Almaty. April 5. Kazakhstan Today - The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, flew over the drying Aral Sea in the helicopter along with the Prime Minister of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirzieev. The UN Secretary General called drying of the Aral Sea - one of the most terrible ecological accidents and has underlined the necessity of collective efforts to preserve the resources of the planet, the agency reports citing the press release placed on the United Nations site.
"It was shocking," Ban Ki-moon said after landing in Nukus. "It is one of the most terrible ecological accidents in the world. It impressed me deeply, very sad that such powerful sea has disappeared," he said.
"I think that it is a collective responsibility of not only the people of Central Asia, but also the whole world. I have been very inspired when I have learnt that the government has been undertaking all measures to struggle against the consequences of this act of nature."
The UN Secretary General expressed satisfaction with the measures undertaken by the International Aral Sea Salvation Fund, which was founded at the initiative of five leaders of the Central Asian states, and promised the help of the United Nations.
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13th April 2010, Tuesday
Landslide Derails Train in Italy, 7 Dead
Rome - A landslide threw a passenger train off the tracks in mountains near the northern Italian city of Bolzano yesterday, killing at least seven and injuring about 25.
The front passenger car of the regional train was destroyed, its windows shattered. Two large trees stopped it from falling into a river below.
The railway line, inaugurated in 2005, is considered one of the most modem in the country.
The accident is the worst in Italy since 31 people died last June in the Tuscan city of Viareggio, after liquefied petroleum gas spilled by a frieght train derailed and exploded at a railway station.
It is also the worst in Europe since a Belgian train crash in Februarym in which 18 people died when two-hour rush commuter trains collided outside Brussels.
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15th April 2010, Thursday
6.9 Magnitude Quake Hits QinghaiThis is the dramatic moment rescuers pulled a young boy, weak from exhaustion, out of the rubble of a building destroyed by an earthquake more than a day earlier.
China poured rescue crews and equipment into a mountainous Tibetan region today to locate the many others thought to still be alive under the debris over 24 hours after a series of strong earthquakes struck, killing nearly 600 people and injuring thousands more.
The quakes, the most powerful of which measured 7.1 on the Richter scale, hit an area in southern Qinghai. It was centred on Yushu county, a region with a population of about 100,000, mostly herders and farmers.
Paramilitary police were forced to use shovels to dig through the rubble in a township where most of the homes had been flattened, footage on state television showed.
In Jiegu, a township near the epicentre, more than 85 per cent of houses had collapsed, while large cracks have appeared on buildings still standing.
'The streets in Jiegu are thronged with panic and full of injured people, with many of them bleeding from their injuries,' an official said.
There were also students buried under the debris of a collapsed vocational school.
Survivors spent the night outdoors, many gathering on a field used for horse races, as temperatures fell below freezing and aftershocks continued, residents said. With limited medical supplies and doctors, survivors with broken limbs could do no more than wait for help.
'This feels like a war zone,' said Ren Yu, general manager of Yushu Hotel in Jiegu, who said he felt at least five aftershocks overnight.
'It's a complete mess. At night, people were crying and shouting. Women were crying for their families.
'Some of the people have broken legs or arms but all they can get now is an injection. They were crying in pain.'
Rescue work focused on several collapsed schools, with the state news agency saying at least 66 students and 10 teachers died.
State media cited the head of the Red Cross chapter in Yushu as saying that 70 per cent of the schools collapsed. Three schools accounted for most of the dead, with 32 students at one primary school and 22 at the Yushu Vocational School, 20 of them girls.
Ren said hotel staffers returning from assisting in rescue work at night described horrific casualties the quake had caused.
Officials yesterday said excavators were not available and with most of the roads leading to the nearest airport damaged, equipment and rescuers would have a hard time reaching the area.
The first tremors had sent residents fleeing as houses made of mud and wood toppled, said Karsum Nyima, the local TV station's deputy head of news.
'In a flash, the houses went down. It was a terrible earthquake,' he said. 'In a small park, there is a Buddhist tower and the top of the tower fell off.
'Everybody is out on the streets, standing in front of their houses, trying to find their family members.'
The quake hit the county of Yushu, a Tibetan area in Qinghai's south. A local government website put the county's population at 89,300, a community of mostly herders and farmers.
The Xinhua news agency said at least 589 people were killed. An additional 10,000 people were thought to be injured.
The China Earthquake Administration said phone lines were down, hindering rescue efforts, while workers were racing to release water from a reservoir where a crack had formed after the quake.
State TV showed footage of paramilitary police using shovels to dig around a house with a collapsed wooden roof.
A local military official, Shi Huajie, told state broadcaster CCTV rescuers were working with limited equipment.
'The difficulty we face is that we don't have any excavators. Many of the people have been buried and our soldiers are trying to pull them out with human labor,' Shi said.
'It is very difficult to save people with our bare hands.'
Five thousand tents and 100,000 thick, cotton coats and heavy blankets were being sent to help survivors cope with strong winds and near-freezing temperatures, the Qinghai provincial government said in a statement.
Wu Yong, a local military chief, said medical workers also were urgently needed but that roads leading to the airport had been badly damaged by the quake, creating difficulties for people and supplies to be flown in.
He said rescue efforts were hindered by frequent aftershocks and strong winds.
The epicentre of the first quake was located 235 miles south-southeast of Golmud, a large city in Qinghai, at a depth of six miles.
Ten minutes later, the area was hit by a magnitude 5.3 quake, which was followed after two minutes by a temblor measuring 5.2.
Both the subsequent earthquakes were measured at a depth of 6 miles. Another quake, measuring 5.8, was recorded at 9.25am.
Xinhua cited officials at the China Earthquake Networks Centre as saying at least 18 aftershocks have been reported and that more temblors exceeding magnitude 6 were likely to occur in the coming days.
In 2008, a magnitude-7.9 quake in Sichuan province left almost 90,000 people dead or missing. That quake flattened several schools, killing thousands of students. Poor design, shoddy construction and the lax enforcement of building codes were found to be rampant.
Northern Sumatra Indonesia got hit by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake, but no serious damage or casualties have been reported.
The sumatra earthquake occured Wednesday at 3:15 p m April 17, 2010 125 miles WNW of Sibolga, Sumatra, Indonesdia, 135 miles SW of Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia, 320 miles W of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and NW of Jakarta, Java, Indonesia.
The U.S. Geological Survey gave the following tectonic summary:
The Banyak Islands, Sumatra Indonesia earthquake occured today as a result of thrust faulting on or near the subduction interface plate boundary between the Australia-India and Sunda plates. At the location of this earthquake, the Australia and India Plates move north-northeast with respect to the Sunda plate at a velocity of about 60-65 mm/year. On the basis of the currently available fault mechanism and earthquake depth, it is likely that this earthquake occurred along the plate interface.
The subduction zone surrounding the immediate region of this Sumatra indonesia earthquake last slipped during the Mw 8.6 earthquake of March 2005, and today's Sumatra Indonesia earthquake appears to have occurred within the rupture zone of that earthquake. Today's earthquake is the latest in a sequence of large ruptures along the Sunda megathrust, including two M 7.4 quakes beneath Simeulue 125 km to the north in 2002 and 2008; a M 9.1 earthquake that ruptured to within 125 km north of this quake in 2004; a M 8.5 375 km to the south in 2007; and a M 7.5 260 km to the south near Padang in 2009.
The USGS initially measured the Sumatra earthquake at 7.8 instead of 7.7 magnitude. The indonesia earthquake triggered a local tsunami warning which was canceled two hours later.
No damage or casualties have been reported in the Sumatra Indonesia due to the earthquake. But witnesses reported power blackouts in several parts of Aceh province and on Simeulue Island, west of Aceh.
Sumatra, Indonesia is the largest island in the country. A 9.1 magnitude earthquake struck off Aceh in December, 2004, triggering a historic tsunami that killed 226,000 people, VOA News reported.
Indonesia is located in the Pacific Ocean's so-called Ring of Fire, where the continental plates meet. This creates conditions for frequent earthquake and volcanoes from Asia to the American Pacific coasts.
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Floods Claim over 100 Lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Mudslides and flooding caused by heavy rains in Rio de Janeiro this week claimed at least 102 lives, according to Brazilian authorities. On April 6, 11 inches of rain flooded the streets of Rio and left nearly 1,200 people homeless and stranded. According to Rio’s Mayor Eduardo Paes, the rainfall was the heaviest in Rio in such a short period and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said it was “the greatest flooding in the history of Rio de Janeiro.” Experts say that a mixture of geographic and structural factors, including poor drainage, is responsible for the destruction.
Weather & Natural Disaster Blogger, Cruyff
San Diego, California Earthquake Update – A 7.2 magnitude shake Baja California this 3:44 PM today which had brought death and shaking of buildings more than 200 miles away in downtown Los Angeles. According to the States Civil Protection Agency spokesperson Alan Sandoval, the earthquake shuts off electricity and disrupted phone services in Mexicali, the capital of Baja California.
The epicenter of the earthquake was also found in Baja California, Mexico. The quake had occurred six miles southwest of Guadalupe Victoria and 108 miles east of Tijuana. Chandeliers of skyscrapers in Los Angeles swayed with the earthquake. According to the City Fire Department, they stated that there was no damages found in the place. The aftershocks was also felt in Phoenix, according to the Arizona Republic Newspaper publishing company.
The day before I mentioned that it's been so many weeks ao silence since Chile Earthquake...