A forest fire occurred at the Telamba village section along the Muara-Tutong highway last evening. The fire started around 6pm in the forest next to the highway. A team of firefighters in two fire engines from Tutong Fire Station rushed to the scene after receiving emergency calls from motorists, Borneo Bulletin reported. The firefighters faced difficulties in battling the fire as they had to run their hose through the dense vegetation. The fire engines also had to take turns to refill their tanks as there are no fire hydrants at the site. At press time the firefighters were still trying to control the blaze.
Tutong – A forest fire occurred at the Telamba village section along the Muara-Tutong highway last evening. The fire started around 6pm in the forest next to the highway. A team of firefighters in two fire engines from Tutong Fire Station rushed to the scene after receiving emergency calls from motorists.
The firefighters faced difficulties in battling the fire as they had to run their hose through the dense vegetation. The fire engines also had to take turns to refill their tanks as there are no fire hydrants at the site. At press time the firefighters were still trying to control the blaze.
An earthquake early Monday centered in Beverly Hills was upgraded from to 3.2 to 3.3. and was felt around Los Angeles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The temblor occurred at 3:26 a.m.
According to the USGS, the epicenter was one mile from West Hollywood, two miles from Century City and eight miles from Los Angeles Civic Center.
The USGS “Do You Feel It” site said the quake was most strongly felt on the Westside but also in the South Bay, downtown L.A. area and the San Fernando Valley.
In the past 10 days, there has been one earthquake magnitude 3.0 and greater centered nearby.
JAKARTA—A strong 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck off the Indonesian resort island of Bali early on Tuesday, but there was no tsunami warning and no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
The quake’s epicentre was at a shallow depth of eight kilometers (five miles), the US Geological Survey said, putting it 278 kilometers south of Denpasar, on Bali. The quake hit at 2:23 am (1823 GMT Monday).
Indonesia sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” where continental plates collide, causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity.
Anak Krakatau in the Sunda Strait, 130 kilometers west of Jakarta, was created by the same tectonic forces that led to the 1883 Krakatoa eruption that killed tens of thousands of people. (Reuters Photo)
Bandarlampung. Volcanic ash from the increasingly active Anak Krakatau has reached a number of areas in Lampung, prompting officials on Monday to issue a warning for local residents and tourists.
“The ash was carried by wind from the southeast to the south, reaching Bandarlampung,” Nurhuda, who heads the observation and information section of the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) in Lampung, said according to state news agency Antara.
Nurhuda said the ash fell over several subdistricts in Bandarlampung, about 130 kilometers away from Anak Krakatau.
“It is rather unusual for the dust to be this thick,” said Juniardi, a resident of Bandarlampung who complained that the falling dust was also hampering visibility.
Officials warned that the ask posed health hazards and asked local residents to wear masks when going outdoors or driving motorcycles.
“We also advise fishermen and tourists not to come within a radius of 3 kilometers of Anak Krakatau. The thick plumes of smoke sent off by Krakatau contain toxic material that is hazardous for your health,” said Andi Suhardi, head of the Anak Krakatau observation post in Hargo Pancuran village.
A report from the volcanology office in Bandung shows that the activities of Anak Krakatau has been on the rise over the past few days, reaching almost 90 eruptions per day.
Nurhuda said the report showed the volcano spewed red hot lava up to 300 meters above its peak. “More than 100 volcanic quakes and tremors have been recorded,” he added.
Anak Krakatau, or child or Krakatau, about 130 kilometers west of Jakarta, was created by the same tectonic forces that led to the 1883 Krakatoa eruption that killed tens of thousands of people.
A new phase of activity has started at Krakatau volcano. A large explosion occurred early today and produced an ash plume that reached 14,000 ft (4.2 km) according to Darwin VAAC who first observed it at 01:32 GMT. Ash fall has reached Lampung and over several subdistricts in Bandarlampung, at about 130 kilometers distance. Authorities have issued a warning for local residents and tourists not to approach the volcano. “It is rather unusual for the dust to be this thick,” said Juniardi, a resident of Bandarlampung who complained that the falling dust was also hampering visibility, the Jakarta Globe writes. According to the news article, the activity of Anak Krakatau has been on the rise over the past few days, reaching almost 90 eruptions per day. Nurhuda said the report showed the volcano spewed red hot lava up to 300 meters above its peak. “More than 100 volcanic quakes and tremors have been recorded,” he added.
Unusually fierce storms swept through Malta on Monday, killing one man and dropping more rain on the Mediterranean island in two hours than its normal monthly average for September. The first storm triggered floods that swept away a man who had abandoned his car. Police said the man managed to make it to higher ground. Another man working in a field was fatally struck by lightning, however, as a second storm battered Malta in the afternoon. The storms caused substantial damage across the small Mediterranean archipelago, which includes the main island and sister islands of Gozo and Comino, with cars overturned, trees uprooted, houses flooded and walls collapsed. Malta’s meteorological office said 42.4 millimeters (1.67 inches) of rain fell, eclipsing the 40-millimeter average for the month of September.
A fire in the Angeles National Forest north of Glendora has spread to 700 acres since it began about 2:15 p.m. along East Fork Road, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service. The blaze was moving north toward the Sheep Mountain Wilderness Area, said John Wagner, an assistant public affairs officer with the forest service. An evacuation was underway at a mobile home park in the vicinity of the fire, Wagner said. He did not know how many residents had been evacuated. There were no reports of casualties or property damage. Wagner said seven air tankers from various agencies were battling the blaze. Fifteen engine companies from the Los Angeles County Fire Department were also fighting the fire, a spokesman said.
NEW ORLEANS — Tens of thousands of customers remained in the dark Monday in Louisiana and Mississippi, nearly a week after Isaac inundated the Gulf Coast with a deluge that still has some low-lying areas under water.
Most of those were in Louisiana, where utilities reported more than 100,000 people without power. Thousands also were without power in Mississippi and Arkansas.
President Barack Obama visited Monday, a day ahead of the Democratic National Convention, and walked around storm damage in St. John the Baptist Parish, where subdivisions were soaked in water from Isaac.
“I know it’s a mess,” Obama said as he approached a resident in the Ridgewood neighborhood. “But we’re here to help.”
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney visited the state Friday.
In St. John the Baptist Parish, residents spent Labor Day dragging waterlogged carpet and furniture to the curb and using bleach and water to clean hopefully to prevent mold.
LaPlace resident Barbara Melton swept mud and debris from her home, which was at one point under 2 feet of water. The garbage, debris and standing water – combined with heat reaching the 90s – created a terrible stench.
“It’s hot, it stinks, but I’m trying to get all this mud and stuff out of my house,” she said.
Melton was grateful for the president’s visit.
“I think it’s awesome to have a president that cares and wants to come out and see what he can do,” Melton, 60, said.
A few houses away, Ed Powell said Isaac was enough to make him question whether to stay.
“I know Louisiana’s a gambling state, but we don’t want to gamble in this method because when you lose this way, you lose a lot.”
Powell said even if Obama comes up with a plan or solution to the flooding problem in his area, time is not on the residents’ side.
“Even if they narrow down what the problem is and begin to resolve the problem, it usually takes years. And between now and whenever, a lot of things can happen,” Powell said.
More than 2,800 people were at shelters in Louisiana, down from around 4,000. State officials were uncertain how many people would eventually need longer-term temporary housing. Kevin Davis, head of the state’s emergency office, said housing would likely include hotels at first, then rental homes as close as possible to their damaged property.
Progress was evident in many places, though lingering flooding remained a problem in low-lying areas.
Crews in the town of Lafitte intentionally breached a levee Sunday night in an effort to help flooding there subside, Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts told The Times-Picayune.
Much of Plaquemines Parish, a vulnerable finger of land that juts into the Gulf of Mexico, remained under as much as 5 feet of water, Parish President Billy Nungesser said. The Category 1 hurricane walloped the parish, and for many, the damage was worse than that from Katrina in 2005.
Mumbai received a whopping 15 cm average rainfall in 12 hours since 8 a.m. Monday, even as one person was killed and normal life disrupted, officials said. Five people were killed in rain-related incidents in other parts of Maharashtra. Five persons were killed and another four injured when the wall of a temple crashed at Kaundinyapur village in Amravati district. The incident occurred Sunday evening and the bodies of the victims were removed from the debris early Monday. The incessant rains resulted in overflowing of Thane district’s Lake Tansa, a major source of drinking water for the 17 million people of the city, civic official said. Some parts of the city received between four to eight centimetres of rains since Monday morning, raising hopes that the water deficit would be wiped out this year. Several low-lying areas in the city and suburbs were waterlogged, slowing down vehicular movement and causing massive traffic snarls on both the national highways and other major roads. In the evening, five people were injured in a house-collapse in Chunabhatti area of central Mumbai as torrential rains continued. Water logging was reported from parts of Borivli, Kandivli, Jogeshwari, Andheri, Santacruz, Bhandup, Sion, Byculla and some areas in Dadar, Worli, Goregaon and Kurla experienced flooding.
Suburban train services were disrupted on the Western Railway, Central Railway and Harbour Line with average 20-30 minutes delays, hitting office workers and students. The evening peak hour witnessed chaos with a signal failure at Santacruz-CST on the Harbour Line route and trains virtually crawling to their destinations. People commuting from south Mumbai to their homes in the suburbs were stuck en route and reached their destinations only after long delays of one-two hours. Elsewhere in the state, most districts of the coastal Konkan, eastern districts of Vidarbha, northern parts of the state, Marathwada and western Maharasthra were lashed with heavy rains since morning, spelling cheers for the water-starved farming community. Torrential downpour in Thane’s major towns like Kalyan, Dombivli, Vasai, Virar, Palghar and Dahanu led to flooding on the roads with vehicular movements virtually crippled for hours. As a precautionary measure, some schools in the district were closed early to enable students reach their homes safely. Farmers in the parched districts of Marathwada smiled broadly as the region was lashed with rains after a gap of over three weeks and earnestly resumed their farming activities. The weather bureau has forecast similar heavy to very heavy rains over Mumbai and other parts of the state for the next two days.
The Ohio Department of Health announced on Friday that the country’s first known swine flu death took place in their state. A 61-year-old Madison county women was infected with the H3N2v virus and died. She had had direct contact with swine at the Ross County fair and had “multiple other underlying medical conditions” according to the statement.
There are currently 102 cases of the H3N2v virus in Ohio. The age range of patients is between 6 months and 61 years. Most of the patients had only a mild illness, and there have been few hospitalizations in this outbreak.
David Daniels, director of the Ohio Department of Agriculture, said, “swine flu is not uncommon, especially when temperatures have been high, as they have been this summer.” Dr. Tony Forshey, state veterinarian at the Ohio Department of Agriculture said “there are veterinarians in the barn at every fair. Heat-stressed swine are more likely to become ill and contagious.”
This type of flu is only transmissible through contact with live pigs. You cannot get the flu through properly handled and cooked pork. This virus is different from seasonal influenza, but it is transmitted in the same way: through coughing and sneezing by people who are infected. Most of the patients this year have been children.
To protect yourself, wash your hands with soap and water, especially after you’ve been around animals at the fair. Avoid touching eyes, nose, and mouth. Do not drink or eat near animals, and do not bring food into the barns when you visit a fair. And limit time around animals. Young children, pregnant women, the elderly, and those with weakened immune systems should avoid exposure to pigs and swine barns.
If you develop a flu-like illness, with symptoms including fever, tiredness, lack of appetite, coughing, runny nose, sore throat, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, see your healthcare provider. And make sure to tell her that you have been in contact with swine or other people who are sick. For questions or help, call the Ohio Department of Agirculture’s Division of Animal Health at 614-728-6220.
The next strong flare could be just around the corner. Sunspot AR1564 is growing rapidly and has developed a ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field that harbors energy for M-class flares. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory took this picture of the active region during the early hours of Sept. 4th:
NOAA forecasters estimate a 40% chance of M-flares during the next 24 hours. Any eruptions will likely be Earth-directed as the active region is turning toward our planet.
Solar wind
speed: 422.7 km/sec
density: 15.2 protons/cm3 explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 0735 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: C2 0507 UT Sep04
24-hr: C2 0507 UT Sep04 explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 0700 UT
Daily Sun: 04 Sep 12
Sunspot 1564 is suddenly growing. It has a ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field that harbors energy for M-class solar flares. Credit: SDO/HMI
Spotless Days Current Stretch: 0 days
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
Since 2004: 821 days
Typical Solar Min: 486 days
Update 04 Sep 2012
A geomagnetic storm that began on Sept. 3rd when a coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth’s magnetic field is fitfully subsiding. The impact at 1200 UT (5 am PDT) induced significant ground currents in the soil of northern Scandinavia and sparked bright auroras around the Arctic Circle. Ole C. Salomonsen photographed the display over Naimakka, Finland, on Sept. 4th:
“There I was standing all alone deep in the Finish forest, just in awe of this display of light above my head,” says Salomonsen. “This is just one of many images of spectacular auroras I shot on this wonderful night.”
Forty-six students of Government Polytechnic College for Women at Sidhapudur in the heart of Coimbatore city became ill on Monday following suspected food poisoning. They were admitted at two hospitals in the vicinity after they complained of severe vomiting and stomach pain. The students developed discomfort after having dinner at the college hostel cafeteria on Sunday. While 11 of them were admitted at Ramakrishna hospital on Sunday night itself, 35 students were rushed to the Coimbatore Medical College and Hospital (CMCH) at around 8 am on Monday. Seven of them are being kept in the Intensive Care unit at CMCH and Ramakrishna hospital. The doctors attending to the students said that most of them were admitted with complaints of vomiting, diarrhea and stomach pain. They were put on drips and medication. P Sivaprakasam, resident medical officer of CMCH said initial examinations had revealed that the students were suffering from food poisoning. He also said that they had consumed contaminated water. “They are recovering well and will be discharged in a couple of days,” he added.
A Kalpana, a third year student recovering at CMCH said that on Sunday night they were served tomato rice for dinner. For the past week the drinking water supply was not proper. Some students may have consumed contaminated water or it may have been used for cooking,” said another student on conditions of anonymity. “Just a few months ago the students had oragnised a public protest demanding good quality food. The case of food poisoning highlights the grim situation prevailing at the hostel,” she added. The doctors say that students fell ill because of consuming contaminated water. What has happened is unfortunate. We will look into the issue and ensure this does not happen again. Corrective measures will be put in place,” said B Padmini, principal of the college. There are 300 students residing at the hostel. Most hostel students are sports players, she said. “Students may have consumed pipe water instead of the boiled water made available to them. This is despite several reminders to drink only boiled water,” the principal added. Regarding the allegation of inadequate drinking water supply in the past one week, Padmini said that on certain days there was a disruption in supply.
Biohazard name:
Mass. Food Poisoning
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
03.09.2012
Biological Hazard
Kyrgyzstan
Chuy Oblast, [About 20 kilometers of the Kant Air Base]
Russia’s military officials say that efforts to prevent an anthrax epidemic have been increased at a Russian air base in Kyrgyzstan because of an outbreak of anthrax nearby. Officials from Russia’s Central Military District say one of the outbreaks is within 20 kilometers of the Kant Air Base in Kyrgyzstan’s northern region of Chui. He says all military buildings on the base — including apartments for officers and their families — have been disinfected and safety checks on food supplies have been increased. The move was undertaken after Kyrgyz health officials announced last week that several cases of anthrax had been confirmed in Chui and in the southern regions of Jalal-abad and Batken.
Biohazard name:
Anthrax
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
A wildlife rescue organization says 13 whales have died following a mass stranding off the Scottish coast. British Divers and Marine Life Rescue said Sunday that the mammals were among a group of 26 pilot whales stranded at Pittenweem, in eastern Scotland. Coast guards, volunteer medics, fire crews and police are all also involved in efforts to rescue the 13 still living. But rescue coordinator Gareth Norman said that it was likely more of the whales would die. A further 24 pilot whales from the same pod are currently in shallow water three miles along the coast at Cellardyke.
Scientists and conservationists are once again puzzled over the behaviour of whales – with two different pods of pilot whales beaching themselves this weekend on either side of the Atlantic.
A pod of 26 pilot whales stranded themselves off the coast of Fife in Scotland.
Crowds of on-lookers gathered to watch the massive rescue and relief operation.
13 of the 26 whales did not make it.
And in a strange coincidence… another pod of whales beached themselves along the coast of south-central Florida in the U.S.
This time, 22 pilot whales stranded themselves near Fort Pierce.
VERO BEACH, Fla., Sept. 2 (UPI) — Wildlife experts suspect an ailing alpha whale caused a pod of short-fin pilot whales to beach themselves in Florida this weekend.
Seventeen of the 22 mammals died in the surf at Avalon Beach State Park in St. Lucie County and five juveniles were taken to a rescue facility at nearby Florida Atlantic University, but were not expected to survive.
Blair Mase, who specializes in the study of whale stranding for the U.S. government, told TCPalm.com the tragedy was probably linked to the pod leader.
“This species has a tight social structure,” said Mase, a regional coordinator for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. “Typically, they stay together as a group. So if one animal is sick, they all come ashore.”
Hundreds of people on the area either watched the stranding unfold. Many tried to help out by throwing wet towels on the whales to protect them from the sun, TCPalm.com said.
Mase it would not have done much good to push the whales off the sand. “If you push them into the water, they’ll just keep coming back and stranding themselves again,” she said.
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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.
A series of small earthquakes which began Wednesday night and continued into Thursday near a long-dormant volcanic peak in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands has prompted researchers to raise the alert level for the Little Sitkin volcano.
The nearly 4,000-foot-high Little Sitkin volcano is named for the island where it resides, located in the Rat Islands in the Aleutian chain. The volcano has shown little activity since scientists have started observing it, with only three questionable eruptive events at the volcano since that time. The most recent eruption may have come in 1900, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory.
Still, the AVO page for Little Sitkin mentions there may have been a “cataclysmic eruption” on the island sometime after the last ice age, which ended more than 11,000 years ago.
Seismic equipment located near the volcano began detecting a “swarm of high-frequency earthquakes” at about 7:15 p.m. Wednesday, the AVO reports. The earthquakes continued through the night into Thursday, prompting the alert level at the volcano being raised. The alert level is currently at yellow, which means that the “volcano is exhibiting signs of elevated unrest above known background level.” Additionally, aircraft traveling in the area are advised to exercise caution.
The volcano is located in a remote part of the Aleutians, about 35 miles northwest of the World War II outpost of Amchitka and 200 miles west of Adak.
Little Sitkin joins two other Alaska volcanoes, Iliamna and Cleveland, currently sitting at elevated alert levels.
Photos: Alaska volcanoes
Apr 02, 2012
Pavlof volcano and eruption plume on evening of Aug. 30, 2007. View is to the south. Plume height approximately 17-18,000 ft.
Iliamna, 130 miles from Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, was first elevated in March of this year following a continued increase in seismic activity.
“The current level of activity at Iliamna does not indicate an imminent or certain eruption,” a status update from the AVO said Thursday. “Seismic activity, along with gas emissions, appear to be declining gradually.”
Meanwhile, the oft-erupting Cleveland volcano which, like Sitkin, is located in the Aleutians, remains elevated as well. Cleveland has been upgraded a half-dozen times in since 2010 alone, and most recently erupted in June, when a pilot reported an ash cloud reaching up to 35,000 feet. Cleveland sits at a higher alert level than Iliamna or Little Sitkin, meaning the volcano still has a higher potential for eruption at any time.
Seismologists say a cluster of earthquakes has been detected at a remote volcano in Alaska’s western Aleutian Islands. The Alaska Volcano Observatory says the quakes began Wednesday evening at Little Sitkin Volcano and are continuing as of Thursday morning. No eruption has been detected. Scientist in charge John Power says there is no direct link to the swarm of earthquakes at Little Sitkin and a cluster of quakes that shook California’s Imperial County earlier this week. Powers says Little Sitkin is located on an uninhabited island and is far from any populated areas. He says the seismic activity is unusual for Little Sitkin, whose last eruption possibly in the early 1900s is questionable. Powers says the concern about an eruption would be the possible threat posed to aircraft.
South Korean rescuers Wednesday recovered two more bodies near two wrecked Chinese fishing boats, bringing the confirmed death toll from a powerful typhoon to 18.
Typhoon Bolaven — the strongest to hit the South for almost a decade — left a trail of death and damage in southwestern and south-central regions of the country.
It drove two Chinese fishing ships aground early Tuesday off the southern island of Jeju, sparking a dramatic rescue operation.
Coastguards wearing wetsuits struggled through high waves and pulled a total of 12 people to safety, and six swam ashore. Eight bodies had been recovered as of Wednesday and seven were still missing, the coastguard in Jeju said.
Dozens of divers are involved in the ongoing search. The coastguard said in a statement it would make “utmost efforts” to account for all the missing.
Most of the other deaths, confirmed by the public administration ministry, were caused by wind gusts that toppled walls or roofs or blew victims off their feet.
Typhoon alerts covering most of the country were lifted as ferries and flights returned to normal and schools reopened. But South Korea is now on watch for another typhoon, Tembin.
Bolaven moved on to North Korea, damaging crops and toppling some 3,700 roadside trees, the North’s official news agency said. Human casualties were not reported.
In North Hwanghae Province, the typhoon deactivated television relay facilities and destroyed or damaged some 20 houses and public buildings, the agency said, adding that “a lot of houses and roads” were submerged in other provinces.
Bolaven crossed the Yalu border river into China early Wednesday.
In South Korea, the typhoon was the strongest since 2003 in terms of wind speed. A maximum speed of 214 kilometres per hour (134 miles per hour) was recorded at Mount Mudeung in the southwestern city of Gwangju.
Power cuts of five minutes or longer hit nearly two million homes, a record in the country, the public administration ministry said.
The storm toppled nearly 8,000 trees and damaged 42 ships or boats and 35 houses. A total of 6,418 hectares (15,852 acres) of farmland was damaged.
Typhoon Tembin, located about 350 kilometres northeast of the Taiwanese capital Taipei early Wednesday, is approaching South Korea at a speed of 20 kilometres an hour.
The situation was bleak in some Eastbank Plaquemines Parish neighborhoods that were inundated by water as Hurricane Isaac pushed across the region.
Officials said an 18-mile stretch of levees was overtopped by water from the Mississippi River early Wednesday. The resulting flood brought as much as 10 feet of water to residential areas, early reports indicated.
The area includes a stretch from Braithwaite to White Ditch. Those communities were under a mandatory evacuation order because of safety concerns.
Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser told WDSU that the problem was limited to overtopping, and not a breach. He described the situation as “serious.”
The National Weather Service noted: “This will result in significant deep flooding in this area.”
The levee is not part of the federal Corps of Engineers protection system.
WDSU reporter Travers Mackel said flood gates were closed to contain the water. He said there was concern that some people were trapped in dangerous conditions.
In nearby St. Bernard Parish, trees blocked roadways, making driving nearly impossible.
More than 400,000 Entergy customers on the south shore were without power.
WDSU reporter Gina Swanson said water was encroaching on an evacuation shelter in Raceland, in Lafourche Parish.
Jefferson Parish reported flooding in Lower Lafitte and water levels in the bayou that were up two feet from Tuesday.
The Harvey and Belle Chasse tunnels were closed — a move that followed the shut-down of the Lake Pontchartrain Causevay Tuesday evening.
Several fires, including major ones in Gretna and Arabi, were also reported.
(MOBILE, Ala.) – While Louisiana appears to be taking the heaviest blow from Hurricane Isaac, there’s no doubt the storm is impact our stretch of the Gulf.
One viewer send in video of waves churning in Mobile Bay ripping up a dock, and a man in Pensacola uploaded video of driving wind and rain from his pool.
Thousands have been without power in Mobile County but crews have been out trying to make those repairs today.
Lake Tangipahoa, a 450 to 500-acre lake at Percy Quinn State Park just north of the Mississippi state line, was swollen from Isaac’s rain, undermining a dam that, if it failed, would release the body of water into the Tangipahoa River that meanders down the parish’s length to Lake Pontchartrain. “That’s going to inundate an already flooded river,” said National Guard Col. Rodney Painting, the incoming commander of the Guard’s 225th Engineer Brigade who started his day helping oversee the evacuation of flooded areas in LaPlace and would end it in his native Tangipahoa helping oversee what appears to be the largest such effort in the state since Isaac made landfall Tuesday. Authorities in Mississippi tried to ease the pressure by releasing some of the water, an effort said to be working. Louisiana officials are taking no chances.State and parish officials called a mandatory evacuation for communities from Kentwood to Robert. If the dam breaks, the National Guard will go into the affected communities with high-water vehicles and small boats, “that we can get through the flooded woods or streets if we have to,” said Painter, who during the Isaac state of emergency has helped coordinate evacuation sites at Zephyr Field in Metairie and in Slidell before moving to Laplace and Amite. In the “controlled release” using spillways, the water from the lake flooded out into a sparsely inhabited area of Mississippi on Thursday afternoon, relieving pressure on a dam scoured by Hurricane Isaac that threatened to push water levels in the Tangipahoa River up to 17 feet in Louisiana. Officials believe the controlled release of waters through emergency spillways will allow the water level to stabilize and lessen pressure on the dam until crews can breach the edge of Tangipahoa Lake near McComb and drain another 8 feet of water.While the release is expected to protect communities on the north shore, officials in Mississippi said about 20 homes on their side of the state line will be flooded out and emergency crews conducted a door-to-door effort to warn residents to leave their homes. Meanwhile, a more massive effort was occurring miles downriver, as National Guard units and other state assets attempted to get 40,000 to 60,000 people out of their homes. Though the water level in the lake was dropping and Mississippi officials downplayed the seriousness of the dam’s condition, Gov. Bobby Jindal continued to urge residents to leave potential flood zones in Tangipahoa Parish Thursday night. “The worse thing that could happen is that people get a false sense of confidence and then if there be a breach overnight it would be a lot harder for people to evacuate,” Jindal said. From the Florida Parishes Arena, troops drove school buses to collection points, where they’re driving evacuees to evacuation shelters set up at schools. School buses have been brought in from as far as Avoylles Parish and Terrebonne Parish, each driven by soldiers. “I’ve already got buses on the road full of people,” said Lt. Col. Vincent Tallo.
About 200 coaches and school buses are being rushed to Tangipahoa, said First Sgt. Rufus Jones of 3rd Battalion, 156th Infantry Regiment, a Guard combat unit whose soldiers, all armed with M4 rifles, waited in the arena for missions that would likely would include security details. By Thursday night, Tallo said he expected 300 National Guard troops in the parish, assisting the evacuation. The National Guard received the mission at 10 a.m., Thursday, said Maj. Scott Slaven, who commands the 205th Engineer Battalion in Bogalusa. Troops and equipment are staged on both sides of the Tangipahoa River, Slaven said. At Pontchatoula High School, Darryl Holliday of Kajun Kettle Foods Inc., which has a state contract to feed evacuees, was told to brace for 2,000 people. At 6:30 p.m., none of the evacuees had reached the school on Louisiana 22. Holliday said he was told that 40 people were en route. Painter said the plan calls for keeping evacuees in Tangipahoa Parish. At the Florida Parishes Arena, employees of the state Department of Children and Family Services prepared to account for the evacuees with forms, in part designed to identify families.
The damage to dam prompted Parish President Gordon Burgess to order mandatory evacuations along the Tangipahoa River, which were carried out with the assistance of the state and National Guard units. The first reports of problems with the dam came into emergency operations officials at 8 a.m., when crews noticed two “sloughs” where dirt was sliding down the sides of the earthen structure, said Greg Flynn, spokesman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. Those sloughs are the first sign of a problem with the integrity of a dam, Flynn said. The damage was caused by rain from Hurricane Isaac, which raised the water level of the recreational fishing lake by several feet, said Richard Coghlan, Emergency Coordinator for Pike County. “The dam appears very stable at this time,” Coghlan said. Mississippi officials stressed that reports Thursday that the waters had breached or overtopped the dam were incorrect. Opening the spillways will bring the water level back to normal but could cause flooding in a wide, sparsely populated stretch of Mississippi. Coghlan said residents had been warned and were planning on leaving for at least a night.
Those homes would also have been flooded in the event that the dam failed, he said. Once the water level drops back to normal, a process that could take days, crews will dig a trench out of the lake with the intention of causing a more serious drop in the water levels, Coghlan said. That will allow maintenance crews to go in and repair the dam, he said. Louisiana state officials estimated that between 40,000 and 60,000 homes would take on some water should the river flood. Many of those were outside the mandatory evacuation zone, which extended one mile on either side of the Tangipahoa River from Kentwood to Robert. It was unclear on Thursday exactly how many people lived in that area or how many were evacuated by the end of the day.
Officials rushed to evacuate more than 100 nursing home residents from Plaquemines Parish, an area with a reputation for weathering storms and perhaps the hardest hit by Isaac. In this hardscrabble, mostly rural parish, even the sick and elderly are hardened storm veterans. Other residents in the Riverbend Nursing and Rehabilitation Center were loaded into ambulances and taken to a nearby naval station. By midafternoon Wednesday, Isaac had been downgraded to a tropical storm. The Louisiana National Guard ceased rescue operations in Plaquemines Parish, saying it felt confident it had gotten everyone out. There were no serious injuries. National Guard spokesman Capt. Lance Cagnolatti said guardsmen would stay in the area over the coming days to help. By early Thursday, Isaac’s maximum sustained winds had decreased to 45 mph and the National Hurricane Center said it was expected to become a tropical depression by Thursday night, meaning its top sustained winds would drop below 39 mph. The storm’s center was on track to cross Arkansas on Friday and southern Missouri on Friday night, spreading rain as it goes.
Torrential rain left motorists battling flooded roads and residents using sandbags to stem the flow of flash floods. And yesterday’s downpour means the county is on track to record one of the wettest Augusts in recent years as families rue the summer that never was. The rain – which hit Staffordshire during yesterday morning and afternoon – forced local authorities and members of the emergency services to attempt to combat a number of deep floods. Weather experts said yesterday’s adverse conditions mean the region is on course to have endured a worse summer than the previous year. Figures from the Met Office have revealed the first two weeks of August saw 36mm of rain fall in the county. In July the region was hit with 139mm. Yesterday’s downpour caused problems across the city, along with Newcastle and the Staffordshire Moorlands. Staff from Staffordshire Moorlands District Council’s street cleaning team handed out sandbags to residents in Endon, Blythe Bridge, Stockton Brook and Brown Edge in a bid to tackle flooding. Firefighters were sent out to close off Endon’s Brook Lane after a flooded ford resulted in the area being deluged in 3ft high water. Crews from Leek and Endon also helped residents safely turn off their electricity and gas as water swept through the area. Last night motorists were being advised to avoid Brown Edge’s Breach Lane. A spokesman for Staffordshire Fire and Rescue said: “We’d urge people to monitor warnings given by the Environment Agency and to avoid driving in areas where there is localised flooding.”
Aug. 30 (Bloomberg) — Almost half of tuberculosis patients who received prior treatment were resistant to a second-line drug, suggesting the deadly disease may become “virtually untreatable,” according to a new study.
Among 1,278 patients who were resistant to two or more first-line tuberculosis drugs in Estonia, Latvia, Peru, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, South Korea and Thailand, 43.7 percent showed resistance to at least one second-line drug, according to a study led by Tracy Dalton at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings were published in the Lancet medical journal today.
About 1.4 million people died from TB, the second-deadliest infectious disease globally after AIDS, and 650,000 cases were multi-drug resistant in 2010, according to the World Health Organization. Rising infection rates prompted the U.K. to announce in May it will require pre-entry tuberculosis screening for migrants from 67 countries seeking to enter the country for more than 6 months.
“The global emergence of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis heralds the advent of widespread, virtually untreatable tuberculosis,” the study authors said in the published paper.
Previous treatment with second-line drugs was the strongest risk factor for resistance to these drugs, the authors said.
Alcohol Abuse
The prevalence of drug resistance, which ranged from 33 percent in Thailand to 62 percent in Latvia, also correlates with how long second-line drugs have been available in each country.
South Korea and Russia had the longest histories of availability — more than 20 years — and the highest rates of resistance. In contrast, Thailand, Philippines and Peru, where second-line drugs were introduced 10 years ago or less, had the lowest resistance rates.
Unemployment, alcohol abuse and smoking were also associated with resistance to second-line injectable treatment across countries.
This is one of the few studies that have followed patients with the multi-drug-resistant form of TB for several years, Justin Denholm, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, said in a phone interview.
Patients not taking their medicines properly is a major driver for resistance, said Denholm, who is studying TB transmission patterns in Australia’s Victoria state.
Individualized Treatment
The WHO’s current strategy for tackling TB is called Dots, short for “directly observed treatment, short course.” Under Dots, patients are required to show up at a clinic three times a week to be supervised when taking their medicine to be sure they complete the treatment.
“The reality is that this one-size-fits-all approach is a major part of what’s led to this drug resistance issue,” Denholm said. “I think individualized treatment is what we should be aiming for.”
Scientists are also researching new treatments. In a study published last month in the Lancet, researchers from Stellenbosch University in Cape Town said an experimental three- drug combination killed 99 percent of the bacteria within two weeks. As the combination doesn’t contain isoniazid or rifampicin, the two main medicines used against TB, it may also provide a much-needed weapon against drug-resistant strains, the researchers wrote.
China Survey
India and China, which have the world’s highest numbers of tuberculosis cases, weren’t included in Dalton’s study as they hadn’t begun pilot programs for increasing access to second-line drugs until after the study began.
In a 2007 national survey in China, 27 percent of multi- drug-resistant tuberculosis cases showed resistance to the antibiotic fluoroquinolone, according to the Lancet report. In India, a 2006 population-based survey in the western state of Gujarat reported fluoroquinolone resistance in 24 percent of cases.
The U.K. Border Agency this month began requiring TB screening for Indians applying for a settlement visa and will extend the rule to those obtaining a work visa from Sept. 10. The new requirement replaces screening at airports.
TB is at the highest level in 30 years in the U.K. In London, 84 percent of the 3,302 people infected in 2010 were foreign-born, according to the Health Protection Agency.
30.08.2012
Epidemic Hazard
USA
State of Colorado, [Cimarrona Campground, Archuleta County]
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.
A vast outcrop of the Arctic Siberian coast that had been frozen for tens of thousands of years is releasing huge carbon deposits as rising temperatures thaw parts of its coastline, a study warned Wednesday.
The carbon, a potential source of Earth-warming CO2, has lain frozen along the 7,000-kilometre (4,400-mile) northeast Siberian coastline since the last Ice Age.
But atmospheric warming and coastal erosion are gnawing at the icy seal, releasing about 40 million tonnes of carbon a year — 10 times more than previously thought, said a study in the journal Nature.
About two-thirds of the carbon escapes into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2) and the rest becomes trapped in higher layers of ocean sediment.
About half the carbon pool in soil globally is held in permafrost in the Arctic, a region that is experiencing twice the global average of climate warming, said the study led by researchers at Stockholm University.
Earlier this week, US scientists said the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean had melted to its smallest point ever.
The region covered by the Nature study, called Yedoma, is twice the size of Sweden but has been poorly researched because it is so remote.
The finding touches on a vicious circle, or positive feedback in climate parlance.
Under this, man-made warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels releases naturally-occurring stocks of CO2 that have been stored in permafrost since the last Ice Age, called the Pleistocene.
The released gases in turn add to global warming, which frees even more locked-up carbon, and so on.
“Thermal collapse and erosion of these carbon-rich Pleistocene coastline and seafloor deposits may accelerate the Arctic amplification of climate warming,” the paper warned.
The atmospheric leakage from Yedoma is equivalent to the annual emissions of around five million passenger cars, on the basis of average carbon output (five tonnes per year) of vehicles in the United States.
In a separate study also in Nature, researchers in Britain, the Netherlands and the United States used computer models to estimate there could be as much as four billion tonnes of methane under Antarctica’s icesheet.
Methane is 25 times more efficient at trapping solar heat than carbon dioxide.
Before it froze over, the region teemed with life whose organic remains became trapped in sediment later covered by ice sheets.
“Our modelling shows that over millions of years, microbes may have turned this old organic carbon into methane,” which could boost climate warming if released by icesheet collapse, the researchers said in a statement.
The collapse of the Antarctic icesheet is considered an extremely remote scenario by most climatologists, and some studies have suggested that parts of it could be thickening, due to localised increases in snowfall.
Out of the 36 patients, who underwent prophylactic treatment after identification of the anthrax hot bed in Zaporizhia region, currently two of them are remaining under supervision of physicians. “Today we can say that everything is fine with the people: out of 36 people, who received preventive treatment, only two are under the supervision of doctors now. They are a man and a woman from Voznesenka village, who had contacted the infected animal and were hospitalized immediately after the accident. Currently, they have no manifestations of disease, but to make sure that the health condition of these people is good, we should get the results of laboratory tests and withstand a certain period,” chief medical officer of Zaporizhia region Anatoly Sevalnev said. According to the deputy head of the Main Department for Veterinary Medicine in Zaporizhia region Serhit Dehtiarenko, the quarantine measures will continue until September 5.
Biohazard name:
Anthrax
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
Streaks of red tide – a toxic algal bloom that threatens both marine life – were clearly visible in Noyac Bay during a flyover on Thursday. Aerial photographer Jeff Cully captured images of red tide lining the shore at Long Beach. Red tide has appeared in Long Island waters every summer since 2004, Chris Gobler, Ph.D., told Patch earlier this month, when the algal bloom made its first showing of the year. Gobler, a Stony Brook Southampton School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences professor, said red tide typically appears in late August, but this summer it was detected in late July. The early arrival could be attributed to high temperatures this summer, he said. “This red tide is caused by the dinoflagellate, cochlodinium,” Gobler explained. “Cochlodinium is not a human health threat but is highly toxic to marine life. Fish exposed to dense cochlodinium blooms cannot survive more than one to six hours, depending on their size. We have had fish die at the Southampton marine lab when our intake system brought in red tide water.” After patches of red tide have passed through, pound net fisherman have found that catches have died off, he added. The School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, thanks to $3 million in grants, announced Monday a plan to restore the health of another local bay, Shinnecock, by seeding eelgrass and shellfish beds in strategic areas where they are most likely to thrive. Shellfish filter algae from water, but their populations in Long Island waters have declined in recent decades, a trend marine sciences hope to turn around. If the effort proves successful, it could be implemented in other distressed bodies of water, both locally and around the world. Research demonstrates that algal blooms are made worse by an increased flow of nitrogen into the bays, from sources such as cesspools and fertilizers, Gobler said.
Biohazard name:
Red Tide
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
Today
Biological Hazard
Ireland
Multiple areas, [Beaches in Waterford and Cork, and Kerry]
Portuguese men-of-war, which look like jellyfish and whose sting can cause severe pain and, in rare cases, death in humans, has been seen on beaches in Waterford and Cork, and may yet reach Kerry coasts. The Irish Water Safety organisation yesterday warned swimmers, surfers and other beach users that Portuguese men-of- war have been seen in Tramore, Ardmore, Inchydoney and Schull, and that there is a risk they may drift farther north. The invertebrate and carnivore creature is a siphonophore, which means it is made up of a colony of organisms working together. Its float is about 30cm long and 13cm wide and it has tentacles that can reach 50m in length. The stinging venom-filled nematocysts in the tentacles cause severe pain to humans, leaving whip-like red welts on the skin. A sting may lead to an allergic reaction. There can also be serious effects, including fever, shock, and interference with heart and lung function. Stings may also cause death, although this is extremely rare.
Biohazard name:
Portuguese man O War Jellyfish invasion
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Once a resident of rivers throughout Japan, the Japanese river otter hasn’t been seen for more than 30 years. Today, the otter was officially deemed extinct by Japan’s Ministry of the Environment. The unique species of otter was designated as natural monument in Japan as the first Japanese mammal to have survived into the Showa Era (1926-1989) before succumbing to extinction. Two species of Japanese bat and two species of wolves became extinct in the Meija Era (1868-1912).
Over-hunting for its fur combined with habitat destruction from human development drove the river otter to near extinction by the 1930s. By the late ’70s the river otter was added to the “Red List of Threatened Mammals of Japan” as critically endangered. The last official sighting of a Japanese river otter was in 1979 along the banks of the Shinjo River in Susaki, Kochi Prefecture.
An adult river otter grew to about 110 centimeters (43 inches) in length, including a tail of up to 50 centimeters (20 inches), sporting a thick, lush coat of fur and short webbed feet. The typical diet for a Japanese river otter consisted mainly of fish, crab and shrimp, but they also dined on eels, sweet potatoes, watermelons and beetles.
Hope after extinction?
Official survey records from the Ministry of the Environment indicate the river otter disappeared from the northern island of Hokkaido in the 1950s and on the main island of Honshu in the 1960s. In the early 1990s research teams assembled in Kochi Prefecture, located in the southwestern part of the island of Shikoku, to see if they could find evidence of surviving otters. In March 1992 the researchers found hair and excrement that was determined to have come from an otter — perhaps the last official evidence of a surviving Japanese river otter.
But Yoshihiko Machida, professor emeritus at Kochi University, isn’t quite ready to sound the death knell for the Japanese river otter, citing reports of confirmed otter droppings found as late as 1999:
“I think it is possible that they still exist, and I want to continue my investigations,” he said in response to the declaration of the otter’s extinction.
Hope springs eternal.
30.08.2012
Environment Pollution
United Kingdom
Scotland, North Sea, [Between Tartan Alpha platform and Galley field]
An oil spill response spill vessel has been deployed to a North Sea field after oil started leaking from crack in a subsea pipeline. An estimated 13 barrels of oil have leaked from the pipeline which connects the Galley field to Talisman’s Tartan Alpha platform, 117 miles north-east of Aberdeen. The leak was first spotted last Friday. A spokesman for Talisman Energy said: “Talisman Energy (UK) Limited can confirm that following the identification of a crack in the production pipeline which connects the Galley field to the Tartan Alpha platform, flushing operations are being carried out using seawater to remove the production fluids from the pipeline. “This is being carried out in accordance with a plan developed by a specialist team and agreed with the Department of Energy and Climate Change, bringing the situation to a safe and timely resolution. All relevant authorities have been informed and are being kept updated.” He added: “Based on the investigatory and monitoring activity undertaken since we identified the issue on 24 August, we estimate the maximum total release to date is 88 barrels of fluids, of which approximately 13 would be oil and the rest water. “We take our responsibility to safeguard the environment very seriously and, as a precaution we deployed a spill recovery and containment vessel with oil spill response equipment on board, while monitoring the leak area by ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) on a round-the-clock basis. The oil spill response vessel will remain on station during subsequent remedial works. “In addition, we have established a regular programme of spotter plane flights to monitor the sea surface and placed a trained wildlife observer on a vessel at the site to monitor seabirds and marine life.”
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
The 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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Analysis of small, repeating earthquakes in an Antarctic ice sheet may not only lead to an understanding of glacial movement, but may also shed light on stick slip earthquakes like those on the San Andreas fault or in Haiti, according to Penn State geoscientists.
“No one has ever seen anything with such regularity,” said Lucas K. Zoet, recent Penn State Ph. D. recipient, now a postdoctoral fellow at Iowa State University. “An earthquake every 25 minutes for a year.”
The researchers looked at seismic activity recorded during the Transantarctic Mountains Seismic Experiment from 2002 to 2003 on the David Glacier in Antarctica, coupled with data from the Global Seismic Network station Vanda. They found that the local earthquakes on the David Glacier, about 20,000 identified, were predominantly the same and occurred every 25 minutes give or take five minutes.
The researchers note in the current Nature Geoscience that, “The remarkable similarity of the waveforms … indicates that they share the same source location and source mechanisms.” They suggest that “the same subglacial asperity repeatedly ruptures in response to steady loading from the overlying ice, which is modulated by stress from the tide at the glacier front.”
“Our leading idea is that part of the bedrock is poking through the ductile till layer beneath the glacier,” said Zoet.
The researchers have determined that the asperity — or hill — is about a half mile in diameter.
The glacier, passing over the hill, creates a stick slip situation much like that on the San Andreas fault. The ice sticks on the hill and stress gradually builds until the energy behind the obstruction is high enough to move the ice forward. The ice moves in a step-by-step manner rather than smoothly.
But motion toward the sea is not the only thing acting on the ice streaming from David glacier. Like most glaciers near oceans, the edge of the ice floats out over the water and the floating ice is subject to the action of tides.
“When the tide comes in it pushes back on the ice, making the time between slips slightly longer,” said Sridhar Anandakrishnan, professor of geoscience. “When the tide goes out, the time between slips decreases.”
However, the researchers note that the tides are acting at the ground line, a long way from the location of the asperity and therefore the effects that shorten or lengthen the stick slip cycle are delayed.
“This was something we didn’t expect to see,” said Richard B. Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences. “Seeing it is making us reevaluate the basics.”
He also noted that these glacial earthquakes, besides helping glaciologists understand the way ice moves, can provide a simple model for the stick slip earthquakes that occur between landmasses.
“We have not completely explained how ice sheets flow unless we can reproduce this effect,” said Alley. “We can use this as a probe and look into the physics so we better understand how glaciers move.”
Before 2002, this area of the David glacier flowed smoothly, but then for nearly a year the 20-minute earthquake intervals occurred and then stopped. Something occurred at the base of the ice to start and then stop these earthquakes.
“The best idea we have is that during those 300 days, a dirty patch of ice was in contact with the mount, changing the way stress was transferred,” said Zoet. “The glacier is experiencing earthquakes again, although at a different rate. It would be nice to study that.”
Unfortunately, the seismographic instruments that were on the glacier in 2002 no longer exist, and information is coming from only one source at the moment.
The image shows how the Caribbean plate is pushed to the east relative to the South American plate, causing the Caribbean Islands’ distinctive arc shape.
CREDIT: Courtesy of Meghan Miller and Thorsten Becker
The movement of Earth’s viscous mantle against South America has pushed the Caribbean islands east over the last 50 million years, according to a study published Monday (Aug. 20) in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The University of Southern California, in announcing the study, said the findings upend previous hypotheses of the seismic activity beneath the Caribbean Sea and provide an important new look at the unique tectonic interactions that are causing the Caribbean plate to tear away from South America.
The Caribbean plate is being pushed eastward due to a thick section of the South American plate called a “cratonic keel.” This section of crust is three times
Meanwhile, part of the South American plate is being pushed beneath the Caribbean plate, a process called subduction. Intense heat and pressure gradually force water-containing magma to rise into the Earth’s mantle and fuel the many active volcanoes in the region.
All of this pushing and pulling formed the distinctive arc shape of the Caribbean islands and has created a very complex system of faults between the two plates, in northern South America, according to the USC statement. The study mapped several of these strike-slip faults, which are similar to California’s San Andreas Fault.
Recent earthquakes in the area helped the two researchers develop an image of the Earth’s deep interior. The earthquake waves move slower or quicker depending on the temperature and composition of the rock.
“Studying the deep earth interior provides insights into how the Earth has evolved into its present form,” researcher Meghan S. Miller said in the statement.
For their study, the researchers used earthquake data to develop 176 computer models, USC said
Mount Tongariro volcano (New Zealand) showed some seismicity earlier today (see seismogram below). The activity can only be seen in Oturere and West Tongariro seismograms (close to the Te Maari craters). Below also one of the rara clear view images of Mt. Tongariro with a strongly steaming vent. N report from GNS science about the seismicity however. The Park service has announced that the trekking trails at Mount Tongariro would be reopened. A 3 km hazard and risk zone will remain in place for some time and might be further reduced once new information of the gas and ash composition is known.
According to INGEOMINAS, the Observatorio Vulcanológico and Sismológico de Popayán reported that during 8-14 August seismic activity at Sotará increased. The seismic network recorded 110 magnitude 0.2-1.6 events mainly located in an area 0.1-5 km NE of the peak, at depths of 2-6 km. Inflation was detected in the NE area, coincident with the zone of increased seismicity. Web-camera views showed no morphological changes. The Alert Level was raised to III (Yellow; “changes in the behavior of volcanic activity”), or the second lowest level. (Smithsonian Institute)
KVERT reported moderate seismic activity from Karymsky during 10-20 August. Satellite imagery showed a weak thermal anomaly on the volcano during 10-13, 15, and 18-20 August. The Aviation Color Code remained at Orange.
KVERT reported that during 10-18 August weak seismic activity was detected at Shiveluch. Observers noted gas-and-steam activity during 15-17 August; weather conditions prevented observations of the volcano on the other days. Satellite imagery showed a thermal anomaly on the lava dome during 10, 12-13, and 18-19 August. Seismic activity increased to moderate levels and hot avalanches were observed during 19-20 August. The Aviation Color Code remained at Orange.
Insivumeh reports 2 moderate explosions at Santiaguito (Santa Maria), Guatemala. The other Guatemala volcano, Fuego sends a white plume approx. 50 meter in the air and grumbles every 1 to 3 minutes. See also seismograms from both volcanoes.
Activity observed by satellites
VAAC reports still the same volcanoes which can be dangerous for aviation ; Sakurajima, Batu Tara and a very active Tungurahua
SO2 satellite imagery shows SO2 clouds at the following volcanoes : Etna, Kilauea and Nevado del Ruiz. Clouds of a number of other volcanoes are not defined enough to be sure.
A smoking Nevado del Ruiz yesterday – image courtesy Ingeominas Colombia
Some scientists say that questions over whether man-made warming is disrupting the Earth’s climate are diminishing Severely damaged corn stalks due to a widespread drought are seen at sunset on a farm near Oakland City, Indiana, August 15, 2012. Heatwaves, drought and floods that have struck the northern hemisphere for the third summer running are narrowing doubts that man-made warming is disrupting Earth’s climate system, say some scientists. Heatwaves, drought and floods that have struck the northern hemisphere for the third summer running are narrowing doubts that man-made warming is disrupting Earth’s climate system, say some scientists.
Climate experts as a group are reluctant to ascribe a single extreme event or season to global warming. Weather, they argue, has to be assessed over far longer periods to confirm a shift in the climate and whether natural factors or fossil-fuel emissions are the cause. But for some, such caution is easing. A lengthening string of brutal weather events is going hand in hand with record-breaking rises in temperatures and greenhouse-gas levels, an association so stark that it can no longer be dismissed as statistical coincidence, they say. “We prefer to look at average annual temperatures on a global scale, rather than extreme temperatures,” said Jean Jouzel, vice chairman of the UN’s Nobel-winning scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Even so, according to computer models, “over the medium and long term, one of the clearest signs of climate change is a rise in the frequency of heatwaves”, he said. “Over the last 50 years, we have seen that as warming progresses, heatwaves are becoming more and more frequent,” Jouzel said. “If we don’t do anything, the risk of a heatwave occurring will be 10 times higher by 2100 compared with the start of the century.” The past three months have seen some extraordinary weather in the United States, Europe and East and Southeast Asia. The worst drought in more than 50 years hit the US Midwest breadbasket while forest fires stoked by fierce heat and dry undergrowth erupted in California, France, Greece, Italy, Croatia and Spain. Heavy rains flooded Manila and Beijing and China’s eastern coast was hit by an unprecedented three typhoons in a week.
Last month was the warmest ever recorded for land in the northern hemisphere and a record high for the contiguous United States, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Globally, the temperature in July was the fourth highest since records began in 1880, it said. James Hansen, arguably the world’s most famous climate scientist (and a bogeyman to climate skeptics), contends the link between extreme heat events and global warming is now all but irrefutable. The evidence, he says, comes not from computer simulations but from weather observations themselves. In a study published this month in the peer-reviewed US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Hansen and colleagues compared temperatures over the past three decades to a baseline of 1951-80, a period of relative stability. Over the last 30 years, there was 0.5-0.6 C (0.9-1.0 F) of warming, a rise that seems small but “is already having important effects”, said Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. During the baseline period, cold summers occurred about a third of the time, but this fell to about 10 percent in the 30-year period that followed. Hot summers which during the baseline period occurred 33 percent of the time, rose to about 75 percent in the three decades that followed. Even more remarkable, though, was the geographical expansion of heatwaves. During the baseline period, an unusually hot summer would yield a heatwave that would cover just a few tenths of one percent of the world’s land area. Today, though, an above-the-norm summer causes heatwaves that in total affect about 10 percent of the land surface. “The extreme summer climate anomalies in Texas in 2011, in Moscow in 2010 and in France in 2003 almost certainly would not have occurred in the absence of global warming with its resulting shift of the anomaly situation,” says the paper. In March, an IPCC special report said there was mounting evidence of a shift in patterns of extreme events in some regions, including more intense and longer droughts and rainfall. But it saw no increases in the frequency, length or severity of tropical storms.
A wildfire burning on military land south of Fairbanks has grown to 42,000 acres, and smoke continues to cause hazy conditions. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports the Dry Creek Fire is growing because of shifting winds. The fire was more than 28,000 acres on Thursday, and spread 14,000 acres throughout the day. The fire located on land co-managed by the U.S. Army and the Bureau of Land Management about 25 miles south of Fairbanks. Air quality advisories have been issued. The fire is not being actively fought since there’s no threat to people or resources. However, that could change if the fire jumps the Tanana River. The National Weather Service expects winds to shift the fire away from population centers on Friday, when rain could also suppress the fire.
A Malian refugee pulls a jerry-can of water in Mauritania Enlarge A Malian refugee pulls a jerrican of water at the Mbere refugee camp on May 3, 2012, near Bassiknou, southern Mauritania. The worst effects of drought could be avoided if countries had a disaster management plan to confront the problem, the UN World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday. The worst effects of drought could be avoided if countries had a disaster management plan to confront the problem, the UN World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday.
With world food prices 6 percent higher now than at the start of the year and approaching the 2010 record, “it’s time for countries affected by drought to move towards developing a policy”, said Mannava Sivakumar, director of the WMO’s Climate Prediction and Adaptation Branch. Such a global approach would also help counter the “major impact” of El Nino, said Sivakumar, in reference to the weather system credited with causing dry conditions in countries including Australia, India and much of east Africa, and flooding in Latin American countries. Initial forecasts for El Nino show that water temperatures in the Pacific are likely to be warmer than normal for September and October, he said, echoing recent Japanese meteorological research that the phenomenon is likely to last until winter in the northern hemisphere. “If it continues through the winter months there could be some consequences but we will carefully monitor (them),” said Sivakumar. Despite repeated droughts throughout human history and their long-term impact compared with other natural disasters, Australia is the only country in the world to develop a risk management policy for drought, Sivakumar said. “To fill the existing vacuum in virtually every nation (for drought management)” the WMO is to host a high-level meeting on national drought policies in Geneva next March, the UN agency said in a statement. Such measures would include better drought monitoring by countries, implementing early-warning systems and most importantly putting in place an “effective system to help the poorest of the poor”, Sivakumar said. Communicating the information to largely uneducated rural farming communities was essential, said Sivakumar, since this would enable them to avoid the worst effects of droughts by taking measures such as thinning crops to reduce the overall water requirement. This would ensure that they would have “some crop instead of no crop”, said Sivakumar.
This NOAA GOES-13 satellite image taken on Aug. 21 at 7:45 a.m. EDT shows three of the four tropical systems being watched in the Atlantic Ocean basin. From left to right are: System 95L, Tropical Depression 9 and System 96L. Post-tropical Storm Gordon is just beyond the horizon. Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project.
The Atlantic Ocean is kicking into high gear with low pressure areas that have a chance at becoming tropical depressions, storms and hurricanes. Satellite imagery from NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites have provided visible, infrared and microwave data on four low pressure areas. In addition, NASA’s GOES Project has been producing imagery of all systems using NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite to see post-Tropical Storm Gordon, Tropical Depression 9, and Systems 95L and 96L.
Tropical Storm Gordon is no longer a tropical storm and is fizzling out east of the Azores. Tropical Depression 9 was born on Aug. 20 and continues to get organized. Behind Tropical Depression 9 in the eastern Atlantic is another low pressure area called System 96L. In the Gulf of Mexico lies another low, called System 95L.
In an image taken from NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite on Aug. 21 at 7:45 a.m. EDT, all of the systems were visible except for post-tropical Storm Gordon. The storms are seen lined up along the Atlantic basin from left to right with System 95L in the Gulf of Mexico, Tropical Depression 9 just east of the Caribbean Sea and System 96L in the eastern Atlantic Ocean.
NOAA manages the GOES-13 satellite, and NASA’s GOES Project uses the data to create images and animations out of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Tropical Depression 9 On Aug. 20 at 0435 UTC (12:35 a.m. EDT) before System 94L organized into Tropical Storm 9, NASA’s Aqua satellite passed overhead, and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured an infrared image of the storm.
It showed that the strongest convection (rising air that forms the thunderstorms that make up the tropical cyclone) were located south of the center of circulation.
Those thunderstorms had cold cloud top temperatures of -63 Fahrenheit (-52 Celsius) that indicated there was strong uplift in the low pressure area, and were an indication that the system could strengthen, which it did later into a depression.
Tropical Depression 9 has been the cause for tropical storm warning posts in a number of islands. On Aug. 21, a Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for Dominica, Guadeloupe, Desirade, Les Saintes, Marie Galante, and St. Martin.
TD9 appears as a rounded storm on the GOES-13 satellite image from Aug. 21. In the image, low pressure area “System 96L” trails to the southwest of TD9.
On Aug. 21 at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 UTC) Tropical Depression 9 (TD9) had maximum sustained winds near 35 mph (55 kmh) and is expected to strengthen into a tropical storm later [today]. It was located about 645 miles (1,035 km) east of Guadeloupe near latitude 15.1 north and longitude 51.8 west. TD90 is moving toward the west near 20 mph (32 kmh) and is expected to continue moving in that direction for the next couple of days, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).
NHC said that the cyclone should move through the central Lesser Antilles on Wed., Aug. 22 and move into the Caribbean Sea the next day. NHC expects rainfall between 4 and 8 inches to affect the northern Windward and the Leeward Islands, accompanied by heavy surf and rip tides. System 96L in Eastern Atlantic
System 96L appears well-defined on the GOES-13 satellite imagery. It is associated with a tropical wave, and is spinning about 425 miles southwest of the Cape Verde Islands. The NHC said that System 96L could very well become the tenth tropical depression of the Atlantic Hurricane Season in the next day or two. It is moving to the west at 15 mph.
System 95L Struggles in the Gulf of Mexico The eastern-most low pressure area in the Atlantic Ocean basin is System 95L, located in the western Gulf of Mexico. It is producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms just off-shore of the northeastern coast of Mexico. The low-level center of circulation is also elongated, which is a bad sign for a tropical cyclone trying to organize. Tropical cyclones need a strong, rounded circulation to strengthen.
The NHC noted that slow development is still possible before System 95L moves inland in northeastern Mexico later in the day on Wed. Aug 21. The system has a 30 percent chance of developing before that happens. Once inland, its chances for development are greatly reduced because it will be cut off from its life-giving warm water supply.
Tropical Storm Gordon is History On Monday, August 20, satellite imagery and surface data revealed that Tropical Storm Gordon lost his tropical characteristics, making it a post-tropical cyclone. According to Reuters news, Gordon caused some power outages, fallen trees and minor flooding.
The National Hurricane Center issued their final advisory on Gordon on August 20 at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 UTC). At that time, Gordon still had maximum sustained winds near 45 mph (75 kmh) and was weakening.
Gordon was about 370 miles (595 km) east-northeast of the Azores, near latitude 39.2 north and longitude 20.3 west. Gordon was moving east-northeast near 16 mph (26 kmh) and was expected to turn southeast while weakening further. Gordon is expected to dissipate in a couple of days east of Portugal.
Over the past 10,000 years, climate changes in the Dead Sea region have led to surprisingly swift desertification within mere decades. This is what researchers from the University of Bonn and their Israeli colleagues found when analyzing pollen in sediments and fluctuations in sea levels, calling the findings ‘dramatic.’ They are presented in the current issue of the international geosciences journal Quaternary Science Reviews, whose print version is published on 23 August.
The Dead Sea, a salt sea without an outlet, lies over 400 meters below sea level. Tourists like its high salt content because it increases their buoyancy. “For scientists, however, the Dead Sea is a popular archive that provides a diachronic view of its climate past,” says Prof. Dr. Thomas Litt from the Steinmann-Institute for Geology, Mineralogy and Paleontology at the University of Bonn. Using drilling cores from riparian lake sediments, paleontologists and meteorologists from the University of Bonn deduced the climate conditions of the past 10,000 years. This became possible because the Dead Sea level has sunk drastically over the past years, mostly because of increasing water withdrawals lowering the water supply. Oldest pollen analysis In collaboration with the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (German Research Centre for Geosciences) and Israel’s Geological Service, the researchers took a 21 m long sediment sample in the oasis Ein Gedi at the west bank of the Dead Sea. They then matched the fossil pollen to indicator plants for different levels of precipitation and temperature. Radiocarbon-dating was used to determine the age of the layers. “This allowed us to reconstruct the climate of the entire postglacial era,” Prof. Litt reports. “This is the oldest pollen analysis that has been done on the Dead Sea to date.” In total, there were three different formations of vegetation around this salt sea. In moist phases, a lush, sclerophyll vegetation thrived as can be found today around the Mediterranean Sea. When the climate turned drier, steppe vegetation took over. Drier episodes yet were characterized by desert plants. The researchers found some rapid changes between moist and dry phases.
Transforming pollen data into climate information The pollen data allows inferring what kinds of plants were growing at the corresponding times. Meteorologists from the University of Bonn took this paleontological data and converted it into climate information. Using statistical methods, they matched plant species with statistical parameters regarding temperature and precipitation that determine whether a certain plant can occur. “This allows us to make statements on the probable climate that prevailed during a certain period of time within the catchment area of the Dead Sea,” reports Prof. Dr. Andreas Hense from the University of Bonn’s Meteorological Institute. The resilience of the resulting climate information was tested using the data on Dead Sea level fluctuations collected by their Israeli colleagues around Prof. Dr. Mordechai Stein from the Geological Services in Jerusalem. “The two independent data records corresponded very closely,” explains Prof. Litt. “In the moist phases that were determined based on pollen analysis, our Israeli colleagues found that water levels were indeed rising in the Dead Sea, while they fell during dry episodes.” This is plausible since the water level of a terminal lake without an outlet is exclusively determined by precipitation and evaporation. Droughts led to the biblical exodus According to the Bonn researchers’ data, there were distinct dry phases particularly during the pottery Neolithic (about 7,500 to 6,500 years ago), as well as at the transition from the late Bronze Age to the early Iron Age (about 3,200 years ago). “Humans were also strongly affected by these climate changes,” Prof. Litt summarizes the effects. The dry phases might have resulted in the Canaanites’ urban culture collapsing while nomads invaded their area. “At least, this is what the Old Testament refers to as the exodus of the Israelites to the Promised Land.” Dramatic results In addition, this look back allows developing scenarios for potential future trends. “Our results are dramatic; they indicate how vulnerable the Dead Sea ecosystems are,” says Prof. Litt. “They clearly show how surprisingly fast lush Mediterranean sclerophyll vegetation can morph into steppe or even desert vegetation within a few decades if it becomes drier.” Back then, the consequences in terms of agriculture and feeding the population were most likely devastating. The researchers want to probe even further back into the climate past of the region around the Dead Sea by drilling even deeper. More information: Holocene climate variability in the Levant from the Dead Sea pollen record, Quaternary Science Reviews 49 (August 2012), dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2012.06.012 Journal reference: Quaternary Science Reviews search and more info website Provided by University of Bonn search and more info website
Ice melts next to the village of Ny-Aalesundin Norway in 2009. The Arctic ice cap is melting at a startlingly rapid rate and may shrink to its smallest-ever level within weeks as the planet’s temperatures rise, US scientists said Tuesday. The Arctic ice cap is melting at a startlingly rapid rate and may shrink to its smallest-ever level within weeks as the planet’s temperatures rise, US scientists said Tuesday.
Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder said that the summer ice in the Arctic was already nearing its lowest level recorded, even though the summer melt season is not yet over. “The numbers are coming in and we are looking at them with a sense of amazement,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the university. “If the melt were to just suddenly stop today, we would be at the third lowest in the satellite record. We’ve still got another two weeks of melt to go, so I think we’re very likely to set a new record,” he told AFP. The previous record was set in 2007 when the ice cap shrunk to 4.25 million square kilometers (1.64 million square miles), stunning scientists who had not forecast such a drastic melt so soon. The Colorado-based center said that one potential factor could be an Arctic cyclone earlier this month. However, Serreze played down the effects of the cyclone and said that this year’s melt was all the more remarkable because of the lack of special weather factors seen in 2007. Serreze said that the extensive melt was in line with the effects of global warming, with the ice being hit by a double whammy of rising temperatures in the atmosphere and warmer oceans. “The ice now is so thin in the spring just because of the general pattern of warming that large parts of the pack ice just can’t survive the summer melt season anymore,” he said. Russia’s Roshydromet environmental agency also reported earlier this month that the Arctic melt was reaching record levels. Several studies have predicted that the cap in the summer could melt completely in coming decades. The thaw in the Arctic is rapidly transforming the geopolitics of the region, with the long forbidding ocean looking more attractive to the shipping and energy industries.
Five nations surround the Arctic Ocean — Russia, which has about half of the coastline, along with Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States — but the route could see a growing number of commercial players. The first ship from China — the Xuelong, or Snow Dragon — recently sailed from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the Arctic Ocean, cutting the distance by more than 40 percent. Egill Thor Nielsson, an Icelandic scientist who participated in the expedition, said last week in Reykjavik that he expected China to be increasingly interested in the route as it was relatively easy to sail. But the rapid melt affects local people’s lifestyles and scientists warn of serious consequences for the rest of the planet. The Arctic ice cap serves a vital function by reflecting light and hence keeping the earth cool. Serreze said it was possible that the rapid melt was a factor in severe storms witnessed in recent years in the United States and elsewhere as it changed the nature of the planet’s temperature gradients. The planet has charted a slew of record temperatures in recent years. In the continental United States, July was the hottest ever recorded with temperatures 3.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.8 Celsius) higher than the average in the 20th century, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Most scientists believe that carbon emissions from industry cause global warming. Efforts to control the gases have encountered resistance in a number of countries, with some lawmakers in the United States questioning the science.
Virginia’s largest city may get up to 45,000 acres smaller over the next century, due to an anticipated 2.3 to 5.2 feet of relative sea-level rise expected in Virginia Beach – a rise that would also impact the entire Hampton Roads region and the Eastern Shore. Recognizing the challenges this will pose, the University of Virginia’s Institute for Environmental Negotiation is assisting citizens and decision-makers in long-range planning. Under director Frank Dukes, associate director Tanya Denckla Cobb and graduate associate Melissa Keywood – all from U.Va.’s School of Architecture – the institute is working to develop awareness of, and strategies to face, rising sea levels. Beginning in March 2011, the institute established partnerships with the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, Wetlands Watch and the city of Virginia Beach to host four listening sessions for Hampton Roads and Eastern Shore citizens to share their experiences of sea-level rise and ideas for confronting it. Following these gatherings, the institute has been working with its partners to synthesize its findings and develop recommendations for action. Later this week, it will release a report on a May 9 session in Virginia Beach, at which the institute facilitated a meeting of a diverse group of 15 regional stakeholders. There, the project partners sorted through 56 potential policies and chose the five most important, and relevant, policy categories for Virginia Beach, discussing in detail the costs and benefits of each category. These included preparing educational materials, tools and online programs; the use of transfer or purchase of development rights; reasonable restrictions and rolling easements; special tax districts for improvements; and updating the zoning code to prepare buildings in vulnerable areas. “I feel strongly that planners need to play a pivotal role in helping communities prepare for these difficult challenges. However, this is not an issue we can address with traditional planning tools, like zoning, alone,” said Keywood, who developed the coastal listening sessions (for which she earned the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Walter B. Jones Award for Excellence in Coastal and Ocean Management in June). Nearly 200 citizens and elected officials turned out June 13 for a Coastal Flooding Workshop in Melfa on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Denckla Cobb, the project coordinator, said the turnout was “record-breaking,” and remarked on participants’ enthusiasm and desire for local government to boost its involvement in education and outreach regarding rising sea levels – a sentiment also heard in Virginia Beach. A vast majority of the Melfa participants said they had noticed changes in wetlands and beaches, she said. “They know that rising sea levels are having real impacts, such as causing more frequent flooding during storm events. It’s also clear that people want more information, not just about what’s happening and why, but also about specific ways communities can prepare for sea-level rise.” “It was clear that people were very interested in catalyzing action to implement new policies to address this concern,” said Keywood, a graduate of the Architecture School’s master’s program in urban and environmental planning. According to a survey taken in Virginia Beach, people considered themselves fairly knowledgeable about sea-level rise and its potential consequences, ranging from wildlife habitat concerns to potential road blockages. “Participants in our workshops are very in tune with their local environments and are acutely aware of the changes they’ve observed over time in regards to habitat loss, shoreline erosion, business loss and others,” Keywood said. Nevertheless, Denckla Cobb saw that many were less aware of strategies and tools they could implement on an individual or local level – reinforcing the need for the institute to play a role in facilitating the development of practical solutions. Sea-level rise is a “multifaceted issue for which there are not a lot of practical, usable tools, unless political will changes,” she said, adding, “There is a difference between knowing what is needed and getting it done.” In addition to the efforts of the institute, Virginia Sea Grant has funded graduate student fieldwork in Hampton Roads as part of architecture professor Timothy Beatley’s “Climate Change and Coastal Planning” course. Its final report focuses on adaptation and accommodation as ways to mitigate sea-level rise, specifically through strategies of land use and growth management, resilience and knowledge dissemination. Since 1980, the Institute for Environmental Negotiation has worked throughout Virginia to mediate natural and man-made environmental issues, such as re-mediating coal mines, revitalizing tobacco farms and mitigating sea-level changes. For more on its Community Resilience in Coastal Virginia initiative, including the new focus group reports, visit its website. Provided by University of Virginia search and more info website
Spotless Days Current Stretch: 0 days
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
Since 2004: 821 days
Typical Solar Min: 486 days
Update 25 Aug 2012
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 3 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 3 quiet explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 6.7 nT
Bz: 5.7 nT north explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 0936 UT
Coronal Holes: 25 Aug 12
A stream of solar wind flowing from the indicated coronal hole should reach Earth on Aug. 26-27. Credit: SDO/AIA.
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2012 Aug 24 2200 UTC
FLARE
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
CLASS M
10 %
10 %
CLASS X
01 %
01 %
Geomagnetic Storms:
Probabilities for significant disturbances in Earth’s magnetic field are given for three activity levels: active, minor storm, severe storm
Scientists have long suspected that the Sun’s 11-year cycle influences climate of certain regions on Earth. Yet records of average, seasonal temperatures do not date back far enough to confirm any patterns. Now, armed with a unique proxy, an international team of researchers show that unusually cold winters in Central Europe are related to low solar activity — when sunspot numbers are minimal. The freezing of Germany’s largest river, the Rhine, is the key.
Researchers have linked low solar activity to a localized, temporary cooling of Central Europe, by studying the freezing of the Rhine river. (Credit: Warburg via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons license)
Although Earth’s surface overall continues to warm, the new analysis has revealed a correlation between periods of low activity of the Sun and of some cooling — on a limited, regional scale in Central Europe, along the Rhine.
“The advantage with studying the Rhine is because it’s a very simple measurement,” said Frank Sirocko lead author of a paper on the study and professor of Sedimentology and Paleoclimatology at the Institute of Geosciences of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. “Freezing is special in that it’s like an on-off mode. Either there is ice or there is no ice.”
From the early 19th through mid-20th centuries, riverboat men used the Rhine for cargo transport. And so docks along the river have annual records of when ice clogged the waterway and stymied shipping. The scientists used these easily-accessible documents, as well as other additional historical accounts, to determine the number of freezing episodes since 1780.
Sirocko and his colleagues found that between 1780 and 1963, the Rhine froze in multiple places fourteen different times. The sheer size of the river means it takes extremely cold temperatures to freeze over making freezing episodes a good proxy for very cold winters in the region, Sirocko said.
Mapping the freezing episodes against the solar activity’s 11-year cycle — a cycle of the Sun’s varying magnetic strength and thus total radiation output — Sirocko and his colleagues determined that ten of the fourteen freezes occurred during years when the Sun had minimal sunspots. Using statistical methods, the scientists calculated that there is a 99 percent chance that extremely cold Central European winters and low solar activity are inherently linked.
“We provide, for the first time, statistically robust evidence that the succession of cold winters during the last 230 years in Central Europe has a common cause,” Sirocko said.
With the new paper, Sirocko and his colleagues have added to the research linking solar variability with climate, said Thomas Crowley, Director of the Scottish Alliance for Geoscience, Environment, and Society, who was not involved with the study.
“There is some suspension of belief in this link,” Crowley said, “and this study tilts the argument more towards thinking there really is something to this link. If you have more statistical evidence to support this explanation, one is more likely to say it’s true.”
The study, conducted by researchers at Johannes Gutenberg and the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich, Switzerland, is set to be published August 25 in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
When sunspot numbers are down, the Sun emits less ultraviolet radiation. Less radiation means less heating of Earth’s atmosphere, which sparks a change in the circulation patterns of the two lowest atmospheric levels, the troposphere and stratosphere. Such changes lead to climatic phenomena such as the North Atlantic Oscillation, a pattern of atmospheric pressure variations that influences wind patterns in the North Atlantic and weather behavior in regions in and around Europe.
“Due to this indirect effect, the solar cycle does not impact hemispherically averaged temperatures, but only leads to regional temperature anomalies,” said Stephan Pfahl, a co-author of the study who is now at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich.
The authors show that this change in atmospheric circulation leads to cooling in parts of Central Europe but warming in other European countries, such as Iceland. So, sunspots don’t necessarily cool the entire globe — their cooling effect is more localized, Sirocko said.
In fact, studies have suggested that the extremely cold European winters of 2010 and 2011 were the result of the North Atlantic Oscillation, which Sirocko and his team now link to the low solar activity during that time.
The 2010 and 2011 European winters were so cold that they resulted in record lows for the month of November in certain countries. Some who dispute the occurrence of anthropogenic climate change argue that this two-year period shows that Earth’s climate is not getting any warmer. But climate is a complex system, Sirocko said. And a short-term, localized dip in temperatures only temporarily masks the effects of a warming world.
“Climate is not ruled by one variable,” said Sirocko. “In fact, it has [at least] five or six variables. Carbon dioxide is certainly one, but solar activity is also one.”
Moreover, the researchers also point out that, despite Central Europe’s prospect to suffer colder winters every 11 years or so, the average temperature of those winters is increasing and has been for the past three decades. As one piece of evidence of that warming, the Rhine River has not frozen over since 1963. Sirocko said such warming results, in part, from climate change.
To establish a more complete record of past temperature dips, the researchers are looking to other proxies, such as the spread of disease and migratory habits.
“Disease can be transported by insects and rats, but during a strong freezing year that is not likely,” said Sirocko. “Also, Romans used the Rhine to defend against the Germanics, but as soon as the river froze people could move across it. The freezing of the Rhine is very important on historical timescales.”
It wasn’t, however, the Rhine that first got Sirocko to thinking about the connection between freezing rivers and sunspot activity. In fact, it was a 125-mile ice-skating race he attended over 20 years ago in the Netherlands that sparked the scientist’s idea.
“Skaters can only do this race every 10 or 11 years because that’s when the rivers freeze up,” Sirocko said. “I thought to myself, ‘There must be a reason for this,’ and it turns out there is.”
As the midnight sun sets, aurora season has resumed around the Arctic Circle. Last night’s display was photographed by Antony Spencer from Kirkufell, Snaefellsnes, Iceland:
“The midnight sun is now long gone in Iceland,” says Spencer. “I was heading back from a sunset photo shoot when I noticed the auroras. They were bright enough to see right through the sunset colors.”
More auroras are in the offing. A stream of solar wind is heading for Earth, due to arrive on August 26-27.
Information courtesy of NASA, NOAA, the US Library, the Goddard Space Flight Center, the Jet Propulsion Lab, the Environmental Visualization Laboratory, the NASA Earth Observatory, SDO, SOHO, Stereo, ISWA, SSEC, HAARP, and SolarIMG – Your information, images, and videos were essential to this video.
(KCRA) —Reports of a large meteor had many people buzzing Wednesday morning.
Viewers called the KCRA 3 newsroom and the sheriff’s departments in several parts of Northern California, along with Reno, to ask about a meteor that appeared about 11:15 p.m. Tuesday.
Witnesses said it lasted for about four seconds and lit up the sky.
Online meteor tracking sites and blogs report the meteor could be seen over parts of Oregon, California and Nevada.
Research presented Aug. 23, 2012 at the International Astronomical Union General Assembly in Beijing has found the first group of galaxies that is just like ours, a rare sight in the local Universe.
This image shows one of the two ‘exact matches’ to the Milky Way system found in the survey. The larger galaxy, denoted GAMA202627, which is similar to the Milky Way clearly has two large companions off to the bottom left of the image. In this image bluer colours indicate hotter, younger, stars like many of those that are found in our galaxy. (Credit: Dr. Aaron Robotham, ICRAR/St Andrews using GAMA data)
The Milky Way is a fairly typical galaxy on its own, but when paired with its close neighbours — the Magellanic Clouds — it is very rare, and could have been one of a kind, until a survey of our local Universe found another two examples just like us.
Astronomer Dr Aaron Robotham, jointly from the University of Western Australia node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and the University of St Andrews in Scotland, searched for groups of galaxies similar to ours in the most detailed map of the local Universe yet, the Galaxy and Mass Assembly survey (GAMA).
“We’ve never found another galaxy system like the Milky Way before, which is not surprising considering how hard they are to spot! It’s only recently become possible to do the type of analysis that lets us find similar groups,” says Dr Robotham.
“Everything had to come together at once: we needed telescopes good enough to detect not just galaxies but their faint companions, we needed to look at large sections of the sky, and most of all we needed to make sure no galaxies were missed in the survey”
Sophisticated simulations of how galaxies form don’t produce many examples similar to the Milky Way and its surrounds, predicting them to be quite a rare occurrence. Astronomers haven’t been able to tell just how rare until now, with the discovery of not just one but two exact matches amongst the hundreds of thousands of galaxies surveyed.
“We found about 3% of galaxies similar to the Milky Way have companion galaxies like the Magellanic Clouds, which is very rare indeed. In total we found 14 galaxy systems that are similar to ours, with two of those being an almost exact match,” says Dr Robotham.
The Milky Way is locked in a complex cosmic dance with its close companions the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, which are clearly visible in the southern hemisphere night sky. Many galaxies have smaller galaxies in orbit around them, but few have two that are as large as the Magellanic Clouds.
Dr Robotham’s work also found that although companions like the Magellanic Clouds are rare, when they are found they’re usually near a galaxy very like the Milky Way, meaning we’re in just the right place at the right time to have such a great view in our night sky.
“The galaxy we live in is perfectly typical, but the nearby Magellenic Clouds are a rare, and possibly short-lived, occurrence. We should enjoy them whilst we can, they’ll only be around for a few billion more years,” adds Dr Robotham.
Dr Robotham and colleagues have been awarded further time on telescopes in New South Wales and Chile to study these Milky Way twin systems now that they’ve been found.
The Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey is an international collaboration led from ICRAR and the Australian Astronomical Observatory to map our local Universe in closer detail.
ICRAR is a joint venture between Curtin University and The University of Western Australia providing research excellence in the field of radio astronomy.
As beach season winds down, a number of Manitoba lakes are dealing with blue-green algae. Pelican Lake in southwest Manitoba reported toxic algae – signs have been posted and drinking and swimming is not recommended. Algal blooms were reported at Rock Lake, Oak Lake beach, Inverness Falls beach, Ochre Beach, Victoria, Patricia and West Grand beaches on Lake Winnipeg. Algal blooms were also reported at Stephenfield Reservoir, Big Whiteshell Lake, Lake Minnewasta and Poplar Bay on Lac du Bonnet, and the Salt Lake campground beach.
Biohazard name:
Blue-Green (cyanobacteria) Algae bloom
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
25.08.2012
Biological Hazard
USA
State of California, Burbank [700 block of Screenland Drive]
Health officials are trying to stop the spread of the potentially deadly disease Typhus, primarily transmitted by fleas. “Murine typhus, which is a disease transmitted primarily by fleas, has been slowly increasing in Los Angeles County,” said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, director of the L.A. County Department of Health. “It is not an epidemic. We had a total of 38 cases reported last year. We’ve had 15 confirmed this year and another 17 that we’re investigating.” Health officials say people can get typhus when their pets come in contact with wild, flea-infested animals like possums, rats, feral cats and others. “And some of the fleas have moved from those animals to your animals,” said Fielding. If one of those fleas from your pet bites you, you could end up with typhus. Health officials say the symptoms of typhus are similar to a bad case of the flu: headaches, high fever, chills, muscle aches and more. Another sign of typhus is a rather large rash that can break out over your body. “The good news is when it’s diagnosed it’s very treatable with antibiotics,” said Fielding. At least one human infection had been confirmed so far this year in Burbank, and two have been verified in the San Fernando Valley. Another three cases are under investigation, according to public health officials. In Los Angeles County, 15 cases of typhus have been confirmed so far this year, while another 17 were still under investigation, according to Fielding. The latest infections are part of a trend in which county officials have noticed a slight increase in flea-borne typhus cases over the past five to six years.
Today
HAZMAT
USA
State of Texas, Mount Pleasant [Pilgrim's Pride Corporation]
An ammonia leak at a northeast Texas meat packing plant has sickened dozens of people. A spokeswoman at Titus Regional Medical Center in Mount Pleasant says hospital staff was advised to prepare to receive as many as 40 patients. Spokeswoman Shannon Norfleet says the cases were said to be minor and examinations were expected to be precautionary. The leak was reported about 2:30 p.m. Friday at the Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plant in Mount Pleasant, about 110 miles northeast of Dallas. Pilgrim’s Pride spokeswoman Margaret McDonald said she was gathering details on how the leak occurred.
About 45,000 gallons of cyanide water solution spilled onto a mine road at the Fort Knox gold mine late Thursday after a bulldozer struck a supply line, according to a Friday notice from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. The DEC reported that much of the spill zone is atop a lined area of the heap leach pile, which is an area that holds material that is treated with the cyanide water solution. The buried 12-inch pipeline carrying the cyanide solution was broke open when it was struck by the bulldozer’s ripper blade, the DEC report said. The rupture and spill were discovered at 9 p.m. Thursday and were reported to DEC less than an hour later. The DEC report said mine operators used heavy equipment to create a raised berm along the spill area to prevent the liquid from spreading and to keep it away from vehicle traffic. DEC sent an investigator to the site and will monitor the cleanup, the report said. The area is also being surveyed to determine the extent of the affected area. Fort Knox is located 26 miles northeast of Fairbanks. The mine, owned by Kinross, began operating in 1996 and in April 2011 poured its 5 millionth ounce of gold. It is expected to continue operating until 2021.
HONG KONG — One of the longest bridges in northern China collapsed on Friday, just nine months after it opened, setting off a storm of criticism from Chinese Internet users and underscoring questions about the quality of construction in the country’s rapid expansion of its infrastructure.
A collapsed section of the Yangmingtan Bridge’s ramp, in the city of Harbin, dropped 100 feet to the ground on Friday, killing three people and injuring five.
The collapse left three people dead and five others injured.
A nearly 330-foot-long section of a ramp of the eight-lane Yangmingtan Bridge in the city of Harbin dropped 100 feet to the ground. Four trucks plummeted with it, resulting in three deaths and five injuries.
The 9.6-mile bridge is one of three built over the Songhua River in that area in the past four years. China’s economic stimulus program in 2009 and 2010 helped the country avoid most of the effects of the global economic downturn, but involved incurring heavy debt to pay for the rapid construction of new bridges, highways and high-speed rail lines all over the country.
Questions about the materials used during the construction and whether the projects were properly engineered have been the subject of national debate ever since a high-speed train plowed into the back of a stopped train on the same track on July 23 last year in the eastern city of Wenzhou. The crash killed 40 people and injured 191; a subsequent investigation blamed in particular flaws in the design of the signaling equipment.
Photographs on Chinese Web sites on Friday appeared to show that the collapsed section of the Yangmingtan Bridge’s ramp had fallen on land, not in the river.
According to the official Xinhua news agency, the Yangmingtan Bridge was the sixth major bridge in China to collapse since July 2011. Chinese officials have tended to blame overloaded trucks for the collapses, and did so again on Friday.
Many in China have attributed the recent spate of bridge collapses to corruption, and online reaction to the latest collapse was scathing.
“Corrupt officials who do not die just continue to cause disaster after disaster,” said one post on Friday on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging service similar to Twitter.
Another Internet user expressed hope “that the government will put heavy emphasis on this and investigate to find out the real truth, and give both the dead and the living some justice!” A third user was more laconic, remarking, “Tofu engineering work leads to a tofu bridge.”
Chinese news media reported that the bridge had cost 1.88 billion renminbi, or almost $300 million.
Note this video does not imply the world is going to end in 2012……
EXTREME WEATHER and EARTHCHANGES……EARTHQUAKES SINKHOLES FLOODS DROUGHT SNOW ANIMAL KILLS ETC
14 DAYS OF GLOBAL CATACLYSM AUGUST 2012
[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.]
BEN NUCKOLS, Associated Press, STEVE SZKOTAK, Associated Press
FILE – In this Aug. 23, 2011, file photo, a U.S. Park Service helicopter flies between the Washington Monument and the Capitol on the National Mall in Washington, following an earthquake in the Washington area. The unexpected jolt cracked the Washington Monument in spots and toppled delicate masonry high atop the National Cathedral. The shaking was felt far along the densely populated Eastern seaboard from Georgia to New England. While West Coast earthquake veterans scoffed at what they viewed as only a moderate temblor, last year’s quake has forever changed the way officials along the East Coast view emergency preparedness. Photo: AP / AP
MINERAL, Va. (AP) — When the “Big One” rocked the East Coast one year ago, the earthquake centered on this rural Virginia town cracked ceiling tiles and damaged two local school buildings so badly that they had to be shuttered for good. Now as the academic year gets under way, students are reciting a new safety mantra: Drop, cover, and hold on.
Earthquake drills are now as ubiquitous as fire drills at Louisa County schools in central Virginia, where 4,600 students were attending classes when the 5.8-magnitude quake struck nearby on Aug. 23, 2011. Miraculously, no one was seriously hurt.
“It’s the new normal,” Superintendent Deborah D. Pettit said of the earthquake drills. “It’s become a normal part of the school routine and safety.”
One such drill is planned for Thursday at 1:51 p.m. EDT — the precise moment a year ago when the quake struck.
The unexpected jolt cracked the Washington Monument in spots and toppled delicate masonry high atop the National Cathedral. The shaking was felt far along the densely populated Eastern seaboard from Georgia to New England.
While West Coast earthquake veterans scoffed at what they viewed as only a moderate temblor, last year’s quake has changed the way officials along the East Coast view emergency preparedness.
Emergency response plans that once focused on hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding and snow are being revised to include quakes. Some states have enacted laws specifically related to the quake, and there is anecdotal evidence of a spike in insurance coverage for earthquake damage.
The quake was centered 3 to 4 miles beneath Mineral, a town of fewer than 500 people about 50 miles northwest of Richmond. Yet it was believed to have been felt by more people than any other in U.S. history.
The damage, estimated at more than $200 million, extended far beyond rural Louisa County. In the nation’s capital, the Washington Monument sustained several large cracks and remains closed indefinitely.
The National Park Service plans next month to finalize the contract to repair the Washington Monument. Repairs are expected to cost $15 million and require a massive scaffolding, and the landmark obelisk is likely to remain closed until 2014.
The National Cathedral reopened last November, but repairs are expected to take years and cost $20 million. The cathedral announced Thursday that it has received a $5 million grant from the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc. With that funding in place, stonemasons were scheduled to begin active restoration Thursday afternoon. Previously, they had been stabilizing the damaged components and cataloging the damage.
In Virginia, the North Anna Power Station became the first operating U.S. nuclear power plant shut down because of an earthquake.
Was it a once-in-a-century anomaly, or are there more quakes to come?
Scientists are trying to answer that question as they pore over the data and survey the epicenter from the air.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, much of central Virginia has been labeled for decades as an area of elevated seismic hazard. But last year’s quake was the largest known to occur in that seismic zone.
“Scientists would like to know if this earthquake was Virginia’s ‘Big One,’” said J. Wright Horton of the USGS.
Meanwhile, the quake prompted several jurisdictions to revise their emergency response plans.
Photographs of the inner crater inside the outer crater, the presence of magma inside the inner crater and pyroclastic deposits in the crater. (S. Vallejo and MF. Naranjo, OVT-IGEPN)
Small pyroclastic flow on the western flank of the volcano in the afternoon of August 21, 2012 (IGEPN)
Thermal image of the continuous emission of gases and ash accompanied by expulsion of incandescent material (Source: S. Vallejo, OVT-IG)
Thermal image of the northern flank of the volcano with fresh pyroclastic deposits and the trace of the lava flow recorded on Saturday August 18 (S. Vallejo, OVT-IGEPN)
Current seismic signal (RETU station, IG)
Tremor signal on current seismic recording (RETU station, IG)
SO2 plume from Tungurahua yesterday 21 Aug (NOAA)
Tungurahua’s eruption continues. This morning, a tall ash plume was rising to 32,000 ft (ca. 10 km) altitude and drifting west. A slight decrease in tremor is visible on the latest seismograms.
So far, effects of the eruption have been limited to ash fall. In canton Quero, the ash fall during the past days has damaged more than 5000 hectares of plant cultivations and hit about 2.000 families.
In the meanwhile, scientists from the volcano observatory have made an overflight of the volcano and posted the following interesting update (freely translated) for 20-21 Aug:
The volcano emits a neary constant eruption column, associated with explosions, that reached a maximum height of 5 km and an average height of 1.5 km above the crater, with moderate ash content, drifting to the west. There were no new reports of ash fall.
An increase in the number and size of the explosions was observed since 15:00 local time on 20 Aug. Until 16:00 on 21 Aug, there were 16 large explosions producing strong cannon-shot noises heard in villages near the volcano and in cities as far away as Ambato, Riobamba and Miracle.
The seismic activity at Tungurahua shows a constant tremor signal associated with steam, gas and ash emissions.
Otherwise, the roaring noises have decreased in intensity and duration with respect to the previous days.
In the evening observatory staff observed constant expulsion of hot material in jets. Lava blocks landed outside the crater and rolled up to 1.5 km from the top of the volcano’s flanks.
An explosion at 14:11 on 21 Aug generated an ash column rising 4 km above the crater, that produced a small pyroclastic flow that descended approximately 2.5 km along the Achupashal creek.
Staff of the Geophysical Institute of the National Polytechnic School conducted an overflight of the volcano yesterday afternoon for thermal and visual monitoring of the activity in the crater area and top of the mountain. They observed that that much of the western and southwestern flank have been covered by fresh ash and blocks.
Thermal images show near continuous explosive activity from the inner crater, ejecting incandescent material onto the the upper flanks of the volcano, where temperatures ranged between 116 and 150°C.
The morphology of the summit consists of an outer crater containing an inner crater about 80 m wide, and a few dozend meters distance from the outside crater. The inner crater was observed to be almost filled with fresh lava. Numerous large meter sized hot blocks could be identified in the crater area and the upper flanks. Temperatures measured at the crater raned between 550°C for the inner crater and 236°C at the outer crater.
Many fresh lava blocks have accumulated in ravines on the south-west, west and north-west upper flanks of the volcano. These could be mobilized to form avalanches IG scientists warn.
The thermal image analysis confirmed that during the night of Saturday, August 18, a lava flow and an incandescent avalanche of blocks that had accumulated in the north-western flank flew down through the Cusu canyon as had been observed then.
IG recommends the authorities and the general public to maintain protective and preparative measures in case the activity escalates further which is a possibility. Most danger during the ongoing activity comes from pyroclastic flows, lahars and ash fall.
An aerial view of New Yorkers taking in the sun on a beach at Coney Island on August 4, 2012 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Mario Tama/Getty Images/AFP)
PARIS: Heat waves, drought and floods that have struck the northern hemisphere for the third summer running are narrowing doubts that man-made warming is disrupting Earth’s climate system, say some scientists.
Climate experts as a group are reluctant to ascribe a single extreme event or season to global warming.
Weather, they argue, has to be assessed over far longer periods to confirm a shift in the climate and whether natural factors or fossil-fuel emissions are the cause.
But for some, such caution is easing.
A lengthening string of brutal weather events is going hand in hand with record-breaking rises in temperatures and greenhouse-gas levels, an association so stark that it can no longer be dismissed as statistical coincidence, they say.
“We prefer to look at average annual temperatures on a global scale, rather than extreme temperatures,” said Jean Jouzel, vice chairman of the U.N.’s Nobel-winning scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Even so, according to computer models, “over the medium and long term, one of the clearest signs of climate change is a rise in the frequency of heat waves”, he said.
“Over the last 50 years, we have seen that as warming progresses, heat waves are becoming more and more frequent,” Jouzel said.
“If we don’t do anything, the risk of a heat wave occurring will be 10 times higher by 2100 compared with the start of the century.”
The past three months have seen some extraordinary weather in the United States, Europe and East and Southeast Asia.
The worst drought in more than 50 years hit the U.S. Midwest breadbasket while forest fires stoked by fierce heat and dry undergrowth erupted in California, France, Greece, Italy, Croatia and Spain.
Heavy rains flooded Manila and Beijing and China’s eastern coast was hit by three typhoons in a week.
Last month was the warmest ever recorded for land in the northern hemisphere and a record high for the contiguous United States, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Globally, the temperature in July was the fourth highest since records began in 1880, it said.
James Hansen, arguably the world’s most famous climate scientist (and a bogeyman to climate skeptics), contends the link between extreme heat events and global warming is now all but irrefutable.
The evidence, he says, comes not from computer simulations but from weather observations themselves.
In a study published this month in the peer-reviewed U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Hansen and colleagues compared temperatures over the past three decades to a baseline of 1951-80, a period of relative stability.
Over the last 30 years, there was 0.5-0.6 C (0.9-1.0 F) of warming, a rise that seems small but “is already having important effects”, said Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
During the baseline period, cold summers occurred about a third of the time, but this fell to about 10 percent in the 30-year period that followed.
Hot summers, which during the baseline period occurred 33 percent of the time, rose to about 75 percent in the three decades that followed.
Even more remarkable, though, was the geographical expansion of heat waves. During the baseline period, an unusually hot summer would yield a heat wave that would cover just a few tenths of 1 percent of the world’s land area.
Today, though, an above average summer causes heat waves that in total affect about 10 percent of the land surface.
“The extreme summer climate anomalies in Texas in 2011, in Moscow in 2010 and in France in 2003 almost certainly would not have occurred in the absence of global warming with its resulting shift of the anomaly situation,” says the paper.
In March, an IPCC special report said there was mounting evidence of a shift in patterns of extreme events in some regions, including more intense and longer droughts and rainfall.
But it saw no increases in the frequency, length or severity of tropical storms.
Budgets leave governments in tough spot to get people, planes, bulldozers to beat back flames
Jeff Barnard / AP
A damaged truck sits among other remains on Wednesday at a rural house site outside Manton, Calif., where a huge wildfire burned through on Saturday, forcing residents to evacuate.
By Jeff Barnard and Nicholas K. Geranios
MANTON, Calif. — Twisted sheets of metal, the hulks of pickup trucks and brick walls were all that was left of homes once sheltered by green pine and cedar trees.
In a rural Northern California subdivision that was the latest to feel the wrath of massive western wildfires, long pine needles bent back on themselves, unburned but dried to a brittle dusty gray by the intensive heat of the Ponderosa fire.
Thousands of residents of tiny rural communities just outside Lassen Volcanic National Park who had been forced to flee soon after the fire was ignited by lighting on Saturday were allowed to return home on Wednesday. But hundreds of other homes were threatened as the fire burned a new front on the southern flank.
The blaze has grown to 44 square miles in the hills about 30 miles east of Redding.
Bob Folsom, who works at a nearby hydroelectric facility, tended the gasoline generator that is keeping his refrigerator running while utility crews worked to replace power lines destroyed by the blaze when it roared through the area last weekend.
“I was ready for this day,” he said. “I try to be self-sufficient.”
Folsom and his son never left their home as the fire burned within a half mile of them last weekend, close enough that they heard trees exploding and the flames roaring like a freight train. Over the past 10 years, they had thinned hundreds of trees, dug a pond to store water, and installed hydrants to fill fire hoses.
“When it comes through, it’s gonna come fast,” he said. “You don’t have time to cut down trees.”
Fires across the West have left some states with thin budgets to scramble to get people, planes, bulldozers and other tools on fire lines to beat back the flames.
And that’s with about a third of the annual wildfire season remaining.
Video: Ponderosa blaze prompts state of emergency (on this page)According to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, the nation as of Wednesday had seen 42,927 wildfires this year, which burned just over 7 million acres.
While the number of fires is down from the 10-year average of 54,209 as of Aug. 22, the acreage was well above the average of 5.4 million acres, said Don Smurthwaite, a NIFC spokesman.
“The fires are bigger,” he said.
In Colorado Springs, Colo., this summer, about 350 homes were burned in the most destructive wildfire in state history. Another fire in northern Colorado just before it scorched 257 homes.
The costs have mounted, not just in the damage to houses and other buildings.
In Utah, for example, officials have spent $50 million as of mid-August to fight more than 1,000 wildfires, far surpassing the $3 million a year the Legislature budgeted for fighting wildfires.
The state’s share is estimated at $16 million, said Roger Lewis of the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands. He said lawmakers will need to figure out how to come up with $13 million.
That’s the largest-ever supplemental appropriation request needed for firefighting in the state, agency spokesman Jason Curry said. He said, “It’s obviously been a big year.”
Washington state fire officials project that they will spend about $19.8 million on emergency fire suppression activities in the current fiscal year that ends next June.
That is expected to far surpass the $11.2 million the agency was allotted for such work, meaning the Department of Natural Resources will have to ask the Legislature for supplemental funds.
Not all Western states are seeing their budgets busted because of fires.
In Oregon, the state estimated it had spent $3.4 million through last Saturday to fight wildfires, with more than two months of the season left. Last year, it spent $6.6 million.
In Montana, forest managers told Gov. Brian Schweitzer that long-term forecasts call for fire conditions through the end of September, which is longer than normal.
The Northern Rockies Coordination Center put the total cost of fighting large wildfires in Montana, including costs to federal and state agencies, at $64 million so far this season. The state’s share is about $25 million to fight fires that have burned about 1,100 square miles.
Schweitzer said the state has already burned through cash reserves set aside for such natural disasters, but that plenty of money is available from surplus general funds.
While parts of the Southwest, particularly Southern California, still have three months of fire season left, Smurthwaite said, shorter days, declining temperatures and higher humidity will help curtail fires.
“That’s almost like putting a little wet blanket over a fire,” he said.
Firefighters in Northern California on Thursday made progress in containing a huge wildfire that has burned 80 homes and other buildings and is threatening 900 more. It was 57 percent contained on Thursday.
Fire crews assessing the rural area determined Thursday that 84 buildings had been destroyed since it was sparked by lightning Saturday. It was unclear when the structures burned and how many were homes.
More than 2,500 firefighters were battling the fire near several remote towns about 170 miles north of Sacramento.
Elsewhere in California, a large wildfire in Plumas National Forest continued to expand, helped by gusty winds.
In Washington state, fire crews still hoped to fully contain a week-old wildfire that has destroyed 51 homes and 26 outbuildings and damaged at least six other homes, authorities said.
The fire, about 75 miles east of Seattle, has caused an estimated $8.3 million in property damage.
In south-central Idaho, authorities have spent more than $23 million fighting a fire near the towns of Pine and Featherville and another in a forest near the resort town of Stanley.
Those wildfires have each consumed about 150 square miles, and will not be extinguished for some time, Smurthwaite said.
“We expect to be managing them for weeks to come,” he said.
Associated Press writers Haven Daley in Manton Calif., Jonathan Cooper in Salem, Ore., Brian Skoloff in Salt Lake City, Terry Collins, John S. Marshall and Terence Chea in San Francisco, Shannon Dininny in Yakima, Wash., Mike Baker in Olympia, Wash., and Jessie Bonner in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.
California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in three Northern California counties on Wednesday after officials said wildfires in the region had destroyed at least 50 buildings and were threatening hundreds more. Some 3,000 people have been evacuated as the so-called Ponderosa fire burned through more than 24,000 acres (9,700 hectares) of steep, rugged terrain in the rural counties of Tehama and Shasta, about 125 miles (200 km) north of state capital Sacramento. The blaze is 50-percent contained, fire officials said. Brown also declared a state of emergency in nearby Plumas County, where a fire has burned through 47,000 acres (19,000 hectares). Declaring a state of emergency frees up funds to help battle the fires. Firefighters on Wednesday were expected to start inspecting the damage from the Ponderosa fire, which they surveyed by air on Tuesday. Efforts to prevent the fire from overrunning the rural towns of Manton and Shingletown have succeeded so far despite high winds and heat, fire officials said.
23.08.2012
Forest / Wild Fire
USA
State of Washington, [Ahtanum Forest, Yakima County]
State officials have closed part of Ahtanum State Forest to help fight a wildfire burning in a closed section of the Yakama reservation about 15 miles northwest of White Swan. Steep terrain is hampering firefighters efforts to contain the blaze, said Sarah Foster, a spokeswoman for the state fire management team that took over the 331-acre fire early Wednesday. The team’s staging camp is in the closed state forest land, which covers Ahtanum Meadows, Ahtanum Campground, Whites Ridge Trailhead and Middle Fork Road. The closures, which were enacted by the state Department of Natural Resources, are expected to last through the weekend, Foster said. Other parts of the state forest, including South Fork Road, Nasty Creek Road, North Fork Road and Jackass Road, are still open to the public. Lightning sparked the fire Sunday. About 200 firefighters and support people are working to contain the flames, which are burning in lodge pole pine trees in the Diamond Butte area. There are no structures in the area. The fire’s commanders want to keep the flames from reaching forested land with heavy infestation of mountain pine beetles. The insects’ activity kill trees, which creates ready fuel for wildfire, Foster said. “Those dead trees burn really rapidly.” Calm weather conditions are expected until Friday, when a cool front will bring lower temperatures and higher winds, she said. Helicopters and nine hand crews worked Wednesday to make progress on the fire. The helicopters are flying out of an area a couple miles outside Tampico. As many as 350 firefigthers could be called in to corral the fire, she said. Some of them could come from the Taylor Bridge Fire, where the incident commanders are starting to reduce the number of crews. In Washington, firefighters can work 14 days on a fire, then have to take 24 hours off before going back out.
TODAY’s Al Roker tracks Tropical Storms Isaac’s current path as it takes aim at Puerto Rico and the eastern Caribbean.
By Weather.com and wire reports
Updated at 11:12 a.m. ET: Tropical Storm Isaac brought rain and gusty winds to Puerto Rico and the eastern Caribbean Islands and was expected to gradually strengthen as it moved west through the northeastern Caribbean on Thursday.
Forecasters said it was too soon to gauge Isaac’s potential impact on Tampa on Florida’s Gulf Coast, where the Republican National Convention is to run from Monday through Thursday.
Some computer models showed Isaac shifting slightly to the west and eventually moving parallel to Florida’s western coastline. Others forecast the storm to make landfall in South Florida and then move inland.
Forecasters predict Isaac will become a hurricane by Friday morning, but perhaps the more ominous threat in the short term is the potential for extremely heavy rainfall over the islands near Isaac’s path, weather.com reported.
More than a foot of rainfall, and potentially as much as 20 inches in some places, was possible on the island of Hispaniola, home to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Life-threatening flash floods and mudslides could result from that amount of rain.
Residents and visitors of the northern Caribbean, Yucatan Peninsula, southeastern United States and the central/eastern Gulf Coast should watch the progress of Isaac closely over the next week or more, weather.com reported.
Numerous watches and warnings have been issued, including a hurricane warning for Haiti and the south coast of the Dominican Republic. Puerto Rico was under a tropical storm warning, and it was expected to see its greatest impacts from Isaac on Thursday.
On Thursday, Isaac was passing just south of Puerto Rico. As the storm approached, Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuno declared a state of emergency, canceled classes, closed government agencies and activated the National Guard.
The government also froze prices on basic necessities such as food, batteries and other supplies and prepared emergency shelters at schools and other facilities.
Despite Tropical Storm Isaac’s threatening winds and rains ahead of the GOP convention in Florida, Mitt Romney and running mate Paul Ryan are taking aim at President Obama and his handling of the economy. NBC’s Peter Alexander reports.
Isaac was projected to weaken to a tropical storm over Haiti and then pass over Cuba before strengthening into a hurricane in the Florida Straits between Cuba and Florida. Its exact path after that remained uncertain.
Heavy rainfall, flooding and mudslides will be threats in all of the northern Caribbean islands regardless of how strong the system becomes, weather.com reported.
Isaac may also threaten U.S. energy interests in the Gulf of Mexico, weather experts said. It was centered about 265 miles southeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico, early on Thursday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Isaac had top sustained winds of 45 miles per hour.
At the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in southeast Cuba on Wednesday, authorities said Isaac forced the postponement of pretrial hearings that were to begin on Thursday for five prisoners accused of plotting the September 11 attacks.
The U.S. military was preparing flights to evacuate the base of lawyers, paralegals, interpreters, journalists, rights monitors and family members of 9/11 victims who had traveled there for the hearings.
Lixion Avila, a senior hurricane specialist at the hurricane center, suggested it would be foolish for anyone to think Tampa — where Republicans will nominate Mitt Romney as their presidential candidate — was out of harm’s way.
Hurricane expert Jeff Masters of private forecaster Weather Underground said Tampa had a 9 percent chance of getting hit with tropical storm-force winds for a 24-hour period ending on the morning the Republican convention kicks off. But that could make the storm a non-event in terms of the convention itself.
“I put the odds of an evacuation occurring during the convention in the current situation at 3 percent,” Masters said in his blog on the weatherunderground.com website.
Orange juice prices rise Florida has not been hit by a major hurricane since 2005 and forecasts showed Isaac was not expected to strengthen beyond a weak Category 1, with top sustained wind speeds of about 80 mph.
The threat to Florida triggered a nearly 6 percent jump in orange juice prices on Wednesday as they surged to a six-week high in trading in New York.
Florida produces more than 75 percent of the U.S. orange crop and accounts for about 40 percent of the world’s orange juice supply.
Lurking behind Isaac, the hurricane center said another tropical depression grew into Tropical Storm Joyce on Thursday.
Located about 1,045 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands, it was packing winds of 40 mph and was moving northwest at 17 mph.
Forecasts predicted it will eventually veer toward the open Atlantic and away from the Caribbean. No coastal watches or warnings were in effect for Joyce.
Reuters and weather.com contributed to this report.
Tropical Storm Isaac has strengthened slightly, data from the hurricane hunters show, but the storm remains disorganized and difficult to forecast. If you have to make decisions based upon what Isaac will do, I highly recommend that you wait until at least Friday morning to make a decision, if at all possible, as the forecasts then should be of significantly higher accuracy. Isaac continues to have a large area of light winds about 50 miles across near its center. This makes the storm subject to reformations of the center closer to areas of heavy thunderstorms that form, resulting in semi-random course changes. Until Isaac consolidates, the lack of a well-defined center will make forecasts of the storm’s behavior less accurate than usual. An Air Force Reserve hurricane hunter aircraft is in Isaac this afternoon, and has found that surface tropical storm-force winds on the east side of the storm, south of Puerto Rico, have undergone a modest expansion. These winds were mostly in the 40 mph range, with a few areas of 45 mph winds. The surface pressure remained fairly high, at 1004 mb. Infrared and visible satellite loops show that Isaac has fairly symmetric circular cloud pattern, with developing spiral bands that are contracting towards the center, which suggests intensification. However, the storm has a very clumpy appearance, and is a long way from being a hurricane. Given the storm’s continued reluctance to organize, Isaac is unlikely to reach hurricane strength before encountering Haiti and Cuba. An analysis of upper level winds from the University of Wisconsin CIMSS shows an upper-level outflow channel well-established to the north, and an intermittent outflow channel to the south. Radar imagery from Puerto Rico shows some weak low-level spiral bands that haven’t changed much in intensity or organization this afternoon. NOAA buoy 42060 reported 1-minute mean winds of 35 mph and a wind gust of 40 early this afternoon. At St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, wind gusts up to 45 mph were observed early this afternoon. Isaac’s rains caused major flooding last night in Trinidad and Tobago, the southernmost islands of the Lesser Antilles chain, according to the Trinidad Express. Isaac’s rains have not been heavy enough today to cause flooding problems on other islands.
Figure 1. True-color MODIS image of Isaac taken at 1:40 pm EDT August 23, 2012. Image credit: NASA.
Latest model runs for Isaac
The latest set of 12Z (8 am EDT) model runs have shifted to the west compared to the previous set of runs. The models continue to show a west-northwestward track to a point on the south coast of Hispaniola, then across eastern Cuba and into the Florida Straits between Florida and Cuba. A trough of low pressure is then expected to pull Isaac to the northwest and then north, towards the Florida Panhandle. The big news in this model cycle is that both of our top models–the GFS and ECMWF–predict that 5 – 6 days from now, the trough of low pressure pulling Isaac to the north may not be strong enough to finish the job. These models predict that the trough will lift out and a ridge of high pressure will build in, forcing Isaac more to the west. The GFS predicts this will occur after Isaac makes landfall in the Florida Panhandle, resulting in Isaac moving slowly to the west over land, from Georgia to Alabama. The ECMWF predicts the westward motion will happen while Isaac is in the northern Gulf of Mexico, resulting in an eventual landfall near the Louisiana/Texas border on Thursday. There are some huge issues to resolve to make an accurate long-range track forecast for Isaac. Where will its center consolidate? How will the interaction with the mountains of Hispaniola and Cuba will affect it? Where will Isaac pop off the coast of Cuba? Hopefully, the data being collected by the NOAA jet this afternoon will give us a more unified set of model forecasts early Friday morning. For now, pay attention to the cone of uncertainty. If you’re in the cone, you might get hit.
A worker tapes the window of a convenience store in Hualien, Taiwan province, on Wednesday, in preparation for typhoon Tembin. (Photo/China Daily)
Two powerful typhoons are heading toward China, putting the weather-beaten nation on alert again after four storms have caused landfalls across the country since the start of August.
“Typhoons Tembin and Bolaven may have a combined impact on coastal areas in the coming 10 days,” Zhang Chang’an, chief forecaster at the China Meteorological Administration, said on Wednesday.
Both storms are strengthening, with Bolaven expected to be the strongest typhoon to hit China this year if it lands in the country, Zhang said, adding that the storm will bring maximum winds of 220 km/h.
The National Commission on Disaster Reduction issued a typhoon alert on Wednesday, warning authorities to make emergency plans.
Tembin was about 2,000 km from the coast of Zhejiang province on Wednesday, moving at a speed of 5 km/h.
The administration has asked authorities in potential affected areas to set up warning signs in high-risk areas such as construction sites and low-lying areas, and open emergency shelters including schools and stadiums for evacuation of affected people.
The Fujian Meteorological Bureau urged boats to take shelter in ports by Wednesday to avoid possible damage brought by Tembin.
Cannon Beach City Councilor Sam Steidel displays the three containers residents can choose from to store their emergency supplies on Aug. 10, 2012 in Cannon Beach, Ore. By Oct. 18, when a statewide earthquake drill called the “Great Oregon Shakeout” is planned, city officials expect to complete the placement of at least one shipping container on Elk Creek Road, east of U.S. Highway 101. (AP Photo/The Daily Astorian, Nancy McCarthy)
CANNON BEACH, Ore. (AP) — What does one stash for a tsunami? Residents of Cannon Beach are thinking about that.
They’re planning to store drums full of survival gear far enough inland and high enough to be safe if the big one hits the Oregon coast and sends a tsunami wave ashore.
The Daily Astorian reports the city is offering residents space in a shipping container and various sizes of drums, barrels and buckets that can be stored inside.
Cannon Beach held a workshop on how to pack for the days after the big one, the equivalent of last year’s Japanese earthquake that could send a deadly tsunami across West Coast beaches and flood coastal towns.
Essential items would include a shelter, such as a tent or tarp; sleeping bags or blankets; food with a long shelf life, such as ready-to-eat meals or canned goods, and a can opener; a basic first-aid kit, either pre-assembled or one containing personal medical items; a survival knife; axe or hatchet; garden trowel or folding shovel; flashlights with extra batteries; matches or lighter with a fire starter; water purification; and bottles or canteens for water storage.
“We’re encouraging people not to turn this into a big to-do,” said City Council member Sam Steidel. “Most things they will need they can find at rummage sales, or they could be surplus stuff they find around the house that they’re not using all the time.”
“I have packed my barrel with enough things for a two-person camp,” said Steidel, who participates in Civil War re-enactments. “The things are pretty much up-to-date items that are in the re-enactment trailer. A simple pot or Dutch oven is all you really need to cook with. Just about everyone has an old cast iron fry pan.”
Cannon Beach is a popular tourist destination on the north Oregon coast, at the other end of a highway from Portland. It’s also known for thinking hard and creatively about tsunamis — something critics say has been lacking along the West Coast.
A few years ago, Cannon Beach looked at the idea of rebuilding City Hall on stilts to provide refuge for people fleeing a tsunami. Computer modeling showed that the location wasn’t the best, and a study of alternative ideas continues.
Recently, state and federal officials said they plan to use Cannon Beach in a pilot study of how landscape and a town’s demographics affect how long it takes for people to flee a tsunami.
For the storage exercise, the city is preparing a 2,000-square-foot pad for at least one, and perhaps two shipping containers, each 20 feet long, 8 feet wide and 8 feet high. The pad is inland, east of the coastal highway, and planned for an elevation above the expected inundation level.
Each shipping container could hold at least 50 of the largest containers offered, those of 55-gallon capacity, Steidel said.
There also are 30-gallon plastic barrels and five-gallon buckets.
In October, the shipping container is to be opened for families to store their emergency stashes. Unless there’s a disaster, the container wouldn’t be reopened until spring, when the caches could be restocked.
Earlier this year, 53 people at a forum signed up for the small containers, and orders are being accepted for more. City officials said some families are buying more than one.
In addition to a purchase fee, the city is charging an annual maintenance fee based on capacity. A 55-gallon plastic barrel costs $57.90, and the annual fee is $55.
Russian authorities said Wednesday that a flash flood had killed four people in the southern Krasnodar region where 172 people drowned in rising waters last month, many trapped in their homes.
“Four people have died,” a spokeswoman for the regional emergency situations ministry told AFP.
“Three people are listed as missing,” the Krasnodar regional government said in a statement.
Heavy rain battered the coastal Tuapse area overnight causing many rivers to overflow and flood the houses and apartments of around 1,837 people, the regional authorities said.
In July, 172 people were found dead after severe flooding in the Krymsk area not far from Tuapse. Around 35,000 people lost some or all of their possessions.
The local authorities faced widespread censure for their failure to warn people in time of the need to evacuate. Three officials have been arrested and accused of negligence leading to the deaths.
On Wednesday the regional government stressed that this time the warning system had functioned “in time” so that the public was not caught unaware by the flooding.
“There will not be a second Krymsk,” the regional government promised, saying that residents had been warned this time with an onscreen message on local television and officials driving the streets with loudspeakers.
Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are facing the threat of floods because of heavy rains which various districts of the two provinces are likely to receive over the next two days. The late spell of monsoon has already claimed 11 lives in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Bajaur Agency while eight people have died in Azad Kashmir. Officials said that torrential rains triggered flash floods in hill torrents in Nowshera, Mansehra and Bajaur Agency. The provincial disaster management authority said that floods had killed three people in Nowshera and six in Mansehra districts. A landslide blocked a portion of the main highway near Garhi Habibullah, Mansehra district. In Rawalpindi’s Kotli Sattiyan area, Ahmed Nawaz, a retired army man, lost three children-a son and two daughters- when a wall of their room collapsed after heavy rain. The three children were asleep when the wall collapsed on them, killing them on the spot. National Disaster Management Authority chairman Dr Zafar Iqbal Qadir told Dawn on Wednesday that catchment areas of Chenab and Ravi rivers’ distributaries were expected to receive heavy rains over the next two days. This may cause floods in Lahore, Faisalabad and Gujranwala divisions. He said the District Management Authority had been placed on alert.Areas around Jhelum river are also likely to receive rains which will raise the level of Mangla dam and will be of benefit to agriculture. He said the level at Mangla had risen by five feet over the past three days to reach 1,173 feet and was expected to go up by another 10-15 feet during the upcoming spell – sufficient for the irrigation requirements. He said there were fears of flash flood in urban areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, particularly in Nowshera, Peshawar, Mardan, Swat and Buner. He said the PDMA was fully operational in the province and working round the clock to cope with any situation and minimise losses. In reply to a question, he said the threat of drought was not yet fully over, but it had substantially fallen. He said Makran, Kharan, Chaghai and Washuk areas in Balochistan were not receiving rains and might face drought if the dry weather persisted. “There is no possibility of massive flooding and the heavy downpour is likely to cause medium-level floods.” The country saw worst flooding of its history in 2010. It affected one-fifth of the population and rendered several hundred thousand people homeless right from Himalayas in the north to the deserts of Sindh in the south. The following year, comparatively low-intensity floods hit the country again, especially parts of lower Sindh. This year the monsoon spell in the middle of July and August was predicted to cause disaster with a forecast of 15 per cent more than the usual rains, but the situation suddenly changed and the threat of flood turned into one of drought. The situation has once again changed and now moderate floods are likely in at least two provinces.According to the Flood Forecasting Division (FFD), heavy rains triggered a low flood in the Ravi river at Shahdara on Wednesday. The Ravi, Jhelum and Chenab rivers were expected to attain medium to high flood by Friday. The three rivers swelled because of rains in their catchment areas during Eid holidays. The FFD centre in Lahore forecast fairly widespread thunderstorm/rain, with isolated heavy to very heavy falls (extremely heavy at one or two places) over Azad Kashmir, northern and north-eastern Punjab (mostly areas falling within Lahore, Gujranwala and Rawalpindi divisions) for Thursday. Azad Kashmir covers the upper and low catchments of the Jhelum river while northern and north-eastern Punjab constitutes the lower catchments of the Chenab and Ravi. The rain forecast means the water level will shoot up by Friday. Riaz Khan, the FFD chief, however said the situation was not alarming.
Rain in the Jhelum catchments would help fill Mangla Dam. The Chenab and Ravi were approaching flood level because of rain in their lower catchments in Pakistan while rain in their upper catchments in India was being stored in dams. “Hence there is no threat of devastating floods.” The FFD reported that a peak of 40,000 cusecs was passing the Ravi at Shahdara on Wednesday evening and the level was rising. The river was in low flood and was expected to attain medium flood level on Thursday. The FFD expected medium to high flood in Jhelum river at Mangla and in Chenab at Marala and Khanki on Thursday or Friday. Heavy rains flooded the Dek and Basantar nullahs in Sialkot region, submerging hundreds of acres of agricultural land. Traffic also remained suspended on Narowal-Pasrur road because of the flooding. The FFD expected more flooding of almost all nullahs in the region over 24 hours.
The Met office reported that Kakul had received 84mm of rain, Murree 77mm, Jhelum 76mm, Sialkot airport 74mm, Mandi Bahauddin 60mm, Mangla 39mm, Kotli 37mm, Sialkot Cantt 32mm, Cherat 29mm, Saidu Sharif 21mm, Islamabad 14mm, Rawlakot 12mm, Muzaffarabad 10mm, Gujranwala 8mm, and Balakot 4mm.
It also forecast scattered thunderstorm/rain with isolated heavy showers over Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as well as Sahiwal, Faisalabad and Sargodha divisions of Punjab for Thursday. Azad Kashmir Prime Minister Chaudhry Abdul Majeed on Wednesday appealed to the federal government to help his administration in rehabilitation of rain victims. A spell of relentless rain since Sunday has displaced thousands of people in the region, besides leaving eight dead. In Muzaffarabad, the capital, one person was killed and landslides threatened over 100 families living on the outskirts of the city. Within the city area, many areas were virtually buried under a huge rock that the gushing rainwater had brought with it. Four people were killed in Bagh district on Eid day and two children died in Mirpur on Wednesday in incidents of house collapse and drowning. Officials said almost all inter-city roads had been cleared for traffic.
A teenager was missing Thursday after heavy rain in southern Nevada brought flash flooding to both Las Vegas and Henderson. The 17-year-old disappeared late Wednesday morning in Henderson. He was swept into flood waters in Pittman Wash. Firefighters say the teen was with friends who witnessed his disappearance. Bud Cranor, a spokesman for the city, said a search for him turned up nothing. “I noticed a man go right through, right in the middle of it,” Mike Harms said. “I got in the car and rode down. I saw him one more time, he was waving his arms and yelling for help, but it was hopeless because he was going so fast, he was gone.” While the water had receded in most areas, it left debris behind. The Desert Rose Golf Course in Las Vegas was covered with trash, including a shopping cart and bottles. For some daredevils, the flood was a chance to show off, authorities said. A Metro Las Vegas helicopter pilot, sent to check out a report of teens riding an air mattress down a flooded wash, saw them leave the water without injury
An official from Thailand’s Food and Drug Administration takes a sample from a shipment of frozen fish imported from Japan to test for possible radiation contamination at Ladkrabang customs in Bangkok (Reuters/Sukree Sukplang)
A pair of fish captured near Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have shown to be carrying record levels of radiation. The pair of greenlings are contaminated with 258 times the level government deems safe for consumption.
The fish, which were captured just 12 miles from the nuclear plant, registered 25,800 becquerels of caesium per kilo, according to Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
TEPCO says the high levels may be due to the fish feeding in radioactive hotspots. The company plans on capturing and testing more of the fish, as well as their feed, and the seabed soil to determine the exact cause of the high radiation.
The findings were surprising for officials, who had previously seen much lower levels of radiation in contaminated fish.
Fishermen been allowed to cast their reels in the nearby waters on an experimental basis since June – but only in areas more than 31 miles from the plant.
Previously, the highest recorded radiation seen in the captured wildlife was 18,700 becquerels per kilo in cherry salmons, according to the Japanese Fisheries Agency.
The radiation was caused by a meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima power plant after it was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
The disaster was so intense that contaminated fish were caught all the way across the Pacific Ocean, on the California coast.
But it’s not only aquatic life that is suffering from side effects of the leaked radiation.
According to researchers, the radiation has caused mutations in some butterflies, giving them dented eyes, malformed legs and antennae, and stunted wings.
The results show the butterflies were deteriorating both physically and genetically.
But the harmful risks don’t stop with butterflies. The radioactivity which seeped into the region’s air and water has left humans facing potentially life threatening health issues.
Anak Krakatau in the Sunda Strait, 130 kilometers west of Jakarta, was created by the same tectonic forces that led to the 1883 Krakatoa eruption that killed tens of thousands of people. (Reuters Photo)
The 
