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Vehicles washed away by tsunami are left in Ofunato, Iwate, northern Japan in Saturday, March 12, 2011 after Japan’s biggest recorded earthquake slammed into its eastern coast Friday.

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Ships drifted by tsunami sit on the land near a port in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, Saturday morning, March 12, 2011 after Japan’s biggest recorded earthquake slammed into its eastern coast Friday.

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The 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami was an 8.8 to 9.1-M_W megathrust earthquake that created tsunami waves of up to 10 meters (33 ft). It was measured at 7 on the Japan Meteorological Agency seismic intensity scale in the northern Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. The earthquake focus was reported to be 130 kilometres off the Oshika Peninsula, the east coast of Tōhoku on 11 March 2011, at 05:46 UTC (14:46 local time) at a depth of 24.4 kilometers (15.2 mi).

News reports by Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) indicate that nearly 580 people have died and more than 1400 are missing in six different prefectures.

Estimates of magnitude range from 8.8 to 9.1 M_W making it the largest earthquake to hit Japan and one of the five largest earthquakes in the world since modern record-keeping began.

Other Information

• Date : 14:46:23, 11 March 2011 (UTC+9) (2011-03-11T14:46:23UTC+9)
• Magnitude : 8.8–9.1 M_W
• Depth : 24.4 km (15.2 mi)
• Epicenter location : 38°19′19″N 142°22′08″E / 38.322°N 142.369°E / 38.322; 142.369Coordinates
• Type ” Megathrust earthquake
• Countries or regions affected : Japan (primary), Multiple nations (tsunami)
• Total damage : Flooding and reports of major damage
• Tsunami : Yes
• Landslides : Yes
• Aftershocks : At least 150 (22 above 6.0 M_W)
• Casualties (preliminary) : nearly 580 dead, more than 1400 missing (March 11, 2011 )

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Continue reading »]]> At least 36 people have died and 23 others are missing in fresh flooding from torrential rains in China’s Gansu province, the latest in a string of natural disasters to strike China.

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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Continue reading »]]> A suicide bomber blew himself up Tuesday among hundreds of army recruits who had gathered near a military headquarters in an attack officials said killed 60 and wounded 125, one of the bloodiest bombings in weeks in the Iraqi capital.

The massive blast took place around 7:30 a.m. just outside the former Iraqi Ministry of Defense building that now houses the army’s 11th division headquarters. The site receives about 250 new recruits each week as Iraqi security forces try to bolster their ranks to prepare for the U.S. military’s looming withdrawal after seven years of war.

Blown-off hands and legs could be seen among pools of blood at the scene, which Iraqi soldiers closed off. U.S. helicopters hovered overhead as frantic Iraqis showed up to search for relatives.

At least two recruits who witnessed that attack raised the possibility that a car had also exploded at the scene, which could account for the high death toll. But a military spokesman blamed the deaths on a single suicide bomber.

"We were sitting there, and somebody began shouting about a parked car," said one of the recruits, Ali Ibrahim, 21, who suffered minor shrapnel wounds in the blast. Ibrahim said he had been waiting to get into the headquarters to secure a job since around 3 a.m.

"Then the explosion happened and I was thrown on my back," he said after his release from the hospital. "It was a tragic scene."

The recruits were gathered in an open area next to Maidan Square in central Baghdad as they waited to be let through the main gates in small groups, according to two Iraqi police officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. At least three soldiers were among the dead and eight among the wounded, the police officials said.

Officials at four Baghdad hospitals confirmed the casualties. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Iraqi Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, a military spokesman, told The Associated Press that the blast was caused by a single suicide bomber who detonated his vest among the packed crowd. He put the casualty count at 39 killed and 57 wounded. Varying casualty counts are common in the chaotic aftermath of massive attacks.

Al-Moussawi blamed al-Qaida for enlisting the bomber, whose upper body was found at the scene, he said.

As many as 1,000 army recruits were gathered at the division headquarters, he added, because Tuesday was to be the last day for soldiers to sign up at the unit.

"We couldn’t get another place for the recruits," al-Moussawi said. "It was difficult to control the area because it’s an open area and because of the large number of recruits."

Iraqi security forces have been trying to boost their numbers as the U.S. military begins to leave the country. All but 50,000 U.S. troops will go home by the end of August, with the rest to follow by the end of 2011 under a security agreement between Baghdad and Washington.

But insurgents determined to highlight the Iraqi government’s struggle to protect the nation have been stepping up attacks in recent weeks.

Iraqi army, police and other security forces have been targeted, but civilians also have been killed by the hundreds.

This summer has seen a spike in violence in Iraq. Data from the Iraqi defense, interior and ministry officials show that July marked the bloodiest month since May 2008, with more than 500 killed, although tallies compiled by The Associated Press and the U.S. military were lower.

August, which saw the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, has also been deadly. Two bombs that set off a power generator and ignited a fuel tank on Aug. 7. killed 43 people in a downtown market in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city.

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The crowd at the off-road race was almost close enough to touch the trucks as they hurtled and bounced over the desert sand — close enough for one mistake to end eight lives.

Hundreds of thrill-seeking fans watched in horror Saturday night as one racer took a jump at high speed, hit his brakes on landing and rolled his truck sideways into spectators, sending bodies flying on a section of track that had no guardrails or anything else to keep the crowd back.

Eight people were killed and 12 were injured at the California 200, a race in the Mojave Desert about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

“You could touch it if you wanted to. It’s part of the excitement,” said 19-year-old Niky Carmikle, who stood sobbing over a makeshift memorial on the spot of the crash Sunday. Her boyfriend, 24-year-old Zachary Freeman of Fillmore, was killed in the crash. “There’s always that risk factor, but you just don’t expect that it will happen to you.”

CHP officer Joaquin Zubieta said Brett M. Sloppy, 28, of San Marcos, was behind the wheel of truck involved in the crash near the city of Lucerne Valley. Zubieta said alcohol was not a factor in the crash and there were no plans to arrest Sloppy.

Zubieta said state vehicle codes don’t apply because it was a sanctioned racing event held with the approval of the federal Bureau of Land Management, which owns the land used for the race.
Tens of thousands of people were spread out along the 50-mile track, but the site of the crash, a stretch known as the “rockpile,” is one of the most popular areas to gather, witnesses said.

Some witnesses said they got within 4 feet of the unmarked track, watching trucks fly through the air over a series of jumps.

The driver “hit the rock and just lost control and tumbled,” said Matt March, 24, of Wildomar, who was standing next to the jump. “Bodies went everywhere.”

March said he and several other fans lifted the truck, which came to rest with its oversized wheels pointing toward the sky, and found four people lying unconscious underneath.

John Payne, 20, of Anaheim, said he was among the first people to reach the truck. He said the victims included one person who was decapitated.
“It was complete chaos,” Payne said.

Carmikle had gone to the bathroom when the crash happened. When she came back, Freeman and his best friend, 24-year-old Dustin Malson of Ventura, were dead.

“Bodies all over the ground, people screaming, and all I wanted to do was find my boyfriend and my friends,” Carmikle said.

It took rescue vehicles and helicopters more than half an hour to reach the remote location, though spectators said off-duty police and firefighters in the crowd joined paramedics hired by the race organizer to help the injured and place blankets over the dead.

Six people died at the scene and two others died after being taken to a hospital, authorities said. Seven ambulances and 10 emergency aircraft responded, airlifting most of the 12 injured people from the area to hospitals.

Paramedics brought six people — five adults and a child — to Loma Linda University Medical Center, spokesman Herbert Atienza said Sunday. He had no information on their condition.

Officials said Sloppy, the driver, wasn’t hurt. It was not clear why he lost control of the truck, a white modified Ford Ranger with “Misery Motorsports” painted on the doors.

A Facebook page that appeared to belong to Sloppy and included a picture of his truck was updated Sunday with a note: “Soo incredibly lost and devistated my thoughts and prayers go out to all the familys and friends involved.. Thank you too all my friends for sticking with me even thru these tragic times I love you all.”

Nearly 40 friends responded with messages of support by Sunday afternoon.

Jeff Talbott, inland division chief for the California Highway Patrol, told the Riverside Press-Enterprise that the driver was forced to run from the scene when the crowd grew unruly and some began throwing rocks at him. Several witnesses, however, said they didn’t see anyone throwing rocks at the driver.

Phone and e-mail messages left for the race organizer, South El Monte-based Mojave Desert Racing, were not immediately returned. The race is part of a series held in the Mojave Desert’s Soggy Dry Lake Bed.

A small cross and a circle of rocks were placed Sunday near the ruts in the ground left by the truck. Bags of victims’ clothing, some of it bloody, sat nearby.

There were no barriers at the site of the crash. Fans said these races rarely have any kind of safety guards.

“That’s desert racing for you,” Payne said. “You’re at your own risk out here. You are in the middle off the desert. People were way too close and they should have known. You can’t really hold anyone at fault. It’s just a horrible, horrible accident.”

The CHP does not normally investigate crashes at organized events, but took the lead on this probe because of its scope. It set up a command center at the starting line of the race. The federal Bureau of Land Management was assisting in the investigation.

Aside from Freeman and Malson, those killed included Brian Wolfin, 27, Anthony Sanchez, 23, and Aaron Farkas, 25, all of Escondido; Danica Frantzich, 20, of Las Vegas; and Andrew Therrin, 22, of Riverside. The name of the eighth victim had not been released Sunday afternoon.

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Officials in Colombia called it a “miracle” that the plane crash on a Colombian island early Monday morning resulted in just one death.

Even as authorities work to determine what caused the Boeing 737 to go down, deft piloting is being pointed to as a key factor in saving the lives of the 130 other people aboard, including at least five American citizens.

“The pilot’s professionalism prevented the plane from going off the runway,” Gen. Orlando Paez of Colombia’s national police told Caracol Radio.

Officials are investigating whether the plane, which belonged to Colombian carrier Aires and was on its way from the capital, Bogotá, had been hit by lightning as it neared San Andres, a Caribbean resort island off the east coast of Nicaragua. A downdraft could have also caused the crash, officials speculated.

Colombian national police, in a statement, said the plane broke into three parts as it landed. There were at least 121 passengers aboard, including four children, plus six crew members.

The state government sent an e-mail to the Associated Press that said passengers included eight US citizens and four Brazilians. An airline representative later told the Associated Press that only five US citizens were aboard.

The sole death could have been caused by a heart attack, a doctor treating the patients has said.

The damage could have been far worse, according to Robert Sanchez, director of the hospital Amor de Patria, which was treating many of the injured. “It’s incredible. For the dimension [of the accident], there should be more,” he told the Associated Press.

Colombian Air Force Col. David Barrero told the wire service by telephone that “the skill of the pilot kept the plane from colliding with the airport.”

The incident called to mind the US Airways flight that landed in the Hudson River in 2009, dubbed the “Miracle on the Hudson.” Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger was credited then with saving the lives of all 150 passengers when the plane made an emergency landing on the river.

There are many more examples, says Robert Mann, president of R.W. Mann & Company, an aviation consultancy in Port Washington, N.Y. He says skilled pilots have managed to safely land despite structural failures on takeoff, malfunctioning controls, and cargo door failure. (Another example he cites is the 1989 crash in Honolulu that killed nine people, of 355 aboard.)

“Obviously skill goes into it, experience goes into it,” he says.

The experience of past crashes teaches pilots and the industry overall ways to deal with problems in the future. PBS has looked back at the lessons learned from some of the worst air accidents in history.

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The 2010 China floods began in early May 2010. 392 people had died, and a further 232 people had been reported missing as of June 30, 2010, including 57 people in a landslide in Guizhou. 53 of the deaths occurred from the flooding and landslides between May 31 and June 3, and 266 deaths occurred between June 13 and June 29. 424 people were killed by the end of June, including 42 from the Guizhou landslide; 277 more were killed and 147 left missing in the first two weeks of July, bringing the death toll as of August 5 to 1,072. A landslide in early August in Gansu killed at least 702 people and left 1,042 missing. More than 140 million people in 28 provinces, municipalities and regions, especially the southern and central provinces and regions of Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Chongqing Municipality, Gansu, Sichuan and Guizhou, and the northeastern province of Jilin have been affected, while at least 4.66 million people have been evacuated because of the risk of flooding and landslides in the latter half of June. By early August, 10.42 million people had been evacuated.

Millions lack drinking water. A total of 1.1 million houses have been destroyed and more than 97,200 square kilometers (24 million acres) of crops have been innundated, while 800,000 ha (2,000,000 acres) of farmland have been completely destroyed. Dozens of rivers remain in flood, including the Pearl River in Guangdong province, which was impacted by severe drought during the spring as its outflow was severely reduced. The total damages from the floods were roughly 83.8 billion yuan as of June 27, 2010, and almost 210 billion yuan (31 billion USD) by August 5. 4.63 million hectares of farmland have been affected by the flooding.

In late May 2010, heavy rainfall caused a train derailment in Jiangxi, killing at least 19 people, and the closure of the Shanghai-Kunming railway line for 24 hours due to a landslide.

Many major rivers in China, including the Yangtze, Yellow and Songhua Rivers have been flooded to danger levels. The Chinese Government has allocated over 2.1 billion yuan for rescue and relief work. The Jialing River, Han River and Huai River have also surged higher than warning levels.

Other Information

• Duration: 10 May – present
• Damages: 31 billion USD
• Fatalities: 1,785 dead, 1,661 missing
• Areas affected: 28 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalites in the People’s Republic of China; North Korea

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The 2010 Gansu mudslide was a deadly mudslide in Zhugqu County, Gannan TAP that occurred at 12 midnight (UTC+8) on August 8, 2010. It has resulted in more than 700 deaths; more than 1,000 others are still missing. It was caused by the heavy rainfall and flooding in the Gansu Province, People’s Republic of China. It was the most deadly individual disaster among the 2010 China floods as of 10 August 2010. The mudslides killed more than 700 people, according to BBC News, as of 10 August 2010.

The worst hit was the Zhouqu County, when mud submerged houses and tore multi-story blocks of flats to pieces. After the heavy rain, there was a buildup of water behind a dam of debris blocking the Bailong River, causing it to overflow and mud to cover houses.

According to Gyurme Dorje’s Tibet Handbook, the forest region of Zhugqu (Drukchu in Tibetan) has, since the 1950s, “shrunk by 30% and the reserve of timber reduced by 25% due to overfelling. The sand in the river water has increased by 60%, and the water volume has reduced by 8%, resulting in increased flooding and drought.”

Other Information

• Date : August 8, 2010
• Time : 12 A.M. CST
• Location : Gansu, China
• Casualties : 702 dead, 1,048 missing

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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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