The official Xinhua News Agency reported that the deaths came on Monday from flooding in Longnan city near Zhouqu.

Zhouqu is where at least 1,254 people were killed as a mudslide triggered by heavy rain crashed through the city on Aug. 8.

The government says another 490 people are still missing from that disaster.

Since Aug. 11, heavy rains have pelted several counties in Longnan city, triggering landslides, Xinhua said.

It said the latest flooding left 295 people injured and more than 6,000 homes collapsed. Flooding has cut off electricity and damaged roads.

In Zhouqu on Tuesday, workers used bulldozers and cranes to dig and search for the missing as rains threatened to hinder rescue efforts, Xinhua reported.

Up to 3 inches (8 centimetres) of rain is expected in the area through Thursday, it said.

China regularly suffers devastating summer floods, but this year has been unusually severe.

Storms killed at least 1,500 people nationwide before the Zhouqu landslide and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage.

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ZHOUQU, Gansu, – The death toll from a massive rain-triggered mudslide in Zhouqu County in northwest China’s Gansu Province has risen to 702, with 1,042 others still missing, local civil affairs authorities said Tuesday afternoon.

Some 1,243 people have been rescued, Tian Baozhong, head of the provincial civil affairs department, told a news conference.

Of them, 58 who were seriously injured had been hospitalized, Ma Chengyang, deputy director of the provincial publicity department, told another press briefing Tuesday night.

Torrential rain on Saturday night prompted an avalanche of sludge and debris to crash down on the county seat of Zhouqu early Sunday morning, ripping many houses off their foundations and tearing multi-story apartment buildings in half.

The mud-rock flow has leveled an area of about 5 km long, 300 meters wide and 5 meters deep in the county seat with more than 2 million cubic meters of mud and rocks, severely damaging power, telecommunication and water supply facilities.

About 45,000 residents have been evacuated, as mudslides have destroyed more than 300 homes and damaged another 700. Moreover, 3,000 homes have been flooded.

More than 4,400 tents have reached Zhouqu but most of them have not yet been set up due to a lack of open space, Tian said.

About 16,000 more tents from the Ministry of Civil Affairs are still in Lanzhou, the provincial capital, Tian said.

The mountainous terrain has hampered disaster relief operations. Rescuers could only set up 100 tents in two settlement centers on the playgrounds of two middle schools.

“We have adequate tents, but insufficient space to pitch them,” said Zhang Hongdong, a worker with the county’s Red Cross Society.

Most people affected by the disaster sought shelter with their relatives and friends in nearby regions, Zhang added.

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Fierce wildfires raging across Russia are a risk to the top-secret capital of its nuclear research industry, officials admitted last night.

Two soldiers were killed yesterday fighting blazes dangerously close to the highly sensitive town of Sarov, despite claims in recent days the fires were under control.

The town, where the atomic complexes are based, is so tightly guarded it remains closed to foreigners, as in Soviet times.

Hundreds of wildfires have been burning across three time zones in Russia. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday boarded a fire-fighting plane to dump water on blazes close to Moscow, where the smoke has caused thick smog.

At Sarov, 230 miles east of the capital and known during the Cold War as Arzamas-16, soldiers have dug a five-mile canal to protect the nuclear arms site.

The two who died were tackling blazes in forests surrounding the town, which remains ringed
by high fences and military checkpoints.

One, rifle battalion commander Vasily Tezetev, 22, ‘died the death of a hero’, according to the local emergency centre. Officials say some sensitive nuclear equipment has been removed from the site to be stored away from the fires.

An official for Russian nuclear body Rosatom insisted last night the nuclear facilities were ‘working normally’ but admitted there were four sites close to Sarov ‘where the risk of sudden inflammation
is still high’.

Conflicting reports over the threat have raised fears that officials are covering up the extent of the damage.

Built by Nazi prisoners of war, the first Soviet nuclear bomb was created in the town and it remains the headquarters of Russian atomic research.

Fires also threaten Snezhinsk, home to another of Russia’s top nuclear research centres, and the reprocessing plant Ozersk, also in the Urals, where a state of emergency has been declared.

Around 557 blazes are still raging, with forecasters fearing the extremely dry conditions could last another ten days.

Moscow remains covered by a stifling smog, with morgues full from a huge rise in the numbers dying during the heat wave.

The cost already to the Russian economy already amounts to a staggering £10 billion and experts have warned the damage will stall Russia’s recovery from recession.

‘Economic growth in Russia is slowing and the heat wave will lead to a further slowdown,’ said Alexander Morozov, chief economist for HSBC bank in Russia.

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The 6.0-magnitude quake, with a depth of 41 kilometers (26 miles), struck 75 kilometers (45 miles) west-northwest of the capital, Port Vila.

It was the second day in a row that a powerful earthquake hit the region, following Tuesday’s 7.5-magnitude quake.

No tsunami warning was issued.

Vanuatu is in the South Pacific Ocean, about three-quarters of the way from Hawaii to Australia, and is made of numerous islands.

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More than 1,000 people have been listed as missing, but with mud, stones and debris covering many houses, the chances of finding anyone alive are considered slight.

Instead, troops and rescue teams joined by traumatised survivors turned to recovering bodies and seeing to the needs of the living. Clean drinking water was a primary concern, with most local sources destroyed or too polluted to use.

Entire communities in Gansu province’s Zhouqu district were swallowed up when the debris-choked Bailong River jumped its banks on Sunday, releasing wave after wave of mud and rubble-strewn water. While torrential rains were the direct cause, tree cutting that left the dry hills exposed and the weakening of cliff faces by a massive 2008 earthquake were seen as contributing to the disaster.

Buildings were torn from their foundations, their lower floors blown out by the force of the debris-laden water. Three villages comprising hundreds of households were buried entirely and much of the region left submerged.

On Wednesday, emergency crews in protective suits sprayed chemical disinfectant across the ground and over machinery, the smell of death heavy in the air. State media reported numerous cases of dysentery, while infected wounds, a lack of sanitation, clean drinking water and accumulating garbage all present the risk of typhoid, cholera and other diseases.

More rain is expected in the region in coming days, the China Meteorological Administration said. At least 45,000 people have evacuated their homes and the Civil Affairs Ministry reported the delivery of 7,000 tents and 21,400 blankets to the area, with thousands more on their way. Zhouqu has a total population of 134,000, but it wasn’t clear how many needed emergency shelter.

Rescue crews were largely reliant on hand tools, with heavy equipment either unable to traverse the difficult terrain or mired in mud up to several yards (metres) deep.

Shen Si, a member of the Tibetan ethnic group native to the area, watched forlornly as troops dug to reach the bodies of her relatives inside their buried home. She said: "My mother and father were in their 60s and my younger brother, all three of them, are buried here in our house still."

China’s leadership has ordered teams to continue the search for survivors and the ruling Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee met Tuesday to discuss rescue and relief work. Flooding in China has killed about 1,800 people this year and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage across 28 provinces and regions.

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Buildings caught fire, others crumbled and bridges collapsed across swathes of central Chile, but the initial death toll was relatively low from a quake packing many times more power than the one that devastated Haiti last month.

An apartment block with up to 200 people inside collapsed in Concepcion, the closest major city to the epicenter, and rescue officials said they were unsure how many escaped.

Overturned cars lay scattered below a fallen overpass in the capital Santiago and telephone and power lines went down across the narrow country, making it difficult to assess the full extent of the damage and loss of life.

The government said at least 214 people were killed in the 8.8-magnitude quake, which struck at 3:34 a.m. (0634 GMT), sending people rushing from their beds and onto the streets in fear, hugging each other and crying.

"It came in waves and lasted so long. Three minutes is an eternity. We kept worrying that it was getting stronger, like a terrifying Hollywood movie," said Santiago housewife Dolores Cuevas.

Chilean officials said the number of deaths was unlikely to increase dramatically, and a U.S. Geological Survey researcher attributed the low toll to Chile’s solid building standards.

But it was the fifth-largest earthquake since 1900 and dealt a blow to the economy and infrastructure of the world’s No. 1 copper producer and one of Latin America’s most developed and stable countries. [ID:nN27181062] [ID:nN27183634]

"This will be a major blow to the country’s infrastructure; there has been major damage to roads, airports, which are now suspended, ports and also in housing," Chilean President-elect Sebastian Pinera said.

The quake halted operations at two oil refineries and two major copper mines [ID:nN27177467] and the government said an estimated half a million homes were severely damaged.

TSUNAMI

A tsunami swept into the port town of Talcahuano, causing serious damage to port facilities and lifting fishing boats out of the water. Television pictures showed shipping containers strewn around and flooded streets in the port, one of the most important in southern Chile.

President Michelle Bachelet said a huge wave hit the Juan Fernandez islands, an archipelago where Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk was marooned in the 18th century, inspiring the novel Robinson Crusoe.

"There was a series of waves that got bigger and bigger, which gave people time to save themselves," pilot Fernando Avaria told TVN television by telephone from the main island.

But at least four people were killed and 13 others were missing on the island, a local official said.

Fifteen hours after the quake struck Chile, the tsunami reached Hawaii’s Big Island, where residents and tourists were evacuated from low-lying coastal areas. The tsunami warning was later lifted for Hawaii, but Japanese officials said a wave up to 3 meters (10 feet) high could hit the country’s Pacific coast and warned residents to evacuate coastal areas.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake struck 70 miles (115 km) northeast of Concepcion at a depth of 22 miles (35 km). It said an earthquake of magnitude 8 or over can cause "tremendous damage." The Jan. 12 quake that devastated Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince and killed well over 200,000 people was measured as magnitude 7.0.

CAPITAL DAMAGED, MINES SHUT

Chile’s capital of Santiago, about 200 miles (320 km) north of the epicenter, was also badly hit. The international airport was closed for at least 24 hours as the quake destroyed passenger walkways and shook glass out of doors and windows.

Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, suspended operations at its El Teniente and Andina mines, but reported no major damage and said it expected the mines to be up and running in the "coming hours."

Production was halted at the Los Bronces and El Soldado copper mines, owned by Anglo American Plc, but Chile’s biggest copper mine, Escondida, was operating normally.

Chile produces about 34 percent of world supply of copper, which is used in electronics, cars and refrigerators.

In Concepcion, one of Chile’s largest cities with around 670,000 inhabitants, at least 12 buildings caught fire and rescue workers pulled 22 people from the rubble of the 15-storey apartment block that pancaked into itself.

Some residents looted pharmacies and a collapsed grains silo, hauling off bags of wheat, television images showed.

At least 269 prisoners took advantage of the quake to escape from a prison about 250 miles (450 km) south of Santiago, police said. Twenty-eight of the inmates were captured and three shot.

Broken glass and chunks of concrete and brick were strewn across roads and several strong aftershocks rattled jittery residents in the hours after the initial quake.

"It was like we were being shaken around in a box," said Claudia Rosario, a 27-year-old receptionist in Temuco, 175 miles (280 km) south of Concepcion. She said residents there were without water and electricity.

An eight-year-old boy and a man were killed in the northern Argentine city of Salta when a powerful aftershock caused walls to collapse, officials said.

There were blackouts in parts of Santiago. Emergency officials said buildings in the historic quarters of two southern cities, mainly made of adobe, had been badly damaged and local radio said three hospitals had partially collapsed.

In 1960, Chile was hit by a 9.5-magnitude earthquake, one of the biggest ever recorded. It devastated the city of Valdivia, killed 1,655 people and spawned a tsunami that engulfed the Pacific Ocean, taking another 200 lives in Japan, Hawaii and the Philippines.

President Barack Obama called Bachelet on Saturday and said the United States stood ready to help Chile. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was due to visit Chile on Tuesday on a Latin America tour. (Additional reporting by Helen Popper, Kevin Gray, Guido Nejamkis and Juliana Castilla in Buenos Aires; Alonso Soto in Santiago; Editing by Stuart Grudgings and Kieran Murray)

source: Reuters

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center lifted its warning for Hawaii about two hours after the series of waves hit Hawaiian shores, and later for most of the rest of the Pacific.

"It’s a big relief," said Jenifer Rhoades, the National Weather Service’s tsunami program coordinator. "It was pretty scary. We’re glad it turned out to be an event where there wasn’t tremendous impacts in terms of loss of life."

The cancellation means residents who evacuated could begin returning to their homes. More than 144,000 people lived in the evacuation zone.

The biggest waves were reported at Kahului Bay in Maui, but even there no flooding or damage was reported, said Shelly Ichishita, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Defense Civil Defense Division.

"All the evidence indicated it would be larger," said Barry Hirshorn, a geophysicist at the Tsunami warning center. "This was a very large earthquake in a part of the world that tends to produce very large tsunamis. We need to walk a line between a false alarm and missing something that’s dangerous and could kill people. Since the science is not exact, we chose to err on the side of not killing people by missing something."

A tsunami warning remained in effect for Russia and Japan.

As the tsunami neared Hawaii, triggered by a massive earthquake in Chile, Hilo International Airport on the big island of Hawaii, which is near the southern coast , was closed, and all crews aboard vessels and on the ground in state ports were ordered to evacuate. A warning siren sounded at 6 a.m. local time, alerting residents to tune into their local television and radio stations for instructions.

"We are counting on the public to follow all the instructions of our emergency personnel," said Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle. "Anyone who is ordering you to evacuate you need to take it seriously. We need you to evacuate in an orderly fashion.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano had been briefed and was monitoring developments from Vancouver, where she is leading a U.S. delegation for the Olympics.

Four Hawaii-based U.S. Coast Guard cutters prepared to get underway to ride out the tsunami at sea, and the service planned to reposition aircraft at low-lying Air Station Barbers Point near Honolulu to be able to respond if big waves hit, officials said.

Lingle declared a state of emergency, a step aimed at making needed resources available, including the National Guard. Several water pumping stations that are in low-lying areas were shut down to prevent equipment from being damaged by flooding.

washingtonpost.com

Vehicles that were driving along a highway that collapsed during the earthquake near Santiago are seen overturned on the asphalt Saturday Feb. 27, 1010 after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck central Chile early Saturday. The quake hit 200 miles (325 kilometers) southwest of the capital and the epicenter was just 70 miles (115 kilometers) from Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city.

A tsunami advisory announced shortly after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Japan’s Ryukyu Islands early Saturday has been canceled, Japan’s Meteorological Agency reported.

There was no tsunami damage "though there may be slight sea level changes from now on," it said, referring to the areas affected by the advisory — the Okinawa Islands, the Amami Islands and the Tokara Islands.

The quake was centered 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) deep and struck at 5:31 a.m. (3:31 p.m. ET Friday) about 85 kilometers (53 miles) from Okinawa.

The quake was felt on Okinawa, with shaking that lasted about 15 seconds, said Lt. Col. Daniel King of the U.S. Pacific Command. He told CNN that commanders in Japan and Hawaii were trying to get damage and casualty reports from U.S. military stations on Okinawa, but had heard nothing in the immediate aftermath.

About 20,000 U.S. troops — mostly Marines, along with Navy and Air Force personnel — are stationed on eight bases on Okinawa, he said.

A massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake rocked Chile early Saturday, killing at least 78 people and triggering tsunami warnings for the entire Pacific basin.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said she expected the death toll to rise.

Numerous aftershocks — including one of magnitude 6.9 — were felt within hours of the initial quake, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The quake’s epicenter was located off the coast of Maule, about 200 miles southwest of the capital of Santiago. It struck at 3:34 a.m. (1:34 a.m. ET), when most people were sleeping.

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