3,500 firefighters work to encircle Calif. blaze


Firefighters take position along Lockwood Way as the Day Fire burns in the hills above Lockwood Canyon, California, September 25, 2006. The blaze jumped a fire line and burned an additional 1,000 acres, as it moved toward the remote community. The fire has burned 140,000 acres since September 4, 2006. REUTERS/Gene Blevins (UNITED STATES)

OJAI, Calif. - Fire crews set backfires to halt flames from reaching a remote community in northern Ventura County threatened by one of the largest and longest-burning wildfires in state history.

Authorities issued a voluntary evacuation Monday evening for about 500 people in Lockwood Valley when flames jumped over a fire line and quickly reached a peak about 1½ miles from the community.

The blaze, ignited by someone burning debris, has burned 218 square miles, or 139,720 acres, in the area 75 miles north of Los Angeles since it began on Labor Day. It was 41 percent contained.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency for Ventura County. The move clears the way for government assistance with costs related to the fire.

More than 3,500 firefighters were trying to encircle the blaze, which has cost $43.6 million to fight.

Weekend severe storms blamed for 13 deaths in Midwest, South

LOUISVILLE (AP) — Debris and damaged items from homes and businesses where hauled curbside Monday as residents in the Midwest and South cleaned up after the weekend's severe thunderstorms that were blamed for 13 deaths.
At least 8 deaths were reported in Kentucky after flooding triggered by 5 to 10 inches of rain in 36 hours sent rivers and creeks over their banks. Eighteen counties and 12 cities declared states of emergency, state officials said.

Every business in the small far western Kentucky city of Fulton was flooded by four feet of water from Harris Fork Creek, authorities said.

High water remained across Kentucky on Monday, and while some flood warnings were still in effect, creeks and rivers had nearly all crested, according to the National Weather Service.

The storms that hit parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee on Friday and Saturday stranded people in cars, forced others from their homes and left thousands without power.

The death toll in Kentucky included two University of Kentucky students swept up by knee-deep water as they tried to cross a flooded Lexington roadway.

"This is a very exceptional event," Bud Schardein, executive director of Louisville's metropolitan sewer district, said of the flooding. "This is not the average storm, it's not even a heavy storm,"

In Illinois, authorities said lightning was the apparent cause of a house fire that killed elderly two women. Three deaths were reported in Arkansas, where six counties declared states of emergency.

In northern Arkansas on Monday, officials found the body of a retired firefighter two days after he was swept away when the Spring River overflowed its banks at a campground in Hardy.

With the floods, campers were stranded at the private campgrounds.

"People were hanging from trees," Hardy Fire Chief Lonnie Phelps said. "The river came up quick."

Arkansas rivers swelled up to 8 feet above flood levels, officials said. Campers at River Bend Park were asked to evacuate.

"I didn't think we were going to make it out of there," said Charles Lenderman, who awoke Saturday morning to find knee-high water in his camper's kitchen. Lenderman and family members — wearing life jackets — swam from the camper to higher ground about 100 yards away.

In central and eastern Missouri, nearly 400 structures were damaged or destroyed and at least 10 people were injured by about 10 tornadoes, officials said.

Earth 'near million-year hot spot'

Indonesia mudflow breaks barriers

SURABAYA, Indonesia, Sept 26 (Reuters) - Barriers built to control a torrent of mud gushing out from an exploratory oil well in Indonesia failed to hold late on Monday, injuring six workers and inundating nearby villages.

Several experts have said the mudflow, which started to spurt in late May, could have been triggered by a crack about 6,000 feet (1,800 metres) deep in East Java province's Banjar Panji well.

However, a group of international scientists said this week the mudflow might be a natural phenomenon that could be impossible to stop.

The mud has swamped four villages over an area larger than Monaco, displacing more than 10,000 people and highlighting the chequered environmental practices in exploiting resources in Indonesia.

The Monday night barrier breaches had been predicted by hundreds of villagers living near the sand-and-gravel dykes who fled the area last week. But, several site workers who stayed in the abandoned houses failed to anticipate the flood.

Landslide buries 8 people in northern Philippines

MANILA, Sept 22 (Reuters) - At least eight people were killed and 14 were injured when a landslide slammed into a narrow mountain road in the northern Philippines, local disaster officials said on Friday.

Vicente Tomas of the Office of Civil Defence in Baguio City said passengers of a mini-bus were clearing a road near Natonin town when boulders and mud rolled down and buried them late on Thursday.

"It was raining heavily all day in the mountain province, causing the landslides," said Tomas, adding those who were pulled out from the mud were rushed to a nearby hospital.

In February, weeks of heavy rain buried nearly 1,000 people in a farming village on the central Philippine island of Leyte.

Scientists issue strongest coral warning

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands - Scientists have issued their strongest warning so far this year that unusually warm Caribbean Sea temperatures threaten coral reefs that suffered widespread damage last year in record-setting heat.

Waters have reached 85 degrees around the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico — temperatures at which coral can be damaged if waters do not cool after a few weeks — said Al Strong, a scientist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch, in a telephone interview Monday.

The warning issued Saturday by NOAA urges scuba-dive operators and underwater researchers in the U.S. Caribbean territories to look for coral damage and use caution around the fragile reefs, which are easily damaged by physical contact.

Coral, which provide a sheltered habitat for fish, lobsters and other animals, die from prolonged bleaching, when the water temperature gets so high that it kills the algae that populate and build the reefs.

The new warning follows two watches issued since July.

Strong said the water was not expected to become as warm as last year, when sea temperatures in the territories hovered near 86 degrees for months at a time and as much as 40 percent of the coral died around the U.S. Virgin Islands.

He said researchers were monitoring how the heat affects coral recovery from last year.

"There is still so much to learn about the physiology of coral" and which species recover fastest, Strong said in a telephone interview from Maryland.

Scientists have not pinpointed what is behind the warm sea temperatures but some speculate global warming might be the cause.

Cooler air set to invade central U. S.

More E. coli infected spinach found in outbreak

WASHINGTON - More bags of spinach tainted with toxic E. coli bacteria have been found and could help investigators track down an outbreak that may have killed three people, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.

It said 183 people in 26 states had been confirmed with E. coli O157:H7 infections in the outbreak.

The Toronto Star newspaper said a woman in Canada's Ontario province had also been infected.

NIGER: Cholera epidemic follows floods

NIAMEY, 26 September (IRIN) - Cholera has claimed 21 lives among 206 infected people in Niger following seasonal rains that have flooded communities and left them unable to cope with a health crisis.

The United Nations has sent emergency aid to Niger following the flooding, which has affected 43,000 people. The government says 10,000 people have lost their homes.

Typhoon Xangsane Takes Aim at Philippines

Typhoon Xangsane is forecast to strike the Philippines at about 18:00 GMT on 26 September. Data supplied by the US Navy and Air Force Joint Typhoon Warning Center suggest that the point of landfall will be near 12.2 N, 126.2 E. Xangsane is expected to bring 1-minute maximum sustained winds to the region of around 120 km/h (74 mph). Wind gusts in the area may be considerably higher.

ACT Alert: Earthquakes in Yunnan Province

Yanjin and Daguan Counties in Yunnan Province are located on an earthquake belt and have suffered several quakes (two of magnitude 5.1 and one of 4.7, with aftershocks of 2 to 3 on the Richter Scale) in July and August 2006. Although these quakes were not of a high magnitude on the Richter Scale, they were shallow (4 to 9 km in depth) and consequently caused widespread damage.

On 22 July a quake measuring 5.1 on the Richter Scale hit Yanjin and neighboring Daguan county, killing 22 people and injuring 106. The epicenter was in Dousha town, Yanjin County, and seriously affected areas of Yanjin, Daguan, Yiliang, Yongshan. More than 1,400 houses were destroyed and 38,000 damaged in 13 townships. According to the National Disaster Reduction Center, the quake affected at least 38,200 families (153,000 people), and 51,000 people had to be relocated. The earthquake also caused widespread infrastructure damage.

On 25 August another quake of 5.1 in the same area killed at least one person and injured 31 others. This quake was shallower than the previous one, causing wider devastation.

On 29 August, Dousha town, Yanjin County was hit by another quake, this time of 4.7, further exacerbating the situation.

FACTBOX-Bird flu's spread around the globe

Sept 26 (Reuters) - International experts on Tuesday called on countries to share freely all influenza virus samples and genetic sequencing data, key to developing a vaccine against a potential bird flu pandemic.

Bird flu has spread rapidly since late 2003 from Asia to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Following are some facts about the H5N1 avian flu virus and its spread around the globe.

* Since the virus re-emerged in Asia in 2003, outbreaks have been confirmed around 50 countries and territories, according to data from the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

* Since the beginning of January 2006, more than 30 countries have reported outbreaks, in most cases involving wild birds such as swans.

* The virus has killed 146 people since 2003, according to the WHO. Countries with confirmed human deaths are: Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam.

* In total, the virus is known to have infected 249 people since 2003, according to the WHO. Many of those who have died are children and young adults.

* Vietnam and Indonesia have the highest number of cases, accounting for 93 of the total deaths.

* The H5N1 virus is not new to science and was responsible for an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in Scotland in 1959. Britain confirmed a new case in Scotland on April 6.

* H5N1 is not the only bird flu virus. There are numerous strains. For example, an outbreak in 2003 of the H7N7 bird flu virus in the Netherlands led to the destruction of more than 30 million birds, around a third of the country's poultry stock. About 2.7 million were destroyed in Belgium, and around 400,000 in Germany. In the Netherlands, 89 people were infected with the H7N7 virus, of whom one (a veterinarian) died.

* The H5N1 virus made the first known jump into humans in Hong Kong in 1997, infecting 18 people and killing six of them. The government ordered the immediate culling of the territory's entire poultry flock, ending the outbreak.

* Symptoms of bird flu in humans have ranged from typical influenza-like symptoms, such as fever, cough, sore throat and muscle aches, to eye inflammations (conjunctivitis), pneumonia, acute respiratory distress, viral pneumonia, and other severe and life-threatening complications. (Sources: OIE, WHO, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)