|
January 10, 2008 |
|
Rescuers used a front loader to pluck a woman and three children from the roof of a sport utility vehicle that strayed onto a flooded road after melting snow and heavy rain swelled rivers during an unusual January warm streak. But they were unable to reach her two other young children. The children in Indiana were among five people killed nationwide Tuesday, the second day of severe weather fueled by unseasonable temperatures. Tornadoes also blew through several states Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, as remnants of the storm system moved eastward, thunderstorms knocked out electricity to more than 70,000 homes and businesses in western New York, downing trees and power lines from Lake Erie to the Finger Lakes. Gusts of up to 75 mph were reported in Rochester, the National Weather Service said. The same system produced wind gusts to 63 mph during the night in Ohio, where at least 50,000 customers were blacked out Wednesday morning. Flood warnings remained in effect Wednesday in parts of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Missouri, the weather service said. A tornado that hit Appleton, Ark., on Tuesday rolled a doublewide mobile home off its foundation, killing a man and injuring his wife. The trailer appeared to have rolled for 50 yards before smashing against a stand of trees in the rural area about 60 miles northwest of Little Rock. "The tornado hit and ... it looked like his house pretty much exploded," Pope County Sheriff Jay Winters said. "It was taken completely off the blocks and just tore to pieces. They were both in the wreckage." Source : Breitbart / AP News |
|
|
December 27, 2007 |
|
Landslides and floods triggered by heavy rain have left more than 120 people dead or missing on Indonesia's Java island, as rescuers struggled on Thursday to pull out bodies buried under thick mud. Officials said thousands of people have been left homeless after their houses were submerged by floods or buried by landslides in villages near the Bengawan Solo river, which lies about 500 km from the capital, Jakarta. About 40 people were missing after floods swept away a bridge in Madiun district in East Java province on Wednesday, a local police officer said. In neighboring Central Java province, about 1,000 rescuers, police and soldiers tried to unearth 26 people buried in mud from steep slopes in Tawangmangu, a hilly area that has been hardest hit by landslides on Java. Rescuers had to use manual equipment, spraying the mud with water to soften it. "We are only left with basic tools, such as spades and ploughs, yet we face a 7-to 9-meter blanket of mud," local police chief Rikwanto told Reuters by telephone. Workers pulled out 12 more bodies on Thursday, bringing the confirmed death toll to 48, said Heru Pratomo, head of the disaster relief agency in Karang Anyar district, of which Tawangmangu is part. Another body was found and 14 were still missing in two neighboring districts, rescue officials said. Source : Yahoo News |
|
|
December 24, 2007 |
|
Three years after the devastating tsunami that destroyed coastal communities around the Indian Ocean, the exact death toll remains uncertain. But survivors' tales of similarly massive waves sweeping in from the ocean are passed down by elders in certain communities and may be enough to save lives in the event of another disaster like the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, a researcher says. The tsunami that struck the coasts of Thailand, India and Indonesia on December 26, 2004 caused very high mortality in the affected regions, with anywhere from 10 to 90 percent of local populations being killed depending on the location. The region-wide death toll is estimated to have exceeded 200,000 . But a similarly intense tsunami that struck northern Papua New Guinea in 1930 caused a fraction of the deaths compared to the 2004 disaster, with only 0.1 percent to 1 percent of the coastal population being killed. The key to this lower death toll were stories of tsunamis that had been passed down across the generations to the area residents, said tsunami researcher Simon Day, a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has been researching evidence of ancient tsunamis in Papua New Guinea. "Oral traditions are a very efficient means of tsunami education," Day said. Day presented his findings at a recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union. (Source : Live Science )  |
|
|
December 17, 2007 |
|
As if political instability and rampant insecurity in the Middle East are not worrying enough, Israeli experts are warning that a major earthquake could strike the region at any time. Three minor quakes over the past month have served as a reminder that Israel and the West Bank sit atop one of the most sensitive fault lines in the world, where earthquakes have a history of causing havoc. "We can say with certainty that an earthquake of a magnitude of six on the Richter scale could take place in the coming years," said Yefim Gitterman from the seismology department at the geophysical institute of Lod, near Tel Aviv. "It can happen tomorrow or in years to come," he said. "Statistically, there is a major quake every 80 years." Under that assessment, Israel and the Palestinian territories should brace for a major earthquake soon, as the last one happened 80 years ago, on July 11, 1927, in British mandate Palestine when 300 people were killed in Jerusalem and Jericho. A similar quake measuring seven on the Richter scale and with an epicentre in the Hula Valley, today in northern Israel up from the Sea of Galilee, devastated the town of Safed and killed some 4,000 people in 1837. "Stronger earthquakes of a magnitude of seven are statistically less common," Gitterman said. But that could be bad enough. The Lod institute estimates that if a magnitude seven earthquake strikes the northern Jordan Valley or the Dead Sea, between 8,200 and 9,500 people could be killed, more than 20,000 injured and more than 20,000 left homeless. Source : Breitbart / AP |
|
|
December 07, 2007 |
Gray's team at Colorado State University issued the prediction six months before the June-November season begins. Hurricane forecaster William Gray called Friday for seven Atlantic hurricanes, three of them major, during the 2008 season.
The preliminary forecast calls for a total of 13 named storms in the Atlantic. It also says it is probable that at least one major hurricane will hit the U.S. coastline. "Despite fairly inactive 2006 and 2007 hurricane seasons, we believe that the Atlantic basin is still in an active hurricane cycle," Gray said. "This active cycle is expected to continue at least for another decade or two." Gray has been forecasting hurricanes for more than two decades, and his predictions are watched closely by emergency responders and others in coastal areas. The predictions are not always on the mark. Gray initially forecast nine hurricanes for the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, and later lowered that prediction to eight. Only six hurricanes formed. Cooler water and the presence of wind shears in the central tropical Atlantic explained the difference, said Phil Klotzbach, a member of Gray's team and the lead author of the forecast. Cooler temperatures inhibit hurricane formation, and wind shears can tear developing hurricanes apart. The team also predicted nine hurricanes for the 2006 season, when only five developed. Klotzbach said that in seven of the past nine years, the team correctly predicted whether the season would be above or below average. Source : Breitbart / AP News |
|
|
December 04, 2007 |
|
Global agriculture, already predicted to be stressed by climate change in coming decades, could go into steep, unanticipated declines in some regions due to complications that scientists have so far inadequately considered, say three new scientific reports. The authors say that progressive changes predicted to stem from 1- to 5-degree C temperature rises in coming decades fail to account for seasonal extremes of heat, drought or rain, multiplier effects of spreading diseases or weeds, and other ecological upsets. All are believed more likely in the future. Coauthored by leading researchers from Europe, North America and Australia, they appear in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "Many people assume that we will never have a problem with food production on a global scale. But there is a strong potential for negative surprises," said Francesco Tubiello, a physicist and agricultural expert at the NASA/Goddard Institute of Space Studies who coauthored all three papers. Goddard is a member of Columbia University's Earth Institute. In order to keep pace with population growth, current production of grain--from which humans derive two-thirds of their protein--will probably have to double, to 4 billion tons a years before 2100. Studies in the past 10 years suggest that mounting levels of carbon dioxide in the air--believed to be the basis of human-caused climate change--may initially bolster the photosynthetic rate of many plants, and, along with new farming techniques, possibly add to some crop yields. Soure : Science Daily |
|
|
November 26, 2007 |
|
Two years ago, way under. Last year, way over. This year, still not right. It's been a stormy few years for William Gray, Philip Klotzbach and other scientists who predict total hurricane activity before each season begins, which raises fundamental questions as the 2007 season draws to an end on Friday: Why do they bother? And given the errors -- which can undermine faith in the entire hurricane warning system -- are these full-season forecasts doing more harm than good? ''The seasonal hurricane forecasters certainly have a lot of explaining to do,'' said Max Mayfield, former director of the National Hurricane Center. ''The last couple of years have humbled the seasonal hurricane forecasters and pointed out that we have a lot more to learn before we can do accurate seasonal forecasts,'' he said. The numbers provide abundant support for those statements. Just before the season started on June 1, the nationally prominent Gray-Klotzbach team at Colorado State University predicted that 17 named storms would grow into nine hurricanes, five of which would be particularly intense, with winds above 110 mph. A different team at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted 13 to 17 named storms, seven to 10 hurricanes and three to five intense hurricanes. The actual results for the 2007 season: 14 named storms, five hurricanes, two intense hurricanes. That turned a season predicted to be extremely active into one that was about average in number of storms and well below average in total intensity. Source : Miam Herald
See Also : Forecasters see less active '07 hurricane season, Hurricane Threat? What Hurricane Threat?, Where are All the Hurricanes? |
|
|
November 26, 2007 |
|
More than four times the number of natural disasters are occurring now than did two decades ago, British charity Oxfam said in a study Sunday that largely blamed global warming. "Oxfam... says that rising green house gas emissions are the major cause of weather-related disasters and must be tackled," the organisation said, adding that the world's poorest people were being hit the hardest. The world suffered about 120 natural disasters per year in the early 1980s, which compared with the current figure of about 500 per year, according to the report. "This year we have seen floods in South Asia, across the breadth of Africa and Mexico that have affected more than 250 million people," noted Oxfam director Barbara Stocking. "This is no freak year. It follows a pattern of more frequent, more erratic, more unpredictable and more extreme weather events that are affecting more people." She added: "Action is needed now to prepare for more disasters otherwise humanitarian assistance will be overwhelmed and recent advances in human development will go into reverse." The number of people affected by extreme natural disasters , meanwhile, has surged by almost 70 percent, from 174 million a year between 1985 to 1994, to 254 million people a year between 1995 to 2004, Oxfam said. Floods and wind-storms have increased from 60 events in 1980 to 240 last year, with flooding itself up six-fold . But the number of geothermal events, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions , has barely changed. Source : AP / Breitbart News |
|
|
November 25, 2007 |
 Flooding has increased six-fold since the 1980s, the report says |
The number of weather-related disasters has quadrupled over the past 20 years and the world should do more to prepare for them, the aid agency Oxfam says. Population increases mean more people are affected when catastrophic weather events take place, it says in a report. Global warming is to blame for the growing number of weather disasters, Oxfam adds. An average of 500 such disasters are now taking place each year, compared to 120 in the 1980s, the report says. The number of floods has increased six-fold over the same period. Source : BBC UK |
|
|
November 19, 2007 |
Hurricane Destroyed Or Damaged About 320 Million Tress Across The South No surprise: They love trees in Poplarville, Miss.
So when hurricane Katrina ripped out tulip poplars, bent black gum to the ground, and scattered loblolly pines like pick-up sticks, local tree enthusiasts such as Julia Anderson not only had a rude aesthetic shock, but many also sensed that the destruction had shaken the very roots of the region's ecological balance.
Now, scientists using NASA satellite imagery have at least partly confirmed those suspicions. From vast slash pine plantations to river-bottom hardwood stands, hurricane Katrina killed or damaged about 320 million trees across Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Texas - the largest ecological disaster in US history, new estimates reveal. Confronting a potential 100 million metric tons of greenhouse gases seeping from rotting logs and leaves, the proliferation of nonnative plants, and a spike in wildfire risks, scientists and residents alike are raising new questions about the storm's environmental legacy.
Perhaps the most critical one: Can Katrina-like storms contribute to an ecological "feedback loop," in which carbon being released from fallen, decaying forests raises the occurrences of storms and, in turn, intensifies the effects of global warming? The good news is that resilient and fast-growing Southern forests, with the help of humans, may be able to temper the phenomenon. Source : CBS News |
|
|
November 18, 2007 |
|
Up to 15,000 people were killed and seven million lives left devastated by the cyclone in Bangladesh last week, aid agencies have said as the full extent of the disaster became clear. | |  | In the worst affected districts, 90 pc of homes and 95 pc of rice crops and valuable prawn farms were obliterated by the winds
|
The Bangladeshi Red Crescent Society, the country's main humanitarian group, said that more than 3,000 bodies had already been recovered from villages shattered by Cyclone Sidr's 150mph wind s. While the official death toll remains low, Save the Children last night said that it feared that 15,000 people could have died while the Red Crescent estimated around 10,000. An international relief effort, supported by donations from the UN, Britain, US and Europe, was slowly grinding into gear yesterday as the International Red Cross estimated 900,000 families had been affected. Previous cyclones killed 500,000 people in 1970 and 143,000 in 1991 - however local officials said the impact would now fall on the many survivors. Source : Telegraph UK |
|
|
November 18, 2007 |
|
The death toll from Bangladesh's most devastating storm in a decade climbed to at least 2,300 on Sunday and relief officials warned the figure could jump sharply as rescuers reach more isolated areas. Teams from international aid organizations worked with army troops in a massive rescue effort that drew help from around the world. Rescue workers cleared roads of fallen trees and twisted roofs to reach remote villages, but tents, rice, water and other relief items were slow to arrive. Hungry survivors, thousands of whom were left homeless, scrambled for food. The death toll rose as officials made contact with coastal regions cut off by the storm, said Selina Shahid of the Ministry of Food and Disaster Management. District officials compile the figures, which are far from precise, based on reports from police, public hospitals, military officials, relief workers and aid agencies, said Mohammad Golam Mostafa of the Disaster Management Ministry Source : Assoicated Press / Myway News |
|
|
November 16, 2007 |
|
A cyclone that slammed into the coast with 150 mph winds killed at least 1,100 people, isolating remote towns and villages swamped by a storm surge or hemmed in by piles of debris, aid workers and a Bangladeshi news agency said Friday. Tropical Cyclone Sidr roared across the country's southwestern coast late Thursday with driving rain and high waves, leveling thousands of flimsy huts and forcing the evacuation of 650,000 villagers, officials said. The United News of Bangladesh news agency said reporters deployed across the devastated region made their own count in each affected district and reached a toll of 1,100. The government, which earlier put the death toll at 242, has acknowledged its trouble keeping count - with power and phone lines down in most remote areas - and said it expected the official number to rise significantly. Source :Reuters / AP |
|
|
November 16, 2007 |
 Some villages on the south coast were flattened by the storm |
More than 50 people have been reported dead after a powerful cyclone battered southern Bangladesh, levelling villages and uprooting trees. Officials have warned that the death toll could rise and that the extent of the damage is still unclear. Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated or sought safe shelter before the storm hit the coast, but some were left behind. The storm was weakening early Friday as it passed through the capital, Dhaka. With the worst of the storm thought to be over, attention now turns to assessing the damage and distributing aid, the BBC's Mark Dummett reports from Dhaka. Source : BBC Science News |
|
|
November 12, 2007 |
|
Instead of being driven to extinction by death from above, dinosaurs might have ultimately been doomed by death from below in the form of monumental volcanic eruptions .
The suggestion is based on new research that is part of a growing body of evidence indicating a space rock alone did not wipe out the giant reptiles.
The Age of Dinosaurs ended roughly 65 million years ago with the K-T or Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event , which killed off all dinosaurs save those that became birds, as well as roughly half of all species on the planet, including pterosaurs. The prime suspect in this ancient murder mystery is an asteroid or comet impact , which left a vast crater at Chicxulub on the coast of Mexico.
Another leading culprit is a series of colossal volcanic eruptions that occurred between 63 million to 67 million years ago. These created the gigantic Deccan Traps lava beds in India, whose original extent may have covered as much as 580,000 square miles (1.5 million square kilometers), or more than twice the area of Texas.
Arguments over which disaster killed the dinosaurs often revolve around when each happened and whether extinctions followed. Previous work had only narrowed the timing of the Deccan eruptions to within 300,000 to 500,000 years of the extinction event. Now research suggests the mass extinction happened at or just after the biggest phase of the Deccan eruptions, which spewed 80 percent of the lava found at the Deccan Traps.
"It's the first time we can directly link the main phase of the Deccan Traps to the mass extinction ," said Princeton University paleontologist Gerta Keller. Source : Live Science |
|
|
November 10, 2007 |
|
The last time a major earthquake ripped along the Hayward Fault, San Leandro and Hayward were nearly leveled, but, in a shock to seismologists, the most populated stretch of the East Bay was relatively unscathed, according to a new map released Wednesday. The "shake map" of the devastating 1868 quake, which scientists now believe was about 7 in magnitude, provides a dramatic glimpse at the damage and size of the nation's 12th-deadliest earthquake . But it offers few clues to what a major temblor on the Hayward Fault would look like today because predicting when and where quakes will occur is still beyond scientists' reach. "The earth doesn't exactly repeat itself," said Jack Boatwright, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey who compiled the map. "Next time the patch under Piedmont could be triggered. We just don't know." Scientists do know, however, that the fault, which stretches about 60 miles from San Pablo Bay to Warm Springs in Fremont, is poised for another major rupture, one that would dwarf the damage of 1868, seismologists said. "The Hayward Fault is a tectonic time bomb," said U.S. Geological Survey senior seismologist Tom Brocher. "(It's) the single most dangerous fault in the entire Bay Area, because it is ready to pop and because nearly 2 million people live directly on top of it." Major quakes along the Hayward Fault occur about every 140 years, and a magnitude 7 quake on the fault today would likely leave about 100,000 people homeless and cause more than $1 trillion in damage, according to the Association of Bay Area Governments and the U.S. Geological Survey. Source : SanFrancisco Chronicle |
|
|
November 08, 2007 |
|
Yellowstone’s ancient volcanic floor has been rising since mid-2004 because a blob of molten rock the size of Los Angeles infiltrated the system 6 miles beneath the surface, scientists say, but there is no risk of an eruption . Yellowstone National Park is the site of North America's largest volcanic field , which is produced by a hotspot, or gigantic plume of hot, molten rock, that begins at least 400 miles (643 kilometers) beneath Earth's surface and rises to 30 miles (48 kilometers) underground, where it widens to about 300 miles across. Occasionally, blobs of magma break away from the top of this plume and rise up to resupply the magma chamber beneath the park's "caldera ," a 40-mile by 25-mile bowl-like depression and volcanic leftover whose walls you can see in the northwest part of the park. These rising blobs of magma can sometimes push on the caldera floor, causing it to rise. Scientists monitoring the Yellowstone caldera think that's exactly what has caused the caldera floor to rise by almost 3 inches (7 centimeters) per year over the past three years—more than three times faster than it has more typically risen since observations began in 1923. "Our best evidence is that the crustal magma chamber is filling with molten rock," said study leader Robert Smith, a seismologist at the University of Utah. "But we have no idea how long this process goes on before there either is an eruption or the inflow of molten rock stops and the caldera deflates again." Smith and his colleagues, whose work is detailed in the Nov. 9 issue of the journal Science, say that there is no indication that the caldera will produce an eruption anytime soon. "There is no evidence of an imminent volcanic eruption or hydrothermal explosion. That's the bottom line," Smith said. "A lot of calderas worldwide go up and down over decades without erupting ." Source : Live Science
See Also : Volcanoes: Ready, stead, blow, Yellowstone's Super Sisters - A List of Known Supervolcanoes, The Yellowstone Caldera, Super Volcano at Yellowstone National Park |
|
|
November 03, 2007 |
|
Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans fled a flooded region of the Gulf coast Friday, jumping from rooftops into rescue helicopters, scrambling into boats or swimming out through murky brown water. President Felipe Calderon called the flooding in Tabasco state one of Mexico's worst recent natural disasters, and pledged to rebuild. A week of heavy rains caused rivers to overflow, drowning at least 80 percent of the oil-rich state. Much of the state capital, Villahermosa, looked like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, with water reaching to second-story rooftops and desperate people awaiting rescue. At least one death was reported and nearly all services, including drinking water and public transportation, were shut down. The flood affected more than 900,000 people in the state of 2 million - their homes flooded, damaged or cut off by high water. A 10-inch natural gas pipeline sprang a leak after flooding apparently washed away soil underneath it, but it was unclear if other facilities operated by the state-run Petroleos Mexicanos were damaged or if oil production was affected. Source : AP / Myway News |
|
|
November 02, 2007 |
|
Last month saw a record October for tornado outbreaks, with 87 twisters forming in just one three-day span, government meteorologists announced today. The outbreak, from Oct. 17 through Oct. 19, surpassed the previous record of 63 tornadoes set along the Gulf Coast from Oct. 23 through Oct. 27 in 1997, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The total number of tornadoes reported in October, 105, came in second behind the 117 tornadoes reported in October 2001. Records go back to 1950. The massive outbreak occurred because two weather systems that had high potential to form tornadoes were simultaneously positioned over the country. Source : Live Science |
|
|
November 02, 2007 |
 | Soldiers in Villahermosa build a dam to stem rising waters 
| Rescue workers in southern Mexico are battling to help some 300,000 people trapped in their homes by flooding, with more rain forecast in coming days. The state of Tabasco is suffering its worst flooding in more than 50 years, with most of the state under water, 1m people affected and at least one death. The state governor has urged anyone who owns a boat to help the rescue efforts, alongside army and navy crews. President Felipe Calderon said the situation was "extraordinarily grave". "It's one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the country," he said in a televised address on Thursday night. Appealing for Mexicans to help by donating supplies, he said many people had "lost their homes, their belongings, their crops and the means to maintain their children". He added: "Others remain in their homes but with no access to food, water or medicine." Source : BBC News |
|
|
November 01, 2007 |
|
Floods and landslides triggered by Tropical Storm Noel killed at least 80 people in the Caribbean as the weather system shifted its sights Thursday to the Bahamas. At least 56 people were killed and dozens missing in the Dominican Republic, said Luis Luna Palino, head of the country's National Emergencies Center (CNE). Floods forced people to climb onto their roofs or perch on trees in affected areas. In one Santo Domingo neighborhood entire houses disappeared under the flood waters. In neighboring Haiti, at least 24 people were killed, Civil Protection officials said. Separately, at least one person was killed and eight were reported missing Wednesday due to floods and landslides caused by heavy rain unrelated to Noel in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco. The center of Noel ripped through central and eastern Cuba on Wednesday, where no casualties were reported though more than 20,000 people were evacuated from the storm's path. Source : Yahoo News |
|
|
October 29, 2007 |
|
At least a dozen people died and many more were reported missing in the Dominican Republic on Monday after Tropical Storm Noel dumped torrential rain on the island of Hispaniola, cutting off communities and grounding flights.. The Dominican National Emergency Committee declared a red alert in six provinces and for the capital, Santo Domingo, as the 14th named storm of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season poured 10 to 20 inches of rain on the Caribbean country and over the treeless hillsides of neighboring Haiti. In some areas downpours of up to 30 inches were possible, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. In Bonao, 55 miles north of Santo Domingo, at least five people were killed by floods while a few others were listed as missing, local officials said. The emergency committee reported another five deaths in San Jose de Ocoa, 83 miles from the capital, and local radio said two people died in the capital district. Source : Yahoo News |
|
|
October 21, 2007 |
|
It's a tough world, all right. Too bad it's not tougher. Right now Earth is looking pretty fragile as it suffers from increasing human punishment. This isn't really news, of course. But CNN has packed the two-night, four-hour "Planet in Peril" with information and images that give a familiar story new urgency. Here is an eye-opening, often heart-wrenching exploration. Airing Tuesday and Wednesday at 9 p.m. EDT, "Planet in Peril" dispatched correspondents Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, as well as Animal Planet wildlife biologist Jeff Corwin, to report on far-flung instances of "environmental change." This term encompasses four key areas: climate change, vanishing natural habitats, disappearing species and human overpopulation. Source : Yahoo News |
|
|
October 18, 2007 |
Some of the world's most destructive volcanoes are long overdue for major eruptions. But which will be first? And how can we avert disaster?"Yellowstone, in Wyoming, is the world's most powerful supervolcano . It is 40,000 years late in its hitherto regular 600,000-year cycle. Yellowstone is due to wake up with a cataclysmic eruptive yawn. Millions live in the firing line. Films such as the BBC's 2005 Supervolcano have attempted to show what the impact of such a blast could be – with ash, rock and debris devastating vast swathes of North America, an ash cloud triggering catastrophic climatic-cooling , which in turn leads to crop failure and starvation around the world – but for many people, volcanoes have remained in the realm of the fantastical. O'Meara says: "A volcano to most human beings anywhere on the planet is something we see in a movie. It's not something we're living next door to." Source : The Independent UK |
|
|
October 08, 2007 |
|
A storm drenched south-east China yesterday after killing five people on Taiwan and prompting the evacuation of 1.4 million people on the mainland, officials said, as the death toll from a separate storm in Vietnam rose to 55. Typhoon Krosa hit land in Zhejiang and Fujian provinces but was soon downgraded to a tropical storm, the official Xinhua news agency said. It said no deaths or injuries were reported, but Krosa wrecked houses and knocked out power in the port city of Wenzhou.
<a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/Params.richmedia=yes&spacedesc=mpu&site=Guardian&navsection=1699&section=107406&country=usa&region=mn&city=cold spring&bandwidth=cable&rand=1318281&tile=1318281"> <img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/Params.richmedia=yes&spacedesc=mpu&site=Guardian&navsection=1699&section=107406&country=usa&region=mn&city=cold spring&bandwidth=cable&rand=1318281&tile=1318281" width="300" height="250" border="0" alt="Advertisement"></a> var setIframeSrcCallback = function( hasVideo ) { var adSrc = "http://ads.guardian.co.uk/html.ng/Params.richmedia=yes&spacedesc=mpu&site=Guardian&navsection=1699§ion=107406&country=usa®ion=mn&city=cold spring&bandwidth=cable&rand=1318281&tile=1318281"; if(hasVideo) { adSrc += "&system=video"; } document.getElementById( 'frameId882829' ).src = adSrc; }; if( 'function' == typeof addOnLoadCallback ) { addOnLoadCallback( setIframeSrcCallback ); } else { setIframeSrcCallback(false); }
In Vietnam, the death toll from Typhoon Lekima, which hit the country's central coast late on Wednesday, rose to 55, with another 16 people missing, officials said yesterday. The death toll in the central province of Nghe An rose to 22 after eight more bodies were discovered, said provincial disaster official Pham Hong Thuong. The death toll was likely to rise as communications improved. Source : Guardian UK / Natural Disasters |
|
|
Natural Disasters 
