A private sanitation truck is sinking into an elevated parking deck in Flatbush.

The truck began sinking into the structure in the 1600 block of Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn just after 3 a.m. Tuesday.

The driver was able to get out of the truck as two sections of the parking deck collapsed under the vehicle.

Police closed the parking lot, where there is a strip mall nearby, to evaluate its stability.

A freight line maintained by the Long Island Rail Road that runs under the structure was halted.

At least five climbers have been killed in an avalanche in the French Alps on Tuesday, according to French police. Two climbers remain missing.

At least five climbers were killed in an avalanche in the French Alps on Tuesday with another two missing, according to the first reports.

The avalanche occurred in the Massif des Ecrins on the slopes of the mountain Dome des neiges des Ecrins around midday.

The mountain's summit stands at 4,015 metres and it is popular with climbers due to the relative ease of the ascent, compared to other peaks in the area.

"There are victims, there will be several dead," the local prefecture in the Hautes-Alpes told AFP adding that one member of the group had survived.

"One person is thought to be ok or slightly injured," said the official, Pierre Besnard.

The victims were two Germans and three from the Czech Republic, according to the Le Parisien newspaper, which added that a Polish national was among those injured.

After four years of drought California is now at its driest for 500 years, scientists have found. The heat has left the Golden State with almost no snowpack in the mountains, which is critical for replenishing the state's water reservoirs.

An analysis of blue oak tree rings in the state's Central Valley has led scientists to "astonishing" results.

Scientists have compared their measurements of tree-ring data to previous Sierra Nevada snowpack level recordings that have been recorded since the 1930's and found that oak trees' growth seem to accurately reflect the lowest snowpack seasons.

"We combined an extensive compilation of blue oak tree-ring series that reflects large-scale California winter precipitation anomalies with a California February-March temperature reconstruction in a reconstruction that explains 63 percent of the Sierra Nevada snow water equivalent variance over the instrumental period," the scientists wrote.

Eight people died and five others are missing after a flash flood washed away vehicles at the Utah/Arizona border, the Hildale, Utah, fire department said.

All the victims are mothers and small children, Assistant Fire Chief Kevin Barlow said. The youngest child was about 4 years old.

The flooding ravaged a community that straddles the border from Hildale, Utah, to Colorado City, Arizona.

A young Australian man has been reportedly killed by what was believed to be a lightning strike when he was hiking at a popular trail in the US.

Jonathan Crowden, from Alfredton, west of Melbourne, was hiking alone on Sunday afternoon (local time) at the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, according to a park official.

But the trip of a lifetime ended in tragedy for the 21-year-old after his deceased body was found about 1.6 kilometres down the South Kaibab Trail.

A witness alerted the canyon's communication centre to report seeing a man being struck by a suspected lightning.

Three people lost their lives as lightning struck them and a person was left injured at Dupally village in Renjal Mandal, Nizamabad district on Tuesday.

Reports state that the three farm labourers engaged in their farm work were struck by lightning and immediately died. A woman who was injured in the incident was rushed to a nearby hospital but her condition is said to be critical.

With heavy rains pouring down in Telangana state, many districts have experienced the strong gales. The lightning incidents, lately have increased in both Telangana and AP as earlier 20 people were killed in AP on the same day due to lightning.

Escaping the Valley Fire in Anderson Springs / YouTube / mulletFive575102As the catastrophic Valley Fire spread through Lake County, California, one YouTube user recorded his daring escape from his home down apocalyptic roads flanked by blazing pines. During the series of videos, he defied death on his way to safety.

The inferno ripped through 50,000 acres in just 36 hours, destroying as many as 1,000 homes and forcing more than 19,000 residents to flee the area. On Saturday night, with no warning, YouTube user mulletFive, realized he and his wife had to escape. He captured three videos of their harrowing flight to safety out of Anderson Springs.


"We are the last house at the very back of the Springs, down in a gulch. There was no smoke or ash coming our way, and there were no sirens or air support nearby, so we honestly didn't know how close it was," mulletFive wrote in a YouTube comment.

"Once we drove up out of our gulch, we realized how close it was. There were no sirens or air support because there was zero firefighting effort in Anderson Springs," he added.


"[W]e did wait way too long to get out," he wrote. "In retrospect, we should have gone out for a drive to find out what was going on, but we were a little preoccupied with packing."

On Sunday, the inferno was still 0 percent contained, and one person was reported dead due to the Valley Fire.

READ MORE: California burning: One dead, 1,000s evacuated as wildfires scorch 400 homes (PHOTOS)

MulletFive wrote that he thought that most of the houses he passed during his dangerous drive would have been consumed by fire. He and his wife are waiting to receive the all-clear to go back home to inspect the damage, but he expects that to be several more days.

"I am in the Bay Area waiting for the roads to reopen, and as soon as they do I will shoot video driving around the Springs and post it ASAP," he wrote Sunday evening.


As of 8 a.m. local time on Monday, the fire was 5 percent contained and it had burned through 61,000 acres.

"Hundreds of homes and hundreds of other structures destroyed," the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection noted on its website.

A waterspout formed in Charles County, Maryland, and was caught on a surveillance camera.

The camera at Captain John's Crab House, in Newburg, Maryland, was pointed out at the water Saturday when storms moved through the area. A waterspout developed in the marina around 3 p.m.

Skip Yates, the general manager of the restaurant, said the winds knocked over some tables and chairs, but nobody was hurt.

If you were near the waterfront in downtown St. Petersburg on Saturday you may have witnessed a dramatic show from Mother Nature.

A waterspout formed over the water of Tampa Bay and was visible from downtown St. Pete.

People pulled out their cell phones to take photos and video of the amazing sight.

Some witnesses shared what they saw on the WFLA News Channel 8 Facebook page.

Nancy Westphal snapped a great shot of the water spout from the Hangar Restaurant which overlooks the runway at Albert Whitted Airport.
Tom Bradley could see the waterspout from his food truck, The Cheesecake Truck, which was parked near the water. Bradley recorded a video of the waterspout.

A series of earthquakes, including one of magnitude 6.6, struck in waters off the west coast of Mexico early on Sunday, but there were no immediate reports of any damage.

The 6.6 magnitude quake, which the U.S. Geological Survey initially reported at a magnitude of 6.8, struck at sea around 106 km (66 miles) southwest of Los Mochis, Sinaloa, at a depth of 10 km.

There were three other smaller quakes nearby, ranging in magnitude from 4.9 to 5.3.

"The biggest one felt reasonably strong, but there have been no reports of damage," an emergency services official said by telephone from Los Mochis, which is located in northern Sinaloa, and sits across the Gulf of California from the south of the Baja California peninsula.