• Magnitude-5.8 Earthquake Strikes Los Angeles
• POSTED: 6:02 am PDT July 29, 2008

  UPDATED: 12:03 pm PDT July 29, 2008
• SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY, Calif. -- A strong earthquake has shaken Southern California.
• The late Tuesday morning jolt was felt from Los Angeles to San Diego, and slightly in Las Vegas. It struck shortly after 11:30 a.m.
• Preliminary information from the U.S. Geological Survey estimated the quake at magnitude 5.8, centered 29 miles east-southeast of downtown Los Angeles near Chino Hills.
• A magnitude-3.8 aftershock was reported in the Diamond Bar area.
• Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said there were not immediate reports of damage or injury in Los Angeles.
• The quake struck at 11:42 a.m. PDT. Buildings swayed in downtown Los Angeles for several seconds.
• "It was dramatic. The whole building moved and it lasted for a while," said Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore, who was in the sheriff's suburban Monterey Park headquarters east of Los Angeles.
• "Here in the Glendale Rancho, near the 134 Freeway and Interstate 5 Freeway intersection, a giant thud which sounded like a sonic boom was followed by 20 seconds of rapid, noisy shaking," said KNBC forum contributor Joanne Hedge.
• "This old house just rode it through as it has since 1939."
• Scroll down to read more viewer comments.
• KNBC reported that phone service was disrupted in the Inland Empire and other areas.
• San Bernardino Quake
• The USGS says a 3.1 magnitude temblor registered at 5:04 a.m. Tuesday, 10 miles northeast of Barstow and Interstate 15 in San Bernardino County, about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

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• DNA Correspondent   

     

  Wednesday, August 13, 2008
• Human beings since the dawn of civilisation have been the lords of their own destiny and also of all other species.
• But now, some scientists believe, the tide is turning against humans. Animals are on the prowl with vengeance in their inscrutable eyes.
• It’s hard to believe, but the wild is literally burning with revenge.
• The phenomenon is being studied through a new discipline called human-animal conflict, warranted by an unprecedented increase in the frequency of animal attacks on humans throughout the world
• The theory seems more akin to science fiction than science, but for its proponents, the purported change in relation between animals and humans is a line of enquiry worth betting their careers on.
• In Africa, for instance, chimpanzees, not known to attack humans, have started doing so.
• Such attacks have reached such frightening levels that the animal behaviourists are suspecting revenge may indeed be a motive.

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• Consider elephants. From Assam to Southeast Asia to Africa, there has been a great rise in instances of the pachyderms attacking humans. “What’s happening today is extraordinary,” the newspaper quotes Dr Gay Bradshaw, director of the Kerulos Centre for Animal Psychology and Trauma Recovery, Oregon, and a world authority on elephants, as saying.
• She and her colleagues think there has been an across-the-species psychological collapse among the world’s elephants. Drawing a parallel between the animals and people caught in circumstances of war, the experts say the attacks are the response of a generation of traumatised elephants.
• They have grown up witnessing the systematic slaughter of their families by humans and, now, they are getting back.
• Bradshaw backs her claims with observational, psychological and neuroscientific evidence, and says the tolerance threshold has been breached not only in elephants, but also in other animals as evidenced by “atypical behaviours in an array of species”.

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• Volcanoes triggering volcanoes?
• August 13, 2008
• by Chris Rowan
• There's lots of volcanic action in the Aleutians arc at the moment, with three volcanoes: Okmok. Cleveland, and Kastochi, all erupting at various points in the last month or so.
• The Volcanism Blog and the Eruptions blog have both been keeping us up to date with the waxing and waning of these eruptions.
• However,given my past interest in possible seismic triggering of volcanic eruptions, it's possibly no surprise that I've been wondering whether the near-simultaneous eruption of three volcanoes in the same geographic region is entirely a coincidence. Could the eruption of one have triggered the others?
• Note that this triggering does not involve causing a completely inactive volcano to suddenly reactivate; it's more about pushing a volcano that is already building up to an eruption over the threshold a little earlier than it would have done otherwise.
• In this case, could the seismic energy released by the first eruption of Okmok on July 12th have provided that extra little push to Cleveland and Kasatochi needed?
• Out of curiousity, I used the reports from the Alaska Volcanic Observatory (see here, here, and here) to roughly plot the activity of the three volcanoes against each other.
• At first glance, there's some evidence of a possible connection.
• Okmok has been erupting fairly continuously in the last few weeks, but there have been a few distinct periods of heightened seismic and eruptive activity
• Cleveland's latest eruption (one of a series that have occurred over the last couple of years, including this one) began on the 21st of July, 1-2 days after one of Okmok's bursts of activity.
• Kasatochi erupted on August 6th, 4 days after another period of increased rumbling from Okmok on August 2nd.
• However, as we all know, correlation is not causation, and it all depends on the sort of timescales over which you'd expect a volcano to respond to a seismic jerk, and whether a few days reasonably falls within that range. I'm not so sure it's not a little to long.
• Additionally, you can also see from the above figure that the activity at Cleveland began to peter out on July 29th, right in the middle of another period of vigorous eruptive activity at Okmok.
• This stronger, negative, correlation seems to rule out the idea of any strong linkage between activity at these two volcanoes. Still, it was worth a look...

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• Changing weather
• August 17th, 2008 by huujuu   
• If the people of Poland are suspicious, being hit by a tornado the day after being threatened with nuclear attack, might seem suspicious.
• http://uk.news.yahoo.com/itn/20080816/tw...
• If it's possible to do then i'd be very surprised if it was'nt used to nudge economies ,,,,,,if some way.....hav'nt really thought that bit out......But i bet it'd be really useful!
• I'm sure there was a link on here to a story about China using weather altering technology.
• The weather in England (and the rest of the British Isles) has been rather strange lately, but that might just be global warming and i'm developing a weather conspiracy story about evil military bosses with power over the weather to explain the strangeness.

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• Tornado kills three people in Poland
• Saturday, August 16 05:50 pm
• A tornado that struck southern Poland on Friday has killed at least three people and injured 34 more.
• Villages in southern Poland were devastated by the heavy storms, with roofs torn off homes, trees knocked down and vehicles overturned.
• The worst damage came in the southern province of Silesia, where two people were killed.
• One man near Czestochowa died after a tree crashed into his home, while a woman was crushed by the ceiling of her house in Rusinowice.
• In a separate incident one woman in the central city of Lodz was electrocuted by wires ripped off by heavy winds.
• Strong winds also swept through section of the A4 highway section near Opole, overturning cars and trucks, and blocking it for several hours.

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• 'Dead Zones' Appear In Waters Worldwide
• New Study Estimates More Than 400
• By Joel Achenbach

   Washington Post Staff Writer 
   Friday, August 15, 2008; Page A02
• In the latest sign of trouble in the planet's chemistry, the number of oxygen-starved "dead zones" in coastal waters around the world has roughly doubled every decade since the 1960s, killing fish, crabs and massive amounts of marine life at the base of the food chain, according to a study released yesterday.
• "These zones are popping up all over," said Robert Diaz, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science who led the study, published online by the journal Science.
• Diaz and co-author Rutger Rosenberg of the University of Goteborg in Sweden counted more than 400 dead zones globally, ranging from expansive ones in the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Mexico to small ones that episodically appear in river estuaries.
• Collectively, they cover about 95,000 square miles.
• Low oxygen, known as hypoxia, is in significant measure a downstream effect of chemical fertilizers used in agriculture.
• Air pollution, including smog from automobiles, is another factor.
• The nitrogen from the fertilizer and the pollution feeds the growth of algae in coastal waters, particularly during summer.
• The result is feast-then-famine: The algae eventually die and sink to the bottom, where the organic matter decays in a process that robs the bottom waters of oxygen.
• The ensuing die-off of marine life cuts down on the productivity of commercial fisheries. The "biomass" missing because of depleted oxygen in the Chesapeake Bay, Diaz estimated, is enough to feed half the number of crabs that are commercially harvested in a typical year.
• Hypoxia has been seen for decades in such places as the Chesapeake, Lake Erie, the Gulf of Mexico and Long Island Sound, but Diaz's comprehensive survey of the scientific literature and government reports has identified many new zones, including in the Florida Keys, Puget Sound and tidal creeks in the Carolinas.
• "We're saying that hypoxia is now everywhere, it seems," Diaz said. "Human activities really screwed up oxygen conditions in our coastal areas."
• A few hypoxic ecosystems have improved in recent years because of better management of pollutants.
• The Indian River in Florida has shown signs of recovery.
• Dead zones in New York's Hudson River and East River have disappeared, the study found.
• Globally, however, only 4 percent of the dead zones are improving.
• The study is the latest alarm sounded by scientists and environmentalists about deteriorating oceans and watersheds.
• Douglas N. Rader, chief ocean scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, said the chaos in the planet's nitrogen cycle is not only creating dead zones but also inciting the spread of toxic organisms, such as the pfiesteria that has appeared in recent years in the Chesapeake.
• "The next big challenge, after global warming, is going to be addressing the massive upset of the world's nitrogen cycle," Rader said.
• Earlier this week, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published online a study warning of "mass extinction in the oceans with unknown ecological and evolutionary consequences."
• The author, Jeremy Jackson, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, contends that global warming, overfishing, invasive species, habitat destruction and agricultural runoff are creating oceans crammed with algae and jellyfish -- a process he calls "the rise of slime."

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• Strong earthquake rattles Peruvian jungle
   
• by Staff Writers
   Washington (AFP) Aug 26, 2008
• A strong earthquake shook Peru's central, eastern jungle region Tuesday, the US Geological Survey said.
• There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
• The 6.3-magnitude quake struck at 4:00 pm local time (2100 GMT), at a depth of 152 kilometers (94 miles),
• with its epicenter located at 93 kilometers (58 miles) north of the jungle town of Pucallpa, or 580 kilometers (360 miles) northeast of Lima.

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• Death toll up to 18 after Costa Rica quake, dozens still missing
• by Staff Writers
   San Jose (AFP) Jan 10, 2009
• The death toll from Costa Rica's strongest earthquake in decades rose to 18 Saturday, with scores missing and injured, while some 150 stranded tourists were finally rescued, officials said.
• "There are 18 dead and 56 missing," Red Cross spokeswoman Lilia Marin told AFP, adding that 91 people were injured in the temblor and 1,378 were being housed in emergency shelters.
• Officials had warned the death toll from Thursday's 6.1-magnitude quake was likely to rise when rescue workers reach isolated villages and cars buried by mudslides.
• Some 150 stranded tourists, most from the United States, France, Canada and Spain, were finally rescued Friday and Saturday when helicopters accessed remote areas.
• Rescuers also reached tourists stranded on mountain passes near the Poas volcano, the epicenter of Thursday's 6.1-magnitude temblor some 30 kilometers (20 miles) northwest of the capital San Jose.
• At nightfall around 100 tourists were still stranded in the region around San Jose, including around 50 in the area of Cinchona, one of the worst hit by the temblor and accessible only by helicopter, according to the Red Cross.
• Helicopters also evacuated a group of tourists trapped on a parking lot at a hotel near the La Paz waterfalls, a top tourist attraction.
• Rescue teams struggled in rain and mist to reach hundreds of people stranded in mountainous central zones, as cracked roads, fallen trees and earth impeded their efforts in the farming region.
• Collapsed houses lined the road leading to the epicenter of the quake near the Poas volcano, one of the country's most popular tourist sites.
• People were still trapped, some of them apparently dead, inside vehicles buried under quake-triggered landslides, an AFP photographer said.
• The National Emergency Board (CNE) declared a red alert in the metropolitan area of the central valley where 2.5 million of the country's four million people live that includes San Jose, Cartago, Alajuela and Heredia.
• The quake was felt across Costa Rica, a popular ecotourism and beach holiday destination, and in neighboring Nicaragua.
• The strongest quake to shake the country in the last 150 years was followed by more than 1,500 aftershocks, and collapsed homes in and around the capital.
• Officials reported meanwhile that the country's leading Cariblanco hydroelectric plant will be out of operation for about a year, after its generators were buried by tons of mud from flooding and landslides unleashed by the earthquake.
• The energy provided by Cariblanco will be replaced through conventional thermal power plants using combustible fuel, translating into higher costs, said officials from the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, the country's largest electricity company.
• The US army sent two Blackhawk helicopters, based in Honduras, to help with the operations.
• The government had contracted most private helicopters in the country, which has no army.
• US Ambassador to San Jose Peter Cianchette gave the Costa Rican government 50,000 dollars in emergency assistance funds, the embassy said.
• President Oscar Arias called on private companies, church groups and social clubs in Costa Rica "to show their solidarity" with earthquake victims.
• The quake will have an economic aftermath as it wiped out most of the strawberry and flower farms that make up a good part of the country's farm exports -- close to 10 billion dollars a year, mainly to the United States.
• "The tragedy will have an impact on exports for several months," Chamber of Commerce President Sergio Navas told reporters.
• The government said it was investigating a fire that destroyed a warehouse full of emergency supplies for the earthquake victims that was run by the CNE. Apparently, a spark from a soldering operation set a mattress on fire.
• The quake opened at least four new, large fissures -- some nearly 100 meters (yards) long -- on the flanks of the 2,708-meter (8,885-foot) Poas volcano.
• Experts said the fissures and new smoke holes that dot the mountain do not denote greater volcanic activity.

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• From The Times

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   January 17, 2009
• Weather Eye: temperatures in Western Europe go crazy
• Paul Simons
• Temperatures in Western Europe have gone crazy over the past few days. A week ago Madrid was hit by a rare snowfall, and in Germany the temperature plunged below minus 30C (minus 22F) and parts of the River Elbe froze.
• But temperatures have risen again as the persistent high-pressure system that brought the freeze was shunted away by a high-altitude jet stream. This opened the way for the return of milder, wet and windy weather blowing off the Atlantic.
• However, colder conditions are now returning, and ski slopes across Europe are being replenished by fresh snowfalls.
• Brutal Arctic storms plunged much of Canada and the US into a deep freeze this week. The northeast US has been hit especially hard, but the bitter cold may ease in Washington DC by Tuesday for the President-elect’s Inauguration Day.
• However, it felt like summer over California as a heat wave broke January temperature records. Santa Ana winds swept down from the mountains, sending temperatures soaring to 29C (85F) in Los Angeles.
• The region is desperate for rain after two years of intense drought, which may lead to water rationing later this year if supplies do not improve.
• In the Philippines unseasonable heavy rains caused floods and landslides that killed 20 people and led 300,000 to evacuate their homes.
• Fiji declared a state of emergency after relentless downpours over five days dropped up to 91cm (36in) rain as tropical depressions drove in from the South Pacific.
• Floods left the country’s economically vital sugar crop devastated.

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• 7.6 Indonesian Quake Kills Dozens, Traps Thousands
• September 30, 2009
    AP
• JAKARTA, Indonesia – Witnesses and media say a powerful earthquake hit western Indonesia, toppling buildings, cutting electricity and causing at least several injuries.
• The quake was along the same fault line that spawned the massive 2004 India Ocean tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people.
• The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.9, and struck 30 miles (50 kilometers) off the coast of Sumatra.
• A video grab shows a foot among the wreckage of a building following an earthquake in Padang on Indonesia's Sumatra island September 30, 2009. A 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck off the city of Padang on the coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island on Wednesday, damaging houses, toppling bridges and starting fires.
• A tsunami warning for countries along the Indian Ocean was issued after the temblor struck early evening Wednesday and then lifted about an hour-and-a-half later.
• Witnesses told local television and radio that hundreds of houses collapsed and that a road to the coastal town of Padang was cut off.
   
    Witnesses reported at least several injuries.
• THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
• JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A powerful underwater earthquake rocked western Indonesia Wednesday, triggering a tsunami alert for countries along the Indian Ocean and sending panicked residents out of their houses.
• An Indonesian television network reported that buildings had collapsed in the coastal city of Padang, in Southern Sumatra province.
• The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami alert for Indonesia, Malaysia, India and Thailand.
• "There is a possibility of a destructive regional tsunami in the Indian Ocean," it said in an e-mailed statement.
   
    There were no immediate reports of a high waves.
• It comes a day after a quake with a magnitude of between 8.0 and 8.3 in the South Pacific hurled a massive tsunami at the shores of Samoa and American Samoa, flattening villages and leaving at least 99 dead and dozens missing.
• The epicenter of Wednesday's temblor off Indonesia lies several thousand miles (kilometers) to the west, on the other side of Australia.
• The shaking could be felt in high buildings in the capital, Jakarta, several hundred miles (kilometers) away. It was also felt in neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.
   
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/09/30/world/AP-AS-Indonesia-Earthquake.html

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• Double devastation: Thousands missing in Indonesian earthquake hours after tsunami hits Samoa killing British boy, 2
• By  Mail Foreign Service
   Last updated at 6:22 PM on 30th September 2009
• • Missing British child, 2, believed dead after tsunami struck Samoa
  • Samoan tsunami kills at least 99; Indonesian earthquake kills 'up to 1,000'
    
  • 'Thousands' buried under rubble after Indonesian earthquake
    
  • Indonesian quake along same fault line as quake that caused 2004 Boxing Day tsunami; both disasters took place on Pacific Ring of Fire
• Hundreds of people are feared dead and thousands more homeless after first a tsunami then an earthquake struck hours apart along the Pacific Ring of Fire.
• A two-year-old British child is among the 99 people killed when a tsunami swept through the Pacific Ocean yesterday, flattening entire villages in its path. Fears are rising for other Britons holidaying in the area.
• Then hours later an earthquake rocked Indonesia, leaving thousands buried underneath rubble and prompting new tsunami warnings. Authorities have confirmed 75 people dead, though one health official has been quoted as saying 1,000 people are dead.

• SCROLL DOWN TO SEE VIDEO REPORT

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  No one spared: An aerial of Hihifo on the western side of Tonga after the first powerful earthquake sent tsunami waves sweeping through the Pacific

   

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  An aerial view of the devastation in Falehau in Tonga after the first earthquake hurled tsunami waves through the Pacific

   

   

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• A massive undersea earthquake triggered the tsunami waves which sped towards the low-lying shores of Samoa and American Samoa, an island chain in the south Pacific near Fiji. Aftershocks have been felt throughout the area.
• Hours later the Indonesian quake took place on the same fault-line as the devastating Boxing Day tsunami which killed 230,000.
• Though the quakes were thousands of miles apart, both took place along the Pacific 'Ring of Fire', a horseshoe-shaped area of seismic activity ringing the Pacific Ocean basin.
• The Ring of Fire is a nearly continuous series of oceanic trenches, volcanic belts, and plate movements, home to 75 per cent of the world's volcanoes and the site of 90 per cent of the world's earthquakes.
• The Foreign Office has confirmed the British child is presumed dead after going missing on Samoa when the tsunami struck. Stephen Rogers, the British honorary consul on the island, said the parents of the child were receiving consular assistance.
• 'They are staying at the New Zealand High Commission in Samoa,' said Dr Rogers. 'They've made contact with the British High Commission in New Zealand.
• 'The child has been missing since the tsunami struck.'

• Dr Rogers said he did not have any further information about the missing child or the parents.

  He said there had been no other reports of British casualties in the disaster but fears for Britons on holiday in the region are rising as families wait to get in contact with their loved ones.
• There are believed to have been about 20 Britons on the island at the time.

• 'We have a number of British people who have lost all their possessions,'  he said. 'We've also had calls from a number of Brits in different  accommodation who are claiming to be OK.  

   

   But he also admitted: 'We've had calls from the UK about people we've got no information about.'
• Emergency services feared entire villages in Samoa and American Samoa had been wiped out by the massive waves, which sent terrified residents fleeing for higher ground.
• They have managed to confirm 99 deaths so far - 63 in Samoa, 30 in American Samoa, and six in Tonga.
• But the scale of the devastation and the lack of power and communications have left authorities fearing the true death toll could be much higher.
• The disaster was compounded when a second powerful earthquake rocked Indonesia, prompting a  new tsunami warning for Indonesia, Malaysia, India and Thailand. The warning has since been lifted.

• At least 75 people have been confirmed dead after the 7.6-magnitude quake along the same fault line as the quake that caused the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. It is not yet known if any Britons were killed.

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  A car has been tossed on its roof by the churning waters of the tsunami as it swept through Pago Pago, on American Samoa

   

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  Another view of the destruction in Hihifo on the western side of Tonga after the tsunami

   

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  Pago Pago, on American Samoa, lies in ruins after the tsunami tore its way through the islands
• Thousands of people are trapped under the rubble in Padang, a city of 900,000,  a senior Indonesian health ministry official said.
• Rustam Pakaya, the head of the health ministry's disaster centre, said via a telephone text message that a hospital in Padang in the area near the epicentre of the quake had also collapsed.
• 'Jamil hospital collapsed and thousands of people are trapped in the rubble of buildings,' Pakaya said.
• The quake was felt around the region, with some high-rise buildings in Singapore, 440 km (275 miles) to the north-east, evacuating staff. Office buildings also shook in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

• A resident called Adi told Indonesia's Metro Television there was devastation around him. 'For now I can't see dead bodies, just collapsed houses. Some half destroyed, others completely. People are standing around too scared to go back inside. They fear a tsunami.
  

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  A boat teeters on the edge of the main highway in American Samoa having been swept ashore by the tsunami

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  A house with its entire front ripped out after the waves crashed ashore in Pago in American Samoa
• 'No help has arrived yet. I can see small children standing around carrying blankets. Some people are looking for relatives but all the lights have gone out completely.'
• Padang, the capital of Indonesia's West Sumatra province, sits on one of the world's most active fault lines along the 'Ring of Fire' where the Indo-Australia plate grinds against the Eurasia plate to create regular tremors and sometimes quakes.
• Geologists have long said Padang may one day be destroyed by a huge earthquake because of its location.
• In Samoa, signs of devastation from the tsunami were everywhere, with a giant boat washed ashore lying on the edge of a highway and flood waters swallowing up cars and homes.

• The giant waves were spawned by an undersea quake, with a magnitude between 8.0 and 8.3, which struck around dawn about 125 miles (200 kilometres) from Samoa, an island nation of 180,000 people located about halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii.
  

  It struck about 120 miles (190 kilometres) from neighbouring American Samoa, a U.S. territory that is home to 65,000 people.

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  Another boat can be seen stranded among wreckage in the village of Si'umu in Western Samoa today
• The waves reached as far as Japan, although Hawaii and Australia were spared any severe damage.
• Four tsunami waves 15 to 20 feet (4 to 6 metres) high roared ashore on American Samoa, reaching up to a mile (1.6 kilometres) inland, Mike Reynolds, superintendent of the National Park of American Samoa, said.

• He reported dozens of park workers missing. Latest news from American Samoa said the tsunami had killed at least 30 people there.

   

  'I don't think anybody is going to be spared in this disaster,' said acting American Samoa Governor Faoa A. Sunia.

• In Washington, President Barack Obama declared a disaster for American Samoa. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it was deploying teams to provide support and assess damage.

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  A car is seen pushed up against a bridge after strong sea water from the tsunami filled a small stream in American Samoa

• Samoan Prime Minister Sailele Malielegaoi looked shaken today on board a flight from Auckland, New Zealand, to the Samoan capital of Apia.

  'So much has gone. So many people are gone,' he told reporters on board. 'I'm so shocked, so saddened by all the loss.'

  Malielegaoi said his own village of Lepa was destroyed.
• In the initial hours after the earthquake there had been fears of a devastating ocean-wide tsunami - but fortunately those dissolved after the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center cancelled its warning for the region.

• President Thomas Lapua, who lives in the Western Samoan capital of Apia, said: 'These are places that exist because people depend on the sea to fish - now the sea is threatening their lives. It may be some time before we find out the full extent of this.'

   

   

   

   

    

  Graphic explains the devastating power of a tsunami wave

   

    

  An earthquake event location map shows the epicentre of the undersea quake
• The quake hit at 6:48 am local time (17:48 GMT) midway between the two island groups.
• At least one entire village in American Samoa was reported to have been flattened by the tsunami, later reports said, but confirmation of the destruction was difficult because communications were cut to many areas.
• In New Zealand residents were told to expect one metre high waves on  the east coast, but waves of only 40 centimetres were detected by coastal sensors.
• At least six additional people were dead in the island nation of Tonga, west of the Samoas.
• 'There are a considerable number of people who've been swept out to sea and are unaccounted for,' New Zealand's acting Prime Minister Bill English said.

• He said a New Zealand P3 Orion maritime surveillance plane would reach the region later today to search for survivors.
  

    

  This graphic provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows how fast the tsunami travels after an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.0 rocked the island nation of Samoa

   

    

  This map shows a projection of the wave energy resulting from the 8.3 magnitude earthquake which hit midway between Samoa and American Samoa early today. This assessment allowed Australia to be rated as having no threat from the quake. The red lines indicate the tectonic plates.

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• New Madrid Worries Surface in Arkansas
• We are preparing for a catastrophic earthquake. The potential, the amount of damage. You have a lot involved with a catastrophic earthquake. —David Maxwell, director of Arkansas Department of Emergency Management
• September 25, 2009
    By Jeremy Peppas
    The Times; North Little Rock, Ark.
• The past is very much the present at the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management.
• 
    Image: This map compares the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the 1811-1812
• New Madrid shakers. Even with very similarly sized events such as these, New Madrid region quakes will cause wider damage over larger areas because of the geology's flat layers and lack of complexity.
• There is little here to stop seismic waves so they can travel much further and cause wider damage.
• Intensity reports from places shown as blue dots.
• Namely what happened nearly 200 years ago, when what became northeast Arkansas, along with other states, were rocked when the New Madrid fault line saw multiple earthquakes that ranged from an estimated 7.2 to 8.1 on the Richter scale, according to the United States Geological Survey.
• David Maxwell, the agency director, said last week that his agency, based at Camp Robinson, was making preparations for what he called a “national level exercise” in May 2011 for another major earthquake along the fault line.
• Arkansas would be joined by seven other states that make up the Central United States Earthquake Consortium, along with federal agencies.
• “We are preparing for a catastrophic earthquake,” Maxwell said. “The potential, the amount of damage. You have a lot involved with a catastrophic earthquake.”
• The model that Arkansas is using is for an earthquake of 7.7 or what Maxwell called the “worst-case scenario.”
• Sheila Annable is the preparedness division director for the agency and the model estimates that 13,977 Arkansans would be injured to the point of requiring medical attention if the New Madrid were to have another quake, while the same model says 574 would be killed.
• Some 127,000 people would be displaced in what makes up the 34-county earthquake zone in Central and Northeast Arkansas.
• Those numbers only reflect Arkansas and do not include the nearly one million people who live in Memphis and Shelby County in Tennessee nor any of the others who live in and around the fault line.
• “The numbers are too big,” Annable said of the impact to the region. “We just looked at Arkansas.”
• Among the concerns expressed by Maxwell and Annable would be disruption to the natural gas lines that supply much of the northeastern United States with fuel for winter heating.
• Also the national electric grid might be knocked off line that could cause a black out from coast to coast, along with the bridges that cross the Mississippi river that could cause national transportation problems.
• Then you have liquefaction.
   
    That’s where shaking associated with earthquakes spreads across the soil and causes the rich farmland of the Delta to become what Annable called “quicksand.”
• The soil becomes more sandy and can’t be farmed.
• With Arkansas as the No. 1 producer of rice, a New Madrid earthquake could disrupt the global food chain, Annable said.
• Another pressing concern of liquefaction is that the land could no longer support the roadbeds making evacuation by vehicle nearly impossible.
• While northeast Arkansas has heard earthquake concerns before, namely in 1990 when a major quake was predicted to the day that came and went, Maxwell said the goal wasn’t to “hype this” and “we are just saying it is going to happen one day.”
• He added people need to have emergency kits prepared for all manner of events from tornadoes to ice storms and even earthquakes.
   
    http://www.nlrtimes.com/articles/2009/09/26/the_times/local_news/nws04.txt

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• Minor earthquake breaks waterline
• Associated Press - September 28, 2009 8:44 AM ET
• MONROE, La. (AP) - Officials say it was to small to shake houses or jar resident, but blame a miniature earthquake for the rupture of a Monroe water line.
• George Newman with the Water Distribution Department said Sunday's break was minor and would only affect businesses in the vicinity. Repairs began Sunday night.
• Newman tells The News-Star of Monroe little earthquake shifts happen frequently and cause lines to crack.

• Information from: The News-Star, http://www.thenewsstar.com

   

  Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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• B.C. cull led to hybrid 'monster wolves,' study shows
• By Nicholas Read, Vancouver SunSeptember 28, 2009
• 

   

  A Pacific coastal wolf at Pacific Rim national park. The B.C. government's Vancouver Island wolf extermination program allowed 'monster' hybrids to take over the region, a team of scientists said.

  Photograph by: Chris Darimont/Raincoast.org, Canwest News Service
• VANCOUVER — The B.C. government's Vancouver Island wolf extermination program allowed "monster" hybrids to take over the region, a team of scientists said.
• From the 1920s until the 1970s, provincial officials tried to rid Vancouver Island of wolves so sport hunters would find it easier to hunt black-tailed deer, the wolves' principal prey.

• So when a few hardy wolves swam across from the northern B.C. mainland in the early 1980s, some were unable to find mates.

  Instead, they mated with stray dogs.
• The result, according to researchers from the University of Sweden, the Smithsonian Institution and the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, was something never documented before in the wild: animals that were neither wolves nor dogs.
• Their research is published in the latest edition of the journal Conservation Genetics.

• So-called wolf hybrids are bred purposely by some breeders as pets, though they are regarded by animal welfare groups as potentially dangerous.

  They had never been documented in the wild before.
• "If the wolf-control campaign had carried on and kept wild wolves at low levels, we would have had, potentially, a population of monster wolves on Vancouver Island," Raincoast biologist and University of California post-doctoral researcher Chris Darimont said in an interview.
• "What our work found is an historical signal of tremendous ecological and social imbalance among wolves as a result of government wolf control."
• Darimont said the 200 or so wolves that now live on Vancouver Island are not "monsters."
• It's likely, he said, that the hybrids born in the 1980s were unable to survive in the wild and therefore unable to propagate.

• Instead, the wolves who were able to find wolf mates became the ancestors of the small population of wild Vancouver Island wolves that now exists.

  Wolves can have as many as five pups a year.
• "Wolf control is indefensible ethically. I think most British Columbians would agree with that," Darimont said. "What this study contributes to the discourse is additional ecological evidence that wolf control is a very bad idea indeed."
• But B.C. government officials dismissed the study's findings.
• "While certainly interesting, the research presented here looks at a situation with a very small and geographically isolated sub-population of wolves that resulted from broad-scale eradication attempts early in the previous century. While the genetic conclusions may be relevant in situations where conservation is a concern . . . that situation is not one that represents the current status of grey wolves in B.C.," the government said in a statement.
• © Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

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• Earthquake Swarm Hits California's Eastern Sierra
• related: 2004 Sumatra Quake Weakened Calif. Fault
• October 1, 2009
    Shelby Grad
    LA Times
• LInyo County was struck by a swarm of earthquakes this morning, including a 5.1 temblor around 3 a.m.
• HOLLY NOTE: When looking at the legend for USGS earthquake maps, keep in mind their time frames of last hour, last day, last week. This can be confusing because any shaker that occurred even 25 hours ago, falls into the "last week" category since there is no daily breakdown.
• Also, since so many of the swarm quakes occurred at nearly the same location, they are obscured under the large 5.1 event.
• According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there have been more than 30 90 temblors centered about seven miles from the tiny town of Keeler, 11 miles from Lone Pine and 148 miles from Las Vegas.
• [Correction: An earlier version of this post attributed information about the quake location to the National Weather Service. That information was provided by the U.S. Geological Survey]
• Quake swarms have occurred before around California, notably in the Mammoth Lakes area and around the Salton Sea.
• There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
   
    While most temblors in the quake swarm were tiny, there were several 3.5 aftershocks to the 5.1 main quake.
  

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• Volcanic activity and earthquakes hit Caribbean islands
• Volcano on Montserrat begins to shoot ash as 4.5 magnitude quake rattles St Maarten
• Associated Press
• guardian.co.uk,   Monday 5 October 2009 20.16 BST
• The volcano on the Caribbean island of Montserrat shot a plume of ash more than two miles into the sky today, lightly dusting the small island.
• The venting by the Soufriere Hills volcano has been accompanied by more than 30 tiny earthquakes since last night, according to Paul Cole, director of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. He said it was the volcano's first sign of activity in 10 months.
• "It's just a reminder that the volcano is still active," said James White Jr, acting director of the island's disaster management coordination agency. "It isn't something for us to panic over."
• Ash released in several bursts from the volcano passed south of Old Town and Olveston, leaving only a light coating in the island's inhabited areas. But the observatory said more ash could fall depending on the wind direction.
• Soufriere Hills became active in 1995 and killed 19 people when it erupted two years later, burying much of the British territory and prompting half its 12,000 inhabitants to leave.
• Meanwhile, a moderate earthquake rattled St Maarten and nearby Caribbean islands today, sending hundreds of jarred islanders and tourists running out of buildings.
• There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the magnitude 4.5 quake.
• It struck at a depth of 22 miles and the epicentre was located east of St Maarten, which shares a tiny island with the French territory of St Martin.
• The US Geological Survey said the temblor hit today around 12.30pm US eastern time (15.30 BST). It was also felt on the Caribbean islands of Anguilla, St Barts, St Kitts and St Eustatius.

• Jackie Joseph, a resident of the densely populated St Peters district of St Maarten, said schoolchildren ran screaming out of classrooms.

  The quake also drove scores of frightened people into the streets in the islands' business districts.

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• More Full Moon Animal Attacks
• Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 7th, 2009
• Perhaps you have noticed some clumping of certain news that seems to stir up non-human animals and people.
• At the end of September, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit Sumatra killing hundreds, while the day before an 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Samoa, triggering a tsunami that flattened whole towns and killed hundreds of people.
• Tidal forces were showing themselves to be powerful leading into October.
• If you have been watching the skies, you may have noticed the Harvest Moon in the North; 2009’s Full Moon occurred on the 4th, Sunday, worldwide, at 06:10 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
• Did you hear what else happened recently?
• 1. In the first incident since the fatal tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo on Christmas Day 2007 (Full Moon was on December 24, 2007), a man got into the grizzly bear exhibit at the same zoo on September 26th. He was found “conscious but unresponsive” and taken into custody by paramedics.
• 2. Five raccoons “gang attacked” up on a woman on Saturday, October 3rd, and left her with serious injuries from bites.
• Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said 74-year-old Gretchen Whitted in Lakeland, Florida, was suddenly attacked when she tried to shoo the animals away from her front door.
• “When she fell down, they enveloped her,” said Judd, who warned the public to be alert to the aggressive raccoons. “She’s literally bitten and scratched from face and the chest all the way down through the legs.”
• 3. Sunday afternoon, October 4th, a Mossy Head, Florida woman was airlifted to a hospital with injuries sustained from an emu’s claw while trying to corral the large flightless bird. The woman was injured while attempting to corral a group of emus for transport to an animal shelter.
• 4. Thirty-seven year old Kelly Ann Walz of Ross Township, Pennsylvania was killed by her pet bear.
• It happened her home Sunday night, October 4th. Officers say she was cleaning the bear’s cage when the three-hundred fifty pound bear mauled her.
• State officials say Walz threw a shovel full of dog food to one side of the cage to distract the bear while she cleaned the other side of the cage, but the bear still attacked. Others saw the attack and called for help, at which point a neighbor shot and killed
• 5. At 1:00 am, October 5th, a man suffered “significant” arm injuries after allegedly sneaking into the tiger enclosure of the Calgary Zoo, Alberta, Canada.
• The Siberian tiger, named Vitali, attacked one of the pair of 27-year-old men who scaled the zoo’s 2.4-meter-high fence near the west public gate early on Monday morning. Rosemarie Siever of Edmonton, was visiting the zoo with her husband, Charles Macdonald, the day after, and hearing about the attack, said not breaching safety enclosures is common sense. “He’s a moron, that’s all I have to say,” she said.
• Humans seem to be out of whack too.
• Or maybe it all is just a bunch of coincidences. Or not? Do you recall the recent wave of other cat attacks?
• Like I’ve asked before during times like these, were any cryptid encounters recorded anywhere too?

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• Globe Feels Nature's Wrath
• October 4, 2009
    Detroit Free Press
• After days of earthquakes and killer weather, scenes of devastation were widespread across Asia and the South Pacific on Saturday: Whole villages wiped out by earthquakes or buried under landslides.
• Tens of thousands of terrified people huddling in shelters to escape typhoons. Hundreds of victims drowned in flash floods, crushed by buildings, buried in mud or swept out to sea.

• Here's a look at the tragedies.
   
   

   

   

   

  
• INDONESIA: Quake kills 715; hundreds more could be buried
• On Saturday, rescuers finally reached four remote villages and said they expected to find more than 600 people dead there, many of them guests at a wedding, buried beneath tons of mud.
• A massive earthquake shook Indonesia on Wednesday, killing 715 people.
• An Associated Press photographer who flew over Indonesia's West Sumatra area said virtually nothing remained of the four villages that had dotted the hillside of the Padang Pariman district three days before.
• Authorities said the quake unleashed a landslide that buried the village under 100 feet of earth and debris. Even the mosque's minaret, taller than 65 feet, disappeared, they said.
• About 400 people were at the wedding in Pulau Aiya village when the 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck.
• Meanwhile, in Padang, a survivor trapped in a collapsed hotel sent text messages Friday saying he and others were alive. But authorities said Saturday that hopes of rescuing them had faded after sniffer dogs failed to detect life in the ruins.
• Across western Indonesia, about 2,400 people were hospitalized Saturday, and tens of thousands were believed to have been displaced.
• PHILIPPINES: At least 4 dead after Typhoon Parma hits
• Just eight days after a tropical storm swept across the Manila area, killing almost 300 people, a typhoon hit the Philippines' northern edge on Saturday, killing at least four more.
• Authorities said Saturday's fatalities occurred in Isabela province, where a man and a 2-year-old boy drowned, another man died of exposure to cold and water and a third man was killed falling from a roof.
• Authorities said the death toll was less severe because the typhoon weakened slightly and changed course.
• Tens of thousands of Filipinos had fled their homes as Typhoon Parma bore down on the main island of Luzon on Friday.
• Still, winds of 108 m.p.h. battered towns in at least two provinces and pelted the northeast corner of the country with downpours that swelled rivers to bursting, toppled power pylons and trees and cut communication lines, officials said.
• Saturday evening, Parma was heading northwest toward Taiwan, which declared a storm warning and began evacuating villages.
• SAMOA: Quake-triggered tsunami's death toll is at 170
• Days after an 8.3-magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami in the Pacific Ocean, authorities said Saturday the death toll had risen to 170, with 129 in Samoa, 32 in American Samoa and nine in Tonga.
• Samoan officials shifted their focus from rescuing victims to burying the dead and providing survivors with food, water and power, but stressed it didn't mean they were giving up on the missing.
  
• Many survivors refused to return to their villages.
   
    "They're scared; a lot of them have been psychologically affected by seeing their relations die in huge numbers," said Taule'alea Laavasa, chairman of the Samoan government's National Disaster Advisory Committee.
• NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS: Typhoon moves away, but it'll likely intensify
• Another huge storm, Typhoon Melor, was churning across the western Pacific early today but was moving away from the Northern Mariana Islands as residents hunkered in shelters.
• The storm, with maximum sustained winds of 130 m.p.h., was expected to intensify over the next 24 hours, but only the island of Agrihan in the U.S. commonwealth remained under typhoon warning.
• Rainfall of up to 6 inches and waves as high as 16 feet were possible, forecasters said.
• Elsewhere:
• India: Flash floods and landslides killed 134 people in southern India, and soldiers spent much of Saturday plucking marooned villagers from rooftops.
• Worst hit were Karnataka state and neighboring Andhra Pradesh, where rivers washed away thousands of homes.
• A government official said the death toll was expected to rise because many inundated areas remained cut off.
• Sicily: Storms that unleashed rivers of mud on eastern Sicily on Friday killed at least 21 people, and about 30 others were missing Saturday, authorities said. Hundreds were left homeless.
• http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091004/NEWS07/910040479&template=printart

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• Chilean Eruption Highlights Risk from 'Rhyolitic' Volcanoes
• October 7, 2009
    AFP
  
• PARIS, October 7, 2009 (AFP) - Magma from a Chilean volcano shot through Earth's crust at around a meter (3.25 feet) per minute, a speed highlighting the perils from so-called rhyolitic volcanoes, scientists reported on Wednesday.
• Chaitén volcano erupting ash and lava and steam. The dome itself is about 250 metres tall and about 2 km in diameter. The lava coming out is rhyolitic. (Jonathan Castro )
• Volcanoes in this category provide some of Earth's most explosive events.
• They are characterised by a dome of hardened magma which covers their central vent and can blow with catastrophic force, often with scant warning.
• They include Vesuvius, Krakatoa and Mount St. Helens -- names that have gone down in history for inflicting loss of life and massive damage.
• In the case of the Chaiten volcano, in Chile's northern Patagonia, local residents at a town 10 kilometers (six miles) from the cone felt earthquakes at about 8 pm on April 30, 2008 that were powerful enough to knock objects off shelves.
• The following day, the volcano erupted. On May 2, the volcano's lid, a caldera, was ripped off in a mighty blast.
• Further eruptions continued for a week, distributing a blanket of ash in a wide swathe near the volcano.
• Jonathan Castro of France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Donald Dingwell, of the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, collected ash samples and analysed crystals that are formed under specific conditions of pressure, temperature and water content.
• They calculate that the magma took just four hours to ascend from a depth of more than five kilometers (three miles).
• The molten rock surged upwards in the range of one meter (3.25 feet) per second before dispersing in an "explosive fragmentation" when it reached the surface.
  
• "This result has implications for hazard mitigation because the rapidity of ascending rhyolite means that future eruptions may provide little warning," they write in the British journal Nature.
• The pair call for rhyolitic volcanoes that have not erupted since the last Ice Age, around 10,000 years ago, to be monitored.
• "In more densely populated regions this would be essential to avoid a major volcanic disaster," they say.
• http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/223561/chilean-eruption-highlights-risk-rhyolitic-volcanoes

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