pit,” said an official. Villagers are being told to wear gloves while feeding their poultry or wild birds.
Biohazard name:
Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (H5N1)
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Alaska is known for pioneering, self-reliant residents who are accustomed to remote locations and harsh weather. Despite that, Gov. Sean Parnell worries a major earthquake or volcanic eruption could leave the state’s 720,000 residents stranded and cut off from food and supply lines. His answer: Build giant warehouses full of emergency food and supplies, just in case.
For some in the lower 48, it may seem like an extreme step. But Parnell says this is just Alaska.
In many ways, the state is no different than the rest of America. Most people buy their groceries at stores, and rely on a central grid for power and heat. But, unlike the rest of the lower 48, help isn’t a few miles away. When a fall storm cut off Nome from its final fuel supply last winter, a Russian tanker spent weeks breaking through thick ice to reach the remote town.
Weather isn’t the only thing that can wreak havoc in Alaska, where small planes are a preferred mode of transportation and the drive from Seattle to Juneau requires a ferry ride and 38 hours in a car. The state’s worst natural disaster was in 1964, when a magnitude-9.2 earthquake and resulting tsunami killed 131 people and disrupted electrical systems, water mains and communication lines in Anchorage and other cities.
“We have a different motivation to do this, because help is a long ways away,” said John Madden, Alaska’s emergency management director.
The state plans two food stockpiles in or near Fairbanks and Anchorage, two cities that also have military bases. Construction on the two storage facilities will begin this fall, and the first food deliveries are targeted for December. The goal is to have enough food to feed 40,000 people for up to a week, including three days of ready-to-eat meals and four days of bulk food that can be prepared and cooked for large groups. To put that number into perspective, Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage, has about 295,000 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and Juneau, its third largest, about 31,000.
It’s not unusual for states that routinely experience hurricanes or other large-scale disasters to have supplies like water, ready-to-eat meals, cots and blankets. But Alaska is interested in stocking food with at least a five-year shelf life that meets the nutrition, health and cultural requirements of the state’s unique demographics. That means, as part of the effort, trying to incorporate cultural foods like salmon for Alaska Natives as well as foods that would be more common in urban areas, state emergency management spokesman Jeremy Zidek said.
An estimated 90 percent of commodities entering Alaska are delivered through the Port of Anchorage. Air service is also a critical link to the outside world and generally the only way to reach many rural communities. A volcanic blast emitting a large amount of smoke and ash could disrupt supply lines by air and water for an extended period, Madden said, and an earthquake could knock out airport runways or ports. Those are just some of the disasters that might require emergency supplies.
Parnell has made disaster readiness a priority of his administration. His spokeswoman said he has experienced firsthand the devastation of natural disasters, including heavy flooding that knocked some buildings off foundations in Eagle in 2009, when he was lieutenant governor, and the Joplin, Mo., tornado last year. Parnell and his wife visited Joplin with members of the relief organization Samaritan’s Purse.
Madden said Alaska’s readiness is better than it once was and it continues to improve.
State officials have been working to encourage individual responsibility, with talks at schools and public gatherings. Emergency management officials plan to have a booth at the Alaska State Fair. A statewide disaster drill is planned for October.
Over the past year, the state has acquired or purchased water purification units and generators designed to work in cold climates, including units that could power facilities like hospitals, Madden said. Officials also are determining what the state needs in terms of emergency medical supplies and shelter, he said.
Delivery of the food stockpiles would be staggered over three years. It would be replaced after it’s used or expired, and it’s entirely possible that much of the food will never be needed. It is not clear what the state will do with the expired, unused food.
The project has a budget of around $4 million and hasn’t generated any real controversy.
Allen Geiger, enjoying hot dogs from a street vendor Tuesday in Anchorage’s Town Square Park, said he had no objections to the plan.
“It seems like an OK idea,” Geiger said. “The scale of it is not too huge.”
___
Associated Press writer Dan Joling in Anchorage contributed to this report.
More than half a million Louisiana homes and businesses lost power during Isaac and most will stay that way for at least several days, Entergy spokesman Chanel Lagarde said. As of noon Wednesday, 552,000 customers were without electricity, including 85% of New Orleans, Lagarde said. Entergy, which serves most of Louisiana, initially planned to dispatch 4,000 workers to repair the power lines once the storm passed. But with outages so widespread, the company said it will need 10,000 workers. Crews from power companies in 24 states, through mutual aid agreements, will pitch in, he said. “The one thing that’s really hampering us is that the winds are still here. The storm is just hanging around,” Lagarde said. “Looks like it won’t be until tomorrow (Thursday) that we can get out there.” Workers cannot go up in bucket trucks to do repairs until the winds drop below 30 mph. Entergy expects it will take “several days” before the company can restore power to most of its customers. The company will not have a more accurate estimate until the storm subsides and workers can assess the damage, Lagarde said. Lagarde also said the number of outages will continue to rise as the storm travels north through the state.
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According to a press release from RighttoKnow.org, campaign finance reports show that pesticide and processed foods companies contributed almost $10 million to oppose Proposition 37. That ballot measure would require labeling of genetically engineered (GE) or genetically modified (GMO) foods. Stacy Malkan, Media Director for California Right to Know said in a statement, “They will not prevail. This is America. We have the right to know what’s in the food we eat and feed our children.”
For instance, Dupont Pioneer has contributed $2.4 million. Bayer CropScience has contributed $1 million, and BASF Plant Science gave almost $1 million to defeat Prop 37. Other large contributors include PepsiCo Inc., Nestle USA, Inc., General Mills, Inc., Conagara Foods, Syngenta Corporation, Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc., Hormel Foods, Kellogg Company and Campbell Soup Company. The president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association recently said that defeating Prop 37 is the highest priority for that group this election year.
Dr. Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, from Pesticide Action Network, said that “rather than reducing the need for hazardous pesticides, herbicide-resistant seeds have driven a massive increase in herbicide use that has been linked to significant environmental and public health concerns.” A 2009 report showed that farmers used 318 million more pounds of pesticides in the first 13 years of commercial GE crop production, from 1996 to 2008.
Most other countries in the world, including the European Union, Japan, Australia, and China, already requires the labeling of GMO foods. Prop 37 will appear on this November’s California ballot. It would require food processors to label about 80% of all non-organic processed food sold in grocery stores. Food processors would most likely change labels nationwide, since it would cost more to have a separate set of labels for products sold in California.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has released a draft about improving their food inspection model. The single system model would replace the eight different inspection systems currently in place. Now, the inspection models covers dairy, eggs, meat, processed foods, imported and manufactured food, fish and seafood, and fresh fruits and vegetables separately.
Each facility will be issued a single license. Additional licenses will not be required for additional activities or products. The facilities will provide information about their business, such as management’s commitment to meeting regulations, preventative control plans, that key personnel have completed food handling training, and which products will be produced under different processes.
This information will help the CFIA develop a profile of the companies, how they conduct business, and a base of knowledge about the different food sectors. Inherent risk will then be determined, which will set the level of oversight and conditions of licensing.
Agriculture Gerry Ritz said in a statement, “we have a world class food safety system in Canada but we want it to be the best. A single inspection approach will make an even stronger system that will benefit all Canadians.”
The CFIA is seeking comments from consumers and those in industry until October 31, 2012. These are the aspects of the new model under consideration: a single licensing and registration requirement; more consistent oversight and inspection; a scaled approach that adapts to the size and complexity of the business; and distribution of more information to consumers about compliance and enforcement. To comment, visit the Consultation site of the CFIA.
Canada’s conservative government is cutting the budget for the CFIA by $56 million over the next three years. Spending on food safety alone is being cut by $21 million. One hundred inspectors will be laid off, and almost half of the agency’s veterinarians will be “affected” by the budget cuts. The CFIA is going to stop checking nutrition labels for accuracy, and some inspection actions, such as part of the meat inspection process, will be moved to the oversight of provinces.
The Agriculture Union PSAC has started a campaign called Food Safety First to publicize these changes. They want the Canadian government to hire additional inspectors, declare a moratorium on industry self-policing, and remove obstacles preventing inspectors from taking immediate action when serious health problems arise.
The incident management team has released the final report on last November’s botulism outbreak involving three siblings.
It began when a 5-year-old boy and then his 7-year-old sister were admitted to the hospital November 8 and 9, respectively, with symptoms that included double vision, sore mouth and lower limb weakness. In a matter of hours, botulism went from being a “possible though unlikely diagnosis” to “sufficiently strong to warrant obtaining trivalent botulinum antitoxin which was administrated to both children, after which the condition stabilized.”
Health Protection Scotland issued a public alert about the botulism threat on November 11 to European Union counties via the established Early Warning and Response System. (EWRS).
Two days later, the investigation team determined that a jar of commercially available korma sauce was the vehicle of intoxication. The United Kingdom’s Food Safety Agency (FSA) took immediate action to remove the affected batch from the supply chain and retail market.
The product FSA recalled was Loyd Grossman Korma Sauce, produced by a branch of the London-based Premier Foods Group Ltd.
“FSA also alerted the public to the potential risks from consumption of sauce from jars of korma sauce from the same batch,” the final report says. The Health Protection Service alerted clinicians in Scotland about the incident and provided warning information early signs and symptoms of botulism.
The outbreak wasn’t over yet, though. A third member of the same family, a 3 1/2-year-old year old girl experienced swallowing problems and was diagnosed with suspected botulism.
All three children recovered from their illnesses.
The final report found no evidence that the korma sauce in the family’s home was contaminated nor did it find any faults in the manufacturer’s production facility or supply chain that could explain the contamination.
“No evidence suggested that any jar, other than the one purchased by the affected family, had been contaminated, ” the report concluded. The incident was formally closed on Dec. 6, 2011.
Lab tests have confirmed that an employee of Tom’s Gyro in Pocatello, Idaho has been infected with Hepatitis A, meaning that restaurant patrons may have been exposed to the virus.
“While the risk to public health is low, the possibility exists that Tom’s Gyro patrons could have been exposed to Hepatitis A,” warned the Southeastern Idaho Public Health Department, which is conducting an investigation into the incident.
SIPHD issued a public health notice Wednesday advising patrons who ate at the restaurant between August 2nd and August 14th to receive a Hepatitis A Vaccine or immune globulin (IG) immediately to prevent the onset of illness. Those who ate at the restaurant between July 15 and August 1 may also have been exposed to the virus, but a preventative measure would not prevent illness at this point.
Hepatitis A, which infects the blood and causes damage to the liver, is detected through a blood test. This case of Hepatitis A was confirmed through testing.
The employee is thought to have practiced good hand hygiene while serving customers, but may still have contaminated food or drinks at the restaurant, according to SIPHD.
“The risk of exposure is considered small, but not zero.”
SIPHD says this seems to be an isolated case, and not part of a larger outbreak.
Patrons who ate at the restaurant between August 2 and August 14 may still prevent illness if they were exposed to the virus, and should receive either the Hepatits A vaccine or Immune Globulin (IG). These are available through most healthcare providers, and will also be offered by the Southeastern Idaho Public Health Department.
The Hepatitis A vaccine is recommended for people between the ages of 12 months and 40 years old who are not pregnant, immune-compromised or have chronic liver disease.
Immune globulin (IG) is recommended for those who are over 40 years old, pregnant, immune-compromised, have chronic liver disease or for infants under 12 months.
At this time, illness onset cannot be prevented among patrons exposed to the virus before August 2.
SIPHD is asking anyone who consumed food or drink at Tom’s Gyro between July 15 and August 2 to see a healthcare provider if they have experienced symptoms of Hepatitis A infection, which include fever, loss of appetite, abdominal discomfort, jaundice, tiredness, nausea or dark urine.
For more information, contact the Southeastern Idaho Public Health Department at 208-234-5888.
Food service establishments in Ottawa, Ontario that repeatedly fail health inspections will be required to enroll employees in mandatory food safety training if a proposal set to be discussed next week becomes law.
The proposal – submitted to the Ottawa Board of Health by public health officials – would make food handler training mandatory for employees of restaurants that rack up more than 4 critical infractions in a one-year period.
The health department of the eastern Canadian city does not currently mandate food handler certification for restaurant employees.
“Mandatory training for all food handlers has been found to have limited benefits; a targeted food handler training approach would enable (Ottawa Public Health) to focus efforts on food premises operators with a history of non-compliance, while still offering the training to all those wishing to be certified,” states the proposal, according to the Ottawa Citizen.
In addition, because food service workers move from one establishment to another, tracking those who are certified is an unwieldy task, it says.
Health officials conducted 13,837 inspections in the city in 2011, an increase from its 13,710 inspections in 2010.
Last year, 55 provincial offense notices were issued to 39 premises, a jump from the 20 notices issued to 13 facilities the preceding year, reports the Citizen.
The Board of Health will discuss the proposal Monday.
Last year’s E. coli O157:H7 outbreak attributed to the Kelley Livestock Building at the North Carolina State Fair has brought changes in pedestrian and animal traffic patterns, now designed to minimize health risks at the fair.
The big Raleigh event, next scheduled for Oct.11 to 21, 2012, was responsible for its third E. coli O157:H7 outbreak last year.
In 2004, the NC fair’s petting zoo left 108 fairgoers infected with E. coli O157:H7. In 2006, the NC fair’s pita stand was found responsible for infecting three people with the bacteria. And last year, the livestock building was blamed for infecting at least 27 fairgoers with O157.
For 2012, the NC State Fair has spent $206,000 on improvements designed to reduce the likelihood that a fairgoer will come into contact with disease-causing pathogens.
More than one million visitors attend the annual NC State Fair.
After last year’s outbreak, a newly appointed State Fair Study Commission took up the issue with the goal of keeping people and competition livestock separated as much as practical without keeping people totally away from the animals.
An NC public health investigation last year found that fairgoer illnesses stemmed from exposure to sheep, goats and pigs competing in the fair’s livestock shows and being kept in the Kelley building.
NC State Agricultural Commissioner Steve Troxler set up the study to review the repeated problem of fairgoers being infected with E. coli.
The solutions the study group came up with involve changing the traffic patterns in buildings where livestock are housed or shown, the Kelley Building, Jim Graham Building, and the Expo Center.
The recommendations included changing the location of animals within buildings and how animals and people enter and exit buildings.
In addition, food vendors are being relocated from the area between the Graham Building and Expo Center. Instructional signs at animal exhibits will be larger, and hand-washing stations will have nighttime lighting and more signs to increase visibility.
“The changes put forth by the Study Commission are a practical and effective way to further reduce the potential for disease transmission – both animal-to-human and human-to-animal,” Troxler said. “They build upon protective measures already in place, and they reduce risks while maintaining the fair’s agricultural heritage.”
Lindsay Tallent, mother of then 2-year old Hunter Tallent who spent 16 days in the hospital with kidney failure after being infected with E. coli at last year’s NC State Fair, said its sad that families must be kept further away from the animals, but in the long run it is better to “keep away any spread of diseases and keep families away from what we’ve had to deal with.”
State Fair revenues are being used to pay for the changes.
”While there is no way to completely eliminate the potential for exposure, the measures being implemented will minimize the risk,” said Dr. Megan Davies, state epidemiologist with the N.C. Division of Public Health. “We also want to encourage the public to do their part as well by following traffic patterns at the fair and using common sense measures to keep themselves and their families healthy.”
Wake County Community Health Director Sue Lynn Ledford, a member of the study commission, said State Fair visitors can help themselves stay healthy by:
- Following instructions on signs indicating animals that should not be touched.
- Using the hand-washing stations located throughout the fairgrounds.
- Helping children wash their hands well at the appropriate times.
“While hand sanitizers and hand wipes are easy to use, washing hands for 20 seconds with soap and water and drying them with clean paper towels is the best way to prevent the spread of germs that cause illness,” Ledford said. “Washing hands before you eat, every time you eat, greatly reduces the spread of disease. This is particularly important after visiting animal exhibits or being in direct contact with animals.”
The 15-member State Fair Study Commission consisted of public health professionals, veterinarians, livestock exhibitors, State Fair staff and representatives of N.C. Cooperative Extension and the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
David Smith, chief deputy commissioner of the department, chaired the group.
Missa Bay, LLC recalled almost 300,000 cases and almost 300,000 individually distributed units of fruit, vegetable, and sandwich products this week for possible Listeria monocytogenes contamination. One of their customers is McDonalds.
That company just issued a statement saying they have stopped serving all existing apple products from Ready Pac’s Missa Bay facility and removed them entirely from the restaurant and distribution centers. The recalled foods have use-by dates of July 8, 2012 through August 20, 2012.
McDonalds spokesperson Danya Proud said that this action is taken “in an abundance of caution”. There have not been reports of illness associated with the recalled products. For questions, you can call McDonalds at 1-800-244-6227. Burger King is another customer of Ready Pac and their fresh apple slices were also part of the recall; they have not issued a statement yet.
The recalled apple slices with expiration dates on or before August 19, 2012 were sold in these states: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Diced apples for Fruit and Maple Oatmeal with expiration dates on or before August 19, 2012 were sold in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Snack Size Fruit and Walnut Salad with expiration dates on or before August 20, 2012 were sold in restaurants in these states: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Listeria monocytogenes can cause fever, muscle aches, nausea, and diarrhea. The symptoms can take as long as 70 days to appear after exposure. Anyone who ate contaminated product in August may not become ill under October, so it can be difficult to connect the illness with the contaminated food. If you purchased and ate these products, record it, along with the use-by date and product codes if possible. Contact REady Pac at 800-800-7822 for a refund.
Vaquería Tres Monjitas is recalling pineapple-guava juice beverage (guava-piña) in all of the package sizes available for undeclared milk. The juice may contain sodium caseinate, a milk derivative, that is not declared on the label. Anyone with a sensitivity or allergy to milk may suffer a severe allergic reaction if they consume this product. No illnesses have been reported to date.
Sodium caseinate is a type of protein found in milk. It is usually used as a food additive. The FDA does not consider it to be a dairy product, even though it contains the proteins that cause allergic reactions to milk.
The juice is available in plastic containers in these sizes: 8 ounce, 14 ounce, 32 ounce, 64 ounce, and 128 ounce. When the labels have been corrected, the product will be available again. For questions, or to return the product for a refund, call the company at 787-474-1817 or 787-474-1818.
A New Jersey-based company is recalling 293,488 cases and 296,224 individual units of fruit, vegetable and sandwich products because they contain apples that may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.
Missa Bay, LLC, a subsidiary of Ready Pac Foods,Missa Bay, LLC, Inc. of Swedesboro, NJ initiated a voluntary recall of the products Friday after Listeria monocytogenes was found on equipment used by the company to process its apple products, which are sold at McDonalds, Burger King and a variety of retail locations around the country.
Apples subject to the recall are diced or sliced and have a use-by date of July 8 through August 20, 2012.
The affected products were distributed to the District of Columbia and 36 states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin and West Virginia.
No illnesses have been reported in connection to the recalled product to date.
Recalled Products
Items subject to recall include:
- BK Fresh Apple Slices, 2oz, “Burger King” label with use-by date of August 13 or before
- Snack Pac Apples & Caramel, 4oz, “Hannaford” label with use-by date of August 18 or before and UPC 4126817191
- Snack Pac Apples, Granola & Yogurt, 4.3oz, “Hannaford” label with use-by date of August 18 or before and UPC 4126817195
- Apple Slices, 1.2oz, “McDonalds” label; (ONLY in the following states: CT, MA, ME, NH, NJ , NY, PA, RI , VT). Product is marked with a use-by date of August 19 or before
- Diced Apples for Fruit & Maple Oatmeal, 0.92oz, “McDonalds” label; (ONLY in the following states: CT, MA, ME, NH, NJ , NY, PA, RI , VT). Product is marked with a use-by date of August 19 or before
- Fruit & Walnut Snack, 5.75oz, “McDonalds” label with a use-by date of August 20 or before
- Apple Blue Pecan bistro, 4.75oz, “Ready Pac” label with a use-by date of August 12 or before
and UPC 7774529497
- Fruit Frenzy, 32oz, “Ready Pac” label with a use-by date of August 18 or before and UPC 7774523086
- Fruit Tray Bien, 32oz, “Ready Pac” label with a use-by date of August 18 or before and UPC 7774521606
- Ready Snax Apples, Cheese with Caramel Dip, 4oz, “Ready Pac” label with a use-by date of August 18 or before and UPC 7774523896
- Ready Snax Apples, Celery, Raisins with Peanut Butter, 4oz, “Ready Pac” label with a use-by date of August 18 or before and UPC 7774523897
- Ready Snax Apples, Granola & Yogurt, 4.3oz, “Ready Pac” label with a use-by date of August 18 or before and UPC 7774523089
- Super Fruit Blend, 6oz, “Ready Pac” label with a use-by date of August 17 or before and UPC 7774523076
- Super Fruit Medley, 10.5oz, “Ready Pac” label with a use-by date of August 16 or before and UPC 7774523746
- Sweet Sunshine Platter, 37oz, “Ready Pac” label with a use-by date of August 16 or before and UPC 7774524204
- Apple, Blue Cheese & Pecan Complete Salad Kit, 8.75oz, “Safeway Farms” label with a use-by date of August 18 or before and UPC 2113033680
- Apple Caramel Dipper, 6.7oz, “Wawa” label with a use-by date of August 16 or before and UPC 2619100394
- Apple Peanut Butter Dipper, 6.5oz, “Wawa” label with a use-by date of August 15 or before and UPC 2619100268
- Apple Slices, 3.5oz, “Wawa” label with a use-by date of August 16 or before and UPC 2619102232
- Baby Carrots, 3oz, “Wawa” label with a use-by date of August 16 or before and UPC 2619102517
- Chicken Salad Snack, 6.7oz, “Wawa” label with a use-by date of August 12 or before and UPC 2619102760
- Chicken Salad Sandwich, 7.8oz, “Wawa” label with a use-by date of August 10 or before and UPC 2619105670
- Fruit & Cheese, 6oz, “Wawa” label with a use-by date of August 11 or before and UPC 2619102567
- Protein Power Pack, 7.8oz, “Wawa” label with a use-by date of August 11 or before and UPC 2619102565
- Red Grapes, 3oz, “Wawa” Label with a use-by date of August 13 or before and UPC 2619102518
- Turkey & Cheese Sandwich, 7.7oz, “Wawa” label with a use-by date of August 10 or before and UPC 2619105622
- Apples, Celery, Raisins & Peanut Butter, 4oz, “Wegmans” label with a use-by date of August 18 and UPC 7789026744
- Apples, Cheese & Caramel Dip, 4oz, “Wegmans” label with a use-by date of August 15 or before and UPC 7789026743
- Apples, Granola & Low Fat Vanilla Yogurt, 4.3oz, “Wegmans” label with a use-by date of August 18 or before and UPC 7789026737
Advice to Consumers
Consumers who purchased any of the recalled products should record the use-by date and/or UPC code number, immediately dispose of the product, and contact Ready Pac Consumer Affairs at (800) 800-7822 Monday through Friday between 8 am and 5 pm Pacific Time to obtain a full refund.
Testing conducted by the government’s Microbiological Data Program (MDP) has prompted a recall of cilantro for potential Salmonella contamination, marking the second time this week and the third time this month that the produce testing program – scheduled to be terminated at the end of the year – has sparked a recall.
Because of MDP’s discovery, Fresco Green Farms of Winchester, California is recalling 1,643 cases of Cilantro harvested from July 18th 2012 to July 27th 2012.
Earlier this week, grape tomatoes produced by Iowa-based Menno Beachy were recalled after testing by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, one of the 11 state agencies that participate in MDP, revealed Salmonella in a sample of the product, prompting a recall Wednesday.
A day later, the Department issued another advisory about possible Salmonella contamination, this time in cilantro from Fresco Green Farms that was sold to grocery stores in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. The stores have been asked to remove the cilantro, which was distributed between July 26 and August 6, 2012, from shelves, and consumers are advised to throw away any cilantro purchased at locations where the affected cilantro was sold. A list of these retailers is available on MDA’s website.
The grape tomato and cilantro samples that tested positive for Salmonella were both taken on July 30, but the tomato recall was issued earlier because the presence of the bacteria on the cilantro took longer to confirm, says Carrie Rigdon, Rapid Response Team Planner for Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s Dairy and Food Inspection Division.
“Laboratory results are still pending on the serotype for the cilantro,” said Ridgdon in an e-mailed statement to Food Safety News.
The tomato and cilantro market withdrawals come on the heels of another MDP-prompted recall of almost 200,000 cantaloupes at the beginning of August, initiated after the New York State Department of Agriculture’s MDP program found Listeria monocytogenes on the melons.
The Microbiological Data Program, a small program housed in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service, was originally started in 2001 as a way to keep tabs on contamination rates of fresh produce, but has expanded its role to include recall tip-offs.
The small program – which costs USDA $4.5 million a year – was scheduled to be shut down in July after being excluded from this year’s budget plan, but was put on life support after its impending shutdown was widely publicized by the media. It is now set to be canceled at the end of 2012.
Consumer Reports, the popular monthly product testing magazine, was awarded a $2 million grant by the Pew Charitable Trusts to study food safety, the New York Times reported Monday.
According to the Times, the organization has already received a one million dollar installment. The magazine’s scientific staff will begin their first round of testing of meat, poultry, and other foods this fall.
“We’ll be focusing mostly on pathogens, heavy metals and carcinogens in food,” Jennifer Shecter, a senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports told NYT, which added that the magazine would also be “studying levels of antibiotics and their role in producing resistance to drugs.”
As the NYT reports, lab testing is expensive and Consumer Reports “was limited by its budget. The Pew grant will alleviate that burden.”
Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, recently released a report, “Meat Without Drugs,” and launched a campaign to pressure retailers to sell meat from animals raised without antibiotics.
The New York Times over the weekend called on the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to release food safety rules that the agency has been reviewing for 8 months — adding to a growing chorus of consumer advocates, industry groups, and lawmakers asking for the rules to move forward.
Nineteen months after President Obama signed the landmark Food Safety Modernization Act into law, the critical elements of the law are not in place, but stuck in regulatory limbo.
“If you think the food supply has become markedly safer since then, think again,” wrote the Times.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration sent drafts rules for preventive controls, produce safety, feed controls, and foreign supplier verification in December 2011. Major regulations to head to OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), where they undergo a cost-benefit analysis, but the office has only 90 days to weigh the costs and benefits of the rule — though it can be expanded to 120 days with an extension.
“While coordinating suggestions from various agencies can take time, a delay of eight months and counting lends credence to the suspicions of consumer advocates who think election-year politics are at play, with Democrats trying to avoid Republican charges that rules kill jobs,” added the editorial. “The budget office denies this, and can point to many rules that have been approved, including a crucial one reducing mercury emissions from power plants. But several important rules, like those on food safety, remain in limbo.
The Times notes that there are many significant rules languishing at OMB, including clean water regulations, labor protections for home care aides, and creditor regulations aimed at protecting veterans, the poor, disabled from bank garnishments — “Such delays call into question the Obama administration’s commitment to reforms that are needed to make government work better and more effectively.”
Obama’s head of OIRA, otherwise known as the regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein recently resigned from the administration to return to Harvard, leaving many questions about what impact his departure might have on the major rules under review.
In an article over the weekend, the Denver Post also highlighted the longtime delay for food safety rules, noting that it has been about a year since the tragic Listeria outbreak linked to cantaloupes claimed more lives than any other outbreak in nearly a century.
“The law was too recent to prevent last summer’s deadly listeria outbreak (and local growers have since implemented their own safety provisions), but more than 18 months later, it should be a vital safeguard against further illnesses,” wrote Lisa Wirthman for the Post. “Unfortunately, that’s not the case.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s annual report to Congress, released this week, offers an overview of what the agency has been up to over the past year.
In FDA’s latest report, which is required by the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act, one thing is immediately clear: FDA has an enormous food safety mandate. The agency regulates $417 billion worth of domestic food and $49 billion worth of imported food. In all, the agency oversees more than 421,121 registered domestic and foreign food facilities.
It’s been about a year and a half since President Obama signed FSMA into law. Though FDA is waiting on drafts of key food safety rules to be released by the White House Office of Management and Budget — where they have now been under review for eight months — the agency has moved forward in a number of other key areas.
In fiscal year 2011, FDA said it used around $190 million for FSMA implementation, $131 million of which was used to inspect domestic food facilities and $33 million for foreign facilities. The agency also gave $25 million to states for food inspections. In its report, FDA noted that the numbers do not include the cost of inspections at the U.S. border, nor did it include the cost of lab analyses or criminal investigations.
Out of 167,033 registered domestic facilities, FDA and states under contract inspected 19,073. Out of 254,088 registered foreign facilities, FDA and states under contract inspected 995. Of the 22,325 domestic food companies FDA has deemed “high-risk,” the agency inspected 11,007, or nearly half of them.
Exactly how much does it cost for FDA to inspect a food maker? For a “high-risk” facility, the average cost is $21,000. For a “non-high-risk” facility, the average is $14,200. Foreign high-risk food facilities cost taxpayers around $24,800 per inspection.
FDA said it is still working on its framework for establishing which food facilities fall into different risk categories.
When it comes to food imported into the United States, through multiple ports of entry, FDA still inspects a small percentage. The agency said it physically examined around 2.3 percent, or 243,400 import lines out of 10,439,236. Field exams cost around $170 each, but if samples are analyzed they cost around $2,800 each.
The agency has also “devoted significant time and resources” to building a more integrated national food safety system. FDA said in the last year they established several working groups to help state, local and tribal stakeholders work to help with the integration. Part of the plan is to integrate response efforts between multiple levels of jurisdiction so that the public health response is “coordinated, faster, and more effective.”
One of the key priorities is creating uniform national standards for program standards, facility inspections, lab testing and outbreak response. In its report, FDA said that achieving more uniformity would “enable greater ability to utilize analyses and observations across jurisdictions to protect public health.”
Sandy Eskin, the director of the Pew Charitable Trusts Food Safety Campaign, said that while the annual report offers a “useful snapshot” of how FDA is implementing FSMA, she remains concerned about “the type of oversight FDA will be giving state contractors as well as the substantial costs associated with traditional ‘pre-FSMA’ inspections.”
“Of course,” she added, “FSMA’s vision for inspection and food import safety will be incomplete as long as the proposed rules regarding the prevention-based requirements for facilities and importers remain bottled up at OMB.”
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According to a 
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Consumer Reports, the popular monthly product testing magazine, was awarded a $2 million grant by the Pew Charitable Trusts to study food safety, the New York Times 
Nineteen months after President Obama signed the landmark Food Safety Modernization Act into law, the critical elements of the law are not in place, but stuck in regulatory limbo.
