Natural disaster, earthquakes, tornadoes, wildfires, etc.

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New tornado detection radar...

New Radar Detects Tornadoes Faster
July 25, 2008 - Researchers Hope New Technology Can Increase Warning Times, Save Lives

As a record-breaking and increasingly deadly tornado season wreaked havoc across middle America this summer, researchers have been testing a new, high-tech radar system that could help forecasters better pinpoint when, where and how a twister — or any other storm for that matter — will strike. The United States has the most powerful radar network in the world -- a national system called NEXRAD. But even so, the average tornado warning comes only 12 minutes before the storm strikes -- and three quarters of the warnings are false alarms.

"We don't want to have people who are waiting 10, 15, 20 minutes, and then nothing happens," said Kevin A. Kloesel, associate dean of the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences at the University of Oklahoma. To that end, university researchers, in conjunction with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the National Weather Service, have been quietly testing a new high-tech system of radars that can see what current NOAA radars can't: storm activity that is close to the ground.

"The National Weather Service operates a radar network and those radars are located hundreds of miles apart. They cover huge areas, are large and do surveillance scanning over the area they cover," Kloesel said. "The problem with large scanning radar is that the farther you look out — when you send a beam straight out, the Earth is actually curving away from it as you get farther and farther away. When you get 90 to 100 miles out, that beam is sensing the storm at 8,000 to 10,000 feet."

According to Kloesel, who has worked on the project since it began six years ago, earth curvature creates an "umbrella" close to the ground that radars can't see; this new system, called Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA), is designed to look under that umbrella, where severe weather, like tornadoes, and hail actually form.

More ABC News: New Radar Detects Tornadoes Faster

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Where Do Hurricanes Really Start?
July 25, 2008 - The Real Home of Hurricanes: Ethiopia?
Researchers Say Many Storms Begin on Far Side of Africa

We've seen the image so many times: the satellite picture of clouds in the Atlantic or the Caribbean, gradually taking the familiar spiral shape of a hurricane. Most of us think of the storms as beginning over the steamy Atlantic waters, which provide fuel for hurricanes as they strengthen and threaten landfall. But it turns out that many storms begin much farther away -- all the way over on the far side of Africa. They can start as thunderstorms in Ethiopia, picking up heat and energy as they drift westward across the Sahara desert.

"It's a remote part of the world, but it really does have a lot of implications for folks living downstream," said Jason Dunion, a scientist at the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. For years, Dunion and fellow researchers have been studying hurricanes to determine their true origins. That led them to take interest in tropical disturbances from as far away as the Red Sea. "Only about one in 10 or so of these tropical 'waves' actually forms into a named storm," said Dunion, "but what's really interesting is they account for over half the hurricanes and tropical storms that we see in the entire Atlantic."

Hurricane Bertha, earlier this month, became a named storm just a few hundred miles off the African coast. It was also one of the longest-lasting hurricanes on record, though it did not make landfall. Dolly, which hit south Texas on Wednesday, did not fit the out-of-Africa pattern. It formed in the Caribbean. What determines if a particular disturbance will become a major hurricane, or fade to nothing as it crosses Africa? Among other things, scientists are curious about sand from the Sahara, which can be picked up by the wind and sometimes travel for thousands of miles. Saharan sand -- along with small amounts of microbial life unique to Africa -- has been detected as far away as southern Florida.

More ABC News: Focus Earth: Where Do Hurricanes Really Start?

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Junta skimmin' off the top...

UN says Myanmar goverment has been stealing aid
Tuesday 29th July, 2008 - The UN has admitted that nearly US$10 million of the aid meant for the survivors of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar has been skimmed off by the ruling junta.

In a well-planned cash scam, which is still running, the military regime of the country has insisted the UN aid agencies buy the local currency, the kyat, at a higher rate from banks run by the government. According to the Telegraph newspaper, the UN agencies are forced to buy the kyat through government backed Foreign Exchange Certificates. One FEC buys only 880 kyat, while in value one FEC on the open market is worth about 1,100 kyat.

In this way US$10 million of aid has been lost, according to Sir John Holmes, the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs. A UN spokesman in Rangoon also told the newspaper that the exact losses were still being calculated. Experts believe that the losses could be higher as the discrepancy in exchange rates since the cyclone hit Myanmar in May has been around 25 percent.

The scandal was first exposed in June by a New York blog which received a leak of minutes from a teleconference in which officials raised their concern over the scandal. However, top officials in Myanmar denied such reports. On July 10th, they launched an appeal for another US $299 million in cyclone aid. The UN has spent US$200 million on aid to Myanmar since the cyclone struck.

UN says Myanmar goverment has been stealing aid

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Big aftershock...

Deadly earthquake strikes China
5 Aug. `08 - One dead as 6.0-magnitude earthquake strikes China's Sichuan province- At least five other people were seriously wounded following the quake; Quake hits hours after Olympic torch relay visits Sichuan's capital; The region is still recovering from a devastating 7.9-magnitude temblor in May

A 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck China's Sichuan province on Tuesday, killing at least one person and seriously injuring five others, a local emergency official told CNN. The official said another 18 people suffered minor injuries. The Sichuan region is still recovering from the after-effects of a devastating 7.9-magnitude temblor in May.The quake's epicenter was located about 50 kilometers (30 miles) north-northwest of Guangyuan, near Sichuan's border with neighboring Gansu province.

Hours before the quakes struck, the Olympic torch relay made its way through parts of Sichuan, on its way to the Summer Games, which get under way Friday in Beijing, some 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) away. The earthquake occurred at 5.49 p.m. local time (0949 GMT), news agency Xinhua said -- striking a few hours after the relay made its final stop in the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu. That tremor killed almost 70,000 people and left 18,000 missing and 5 million homeless. There had been 22,019 aftershocks detected since then -- including three in the past four days before the last incidence.

Tuesday's casualties were in Yaodu Township, which was also severely affected by the May 12 quake, a Qingchuan County official told Xinhua. The quake also disrupted communications in Yaodu, Xinhua said, but details of other damage were not yet available yet. The epicenter of the initial quake was about 290 kilometers (180 miles) southwest from Tuesday's temblor. It was felt in the cities of Hanzhong and Xi'an, both in neighboring Shaanxi province, as well as Chongqing. Many people rushed out of buildings in those cities, Xinhua reported.

MORE

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Pakistan floods displace 82,000, kill dozens
August 5, 2008 -- 82,000 people have been displaced in Pakistan by monsoon flooding; Over 3,200 homes have been destroyed in Punjab province; At least 27 killed, according to officials

Officials in Pakistan say floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains have destroyed thousands of homes and caused at least 27 deaths. Punjab relief commissioner Mohammed Sajjad said Tuesday that 82,000 people had been displaced in the eastern province.

The worst affected districts were Rajanpur and Dera Ghazi Khan. He said over 3,200 homes were destroyed and vast areas of agricultural land were inundated. Officials are reporting that five people died in Punjab and 22 more in Pakistan's northwest since Monday.

Dawn News TV meanwhile is reporting that the impact of the floods was greater than official reports have been suggesting, and that hundreds of thousands have been displaced. Pakistan's annual monsoon rains are heavier than usual. Each year floods claims scores of lives.

Source

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What happened to all that red tape Fearless W was gonna cut??...

Three Years After Katrina
August 11, 2008 - The pace of recovery is slowing in New Orleans as the city approaches the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina late this month. The next president and Congress will need to expedite assistance before the city’s mood turns from guarded optimism back to despair.

With a mélange of federal, state, city and private recovery efforts under way, it is difficult to grasp what is really happening in the stricken city. Fortunately, two reports on New Orleans’s condition have just been issued by authoritative outside organizations. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation released its second survey of the attitudes and experiences of the city’s residents. The good news is that 6 in 10 Katrina survivors say that their lives are almost or largely back to normal, and most see recovery moving in the right direction. The bad news is that 4 in 10 respondents say their lives are still disrupted, and more than 7 in 10 see little or no progress in making housing affordable or in controlling crime, which they view as the city’s top problem. Smaller majorities see little or no progress in making medical services available, strengthening public schools, attracting jobs or rebuilding neighborhoods.

These perceptions are largely consistent with an index of progress compiled by the Brookings Institution and the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. Their third-year report finds that the greater New Orleans area has recovered the vast majority of its pre-Katrina population and jobs but that recovery trends have slowed in the past year. Tens of thousands of blighted properties, a lack of affordable housing and thin public services continue to plague the city. Rents are 46 percent higher than before the storm.

New Orleans residents expressed mixed attitudes about their prospects. Three-fourths told Kaiser that they remained optimistic about the future even though most felt that both Washington and the American public have largely forgotten them. What is worrisome is that half of the residents are dissatisfied with or angry about the lack of progress, most think it is a bad time for children to grow up in New Orleans and 22 percent (predominantly young) are seriously considering moving away. Unless government agencies and private organizations pick up the pace of recovery efforts, New Orleans may see its future pack up and go with them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/opinion/12tue2.html

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New Orleans repeating deadly levee mistakes...

Big Easy sees levee mistakes again
Sat., Aug. 23, 2008 - Levees unable to protect against another storm like Katrina, experts say; Signs emerge that many in and out of government haven't learned the mistakes of the Katrina disaster.

Signs are emerging that history is repeating itself in the Big Easy, still healing from Katrina: People have forgotten a lesson from four decades ago and believe once again that the federal government is constructing a levee system they can prosper behind.

In a yearlong review of levee work here, The Associated Press has tracked a pattern of public misperception, political jockeying and legal fighting, along with economic and engineering miscalculations since Katrina, that threaten to make New Orleans the scene of another devastating flood.

Dozens of interviews with engineers, historians, policymakers and flood zone residents confirmed many have not learned from public policy mistakes made after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which set the stage for Katrina; many mistakes are being repeated.

"People forget, but they cannot afford to forget," said Windell Curole, a Louisiana hurricane and levee expert. "If you believe you can't flood, that's when you increase the risk of flooding. In New Orleans, I don't think they talk about the risk."

'It makes me feel safe'

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Gustav headed for N'awlins...

Evacuation Possible in New Orleans
Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008 — On the eve of Hurricane Katrina's third anniversary, a nervous New Orleans watched Wednesday as another storm threatened to test everything the city has rebuilt, and officials made preliminary plans to evacuate people, pets and hospitals in an attempt to avoid a Katrina-style chaos.

Forecasters warned that Gustav could grow into a dangerous Category 3 hurricane in the next several days and hit somewhere along a swath of the Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle to Texas — with New Orleans smack in the middle. "I'm panicking," said Evelyn Fuselier of Chalmette, whose home was submerged in 14 feet of floodwater when Katrina hit. Fuselier said she's been back in her home one year this month, and called watching Gustav swirl toward the Gulf of Mexico indescribable. "I keep thinking, 'Did the Corps fix the levees?', 'Is my house going to flood again?' ... 'Am I going to have to go through all this again?'"

Taking no chances, city officials began preliminary planning to evacuate and lock down the city in hopes of avoiding the catastrophe that followed the 2005 storm. Mayor Ray Nagin left the Democratic National Convention in Denver to return home for the preparations. Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency to lay the groundwork for federal assistance, and put 3,000 National Guard troops on standby. If a Category 3 or stronger hurricane comes within 60 hours of the city, New Orleans plans to institute a mandatory evacuation order. Unlike Katrina, there will be no massive shelter at the Superdome, a plan designed to encourage residents to leave. Instead, the state has arranged for buses and trains to take people to safety.

It was unclear what would happen to stragglers. Jerry Sneed, the city's emergency preparedness director, said officials are ready to move about 30,000 people. Nearly 8,000 people had signed up for transportation help by late Wednesday. At a suburban Lowe's store, employees said portable generators, gasoline cans, bottled water and batteries were selling briskly. Hotels across south Louisiana reported taking many reservations as coastal residents looked inland for possible refuge.

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New Orleans wonders if rebuilt levees will hold...

Will levees hold in New Orleans?
Thurs., Aug. 28, 2008 - 'We shouldn't be surprised if there is frailty,' expert says as Gustav storm tracks toward city.

Just three years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans confronts a new threat from Gustav and a stark question: Will the partially rebuilt levees hold? Despite $2 billion in improvements, including 220 miles of repaired, raised and replaced floodwalls, 17 new pump stations and more flood-resistant pump stations, nobody can say for sure the city won't be swamped again. And if it is, could it ever recover?

"It's scary, man," said Robert Russell, a 63-year-old plumber whose house in Gentilly Woods is close to floodwalls on the Industrial Canal that are so suspect the Army Corps of Engineers is buffering them with large baskets filled with sand. "They say it's not up to code," he said. "We'll have to wait and see." Levee experts and the Army Corps insist New Orleans is safer than before Katrina flooded more than 80 percent of the city on Aug. 29, 2005.

Yet the system still has severe shortcomings: Flood barriers meant only to withstand medium-strength storms, hidden layers of weak soil and navigation channels that inadvertently funnel storm surge into the city, to name a few. "The positive thing about having any storm hit you, it will reveal any kind of frailty in the system," said J. David Rogers, an engineer at the Missouri University of Science and Technology who has tracked the construction closely. "And we shouldn't be surprised if there is frailty."

Only a third of way there

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Half of Katrina victims were elderly
Thurs., Aug. 28, 2008 - New report also finds that more than half of those who died were black

As New Orleans residents warily track another threatening storm, a new report presents the clearest picture yet of deaths from Katrina in Louisiana. Of the nearly 1,000 who died, almost half were 75 or older, according to researchers. Most died on the day of the storm — August 29, 2005 — and drowning was the leading cause of death. More than one-third died in homes.

The results present a tragic portrait of elderly residents who may have thought the warnings were a false alarm, who feared that abandoning their homes would lead to looting, or who simply didn't want to leave their familiar surroundings for the unknown.

The high death toll in the elderly was likely due to those factors along with older people being more vulnerable and frail and unable to fight the catastrophic storm, the report said.

Most comprehensive report

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Louisville KY, Knoxville and Memphis, TN have been designated host cities for Gustav evacuees...

New Orleans Police Urge Evacuations
Friday, Aug. 29, 2008 — Police with bullhorns plan to go street to street this weekend with a tough message about getting out ahead of Hurricane Gustav: This time there will be no shelter of last resort. The doors to the Superdome will be locked. Those who stay will be on their own.

New forecasts Friday made it increasingly clear that New Orleans will get some kind of hit — direct or indirect — by early next week. That raised the likelihood people would have to flee, and the city suggested a full-scale evacuation call could come as soon as Sunday. Those among New Orleans' estimated 310,000 to 340,000 residents who ignore orders to leave accept "all responsibility for themselves and their loved ones," the city's emergency preparedness director, Jerry Sneed, has warned. As Katrina approached in 2005, as many as 30,000 people who either could not or would not evacuate jammed the Louisiana Superdome and the riverfront convention center. They spent days waiting for rescue in squalid conditions. Some died.

Stung by the images that flashed across the world, including the photo of an elderly woman dead in her wheelchair, her bodied covered with a blanket, officials promised to find a better way. This time, the city has taken steps to ensure no one has an excuse not to leave. The state has a $7 million contract to provide 700 buses to evacuate the elderly, the sick and anyone around the region without transportation. Officials also plan to announce a curfew that will mean the arrest of anyone still on the streets after a mandatory evacuation order goes out. Police will roam neighborhoods urging residents to flee, and officials will text-message residents with major storm developments. In addition, the city will reach out to churches, hoping to spread the word about where the buses will pick up evacuees.

In an effort to keep track of where people go after they leave the city, officials plan to give evacuees bar-coded bracelets containing their ID. Still, advocates for the poor worried that the message would not get to the city's most marginalized residents — and that could spell disaster. "It's an enormous concern, an extraordinary concern" for day laborers, the homeless, renters and public-housing residents, said Saket Soni, director of the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice. "Hundreds if not thousands will fall through the cracks of an evacuation plan, and they will be left in the city, not out of choice but out of necessity."

MORE

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Hope it doesn't rip any of the oil rig line loose...

Gustav: What's at stake
August 30, 2008: A hurricane threatens to halt much of the Gulf of Mexico's oil production, which could send crude and gas prices back up near mid-summer levels.

The Gulf of Mexico is home to 4,000 drilling platforms and 33,000 miles of pipeline, which send 1.3 million barrels a day to the Gulf Coast's 56 refineries. But a hurricane threatens to deal a powerful blow to the oil-rich region.

Hurricane Gustav, which just smacked Jamaica with heavy rain and winds, is heading towards the Gulf of Mexico, and forecasters predict its path will steer right through the heart of the region's biggest concentration of oil and gasoline producers.

Experts say the storm has the potential to significantly disrupt oil production in the region, potentially damaging gasoline refineries, which could send the price of oil and gas back up near record highs.

Production disruption:

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New Orleans Evacuating
Saturday, Aug. 30, 2008 — Lines of people waiting for buses to take them out of the city grew longer Saturday and traffic grew heavier on main highways as Hurricane Gustav strengthened into a dangerous storm on track for the Gulf Coast.

A line well over a mile long stretched in six loops through the parking lot at Union Passenger Terminal. Under a blazing sun, many led children or pushed strollers with one hand and pulled luggage with the other. Volunteers handed out bottled water, and medics were nearby in case people became heatsick. Joseph Jones Jr., 61, wore a towel over his head to block the sun. He'd been in line 2 1/2 hours, but wasn't complaining. During Katrina, he had been stranded on a highway overpass.

"I don't like it. Going someplace you don't know, people you don't know," Jones said. "And then when you come back, is your house going to be OK?" The city had yet to call for a mandatory evacuation, but began ushering out the sick, elderly and those without their own transportation on Saturday. The state has a $7 million contract for more than 700 buses to carry an estimated 30,000 people to shelters.

Many residents said the evacuation was more orderly than Hurricane Katrina, which struck three years ago Friday. But not everyone was happy. Elizabeth Tell, 67, had been waiting on the corner since 6:30 a.m. for a special needs bus to take her and her dog, Lee Roy, to the station. It was three hours before the first bus arrived, completely full of people in wheelchairs.

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How to keep in touch when disaster strikes...

Tips for staying connected in disasters
Fri., Aug. 29, 2008 - Preparation is key if you want keep stay in touch when the worst happens

* Keep your cell phones charged. Buy extra batteries if you can, and remember to charge them.

* A car adapter will let you recharge from the car battery if power goes out.

* Keep phones and batteries dry in a waterproof plastic bag.

* Program numbers for relatives, friends, emergency responders and insurance companies into your phones.

* Landline phones may work even if the electricity goes out, since they're powered through the phone line itself. However, those lines are vulnerable to wind and water.

* If disaster strikes, both landline and wireless networks may be overloaded. The capacity for text messages is higher, so use those instead, and free up voice capacity for emergency calls. Sprint Nextel Corp. recommends customers who have push-to-talk phones to use that service.

* If you need to evacuate, forward your home phone calls to your cell phone.

Tips for staying connected in disasters - Wireless - MSNBC.com

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Phone companies plan backups for Gustav
Fri., Aug. 29, 2008 - Carriers faced criticism and a regulatory push after Hurricane Katrina

The tropical storm bearing down on the Gulf Coast could be a test for the country's wireless carriers, which faced criticism and a regulatory push after Hurricane Katrina took out networks. Verizon Wireless has spent $137 million in the past year on enhancing its network in the Gulf Coast area, including doubling its capacity at regional switching centers to handle a barrage of calls when disaster strikes.

"Certainly there were lessons to be learned from Katrina," Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Gretchen LeJeune said. "Preparation for bad weather has been at the top of mind and we prepare for it all year." AT&T Inc., the main landline phone company in the region and the country's largest wireless carrier, has also added capacity, among a raft of preparations and upgrades to its Gulf Coast infrastructure over several years. It has replaced some cables that are vulnerable to flooding with waterproof ones. Optical fiber has replaced copper wiring, which can short out when wet.

Tropical Storm Gustav was near Jamaica on Friday, and forecasters said it could hit the Louisiana coast at the beginning of next week as a major hurricane. If so, wireless networks would have two main vulnerabilities. The cell towers may be unhurt by the buffeting winds of a hurricane, but to keep working, each one needs electrical power and a connection to the larger network, usually via landline. After Katrina, the Federal Communications Commission seized on the power issue, and sought to mandate that almost all cell sites in the U.S. have at least eight hours of backup power in the event main power fails.

More http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26457282/