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Hell and high water

Posted by Admin on November 9, 2011

http://in.news.yahoo.com/deadly-flooding-in-india%E2%80%8E-.html;_ylt=Ag2B510rF03b7KqijuDm4kph_t5_;_ylu=X3oDMTQ2YWZvNzhxBG1pdANtb3Jlb253aWRlc2NyZWVuBHBrZwM1ZGQ0OWJhMi1mZTRjLTM5OTYtYWJlZi03Njc4ZjllMDQ0OWYEcG9zAzMEc2VjA01lZGlhRmVhdHVyZWRDYXJvdXNlbAR2ZXIDZjZhYTVkYjQtZWRhZS0xMWUwLWFkOWUtMWY0ZjBhNWU3MWM2;_ylg=X3oDMTJuamcybnFkBGludGwDaW4EbGFuZwNlbi1pbgRwc3RhaWQDMGJjYzhmOWMtYWRmMi0zNmM2LTk1MTItMzQ0NGY5MjFlNmU1BHBzdGNhdAMEcHQDY29taWMtZ2FsbGVyeQ–;_ylv=3

The annual cycle of drought and flood in India routinely makes headlines but it appears that this time the floods have the upper hand. Prolonged and intense monsoon rainfall has led rivers in northern and eastern India to flow above the danger mark, breach banks and overflow into habitation. As the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and other influencers debate if the Below Poverty Line cap for daily expenditure must be raised above Rs 32 (Rs 26 in rural India), untamed waters have devastated the livelihoods of about 4 million people in north and east India. In Orissa alone, 2.2 million people have been affected. Over 1,700 rural roads have been damaged and the state government has earmarked Rs 1,210 crore to bring life back to normal while it has asked the Centre for Rs 3,265 crore as compensation. The states of Assam, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal are also struggling to cope as rivers in spate have swept away people, livestock, bridges and homes.

Mon, Oct 3, 2011

AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout

AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout

A woman carries her injured son through flood waters at Pahanga village in Orissa’s Jajpur district. Monsoon rains have destroyed mud huts and flooded wide swaths of north and east India, leaving hundreds of thousands of people marooned by the raging waters.

　

AP Photo/ Aftab Alam Siddiqui

AP Photo/ Aftab Alam Siddiqui

At Kasimpurchak near Danapur Diara in Patna, a boat turns into a veritable Noah’s Ark as villagers share it with cattle to cross a flooded river. In Bihar, an estimated 2,512 boats have been deployed to evacuate 68,000 people as floods destroyed standing crops in 114,000 hectares of land and damaged over 15,000 homes and public buildings.

AP Photo/Kevin Frayer

AP Photo/Kevin Frayer

Boys row a makeshift banana raft on their way to a marooned community near Patamundi, about 120 kilometers north of Bhubaneshwar, India. The Orissa government has decided to withdraw air-dropping of relief materials as water levels have receded and most of the worst-hit areas are now accessible by road and some by boat. The death toll in the second spell of floods has risen to 40, an official said.

AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout

AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout

Villagers carrying relief materials brave floodwaters at Rasulpur village in Orissa’s Jajpur district. The southwest monsoon, which brings rain from June through September, is vital to agriculture but also cause floods and landslides.

AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout

AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout

Twenty out of Orissa’s 30 districts have been affected by successive floods and road communication has been snapped in several areas. The state government has decided to construct permanent helipads in coastal region for relief operation.

AP Photo/Biswaranjan RoutA villager stands on all that is left of a bridge at Rasulpur village in Orissa’s Jajpur district. Several bridges have been washed off, disrupting road connections across the beleaguered state. Three hundred rural bridges will be restored at a cost of Rs 1,000 crore under the Orissa Rural Bridges Scheme.

AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout

AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout

A woman returns to her village through flood waters at Rasulpur village in Orissa’s Jajpur district. A spokesperson of the National Rural Health Mission said 978 women in advanced stages of pregnancy had been marooned by the worst floods to hit the state in three decades.

AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout

AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout

A girl sleeps at her mud hut surrounded by flood waters at Pahanga village in Orissa’s Jajpur district. Nearly a thousand villages have been marooned by floods sparked by two spells of incessant monsoon rain.

AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout

AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout

A villager returns to his marooned house in Bari village, about 130 kilometers from Bhubaneshwar. The state government said it would spend Rs 1208 crore within 45 days on restoration and reconstruction work.

AP

AP

Village boys cross a flooded area on a makeshift raft in Orissa. The state government has decided to waive the examination fee for high school students in flood-affected areas.

AP Photo/Bikas Das

AP Photo/Bikas Das

Villagers ford floodwaters at Patamundi near Kendrapara, about 120 kilometers north of Bhubaneshwar. The state government has sought Rs 3,265 crore as grant from the National Disaster Relief Fund (NDRF) towards damages suffered in the twin floods in September.

AP Photo/Kevin Frayer

AP Photo/Kevin Frayer

Flood-displaced boys fish in floodwaters. An estimated 1109 villages have been marooned in two spells of flooding in 10 districts of Orissa.

REUTERS/Mukesh Gupta

REUTERS/Mukesh Gupta

Men ride a bicycle through a flooded road after a heavy downpour on the outskirts of Jammu. Monsoon rains were one percent above normal in mid-September, weakening from 39 percent above average in the previous week, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said, easing concerns that heavy rains could damage planted crops.

AP

AP

Townsfolk in Varanasi wade through flood waters caused due to excess rainfall. Monsoon rains caused mud-walled homes to collapse and rescuers are struggling to reach affected villages in eastern Uttar Pradesh.

REUTERS/Parivartan Sharma

REUTERS/Parivartan Sharma

A car submerged in a flooded underpass after heavy rains in Noida, near New Delhi. Above-normal monsoon rains affected life all over north India.

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Floods threaten Bangkok as north starts to rebuild

Posted by Admin on November 7, 2011

http://in.news.yahoo.com/floods-threaten-bangkok-north-starts-rebuild-104703813.html

By PAILIN WEDEL – Associated Press | AP – 2 hours 12 minutes ago

BANGKOK (AP) — Floodwaters from Thailand‘s flood-ravaged central heartland pushed farther into Bangkok on Monday, as residents of long-submerged provinces north of the capital started to rebuild their lives.

The water slowly advancing through Bangkok’s northern and western neighborhoods is threatening the city’s subway system, two key industrial estates and the emergency headquarters set up to deal with the flooding that has claimed more than 500 lives nationwide.

Evacuations have been ordered in 12 of Bangkok’s 50 districts, with residents of the northern district of Klong Sam Wa told to leave Monday. The evacuations, which also effect parts of several other districts, are not mandatory, and many people are staying to protect homes and businesses. But the orders illustrate how far flooding has progressed into the city and how powerless the government has been to stop it.

The flooding began in late July and some provinces to the north of Bangkok have been inundated for more than a month. The waters have started to recede in recent days, revealing the massive cleanup effort that lies ahead.

For two months, Anan Dirath was forced to live on the second floor of his home in Nakorn Sawan province. But now that the water has receded to knee level, it’s time to clean up.

He armed his two teenage children with mops, scrub brushes and garbage bags. Wading in the water, his family began scrubbing dirt off the walls and collecting the garbage around the house. He said the dirt was difficult to wash off and he has had to scrub the paint off to get rid of it.

“Oh my pretty home. It used to be a pretty two-story home,” he said Monday.

In nearby Nakorn Sawan town center, where the water has dried completely, the government sponsored a cleanup day last week when roads were scrubbed down to get rid of the oily mud left from the floods. Back hoes were used to carry garbage away.

The cleanup also has begun in some parts of Thailand’s ancient capital of Ayutthaya. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra is to visit the province Tuesday to witness recovery efforts.

Yingluck says a plan to be put before the Cabinet on Tuesday would allocate 100 billion baht ($3.3 billion) for post-flood reconstruction.

Her government has come under fire for failing to predict the threat to Bangkok. Residents also have been frustrated by widely differing assessments of the flooding situation from the prime minister, Bangkok’s governor and the country’s top water experts and officials.

Floodwaters in the city continued to flow south Monday toward the still-unaffected central business district. In Chatuchak, a few miles (kilometers) north of there, water was nearly knee deep around Mo Chit Skytrain station, the northernmost stop on the capital’s elevated train system.

Water was also rising near three subway stops in the same area. Both mass transit networks are functioning normally, though some exits have been barricaded and closed.

Chatuchak is home to the government’s national flood relief headquarters, which is housed in the Energy Ministry — a building now surrounded by water. The relief headquarters moved last week out of Bangkok’s Don Muang airport after it, too, was flooded. The city’s main airport remains open.

Also in Chatuchak, water has begun approaching a main road near the Mo Chit bus terminal, a major gateway to northern Thailand.

___

Associated Press writers Vee Intarakratug, Todd Pitman and Chris Blake contributed to this report.

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"Stage Two" of the BP Gulf of Mexico Environmental Disaster New Drilling Permits amid 28,000 Unmonitored Abandoned Wells

Posted by Admin on October 28, 2011

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27279

by Rady Ananda

Global Research, October 25, 2011
24,486 permanent and 3,593 temporarily abandoned wells in the Gulf of Mexico [Image]
Since BP’s catastrophic Macondo Blowout in the Gulf of Mexico last year, the Obama Administration has granted nearly 300 new drilling permits [1] and shirked plans to plug 3,600 of more than 28,000 abandoned wells, which pose significant threats to the severely damaged sea. Among those granted new permits for drilling in the Gulf, on Friday Obama granted BP permission to explore for oil in the Gulf, allowing it to bid on new leases that will be sold at auction in December.

Reports Dow Jones: “The upcoming lease sale, scheduled for Dec. 14 in New Orleans, involves leases in the western Gulf of Mexico. The leases cover about 21 million acres, in water depths of up to 11,000 feet. It will be the first lease auction since the Deepwater Horizon spill.” [2]

Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey objected to BP’s participation in the upcoming lease sale, pointing out that: “Comprehensive safety legislation hasn’t passed Congress, and BP hasn’t paid the fines they owe for their spill, yet BP is being given back the keys to drill in the Gulf.”

Environmental watchdog, Oceana, added its objection to the new permits, saying that none of the new rules implemented since April 2010 would have prevented the BP disaster. “Our analysis shows that while the new rules may increase safety to some degree, they likely would not have prevented the last major oil spill, and similarly do not adequately protect against future ones.” [3]

Detailing the failure of the Dept. of Interior’s safety management systems, Oceana summarizes:

  • Regulation exemptions (“departures”) are often granted, including one that arguably led to the BP blowout;
  • Economic incentives make violating rules lucrative because penalties are ridiculously small;
  • Blowout preventers continue to have critical deficiencies; and
  • Oversight and inspection levels are paltry relative to the scale of drilling operation.

Nor have any drilling permits been denied [4] since the BP catastrophe on April 20, 2010, which still spews oil today [5].

28,079 Abandoned Wells in Gulf of Mexico

In an explosive report at Sky Truth, John Amos reveals from government data that “there are currently 24,486 known permanently abandoned wells in the Gulf of Mexico, and 3,593 ‘temporarily’ abandoned wells, as of October 2011.” [6]

Over a year ago, the Dept. of Interior promised to plug the “temporarily abandoned” (TA) wells, and dismantle another 650 production platforms no longer in use. [7] At an estimated decommissioning cost of $1-3 billion [8], none of this work has been started, though Feds have approved 912 permanent abandonment plans and 214 temporary abandonment plans submitted since its September 2010 rule. [9]

Leaking abandoned wells pose a significant environmental and economic threat. TA wells are those temporarily sealed so that future drilling can be re-started. Both TA wells and “permanently abandoned” (PA) wells endure no inspections.

Over 600 of those abandoned wells belong to BP, reported the Associated Press last year. “Experts say abandoned wells can repressurize, much like a dormant volcano can awaken. And years of exposure to sea water and underground pressure can cause cementing and piping to corrode and weaken.” [10]

The AP added that some of the permanently abandoned wells date back to the 1940s.  And Amos advises that some of the “temporarily abandoned” wells date back to the 1950s.

A three-month EcoHearth investigation revealed that a minimum of 2.5 million abandoned wells in the US and 20-30 million worldwide receive no follow up inspections to ensure they are not leaking. Worse:

“There is no known technology for securely sealing these tens of millions of abandoned wells. Many—likely hundreds of thousands—are already hemorrhaging oil, brine and greenhouse gases into the environment. Habitats are being fundamentally altered. Aquifers are being destroyed. Some of these abandoned wells are explosive, capable of building-leveling, toxin-spreading detonations. And thanks to primitive capping technologies, virtually all are leaking now—or will be.” [11]

Sealed with cement, adds EcoHearth, “Each abandoned well is an environmental disaster waiting to happen. The triggers include accidents, earthquakes, natural erosion, re-pressurization (either spontaneous or precipitated by fracking) and, simply, time.”

As far back as 1994, the Government Accountability Office advised that there was no effective strategy in place to inspect abandoned wells, nor were bonds sufficient to cover the cost of abandonment. Lease abandonment costs estimated at “$4.4 billion in current dollars … were covered by only $68 million in bonds.” [12]

The GAO concluded that “leaks can occur… causing serious damage to the environment and marine life,” adding that “MMS has not encouraged the development of nonexplosive structure removal technologies that would eliminate or minimize environmental damage.”

Not only cement, but seals, valves and gaskets can deteriorate over time. A 2000 report by C-FER Technologies to the Dept. of Interior identified several  different points where well leaks can occur, as this image (p. 26) reveals.  [13]

To date, no regulations prescribe a maximum time wells may remain inactive before being permanently abandoned. “The most common failure mechanisms (corrosion, deterioration, and malfunction) cause mainly small leaks [up to 49 barrels, or 2,058 gallons]. Corrosion is historically known to cause 85% to 90% of small leaks.”

Depending on various factors, C-FER concludes that “Shut-In” wells reach an environmental risk threshhold in six months, TA wells in about 10-12 years, and PA wells in 25 years.  Some of these abandoned wells are 63 years old.

The AP noted that none of the 1994 GAO recommendations have been implemented. Abandoned wells remain uninspected and pose a threat which the government continues to ignore.

Agency Reorganization

Not only was nothing was done with the 1994 GAO recommendations to protect the environment from abandoned wells, its 2003 reorganization recommendations [14] were likewise ignored.  In a June 2011 report on agency reorganization in the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill, the GAO reports that “as of December 2010,” the DOI “had not implemented many recommendations we made to address numerous weaknesses and challenges.” [15]

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) was renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) last May after MMS drew heavy fire for malfeasance, including allowing exemptions to safety rules it granted to BP. An Office of Inspector General investigation revealed that MMS employees accepted gifts from the oil and gas industry, including sex, drugs and trips, and falsified inspection reports. [16]

Reorganization proceeded.  Effective October 1, 2011, the Dept. of the Interior split BOEMRE into three new federal agencies: the Office of Natural Resources Revenue to collect mineral leasing fees, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) “to carry out the offshore energy management and safety and environmental oversight missions.” The DOI admits:

“The Deepwater Horizon blowout and resulting oil spill shed light on weaknesses in the federal offshore energy regulatory system, including the overly broad mandate and inherently conflicted missions of MMS which was charged with resource management, safety and environmental protection, and revenue collection.” [17]

BOEM essentially manages the development of offshore drilling, while BSEE oversees environmental protection, with some eco-protection overlap between the two agencies. [18]

Early this month, BSEE Director Michael Bromwich spoke at the Global Offshore Safety Summit Conference in Stavanger, Norway, sponsored by the International Regulators Forum. He announced a new position, Chief Environmental Officer of the BOEM:

“This person will be empowered, at the national level, to make decisions and final recommendations when leasing and environmental program heads cannot reach agreement. This individual will also be a major participant in setting the scientific agenda for the United States’ oceans.” [19]

Bromwich failed to mention anything about the abandoned wells under his purview. Out of sight, out of mind.

Cost of the Macondo Blowout

Today, the GAO published its final report of a three-part series on the Gulf oil disaster. [20]  Focused on federal financial exposure to oil spill claims, the accountants nevertheless point out that, as of May 2011, BP paid $700 million toward those spill claims out of its $20 billion Trust established to cover that deadly accident. BP and Oxford Economics estimate the total cost for eco-cleanup and compensatory economic damages will run to the “tens of billions of dollars.” [21]

On the taxpayer side, the GAO estimates the federal government’s costs will exceed the billion dollar incident cap set by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (as amended). As of May 2011, agency costs reached past $626 million.

The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund’s income is generated from an oil barrel tax that is set to expire in 2017, notes GAO.

With today’s District Court decision in Louisiana, BP also faces punitive damages on “thousands of thousands of thousands of claims.” U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier denied BP’s appeal that might have killed several hundred thousand claims, among them that clean up workers have still not been fully paid by BP. [22]

Notes

[1] U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, “Status of Gulf of Mexico Well Permits,” n.d. http://www.bsee.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Permits/Status-of-Gulf-of-Mexico-Well-Permits.aspx

[2] Tennille Tracy, “US Govt Approves First BP Deepwater Exploration Plan in US Gulf Under New Rules,” Dow Jones News Wire, 24 Oct. 2011. Reproduced athttp://www.firstenercastfinancial.com/news/story/45441-us-govt-approves-first-bp-deepwater-exploration-plan-us-gulf-under-new-rules

[3] Michael Craig and Jacqueline Savitz, “False Sense of Safety: Safety Measures Will Not Make Offshore Drilling Safe,” Oceana, 20 Oct. 2011http://na.oceana.org/sites/default/files/reports/OffshoreSafetyReport_Oceana_10-18-11.pdf

Also see Oceana’s online appendix showing an analysis of each new safety measure’s effect on safety.http://na.oceana.org/sites/default/files/OnlineAppendix_SafetyReport_Oceana_10-19-11.pdf

[4] U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, “Application for Permit to Drill (APD) Approval Process and Definitions,” n.d.http://www.bsee.gov/uploadedFiles/APD_Facts_and_Definitions_BSEE.pdf

[5] See, e.g.: David Edwards, “New evidence of a massive oil slick near Deepwater Horizon site,” Raw Story, 1 Sept. 2011.http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/new-evidence-of-a-massive-oil-slick-near-deepwater-horizon-site/

Frank Whalen, “Oil Still Gushing from Bp Well in Gulf,” American Free Press, 2 Sept. 2011. http://americanfreepress.net/?p=341

Dahr Jamail, “Environmental Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico: The Escalation of BP’s Liability,” Global Research, 5 Oct. 2011. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26947

Luis R. Miranda, “Gulf of Mexico Sea Floor Unstable, Fractured, Spilling Hydrocarbons,” The Real Agenda, 10 Oct. 2011. http://real-agenda.com/2011/10/10/gulf-of-mexico-sea-floor-unstable-fractured-spilling-hydrocarbons/

[6] John Amos, “Over 28,000 Abandoned Wells in the Gulf of Mexico,” 18 Oct. 2011. http://blog.skytruth.org/2011/10/abandoned-wells-in-gulf-of-mexico.html

[7] U.S. Dept. of the Interior, “Interior Department Issues ‘Idle Iron’ Guidance,” 15 Sept. 2010. http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/Interior-Department-Issues-Idle-Iron-Guidance.cfm

[8] Siobhan Hughes, “Plugs Ordered on Idle Wells: Move to Permanently Seal Sites in Gulf Could Cost Billions but Create New Work,” Wall Street Journal, 16 Sept. 2010.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703743504575493782591743858.html

[9] U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, “Idle Iron Update,” n.d. (pp. 9-16) https://www.noia.org/website/download.asp?id=47290

[10] Jeff Donn and Mitch Weiss, “Gulf of Mexico hides 27,000 abandoned wells,” Associated Press, 7 July 2010. http://www.dallasnews.com/news/state/headlines/20100707-Gulf-of-Mexico-hides-27-000-1068.ece

[11] Steven Kotler, “Planet Sludge: Millions of Abandoned, Leaking Oil Wells and Natural-Gas Wells Destined to Foul Our Future,” EcoHearth, 17 Aug. 2011.http://ecohearth.com/eco-zine/green-issues/1609-abandoned-leaking-oil-wells-natural-gas-well-leaks-disaster.html 

[12] U.S. Government Accounting Office, “Offshore Oil and Gas Resources: Interior Can Improve its Management of Lease Abandonment,” (GAO/RCED-94-82) May 1994.http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat3/151878.pdf

[13] J.R. Nichols and S.N. Kariyawasam, “Risk Assessment of Temporarily Abandoned or Shut-in Wells,” C-FER Technologies, Oct. 2000.http://www.boemre.gov/tarprojects/329/329AA.pdf

[14] U.S. Government Accounting Office, “Results-Oriented Cultures: Implementation Steps to Assist Mergers and Organizational Transformations,” (GAO-03-669) 2 July 2003. http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-03-669

[15] U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Oil and Gas: Interior’s Restructuring Challenges in the Aftermath of the Gulf Oil Spill,” (GAO-11-734T) 2 June 2011.http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11734t.pdf

[16] U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Office of Inspector General, “Investigative Report – Island Operating Company, et al.,” 31 March 2010.http://www.govexec.com/pdfs/052510ts1.pdf

[17] U.S. Dept. of the Interior, “Interior Department Completes Reorganization of the Former MMS,” 30 Sept. 2011. http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/Interior-Department-Completes-Reorganization-of-the-Former-MMS.cfm#

[18] U.S. Dept. of the Interior, untitled document distinguishing the areas of responsibility between the BOEM and the BSEE. n.d.http://www.bsee.gov/uploadedFiles/A%20to%20Z%20Guide%20web%20version%281%29.pdf

[19] U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, “BSEE Director Delivers Remarks at the International Regulators Forum 2011 Global Offshore Safety Summit Conference,” 4 Oct. 2011. http://www.boemre.gov/ooc/press/2011/press1004.htm

[20] U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Actions Needed to Reduce Evolving but Uncertain Federal Financial Risks,” (GAO-12-86), 24 Oct. 2011. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d1286.pdf

[21] U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Preliminary Assessment of Federal Financial Risks and Cost Reimbursement and Notification Policies and Procedures,” 9 Nov. 2010. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d1190r.pdf

[22] Sabrina Canfield, “Judge Denies BP Appeal That Might Have Killed Thousands of Claims, Courthouse News Service,” 24 Oct. 2011.http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/10/24/40864.htm

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Rady Ananda is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Rady Ananda

 

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Turkey earthquake death toll rises to 534

Posted by Admin on October 28, 2011

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/turkey-earthquake-death-toll-rises-to-534/196734-2.html

Posted on Oct 27, 2011 at 05:31pm IST

Ercis: Rain and snow on Thursday compounded difficulties for thousands rendered homeless in the powerful earthquake that hit eastern Turkey, and the government said the death toll has gone up to 534.

The prime minister’s center for crisis and emergency management said 2,300 people were injured and 185 were rescued from the rubble.

Meanwhile, a moderate earthquake, measuring 5.4 according to Turkey’s Kandilli seismology center, hit the neighboring province of Hakkari on Thursday, sending people rushing out of buildings in fear and panic. No damage was reported but NTV television said some people were slightly injured while trying to escape through windows.

That temblor was centered 90 miles (150 kilometers) south of the epicenter of Sunday’s devastating quake.

Turkish authorities delivered more tents after acknowledging initial problems in the distribution of aid for survivors of the 7.2-magnitude quake that shattered at least 2,200 buildings on Sunday.

Foreign assistance also began arriving after Turkey said it would accept help to house survivors through the winter. Israel, which has a troubled political relationship with Turkey, sent emergency housing units, blankets and clothing. Germany also dispatched supplies, including tent heating units. Britain said it was dispatching 1,000 tents to shelter some 5,500 people. Russia and Ukraine also contributed.

Some media reports had said rescuers pulled out a 19-year-old alive from the rubble on Thursday, but Mustafa Ozden, the head of the team that brought out the young man, told The Associated Press that he was rescued on Tuesday.

Rain gave way to intermittent snow, deepening the hardship of thousands of people either rendered homeless in the powerful earthquake or too afraid to return indoors amid aftershocks that continued to rattle the area.

In the worst-hit city of Ercis, families who managed to obtain tents shared them with others. Some people spent a fourth night outdoors huddled under blankets in front of campfires, either waiting for news of the missing or keeping watch over damaged homes.

Sermin Yildirim, who was eight months pregnant, was with her twins and husband. They shared a tent with a family of four who were distant relatives. Her apartment in a three-story building was not damaged but the family was reluctant to return.

“It’s getting colder, my kids are coughing. I don’t know how long we will have to stay here,” Yildirim said. “We were not able to get a tent. We are waiting to get our own.”

The Red Crescent organization and several pro-Islamic groups set up kitchens and dished out soup or meals of rice and beans.

People were seen gathering pieces of wood to light campfires or stove-heaters.

Muhlise Bakan, 41, was not happy to share her tent with her husband’s second wife, Hamide.

“I have four children, she has five,” Bakan said. “We were sleeping in separate rooms at our house, and now we are sleeping side by side here.”

However, she acknowledged the two women were now “closer” as they struggle together in hard times. Turkish law does not recognize second marriages, but still some men in the country’s southeast marry more then one wife in religious ceremonies that are accepted among conservatives.

Health problems increased the hardship for some quake survivors.

“I am very sick, I need medicine,” said Kevsel Astan, 40, who had a kidney transplant more than four years ago.

She said she was being treated at the state hospital until the quake struck. The damaged hospital has been evacuated and doctors are focusing on emergency cases.

Burke Cinar, a sociologist with a Turkish foundation, said the group was trying to get tents for the families of 15 children with leukemia in Ercis. She said about 100 leukemia patients live in quake-hit Van province.

Turkey’s weather agency predicted intermittent snowfall for the next three days.

More than a dozen television stations organized a joint aid telethon, amassing just under 62 million Turkish Lira ($37 million) in aid for the region.

Searchers sifted through piles of debris, recovering more bodies. They included two dead teenage sisters and their parents who were holding hands, and a mother clutching her baby boy, according to media reports.

Two teachers and a university student were rescued from ruined buildings on Wednesday, but there were no signs of survivors elsewhere and excavators were clearing debris from some collapsed buildings. One of the teachers later died in hospital, NTV reported on Thursday.

Posted in Earth Changes | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Canadian Arctic nearly loses entire ice shelf

Posted by Admin on October 1, 2011

http://news.yahoo.com/canadian-arctic-nearly-loses-entire-ice-shelf-214311365.html

By CHARMAINE NORONHA – Associated Press | AP – 23 hrs ago

TORONTO (AP) — Two ice shelves that existed before Canada was settled by Europeans diminished significantly this summer, one nearly disappearing altogether, Canadian scientists say in new research.

The loss is important as a marker of global warming, returning the Canadian Arctic to conditions that date back thousands of years, scientists say. Floating icebergs that have broken free as a result pose a risk to offshore oil facilities and potentially to shipping lanes. The breaking apart of the ice shelves also reduces the environment that supports microbial life and changes the look of Canada’s coastline.

Luke Copland is an associate professor in the geography department at the University of Ottawa who co-authored the research. He said the Serson Ice Shelf shrank from 79.15 square miles (205 square kilometers) to two remnant sections three years ago, and was further diminished this past summer.

Copland said the shelf went from a 16-square-mile (42-square-kilometer) floating glacier tongue to 9.65 square miles (25 square kilometers), and the second section from 13.51 square miles (35 square kilometers) to 2 square miles (7 square kilometers), off Ellesmere Island‘s northern coastline.

This past summer, Ward Hunt Ice Shelf‘s central area disintegrated into drifting ice masses, leaving two separate ice shelves measuring 87.65 and 28.75 square miles (227 and 74 square kilometers) respectively, reduced from 131.7 square miles (340 square kilometers) the previous year.

“It has dramatically broken apart in two separate areas and there’s nothing in between now but water,” said Copland.

Copland said those two losses are significant, especially since the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf has always been the biggest, the farthest north and the one scientists thought might have been the most stable.

“Recent (ice shelf) loss has been very rapid, and goes hand-in-hand with the rapid sea ice decline we have seen in this decade and the increasing warmth and extensive melt in the Arctic regions,” said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, remarking on the research.

Copland, who uses satellite imagery and who has conducted field work in the Arctic every May for the past five years, said since the end of July, pieces equaling one and a half times the size of Manhattan Island have broken off. Co-researcher Derek Mueller, an assistant professor at Carleton University’s geography and environmental studies department, said the loss this past summer equals up to three billion tons. Copland said their findings have not yet been peer reviewed since the research is new, but a number of scientists contacted by The Associated Press reviewed the findings, agreeing the loss in volume of ice shelves is significant.

Scambos said the loss of the Arctic shelves is significant because they are old and their rapid loss underscores the severity of the warming trend scientists see now relative to past fluctuations such as the Medieval Warm Period or the warmer times in the pre-Current Era (B.C.).

Ice shelves, which began forming at least 4,500 years ago, are much thicker than sea ice, which is typically less than a few feet (meters) thick and survives up to several years.

Canada has the most extensive ice shelves in the Arctic along the northern coast of Ellesmere Island. These floating ice masses are typically 131 feet (40 meters) thick (equivalent to a 10-story building), but can be as much as 328 feet (100 meters) thick. They thickened over time via snow and sea ice accumulation, along with glacier inflow in certain places.

The northern coast of Ellesmere Island contains the last remaining ice shelves in Canada, with an estimated area of 217 square miles (563 square kilometers), Mueller said.

Between 1906 and 1982, there has been a 90 percent reduction in the areal extent of ice shelves along the entire coastline, according to data published by W.F. Vincent at Quebec’s Laval University. The former extensive “Ellesmere Island Ice Sheet” was reduced to six smaller, separate ice shelves: Serson, Petersen, Milne, Ayles, Ward Hunt and Markham. In 2005, the Ayles Ice Shelf whittled almost completely away, as did the Markham Ice Shelf in 2008 and the Serson this year.

“The impact is significant and yet only a piece of the ongoing and accelerating response to warming of the Arctic,” said Dr. Robert Bindschadler, emeritus scientist at the Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

Bindschadler said the loss is an indication of another threshold being passed, as well as the likely acceleration of buttressed glaciers able to flow faster into the ocean, which accelerates their contribution to global sea level.

Copland said mean winter temperatures have risen by about 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade for the past five to six decades on northern Ellesmere Island.

(This version CORRECTS Corrects in paragraph 3 that Serson Ice Shelf shrank to two remant sections three years ago, not five years ago; and in paragraph 13 the size of the last remaining ice shelves in Canada. Minor style edits, For global distribution.)

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U.S. Workers are the Victims of a Speedup

Posted by Admin on September 30, 2011

http://battleofearth.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/u-s-workers-are-the-victims-of-a-speedup/

LA Times, August 14, 2011
Posted here: Tuesday, August 23, 2011 @ 5:00 PM

Juan Sanchez polishes an acrylic bench on the Plexi-Craft factory floor in the Queens borough of New York. To keep profits climbing in tough times, corporations have laid off staff and piled more and more work onto the remaining employees. (Scott Eells / Bloomberg)

By Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery

As employees work harder and longer hours, they face stagnant pay despite the 22% jump in corporate profits since 2007. But being victimized by this ‘speedup’ is not inevitable.

Mind racing at 4 a.m.? Guiltily realizing you’ve been only half-listening to your child for the past hour? Checking work email at a stoplight, at the dinner table, in bed? Dreading once-pleasant diversions, like dinner with friends, as just one more thing on your to-do list?

Guess what: It’s not you. It’s the speedup. To keep profits climbing in tough times, corporations have laid off staff and piled more and more work onto the remaining employees.

Webster’s defines speedup as “an employer’s demand for accelerated output without increased pay,” and it used to be a household word. Bosses would speed up the line to fill a big order, goose profits or punish a restive workforce. Workers recognized it, unions (remember those?) fought it — and, if necessary, walked out over it.

Now the word we use is “productivity,” and pundits across the political spectrum revel in the fact that year after year, American companies are wringing more value out of their employees than they did the year before. Just counting work that’s on the books (never mind those 11 p.m. emails), we now put in an average of 122 more hours per year than Brits, and 378 hours (nearly 10 weeks!) more than Germans. Worldwide, almost everyone except Americans has, at least on paper, a right to at least one day a week off, paid vacation time and paid maternity leave.

Sure, but we all have to do more with less — employers struggling to survive the downturn are just tightening their belts, right?

That’s true for some. But in the big picture, the data show a more insidious pattern. After a sharp dip in 2008 and ’09, U.S. economic output quickly recovered to near pre-recession levels. The United States did better than most of its fellow G-7 economies. But U.S. workers didn’t see the benefit: During the recession far more people here lost their jobs than anywhere else, and far fewer were hired back once the recovery began. And who knows what will happen now that the economy has made another downward turn?

Yes, some positions always get “rationalized” away, thanks to technological or organizational improvements — and, of course, offshoring remains a major factor. But increasingly, U.S. workers are also falling prey to what we’ll call offloading: cutting jobs and dumping the work onto the remaining staff. Consider a recent Wall Street Journal story about “superjobs,” a nifty euphemism for employees doing more than one job’s worth of work — more than half of all workers surveyed said their jobs had expanded, usually without a raise or bonus. All that extra work helped fuel nearly a sixfold increase in U.S. productivity from 2008 to 2010.

Workforce down, output up: No wonder corporate profits are up 22% since 2007, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute. To repeat: Up. Twenty-two. Percent.

To understand how we got here, first consider the Ben Franklin-Horatio Alger-Henry Ford ur-myth: To balk at working hard — really, really hard — brands you as profoundly un-American. All well and good. But today, the driver is no longer American industriousness. It’s something much more predatory. As Rutgers political scientist Carl Van Horn told the Associated Press recently: “The employee has no leverage. If your boss says, ‘I want you to come in the next two Saturdays,’ what are you going to say — no?”

Which brings us to another shared delusion: multitasking. It seems the obvious fix — I’ll just answer this email while I help with your homework. But research shows most of us cannot actually multitask. And not only that: If you attempt to multitask constantly, your mental circuitry erodes and your brain loses its ability to focus.

Think you’re the exception? Nope, warns Stanford sociologist Clifford Nass. “You’re really lousy at it. No one talks about it — I don’t know why — but in fact there’s no contradictory evidence to this for about the last 15, 20 years.”

Actually, it’s not hard to guess why no one talks about it: We need to believe there’s a personal workaround for what we’re conditioned to see as a personal shortcoming. When, in fact, the problem is the absurd premise that our economy can produce ever more with ever less.

How have we been so brainwashed? For a lucky few, money and perks help sugarcoat the daily frenzy. But for most Americans, it’s just fear — of being passed over at best, downsized at worst. Even among college grads, unemployment is twice what it was in 2007. McDonald’s recently announced that it had gotten more than 1 million applicants for 62,000 new positions. Enough said.

Not that there aren’t winners in the speedup economy. Although incomes for 90% of U.S. workers have stagnated or fallen for the last three decades, the wealthiest 0.1% are making 6.4 times as much as they did in 1980. And that 22% increase in profits? Most of it accrued to a single industry: finance.

In other words, all that extra work you’ve taken on — the late nights, the skipped lunch hours, the missed soccer games — paid off. For them.

This will keep up as long as we buy into three fallacies: One, that to feel crushed by debilitating workloads is a personal failing. Two, that it’s just your company or industry struggling — when in fact what’s happening to hotel maids and salesclerks is also happening to project managers, engineers and doctors (visit our website to read their tales). Three, that there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

We got to this point because of decades of political decisions. We’ve turned over the financing of elections to wealthy interests; we’ve made it harder for unions to organize; we’ve deregulated Wall Street and then completely wimped out on reregulating it after the financiers nearly destroyed the global economy.

But there is another way. European companies face the same pressures that ours do — yet in Germany’s vigorous economy, for example, six weeks of vacation are de rigueur, weekend work is a last resort, and companies’ response to a downturn is not to fire everyone, but to institute Kurzarbeit — temporarily reducing employees’ hours and restoring them when things start looking up. Sure, they lag ever so slightly behind us in productivity. But ask yourself: Whom does our No. 1 spot benefit?

Exactly. So maybe it’s time to come out of the speedup closet. Rant to a friend, neighbor, co-worker. Hear them say, “Me too.” That might sound a little cheesy. But if you’re in an abusive relationship — which 90%-plus of the U.S. currently is — the first step toward recovery is to admit you have a problem.

Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery are co-editors of Mother Jones. Their extended essay about the speedup, along with charts and first-person tales, can be found at Motherjones.com.

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Mexico City street gangs mimic cartel violence

Posted by Admin on April 10, 2011

http://headlinenewsbureau.com/siterun_data/news/world/doc25586ad45cbe2730998e423d9f803419.html

By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ | Posted: Sunday, April 3, 2011 1:06 pm

Two headless bodies are dumped on a street in suburban Mexico City along with a message sent by a mysterious group called “The Hand with Eyes.” Days later, a severed head shows up in a car abandoned outside an elementary school in the same suburb.

For drug lords, this sprawling metropolis of 20 million has been a favorite hide-out and place to launder money, making Mexico City somewhat of an oasis from the brutal cartel violence along the border and in outlying states.

Now a spate of killings and decapitations never before seen have authorities batting down fears that a once-distant drug war is making its way into the capital. Instead, they say, the violence since late last year comes from street gangs fighting for an increasingly lucrative local drug market.

While drug use in Mexico City doesn’t come close to that in the U.S., it has grown dramatically in the past decade. About 8 percent of middle and high school students here now experiment with drugs, said city drug addiction adviser Patricia Reyes, a number that has climbed from 2.5 percent in 1998 according to national surveys.

Some of the high-profile violence comes from groups that are remnants of the Beltran Leyva cartel, which has splintered and moved closer to the city since the Mexican navy killed leader Arturo Beltran Leyva in December 2009. Others imitate cartel tactics to gain turf.

“I think of these groups as cells, as franchises,” said Alfredo Castillo, attorney general for Mexico state, the suburban area surrounding Mexico City. “As franchises what do they want? They want the know-how, the business model, and in the end, they want their backing in case of an extraordinary problem.”

The mass killings started late last year, when a drive-by shooting in the rough neighborhood of Tepito killed six youths and a family of five was slain in a drug-related attack in the south of the city.

The violence intensified earlier this year as Juan Vasconcelos, a reputed local gang assassin, allegedly went on a cocaine- and alcohol-fueled killing spree that ended with his arrest in February.

The first attack left five people dead on Jan. 8. Another killed eight people Jan. 16 and the third left seven dead Feb. 13.

Police say Vasconcelos has ties in Mexico state to La Familia cartel, based in the neighboring state of Michoacan. While that alliance wasn’t fueling the violence _ Vasconcelos went after rival drug dealers and members of his own gang to consolidate his power _ it made it easier for him to get high-powered weapons.

When police asked in a taped interrogation what he did for a living, Vasconcelos replied, “I kill.”

Then mutilated bodies started showing up, unheard of in the metro area, leading the news media to blame big cartels, including the vicious Zetas gang, and saying the military now patrols parts of the metro area like it does in border cities and other drug hot spots.

The Mexican army denied to The Associated Press that it has patrols in or around Mexico City.

“What we have here is drug dealing, and I’ll say it again: Drug dealing is not considered organized crime,” Mexico City Attorney General Alejandro Mancera was quoted by the newspaper Milenio as saying earlier this month. Mancera did not respond to several requests to be interviewed by the AP.

Mexico City, which still struggles with robberies and high kidnapping rates, has long been considered infested with crime. But murders are dramatically lower in the capital than in northern Mexican cities, where drug violence has been raging for at least four years, and people who long feared the city are now moving there to escape drug violence elsewhere.

Mexico City’s homicide rate was about nine per 100,000 in 2010, lower even than many U.S. cities, including Washington, D.C., which had 22 per 100,000 last year, according to government statistics.

The northern border city of Ciudad Juarez had a staggering 230 per 100,000.

Because many of the country’s wealthy live in the capital, it has long been a neutral place for traffickers to do business undetected and live with their families behind tall gates. According to a recent federal police report, six of the major drug gangs operate in all 16 delegations of Mexico City proper.

While they leave each other alone, the police go after them. Capos have been picked up while jogging in exclusive neighborhoods and caches of weapons have been found in mansions.

At least four top members of the powerful Sinaloa and Juarez cartels have been arrested in Mexico City, including the son of Sinaloa cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and the son of the now deceased Amado Carrillo Fuentes, founder of the Juarez cartel.

La Familia, a newer cartel formed in 2006, began expanding into the suburbs from Michoacan as President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown on the cartel in his home state. Now, they have a presence northeast of the capital, where they run drug, extortion and car theft operations, Castillo said.

Still, the major cartels tend to lay low. There is a strong police presence, with 90,000 officers assigned to the 16 boroughs, plus the Mexico state police patrolling areas surrounding the city. The capital is also where the army, navy, and federal police are based, something that may inhibit traffickers from launching the brazen attacks seen in other places.

“There is an enormous reactive force concentrated in Mexico City and because of that, drug traffickers have to maintain a low profile,” said Martin Barron, a crime expert at the National Institute of Criminal Justice, a government think tank.

But tensions and violence among local gangs have flared to new levels. So far the attacks are relatively few in number, but drug-related killings have increased from 135 in 2009 to 191 in 2010, according to the Mexican government.

One local gang in Mexico City, the Hand with Eyes, left the decapitated bodies of a man and a woman in the western suburb of Naucalpan in February, along with a note saying, “People of this plaza don’t seem to understand it has an owner.”

Days later, a car with a severed head on the dashboard and the rest of the body in the back seat was abandoned in the same area.

The new gang has been beheading local drug dealers who refuse to join its ranks, Castillo said.

_____

Associated Press writer Gloria Perez in Mexico state contributed to this report.

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Syrian government: 12 killed in seaside city

Posted by Admin on March 27, 2011

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110327/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_syria

AP – Pro-Syrian President Bashar Assad protesters, shouts pro-Assad slogans as they hold his posters, in Damascus
By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Zeina Karam, Associated Press – 1 hr 1 min ago

DAMASCUS, Syria – The Syrian government says 12 people were killed in violence rocking a seaside Mediterranean city.

Syria’s state-run news agency said unknown armed elements on Saturday attacked neighborhoods in Latakia, shooting from rooftops and terrorizing people.

Ten people, including security forces, residents as well as two members of the shadowy “armed elements” died in the violence.

Some 200 others were wounded, most from the security forces, the report said Sunday.

Syrian army units deployed in Latakia Saturday night following a day of violence and chaos in which protesters and the government traded accusations of violence and incitement.

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Japan tsunami: Nothing to do but run

Posted by Admin on March 16, 2011

Archive: Sendai, Japan (NASA, International Sp...

Image of Sendai by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110316/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_earthquake_devastation

By TODD PITMAN, Associated Press Todd Pitman, Associated Press – 18 mins ago

SHIZUGAWA, Japan – Growing up in this small fishing town on Japan’s northeastern coast, 16-year-old Minami Sato never took the annual tsunami drills seriously.

She thought the town’s thick, two-story-high harbor walls would protect against any big wave. Besides, her home was perched on a hilltop more than a mile (about two kilometers) from the water’s edge. It was also just below a designated “tsunami refuge” — an elevated patch of grass that looked safely down across the town’s highest four-story buildings.

But the colossal wave that slammed into Shizugawa last week “was beyond imagination,” the high-school student said. “There was nothing we could do, but run.”

The devastating tsunami that followed Friday’s massive earthquake erased Shizugawa from the map, and raised questions about what, if anything, could have been done to prevent it. More than half the town’s 17,000 people are missing and scenes of ruin dot the towns and villages along Japan’s northeastern coast, devastation not seen here since the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

On Wednesday, the official death toll from the tragedy was raised to 3,676 but it is expected climb above 10,000 as nearly 8,000 people are missing. Some 434,000 people were made homeless and are living in shelters.

With each passing day, more and more poignant stories of survivors and victims are emerging.

Immediately after the quake, Katsutaro Hamada, 79, fled to safety with his wife. But then he went back home to retrieve a photo album of his granddaughter, 14-year-old Saori, and grandson, 10-year-old Hikaru.

Just then the tsunami came and swept away his home. Rescuers found Hamada’s body, crushed by the first floor bathroom walls. He was holding the album to his chest, Kyodo news agency reported.

“He really loved the grandchildren. But it is stupid,” said his son, Hironobu Hamada. “He loved the grandchildren so dearly. He has no pictures of me!”

Shizugawa, 30 miles (50 kilometers) from Hamada’s home in Iwate province’s Ofunato city, had been preparing for just such a disaster since at least 1960, when the largest earthquake on record — a magnitude 9.5 — hit Chile and triggered a tsunami that swept the entire Pacific Ocean and hit Japan.

A Miyagi prefecture official said the harbor walls, which began to be constructed soon after the tsunami, were completed in 1963.

Every year on the anniversary of that destruction — May 22 — residents of Shizugawa practiced tsunami drills — running to designated refuges on higher ground scattered through town as sirens howled and making arrangements for emergency food and shelter.

The drills were voluntary, but most people took part, said 50-year-old housewife, Katsuko Takahashi, who was sitting in the darkness outside a school turned shelter in Shizugawa, shivering as snow fell.

“I can’t say we prepared enough, because half the population is still missing,” she said. “But you cannot prepare for a tsunami this big.”

When Sato first saw the colossal brown wave rushing toward Shizugawa on Friday afternoon, it looked small enough for the 20-feet-high (6-meter-high) walls along the harbor — hundreds of feet (meters) of thick concrete slabs — to stop it.

But as the tsunami slammed into the harbor edge, it was clear the walls, stretched over a half-mile (a kilometer), would be useless. Sato — watching from her hilltop home — saw the surging water easily engulf not only the walls, but crash over the top of four-story-high buildings in the distance.

Sato grabbed her 79-year-old grandmother and started running up a pathway behind her home to the tsunami refuge.

But there, she saw several dozen people who had gathered already on the move.

“Run!” screamed one. “The water is coming! It’s getting higher!” shouted another.

The wave fast approaching, Sato ran up the steps into a Shinto shrine, past a cemetery and kept going, finally coming to a halt out of breath beside a cell phone tower.

The surging sea swept over the refuge below them, picking up 16 cars that had been parked neatly in a row and cramming them chaotically together into a corner of the parking lot.

Below, the ocean had swallowed all of Shizugawa, rising above a four-story mini-mall and the town’s hospital, two of the few buildings still standing — but totally gutted — when the wave receded.

“I thought I was going to die,” Sato said Tuesday afternoon, as she gathered up two sweaters, two books and a pillow from her ruined house, whose missing front wall looked out over the town, where a line of army-green Japanese Self Defense Force jeeps rode through the destruction.

The harbor wall is now half missing. On one road that still exists in Shizugawa, evacuation routes can still be seen painted into the tarmac.

One shows a blue wave curled around a running human figure. A green arrow indicates a refuge is just a few hundred yards (meters) away — the same one now covered with debris beside Sato’s house.

Just around the corner, the road is gone, surrounded by an apocalyptic wasteland of knotted rubble that used to be Shizugawa.

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Scenes of devastation at heart of Japan disaster

Posted by Admin on March 12, 2011

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110312/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_earthquake_devastation

By JAY ALABASTER, Associated Press Jay Alabaster, Associated Press – Sat Mar 12, 8:38 am ET

SENDAI, Japan – Miles from the ocean’s edge, weary, mud-spattered survivors wandered streets strewn with fallen trees, crumpled cars, even small airplanes. Relics of lives now destroyed were everywhere — half a piano, a textbook, a soiled red sleeping bag.

On Saturday, a day after a massive tsunami tore through Sendai, residents surveyed the devastation that has laid waste to whole sections of the northern port of 1 million people, 80 miles (128 kilometers) from the epicenter of the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that set off one of the greatest disasters in Japan‘s history.

Rescue workers plied boats through murky waters around flooded structures, nosing their way through a sea of detritus, while smoke from at least one large fire billowed in the distance. Power and phone reception remained cut as the city continued to be jolted by powerful aftershocks.

A still unknown number of people perished. Police said they found 200 to 300 bodies washed up on nearby beaches, but authorities were still assessing the extent of the devastation in the city and along the nearby coast.

Rail operators lost contact with four trains running on coastal lines Friday and still had not found them by Saturday afternoon, Kyodo News agency reported. East Japan Railway Co. said it did not know how many people were aboard.

Overall, the country’s official death toll stood at 574, although local media reports said at least 1,300 people may have been killed. Prime Minister Naoto Kan said 50,000 troops would join rescue and recovery efforts, and rescuers still had not reached some of the hardest-hit areas by late Saturday, some 30 hours after the quake.

Hundreds of people lined up outside the few still-operating supermarkets in Sendai, stocking up on drinks and instant noodles, knowing it would be a long time before life returns to anything like normal. Some recalled how they cheated death as the massive waves swept some 6 miles (10 kilometers) inland.

A convenience store 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the shore was open for business, though there was no power and the floors were covered with a thick layer of grime.

“The flood came in from behind the store and swept around both sides,” said shop owner Wakio Fushima. “Cars were flowing right by.”

Many Sendai residents spent the night outdoors, or wandering debris-strewn streets, unable to return to homes damaged or destroyed by the quake or tsunami. Those who did find a place to rest for the night awoke to scenes of utter devastation.

The city’s Wakabayashi district, which runs directly up to the sea, was a swampy wasteland with murky, waist-high water. Most houses were completely flattened, as if a giant bulldozer had swept through.

Satako Yusawa, 69, said she has felt many earthquakes but never anything like what hit Friday afternoon.

“I was having tea at a friend’s house when the quake hit. We were desperately trying to hold the furniture up, but the shaking was so fierce that we just panicked,” she said.

She said her son had just borrowed a large amount of money to build a house, and the family moved in on Feb. 11. Luckily, he was out of town when the quake and tsunami hit, but on Saturday they couldn’t find the house, or even where it used to stand.

Yusawa broke into tears as she looked out over the devastation.

“This is life,” she said.

At an electronics story in the city, workers gave away batteries, flashlights and cell phone chargers. Several dozen people waited patiently outside.

From a distance, the store appeared to have survived the devastation intact. But a closer look revealed several smashed windows and slightly buckled walls.

Inside was chaos. The ceiling of the second floor had collapsed, and large TVs, air conditioners and other products lay smashed and strewn about the aisles.

The contents of the entire building were soaked by the automatic sprinklers that were triggered by the quake.

“Things were shaking so much we couldn’t stand up,” said Hiroyuki Kamada, who was working in the store when the initial quake hit. “After three or four minutes it lessened a bit and we dashed outside.”

The tsunami directly hit the city’s dock area and then barreled down a long approach road, carrying giant metal shipping containers about a mile (2 kilometers) inland and smashing buildings along the way.

Hundreds of cars and trucks were strewn throughout the area — on top of buildings, wedged into stairwells, standing on their noses or leaning against each other as if in prayer.

Most ships in port managed to escape to sea before the tsunami hit, but a large Korean ship was swept onto the dock.

Most buildings out of range of the tsunami appeared to have survived the quake without much damage, though some older wooden structures were toppled. Paved roads had buckled in some places.

Cell phone saleswoman Naomi Ishizawa, 24, was working when the quake hit in the mid afternoon. She said it took until nightfall to reach her house just outside Sendai and check on her parents, who were both OK. Their home was still standing, but the walls of a bedroom and bathroom had collapsed and debris was strewn throughout.

And yet, she was lucky. The tsunami’s inland march stopped just short of her residence; other houses in her neighborhood were totally destroyed.

Like many people throughout Japan’s northeast, she had not heard from others in her family and was worried.

“My uncle and his family live in an area near the shore where there were a lot of deaths,” Ishizawa said. “We can’t reach them.”

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Blast at Japan nuke plant; thousands missing

Posted by Admin on March 12, 2011

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110312/ap_on_bi_ge/as_japan_earthquake

By ERIC TALMADGE and YURI KAGEYAMA, Associated Press Eric Talmadge And Yuri Kageyama, Associated Press – 3 mins ago

IWAKI, Japan – An explosion shattered a building housing a nuclear reactor Saturday, amid fears of a meltdown, while across wide swaths of northeastern Japan officials searched for thousands of people missing more than a day after a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

The confirmed death toll from Friday’s twin disasters was 686, but the government’s chief spokesman said it could exceed 1,000. Devastation stretched hundreds of miles (kilometers) along the coast, where thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centers cut off from rescuers, electricity and aid.

The scale of destruction was not yet known, but there were grim signs that the death toll could soar. One report said four whole trains had disappeared Friday and still not been located. Others said 9,500 people in one coastal town were unaccounted for and that at least 200 bodies had washed ashore elsewhere.

Atsushi Ito, an official in Miyagi prefecture, among the worst hit states, could not confirm those figures, noting that with so little access to the area, thousands of people in scores of town could not be contacted or accounted for.

“Our estimates based on reported cases alone suggest that more than 1,000 people have lost their lives in the disaster,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. “Unfortunately, the actual damage could far exceed that number considering the difficulty assessing the full extent of damage.”

Among the most worrying developments was concerns that a nuclear reacter could melt down. Edano said Saturdya’s explosion was caused by vented hydrogen gas and destroyed the exterior walls of the building where the reactor is, but not the actual metal housing enveloping the reactor.

Edano said the radiation around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant had not risen after the blast, but had in fact decreased.

Three people being evacuated from an area near the plant have been exposed to radiation, Yoshinori Baba, a Fukushima prefectural disaster official, confirmed. But he said they showed no signs of illness.

Virtually any increase in ambient radiation can raise long-term cancer rates, and authorities were planning to distribute iodine, which helps protect against thyroid cancer.

Authorities have also evacuated people from a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius around the reactor.

The explosion was caused by hydrogen interacting with oxygen outside the reactor. The hydrogen was formed when the superheated fuel rods came in contact with water being poured over it to prevent a meltdown.

“They are working furiously to find a solution to cool the core, and this afternoon in Europe we heard that they have begun to inject sea water into the core,” said Mark Hibbs, a senior associate at the Nuclear Policy Program for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “That is an indication of how serious the problem is and how the Japanese had to resort to unusual and improvised solutions to cool the reactor core.”

Officials have said that radiation levels were elevated before the blast: At one point, the plant was releasing each hour the amount of radiation a person normally absorbs from the environment each year.

The explosion was preceded by puff of white smoke that gathered intensity until it became a huge cloud enveloping the entire facility, located in Fukushima, 20 miles (30 kilometers) from Iwaki. After the explosion, the walls of the building crumbled, leaving only a skeletal metal frame.

Tokyo Power Electric Co., the utility that runs the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, said four workers suffered fractures and bruises and were being treated at a hospital.

The trouble began at the plant’s Unit 1 after the massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake and the tsunami it spawned knocked out power there, depriving it of its cooling system.

Power was knocked out by the quake in large areas of Japan, which has requested increased energy supplies from Russia, Russia’s RIA Novosti agency reported.

The concerns about a radiation leak at the nuclear power plant overshadowed the massive tragedy laid out along a 1,300-mile (2,100-kilometer) stretch of the coastline where scores of villages, towns and cities were battered by the tsunami, packing 23-feet (7-meter) high waves.

It swept inland about six miles (10 kilometers) in some areas, swallowing boats, homes, cars, trees and everything else.

“The tsunami was unbelievably fast,” said Koichi Takairin, a 34-year-old truck driver who was inside his sturdy four-ton rig when the wave hit the port town of Sendai.

“Smaller cars were being swept around me,” he said. “All I could do was sit in my truck.”

His rig ruined, he joined the steady flow of survivors who walked along the road away from the sea and back into the city on Saturday.

Smashed cars and small airplanes were jumbled up against buildings near the local airport, several miles (kilometers) from the shore. Felled trees and wooden debris lay everywhere as rescue workers coasted on boats through murky waters around flooded structures, nosing their way through a sea of debris.

Late Saturday night, firefighters had yet to contain a large blaze at the Cosmo Oil refinery in the city of Ichihara.

According to official figures, 642 people are missing and missing 1,426 injured.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said 50,000 troops joined rescue and recovery efforts, aided by boats and helicopters. Dozens of countries also offered help.

President Barack Obama pledged U.S. assistance following what he called a potentially “catastrophic” disaster. He said one U.S. aircraft carrier was already in Japan and a second was on its way.

More than 215,000 people were living in 1,350 temporary shelters in five prefectures, the national police agency said.

Aid has barely begun to trickle into many areas.

“All we have to eat are biscuits and rice balls,” said Noboru Uehara, 24, a delivery truck driver who was wrapped in a blanket against the cold at center in Iwake. “I’m worried that we will run out of food.”

Since the quake, more than 1 million households have not had water, mostly concentrated in northeast. Some 4 million buildings were without power.

About 24 percent of electricity in Japan is produced by 55 nuclear power units in 17 plants and some were in trouble after the quake.

Japan declared states of emergency at two power plants after their units lost cooling ability.

Although the government spokesman played down fears of radiation leak, the Japanese nuclear agency spokesman Shinji Kinjo acknowledged there were still fears of a meltdown.

A “meltdown” is not a technical term. Rather, it is an informal way of referring to a very serious collapse of a power plant’s systems and its ability to manage temperatures.

Yaroslov Shtrombakh, a Russian nuclear expert, said a Chernobyl-style meltdown was unlikely.

“It’s not a fast reaction like at Chernobyl,” he said. “I think that everything will be contained within the grounds, and there will be no big catastrophe.”

In 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded and caught fire, sending a cloud of radiation over much of Europe. That reactor — unlike the Fukushima one — was not housed in a sealed container, so there was no way to contain the radiation once the reactor exploded.

The reactor in trouble has already leaked some radiation: Before the explosion, operators had detected eight times the normal radiation levels outside the facility and 1,000 times normal inside Unit 1’s control room.

An evacuation area around the plant was expanded to a radius of 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the six miles (10 kilometers) before. People in the expanded area were advised to leave quickly; 51,000 residents were previously evacuated.

“Everyone wants to get out of the town. But the roads are terrible,” said Reiko Takagi, a middle-aged woman, standing outside a taxi company. “It is too dangerous to go anywhere. But we are afraid that winds may change and bring radiation toward us.”

The transport ministry said all highways from Tokyo leading to quake-hit areas were closed, except for emergency vehicles. Mobile communications were spotty and calls to the devastated areas were going unanswered.

Local TV stations broadcast footage of people lining up for water and food such as rice balls. In Fukushima, city officials were handing out bottled drinks, snacks and blankets. But there were large areas that were surrounded by water and were unreachable.

One hospital in Miyagi prefecture was seen surrounded by water. The staff had painted an SOS on its rooftop and were waving white flags.

Technologically advanced Japan is well prepared for quakes and its buildings can withstand strong jolts, even a temblor like Friday’s, which was the strongest the country has experienced since official records started in the late 1800s. What was beyond human control was the killer tsunami that followed.

Japan’s worst previous quake was a magnitude 8.3 temblor in Kanto that killed 143,000 people in 1923, according to the USGS. A magnitude 7.2 quake in Kobe killed 6,400 people in 1995.

Japan lies on the “Ring of Fire” — an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching around the Pacific where about 90 percent of the world’s quakes occur, including the one that triggered the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 12 countries. A magnitude-8.8 quake that shook central Chile in February 2010 also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.

___

Kageyama reported from Tokyo. Associated Press writers Malcolm J. Foster, Mari Yamaguchi, Tomoko A. Hosaka and Shino Yuasa in Tokyo, Jay Alabaster in Sendai, Sylvia Hui in London, David Nowak in Moscow, and Margie Mason in Hanoi also contributed.

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