Continue reading »]]>

This video is a series of shots of the Jesucita Fire in Santa Barbara, California on May 6, 2009. All of this footage was shot from downtown Santa Barbara only a few blocks from State Street and within walking distance to the ocean.- Scubaman5000

Continue reading »]]> Paloma lost its punch as it stalled over Cuba on Sunday and was downgraded to a tropical depression after coming ashore as powerful hurricane that battered the island still recovering from two earlier storms.

Paloma left a trail of destruction through eastern Cuba, but not the widespread devastation of hurricanes Gustav and Ike that caused $8 billion in damage when they struck in August and September.

In it latest advisory, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Paloma’s winds had dropped to 35 miles per hour (55 kph). Its center was located 15 miles (25 km) south-southwest of the eastern central city of Camaguey and moving just 1 mph (2 kph) to the north, the center said.

The storm hit the southern coast on Saturday with 120 mph winds (195 kph) that knocked over power and phone lines, toppled trees, damaged homes and felled a communications tower.

In Santa Cruz del Sur, where Paloma made landfall, a 13-foot (4-metre) storm surge pushed seawater nearly a mile (1.5 km) inland, damaging hundreds of homes. Rainfall of up to 15 inches (40 cm) was reported in some areas, causing local flooding.

Paloma weakened quickly as it crept inland and was downgraded throughout the day on Sunday before its downgrade to tropical depression.

Much earlier in the day, the Cuban weather service said only remnants of Paloma remained and stopped issuing advisories.

NO INJURIES OR DEATHS

Cuban officials declared the recovery phase begun and many of the hundreds of thousands of evacuees started returning home. No storm-related deaths or major injuries were reported.

“I’m happy that it was less that expected,” university student Maritza Bacallao in Camaguey. “The scare was worse than the reality.”

“It was less than Ike and I hope it’s the last one,” said school teacher Iris Mendoza, also in Camaguey. “It’s the second time they made me spend the night without sleeping, watching to see if the roof fell in.”

Gustav slammed the Isle of Youth and westernmost Pinar del Rio province with 150 mph (230 kph) winds, while Ike hit eastern Cuba with 120 mph winds (195 kph) and rampaged through much of the island.

They damaged almost 450,000 homes and destroyed 30 percent of Cuba’s crops, which touched off food shortages in the cash-strapped communist-run island that normally imports 60 percent of its food.

The most recent reports said only 20 percent of the damaged homes had been fully repaired.

Before hitting Cuba, Paloma raked the Cayman Islands, causing wind damage and flooding in the wealthy British territory, but no deaths.

Paloma was the eighth hurricane of a busy Atlantic hurricane season, which officially ends Nov. 30.

It was was the second-most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the month of November and struck 76 years after a Nov. 9, 1932, cyclone that killed 3,000 in the same part of Cuba.

Reuters

Continue reading »]]> CAMAGUEY, Cuba (AP) — Crashing waves and a powerful sea surge from Hurricane Paloma destroyed hundreds of homes along Cuba’s southern coast, but the storm rapidly weakened into a tropical depression Sunday as it moved over the island.

Early damage reports were limited, but state media said the late-season storm toppled a major communications tower, interrupted electricity and phone service and sent sea water almost a mile (1 1/2 kilometers) inland, ravaging a coastal community near where it made landfall.

No storm-related deaths were immediately reported.

Officials had feared that Paloma could slow Cuba’s recovery from Gustav and Ike, devastating hurricanes that struck earlier this year, causing about $9.4 billion in damage and destroying nearly a third of the island’s crops.

But Vicente de la O of Cuba’s national power company said damage to the power grid was far less than that caused by Gustav and Ike in late August and early September.

Paloma roared ashore near Santa Cruz del Sur late Saturday as a Category 4 hurricane but quickly lost strength, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. Forecasters said the Cuban and Bahamian governments discontinued all warnings associated with Paloma by Sunday morning.

At 4 p.m. EST, Paloma’s center was 15 miles (25 km) south-southwest of Camaguey, Cuba. Once as strong as 145 mph (230 kph), the storm’s winds had weakened to 35 mph (55 kph). Paloma was drifting toward the north at about 1 mph (2 kph).

The hurricane center’s forecast said Paloma or its remnants should be near the north coast of Cuba on Monday.

On Sunday, waves more than 10 feet (3 meters) high leveled about 50 modest houses along the coast of Santa Cruz del Sur. Civil Defense authorities said altogether 435 homes in the community were destroyed.

Javier Ramos told The Associated Press he rebuilt his simple wood-frame house in the town after Hurricane Ike, only to watch Paloma flatten it again.

“At least we’re alive, but my wife hasn’t seen this yet,” Ramos said as he scavenged bits of clothing and smashed dishes in his front yard. “I don’t know how she’s going to react. It’s going to be terrible.”

Elsewhere in town, Angel Betancourt was skinning a drowned goat. “The water was up to a meter high and the goat drowned,” he said. “What else can we do? We’re going to eat it.”

Touring Santa Cruz del Sur on Sunday, Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura said the area was among the hardest-hit nationwide.

In the nearby community of Jagua, Herienso Rondon, a 50-year-old retired day laborer, said he was still trying to repair damage from Ike when Paloma tore away his wooden house’s roof and pulverized the belongings inside, including a meager bed and mattress.

“I don’t have any hope,” he said. “After Hurricane Ike (government officials) came to visit me and said they had no way to help and I had to buy the wood for repairs.

“I have no money,” said Rondon, who gets a monthly pension of 158 pesos, about $7.50.

Across central and eastern Cuba, more than 500,000 people were evacuated from low-lying areas as Paloma approached. Cuba regularly moves people en masse to higher ground before tropical storms and hurricanes, preventing major loss of life.

Earlier, Paloma downed trees, flooded low-lying areas and damaged roofs in the Cayman Islands. But residents there appeared to weather the hurricane unscathed.

The Associated Press:

Incoming search terms:

• hurricane barbara
• hurricane in haiti

Continue reading »]]> Hurricane Paloma, heading toward Cuba, is packing sustained winds of 135 mph and has been upgraded to Category 4 status, meteorologists said Saturday.

Accuweater.com forecasters said Paloma was expected to make landfall late Saturday night or early Sunday morning along the south-central coast of Cuba. Rain and strong winds were already pounding the Cayman Islands Saturday as officials urged residents to stay off the streets and evacuated some low-lying coastal regions.

“Before Paloma gets to Cuba, there will be some upper level wind sheer that will take away some of its energy, but it is still likely to be Category 3,” said AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist Michael Sager. “The storm will run perpendicular to the island and it will remain over land for about 12 hours. It’s likely to have become more disorganized by the time the storm passes on to the Bahamas.”

At 4 a.m. Saturday, the storm’s center was 40 miles southwest of Little Cayman and about 75 miles east of Grand Cayman and was moving in a northeasterly direction, CNN reported.

UPI.com

Continue reading »]]> Hurricane Paloma strengthened over the Caribbean and may become a Category 3 storm before hitting Cuba, which is still recovering from hurricanes Ike and Gustav.

Paloma’s maximum sustained winds increased to 130 kilometers (80 miles) per hour, from 120 kph earlier today, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in an advisory on its Web site just before 7 a.m. Miami time. The system, which is forecast to continue strengthening, was about 395 kilometers (245 miles) west of Montego Bay, Jamaica, and moving north at 13 kph.

On the forecast track, the center of Paloma will pass near the Cayman Islands late Friday or early Saturday,” before hitting Cuba, the center said. Additional “strengthening is likely and Paloma is expected to become a Category 2 hurricane later today and possibly reach Category 3 intensity by Saturday.”

A Category 3 storm has winds of between 178 and 209 kph, the third strongest on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity. As much as 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain may fall on the Caymans, the center said.

The Cuban government issued a hurricane watch for the central provinces of Sancti Spiritus, Ciego de Avila, Camaguey, Las Tunas and Granma, the center said. A watch means that hurricane conditions are possible in the area within 36 hours.

Hurricane Ike, which made landfall in eastern Cuba as a Category 3 storm in early September, killed four and prompted Cuban authorities to evacuate as many as 2 million people, or almost a fifth of the population. In late August, Hurricane Gustav hit the island with 150 mph winds, leading to evacuations.

Miss Refineries

The center’s five-day projection shows the system crossing central Cuba and then moving over the central Bahamas and toward the open Atlantic Ocean early next week.

“Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion,” the center said.

AccuWeather.com meteorologist Dale Mohler said Paloma should miss refineries in the Gulf of Mexico and in Saint Croix. The Gulf is home to about one-quarter of U.S. oil production.

“Paloma’s path will take it well away from refineries,” Mohler said in an e-mailed statement. “It could be very bad news for the people of Cuba, but it won’t impact energy interests.”

Paloma is the 16th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. Forecasters predicted the season would see an above-average number of storms. Colorado State University researchers projected at least 17 major storms, including nine hurricanes, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center said there would be 14 to 18 named storms.

Bertha, Gustav

Hurricanes Bertha, Gustav, Ike and Omar reached major hurricane status of at least Category 3, with winds greater than 111 mph.

Paloma is similar to Hurricane Michelle of November 2001, which took just three days to intensify from a tropical depression into a Category 4 hurricane with winds of at least 131 mph, Weather Underground meteorologist Jeff Masters wrote on his blog.

Bloomberg.com:

Continue reading »]]> ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Outside the Zekai Tahir Burak maternity hospital stands a bronze statue of a mother nursing a baby with an inscription from the Prophet Mohammed: “Paradise lies at the feet of the mother.”

In July, the Ankara facility became the scene of any parent’s hell: A total of 27 newborns died here within two weeks, most of them from infection.

Now Turkey is reeling from a similar tragedy at another hospital, this time in the western city of Izmir, where 13 premature babies died last weekend within 24 hours, apparently from tainted IV treatment.

The deaths at two of the nation’s most modern maternity hospitals go to the heart of Turkey’s uncertain status as a country energetically seeking to modernize in its bid to join the European Union — but held back by problems associated with the developing world.

The scandals have exposed a shortfall in the number of specialized neonatal units dealing with premature and high-risk babies as well as a shortage of qualified staff in a country of 70 million.

Most hospitals lack specialized premature birth units, and high-risk or premature babies are often transferred to larger hospitals in cities such Istanbul, Ankara or Izmir. The transfer and high concentration of newborns in the same place increases the risk of infections, experts say.

“There just isn’t the facility that allows a premature baby to survive in the hospital that it was born in,” said Bedriye Yorgun, who heads the Ankara-based Health and Social Services Workers’ Union, which advocates improved health services. “When the babies are transferred, there is a higher chance of exposure to infection and of spreading an infection.”

The government has acknowledged a shortage and has said it plans to increase the number of neonatal wards nationwide from the current 156 to 200 by 2010. It has also admitted to a shortage of more than 400 specialized doctors and thousands of nurses.

After the first deaths at the capital’s Zekai Tahir Burak maternity hospital, a team of government-appointed doctors said a staff shortage had increased the risk of infection.

Dr. Fahri Ovali, one of the doctors, told reporters: “There were four high-risk babies for every nurse.”

The Izmir tragedy caused a renewed explosion of outrage in this country where children are cherished and people will often stop to show affection to other people’s kids.

“Such shame does not exist elsewhere in the world,” read a headline in Bugun newspaper. “13 mothers’ arms left empty,” said Aksam newspaper.

A preliminary investigation concluded that the infants died of a bacterial infection spread by IV treatment. Further investigation is under way to see how the bacteria got mixed with the intravenous solution used to treat the infants at Izmir’s Tepecik hospital. The bodies of three of the babies, who were buried immediately after their deaths, were exhumed to help with the investigation.

Izmir health department head Mehmet Ozkan said the hospital believed the babies were not neglected. After the 13 deaths, the unit was placed under quarantine and no new babies have been admitted.

Some of the families have filed complaints against the hospital accusing its directors of negligence. A local prosecutor has also launched a criminal investigation into the deaths, while the main opposition party has called for a parliamentary debate on the deaths.

A chief obstetrician at Etlik Zubeyde Hanim hospital said a government decree forcing hospitals not to turn away any patients was to blame.

“If there are no spare incubators and you are forced to admit more and more babies, what do you do? You have to put two babies into the same incubator, which increases the possibility of infections,” he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue and because as a state-employee, he is not authorized to speak to journalists.

Yorgun, who heads the health workers’ union agreed.

“The government is telling the people that no one will be turned away from hospitals, but it is not creating the conditions to allow doctors to treat everyone,” she said.

String of baby deaths shocks Turkey – CNN.com

Continue reading »]]> Hurricane Ike took aim at Cuba today after leaving 20 people dead in Haiti, where the death toll from a succession of powerful storms in the past few weeks now tops 600.

Ike was downgraded today from a Category Four hurricane to a still potentially devastating Category Three, as Cuba evacuated hundreds of thousands in a frantic bid to evade the storm’s fury.

Officials in Haiti, meanwhile, continued aid operations in the flood-stricken town of Gonaives, which has borne the brunt of recent flooding and seen untold misery and destruction.

Ike plowed across the low-lying Turks and Caicos overnight as a powerful Category Four storm, causing some injuries and extensive damage on the British territory and tourist haven, Bahamas radio reported.

The hurricane then raked the south-eastern Bahamian island of Great Inagua, toppling trees, blowing off roofs, causing an island-wide power failure and forcing many of its 1,000 residents to seek refuge in shelters, a resident told AFP by telephone.

With winds decreasing slightly to 195 km/h, the storm is forecast to roar ashore in eastern Cuba tonight as a Category Three “major hurricane” on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale.

But the immediate concern is its effect on Haiti, where a humanitarian crisis is unfolding after flooding from Ike and previous storms Hanna and Gustav left around 600 people dead and thousands in desperate need of food, clean water and shelter.

With winds near 215 km/h, the storm’s outer bands lashed Haiti’s vulnerable north-west coast with torrential rain.

Hundreds of bodies were found in flood-prone Gonaives, a atown of 350,000 in north-western Haiti, after a five-metre wall of water and mud engulfed much of the town. The storm followed on the heels of Hanna, last week’s massive storm.

United Nations peacekeepers yesterday evacuated several thousand residents from Gonaives, a local official said, but thousands more are still awaiting relief.

About 650,000 Haitians have been affected by the flooding, including 300,000 children, and the task of delivering crucial aid has been complicated by dismal transport conditions, according to UNICEF.

Officials say 200,000 people have been without food and clean water, many for four days.

At least 20 people were found dead Sunday in Cabaret, 13 of them children, when a torrent of muddy water raged through the village, the region’s parliamentarian said.

“What has happened here is unimaginable,” deputy Pierre-Gerome Valcine told AFP from Cabaret, 35 km north of the capital Port-Au-Prince.

“Many homes were destroyed in Cabaret, and we have seen some bodies of children in the water,” added a journalist for UN radio who spent the night on the roof of his house.

Massive flooding over the past week in the poorest country in the Americas has triggered a humanitarian crisis that is worsening by the day — and has prompted prayers from Pope Benedict XVI.

“I want to remember the dear population of Haiti, greatly distressed in recent days by passing hurricanes,” Benedict told pilgrims on the Italian island of Sardinia today.

Continuing stormy weather hampered relief efforts today, when heavy rains led to the collapse of a key bridge which severed the only viable land route to Gonaives.

The bridge gave way overnight at the town of Mirebalais in central Haiti, forcing three trucks loaded with emergency supplies and bound for Saint-Marc, where thousands of desperate flood refugees from Gonaives were crowding into shelters, to turn back, according to a World Food Program official.

Many bridges in other areas of Haiti have also collapsed, homes have been washed away and crops ravaged.

Meanwhile, more than 600,000 people in Cuba began evacuations today ahead of the Ike’s arrival, including 9,210 foreign tourists who were moved out of Varadero, a tourism mecca about 120 km east of Havana.

Cuban Vice President Jose Ramon Machado, meeting with authorities in Holguin, urged people to “carry out the evacuation in an orderly and speedy fashion” and to take steps to “avoid the loss of life”.

Ike is expected to eventually careen past Florida into the Gulf of Mexico and sweep toward Louisiana and the storm-battered city of New Orleans as early as Tuesday.

Continue reading »]]> CAMAGUEY, Cuba – Hurricane Ike roared into Cuba on Sunday after destroying houses and crops on low-lying islands and worsening floods in Haiti that have already killed more than 300 people.

With Ike forecast to sweep the length of Cuba and possibly hit Havana head-on, hundreds of thousands of Cubans evacuated to shelters or higher ground. To the north, residents of the Florida Keys fled up a narrow highway, fearful the “extremely dangerous” hurricane could hit them Tuesday.

At least 58 people died as Ike’s winds and rain swept Haiti on Sunday – and officials found three more bodies from a previous storm – raising the death toll from four tropical storms in less than a month to 319. A Dominican man was crushed by a falling tree. It was too early to know of deaths on other islands where the most powerful winds were still blowing.

Ike’s centre hit the Bahamas’ Great Inagua island, where the roofs of its two shelters both sprung leaks under the 217-kilometre-an-hour winds. As the storm passed, people inside peeked through windows at toppled trees and houses stripped of their roofs.

“It’s nasty. I can’t remember getting hit like this,” reserve police officer Henry Nixon said from inside a shelter holding about 85 people.

Great Inagua has about 1,000 people and about 50,000 West Indian flamingos – the world’s largest breeding colony. Both populations sought safety from the winds and driving rain, with the pink flamingos gathering in mangrove thickets. Biologists worried their unique habitat could be destroyed.

“There’s a possibility that the habitat can’t really be replaced and that they can’t find an equivalent spot,” said Greg Butcher, bird conservation director for the National Audubon Society.

“You might have a significant drop in the number of flamingos.”

Todd Kimberlain, a meteorologist at the U.S. National Hurricane Center, said Ike reached land in eastern Cuba late Sunday night and was expected to remain over the island until Tuesday.

At 11 p.m. ET, Ike was a Category 3 hurricane with top sustained winds of 195 km/h. It was centred near Cabo Lucretia, Cuba, about 220 kilometres east of Camaguey and moving westward at 20 km/h.

The hurricane centre predicted Ike’s eye could hit Havana, the capital, with its two million people many vulnerable old buildings, by Monday night.

State television broadcast images of the first damage in Cuba, showing a storm surge washing over coastal homes in the easternmost city Bayamo. It reported dozens of dwellings had been damaged beyond repair.

An informal tally of figures being released sporadically by some individual eastern provinces indicated at least 600,000 people had been evacuated in eastern Cuba by Sunday evening. Former president Fidel Castro released a written statement calling on Cubans to heed security measures to ensure no one dies when Ike hits.

Cuba’s government said more than 224,000 people were being evacuated in the central-eastern province Camaguey alone, where heavy rains began falling late Sunday.

Foreign tourists were pulled out from vulnerable beach resorts, workers rushed to protect coffee plants and other crops and plans were under way to distribute food and cooking oil to disaster areas.

“There’s no fear here, but one has to prepared. It could hit us pretty hard,” said Ramon Olivera, gassing up his motorcycle in Camaguey, where municipal workers boarded up banks and restaurants.

More than 100 people waited in bread lines at each of the numerous government bakeries around town as families hoarded supplies before the storm.

On the provincial capital’s outskirts, trucks and school buses brought about 1,000 evacuees to the sprawling campus of an art school.

Classrooms at the three-storey school built on stilts were filled with metal bunk beds. The approaching hurricane brought a stiff breeze through the open windows.

Mirtha Perez, a 65-year-old retiree, said hardly anyone was left in her small town Salome, located nearby.

“It’s a huge evacuation,” she said.

“We are waiting and asking God to protect us and that nothing happens to us.”

The first islands to bear Ike’s fury Sunday were the Turks and Caicos, which have little natural protection from storm surges of up to 5.5 metres.

The British territory’s Premier Michael Misick said more than 80 per cent of the homes were damaged on two islands and people who didn’t take refuge in shelters were cowering in closets and under stairwells, “just holding on for life.”

“They got hit really, really bad,” Misick said.

“A lot of people have lost their houses, and we will have to see what we can do to accommodate them.”

In South Caicos, a fishing-dependent island of 1,500 people, most homes were damaged, the airport was under water, power will be out for weeks and at least 20 boats were swept away, despite being towed ashore for safety, Minister of Natural Resources Piper Hanchell said.

Tourism chairman Wayne Garland was text-messaging with two people in Grand Turk during the height of the storm.

“They were literally in their bathroom because their roofs were gone,” he said. “Eventually they were rescued.”

Twenty-one of the Haitian victims, still unclaimed, were stacked in a mud-caked pile in a funeral home in the coastal Haitian town Cabaret – including two pregnant women, one with a dead girl still in her arms. More than a dozen children were in the pile. All but one of the rest of the known deaths were in the Cabaret area, civil protection director Marie-Alta Jean Baptiste said. A victim of Ike was found in Gonaives on Sunday.

Heavy rains also pelted the Dominican Republic, Haiti’s neighbour on the island Hispaniola, where about 4,000 people were evacuated from northern coastal towns. One man was crushed by a falling tree.

Strong gusts and steady rains fell at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in southeast Cuba, where all ferries were secured and beaches were off limits. The military said cells containing detainees – about 255 men suspected of links to the Taliban and al-Qaida – are hurricane-proof. But the base was spared the strongest winds.

Where Ike goes after Cuba was hard to predict, leaving millions from Florida to Mexico worrying where it will strike.

“These storms have a mind of their own,” Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said as tourists and then residents evacuated the Keys along a narrow highway.

In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin prepared for the possibility of more havoc only days after an historic, life-saving evacuation of more than two million people from hurricane Gustav.

Off Mexico, tropical storm Lowell was moving northwest parallel to the coast with maximum sustained winds of 95 km/h. But the hurricane centre predicted it will veer into the Baja California Peninsula late in the week.