Earth Changes

18 specialist firefighters killed battling Arizona wildfire

FoxNews.com
Sun, 30 Jun 2013 22:58 UTC

© AP/The Arizona Republic
June 30, 2013: Flames top a ridge as the Yarnell Hill Fire moves towards Peeples Valley, Arizona.

Yarnell - Local fire officials have confirmed that at least 18 firefighters have died while battling the Yarnell Hill Fire in central Arizona.

The Prescott Fire Department confirmed to MyFoxPhoenix that the firefighters,all part of a group called the Prescott Granite Mountain Hotshots, had passed away Sunday evening.

The Yavapai County Sheriff's Office has notified residents in the Peeples Valley area and in the town of Yarnell to evacuate.

Roxie Glover, spokeswoman at Wickenburg Community Hospital, told The Associated Press that the hospital has been told to expect residents with injuries and firefighters.

Earlier Sunday, the fast-moving fire prompted the evacuation of at least 50 homes in the Buckhorn, Model Creek and Double A Bar Ranch areas about 85 miles northwest of Phoenix.

Comment: What a horrible tragedy, the single worst such incident in the U.S. since 1933:

The tragedy ranks as the greatest loss of life among firefighters from a single wildland blaze in the United States since 29 men died battling the Griffith Park fire of 1933 in Los Angeles, according to National Fire Protection Association records.

Flash floods force evacuations in East-Central New York

Indian County Today Media Network
Fri, 28 Jun 2013 21:54 UTC

Flooding fueled by heavy rains has driven hundreds of residents of east-central New York State from their homes in several counties, including Oneida, Chenango, Madison and Herkimer.

Many downtown Oneida streets were inundated on Friday June 28 after the levy along Oneida Creek overflowed, the Oneida Dispatch reported. The water was expected to crest in the early afternoon, said Dave Nicosia of the National Weather Service, speaking to the Dispatch. Oneida creek was at "record levels," he said, up at 16.7 feet, which surpassed the previous record of 15.6 in September 2011.

The Oneida Animal Hospital had to be evacuated as well, and numerous residents were moved to a shelter set up by the Red Cross at the city's armory. In addition severe rainstorms and flooding led the town of Kirkland to declare a state of emergency, the Dispatch reported.

The National Weather Service also warned resident in vulnerable areas along streams and creeks to expect flooding and poor drainage conditions, according to Syracuse.com.

"I haven't seen it this bad since the 1950s," said 71-year-old Joe Salerno to the Dispatch as he watched Oneida Creek overtake his back yard and flow into the cellar of his childhood home, where his son now lives.

Fire in Arizona prompts evacuation of 50 homes

USA Today
Sun, 30 Jun 2013 21:56 UTC

A one square-mile wildfire burning in a central Arizona community has led to the evacuation of at least 50 homes that are threatened by the blaze.

Yaenell - A fast-moving wildfire burning in a central Arizona community has led the evacuation of at least 50 homes that are threatened by the blaze, and by Sunday afternoon, authorities had asked even more residents to leave.

The wildfire also forced the closure of about 15 miles of state Route 89, the Arizona Department of Transportation announced. The department did not have an estimate of how long the closure would last but advised drivers to use U.S. 93 or Interstate 17 as alternate routes.

Fire information officer Mike Reichling said earlier Sunday that no homes had been lost in the fire northwest of the Yavapai County community of Yarnell.

Early estimates put the number of evacuated homes at 120, but the number was downgraded by officials closer to the fire.

Reichling says the blaze was within a mile of some homes but was burning away from them.

The Yarnell Hill Fire prompted evacuations in the Model Creek, Buckhorn and Double A Bar Ranch areas about 85 miles northwest of Phoenix. The blaze also was within 200 yards of the Model Creek School.

Crews cleared brush and did other work around the evacuated homes to help guard against the fire.

Sinkhole raises concern in West Hempfield, Pennsylvania

Ryan Robinson
Lancaster Online
Wed, 26 Jun 2013 12:43 UTC

A large sinkhole opened up near Route 23 in West Hempfield Township on Tuesday - and it might be fixed very soon.

The sinkhole is 20 to 25 feet deep and ranges from 8 to 10 feet wide at the surface to 30 to 40 feet wide underground, township police Sgt. Russell Geier said.

The hole is in a retention-pond area about 50 feet north of Route 23, near Corporate Boulevard.

Dale Getz has worked as the township's director of public works for five years, and in municipal government for about 20 years.

The sinkhole is the largest of the five or six he has seen during that time, but curious residents should keep their distance, he said.

"It wouldn't be advisable to get near it, because there's no stable ground underneath," he said.

Over 10,000 feared dead in India floods

RIA Novosti
Sun, 30 Jun 2013 13:31 UTC

The death toll in floods and landslides, triggered by heavy rains in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, has probably exceeded 10,000 people, China's Xinhua news agency said on Sunday citing local authorities.

Previous estimates put the death toll at 6,500 people. Regional officials earlier said that nearly 3,000 people are listed as missing.

Texas meteorologists picked up an apocalyptic-like storm on their radar that turned out to be a huge cloud of dust, bugs, pollen and even birds

DailyMail.co.uk
Sun, 30 Jun 2013 12:01 UTC

What's that in the sky?

What appeared to be an unusual and unexpected storm turned out to be a cloud of dirt, dust, pollen, bugs and even birds.

National Weather Service forecasters in Dallas-Forth Worth Texas picked up the strange phenomenon on their radar on Friday while the weather remained hot and dry, reaching record highs of 105 and 106 degrees in the Austin area to the south.

'It looked like it was raining,' Jennifer Dunn, a meteorologist for the weather service office that covers the Dallas-Fort Worth region, told the Austin American-Statesman.

'We thought something was wrong with the radar, but we checked our instruments and measurements. Everything was working fine.'

Dunn and her colleagues said their best guess was that the anomaly was a giant swarm of bugs.

But a meteorologist for the weather service office in New Braunfels, which includes Austin, told the Statesman that insects likely made up less than 1 per cent of the unusual matter in the air over the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Over 1 thousand dead seagulls discovered in Kazakhstan sector of Caspian Sea

engrinews.kz
Thu, 27 Jun 2013 09:00 UTC

Mass mortality of seagulls has been registered at Shalyga island in the northern part of the Caspian Sea, Interfax-Kazakhstan reports.

1,200 dead birds were discovered at the island in the end of last week, a special ecological prosecutor of Atyrau oblast Kairat Uteuliyev told Interfax-Kazakhstan on June 26.

According to him, several dead birds were transferred for tests to the oblast branch of the state veterinary laboratory of the Veterinary Control Commission of Kazakhstan Agriculture Ministry. "We will get the test results very soon and only then we will be able to talk about causes of the mass mortality of these birds. After that the respective authority will react to the incident and evaluation activities of the state environmental protection authorities that are responsible for controlling the fauna," Uteuliyev said.

Unprecedented summer snow in Norway June 29th

BT.no
Sat, 29 Jun 2013 09:06 UTC

In the trenches: The British couple had to call the tow truck before they could continue their holiday. - They are not so used to driving on this road conditions, says Morten Hansen from Traffic surveillance. There have been no reports of other accidents associated with snowfall.

Snow fell on highway 7 over Hardangervidda on Saturday, but the snow plow came too late for this British couple.

- They had not driven more than 400 meters before they ended up in the ditch, says Kari Varberg (50), who owns and operates Dyranut Fjellstov

She sat at the breakfast table when it started snowing on Saturday morning.

Shortly after, she was called upon to take care of the two British campers who ended up in the ditch.

- They had woken up and seen that it was snowing, so they wanted to get out quickly on the fells, she says.

Meteorite fragment from Chelyabinsk explosion located in Urals lake

Space Daily
Wed, 26 Jun 2013 00:00 UTC

A huge fragment of meteorite that slammed into Russia's Urals region in February was located on the bottom of Chebarkul Lake in the Chelyabinsk Region, a scientist said on Friday.

On February 15, a meteorite landed with a massive boom that blew out windows and damaged thousands of buildings around the Urals city of Chelyabinsk, injuring 1,200 people in the area.

The meteorite broke into approximately seven large fragments and one of them is believed to have fallen into Chebarkul Lake, forming a hole in the ice about eight meters in diameter. In late March, a radar probe of the bottom of the lake has revealed a crater possibly created by a fragment of a meteorite.

Viktor Grokhovsky, a senior researcher with the Urals Federal University was among scientists who measured the magnetic field in the area where a meteorite chunk has presumably fallen. He said that the measurements indicated that an object, most likely a meteorite fragment about 60 centimeters (about two feet) in diameter and weighting approximately 300 kilograms (over 661 lbs), is lying on the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake.

He added that an eyewitness caught on camera how the meteorite exploded above the lake and apparently crashed through the ice, sending a massive jet of water into the air.

Russian meteor shockwave so powerful it circled globe twice

Simon Redfern
BBC News
Thu, 27 Jun 2013 20:29 UTC

The shock wave from an asteroid that burned up over Russia in February was so powerful that it travelled twice around the globe, scientists say.

They used a system of sensors set up to detect evidence of nuclear tests and said it was the most powerful event ever recorded by the network.

More than 1,000 people were injured when a 17m, 10,000-tonne space rock burned up above Chelyabinsk.

The study appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The researchers studied data from the International Monitoring System (IMS) network operated by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO).

The detection stations look out for ultra-low frequency acoustic waves, known as infrasound, that could come from nuclear test explosions. But the system can also detect large blasts from other sources, such as the Chelyabinsk fireball.

Alexis Le Pichon, from the Atomic Energy Commission in France and colleagues report that the explosive energy of the impact was equivalent to 460 kilotonnes of TNT. This makes it the most energetic event reported since the 1908 Tunguska meteor in Siberia.