Archive | September 2, 2014

MAGNITUDE 4.9 ICELAND REGION

Subject to change

Depth: 5.5 km
 

Distances: Latitude, Longitude  64.678  -17.459 
(5.0 km NE of Bárðarbunga)

Earthquake location   02 Sept 23:45 GMT

Map of earthquake epicentres

Time and magnitude of earthquake   02 Sept 23:45 GMT

Graph showing earthquake timing and magnitude

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Deadly Ebola Virus; Another American doctor has been tested positive for Ebola

Ebola Virus

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is much worse than official figures show, and other countries are unintentionally making it harder to control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Tom Frieden told CNN on Tuesday.
 
The call for action came as a missionary organization announced that another one of its doctors working in Liberia has tested positive for the Ebola virus.
 
“We’ve seen outbreaks of Ebola before. This is the first epidemic spreading widely through many countries, and it is spiraling out of control,” said Frieden, who recently returned from a trip to the region. “It’s bad now, much worse than the numbers show. It’s going to get even worse in the very near future.”
 
More than 3,000 people have been infected by Ebola in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria since the outbreak began in December, according to the World Health Organization. At least 1,552 have died.
 
Making it worse, Frieden said, is that other countries are turning their backs on those coming from countries where the outbreak is strongest, even if they don’t realize it.
 
Measures to restrict flights and border crossings into the countries facing the outbreak were designed to contain the spread, but are having a paradoxical effect, he explained.
 
“This is making it really hard to get help in and to respond effectively to the outbreak,” he said on CNN’s “New Day.”
 
“What we’re seeing is a spiraling of cases, a hugely fast increase in cases, that’s harder and harder to manage,” he said. “The more we can get in there and tamp that down, the fewer cases we’ll have in the weeks and months to come.”
 
Frieden sounded the same alarm last week during a visit to Liberia.
 
The sooner the world unites to help West Africa, the safer the world will be, he said.
 
U.S. doctor infected
 
An American missionary doctor working in the Liberian capital has tested positive for Ebola, his organization, SIM USA, said Tuesday. The doctor, whose name was not released, was not treating Ebola patients and it’s not known how he contracted the disease, SIM USA said.
 
One of the first Americans to contract the disease, Nancy Writebol, also was working on a SIM USA mission. Writebol was the second human Ebola patient on U.S. soil after being flown in for specialty treatment in Atlanta. She was subsequently released on August 19.
 
The unnamed American doctor immediately isolated himself upon the onset of symptoms, and is currently in an Ebola isolation unit, the group said.
 
“The doctor is doing well and is in good spirits,” SIM USA said in a statement.
 
Aid groups urge support
 
In a strongly-worded statement to U.N. members, the president of Doctors Without Borders, Dr. Joanne Liu, criticized the “global coalition of inaction” in response to the Ebola outbreak.
 
“States with the required capacity have a political and humanitarian responsibility to come forward and offer a desperately needed, concrete response to the disaster unfolding in front of the world’s eyes,” Liu said. “Rather than limit their response to the potential arrival of an infected patient in their countries, they should take the unique opportunity to actually save lives where immediately needed, in West Africa.”
 
Ebola treatment and management centers run by aid groups find themselves overwhelmed by the ever-increasing number of people with symptoms of Ebola, Liu said.
 
Centers run by her own group have had to turn away sick people because they are too full, she said.
 
West Africa harvests at risk
 
Food prices in West African countries is rising, as panic buying ensues amid fears that the food supply will be limited.
 
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. reported that disruption to food trade and marketing have curtailed the availability of some food. The result has been hoarding that results in further food shortages and price hikes of staple foods, the agency said.
 
“Even prior to the Ebola outbreak, households in some of the affected areas were spending up to 80 percent of their incomes on food,” Vincent Martin, Head of FAO’s Dakar-based Resilience Hub, said in a news release. “Now these latest price spikes are effectively putting food completely out of their reach. This situation may have social repercussions that could lead to subsequent impact on the disease containment.”
 
Another effect of the Ebola outbreak has been restrictions on migration and movement inside the region, creating labor shortages on farms, the FAO said.
 
The main harvest season for crops such as rice and maize is weeks away, and what was predicted to be a favorable harvest is now at risk, the agency said.
 
Governments express concern
 
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said Monday that the massive Ebola outbreak in her country “remains grave.”
 
“Our health delivery system is under stress. The international community couldn’t respond quickly,” she told CNN.
 
But she also sounded hopeful. She said that conditions are slowly improving and that the world is responding to the epidemic, realizing the catastrophe that could unfold if the virus were to spread beyond Africa’s borders.
 
The West African nation of Senegal confirmed its first Ebola case last week, one week after closing its border with Guinea.
 
Senegal is the fifth country in the region to report the Ebola virus.
 
A separate Ebola outbreak, unrelated to the one in West Africa, was reported by the Democratic Republic of Congo.
 
The World Health Organization on Tuesday confirmed that samples from the Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo were distinct from what is affecting the other countries.
 
The news is reassuring the WHO said, because it means that the epidemic in West Africa has not spread to Central Africa.

Wildfire forces mandatory evacuation orders in California, USA

Wild Fire Alert

A wildfire crept within a few miles of hundreds of homes in far Northern California, but a feared surge toward a forest community had yet to materialize for most of Tuesday, officials said.

“It hasn’t made any significant runs up to this point,” fire information officer Anne Jeffrey said.

Low humidity and gusty winds were descending on the area of the blaze in the Klamath National Forest and were expected to remain through Wednesday evening.

That brought some swirling growth to the blaze by the afternoon but not near populated areas.

“Where it’s the most active is not close to homes,” Jeffrey said.

About 250 homes were under mandatory evacuation orders, with nearly 700 more considered threatened.

The fire was about 2½ miles from the community of Hamburg. It had burned through 100 square miles and containment efforts were in early stages.

Combined with unstable air, it could generate a smoke column that could push embers as far as 2 miles, jumping containment lines and starting spot fires near some of the threatened homes, fire information officer Paul Gibbs said.

“We saw these conditions a few days ago, but the fire was much farther away from the communities. Now it’s much closer,” he said. “If it does that again, then you might have potential to reach these communities.”

The fire is among a number of lightning-sparked blazes that began in the area in mid-August. The others are either contained or nearly contained.

Tropical storm Dolly is forecast to strike Mexico at about 06:00 GMT on 3rd September 2014

Tropical storm Dolly is forecast to strike Mexico at about 06:00 GMT on 3 September. Data supplied by the US National Hurricane Center suggest that the point of landfall will be near 23.7 N, 97.5 W. Dolly is expected to bring 1-minute maximum sustained winds to the region of around 83 km/h (51 mph). Wind gusts in the area may be considerably higher.

MEGA DIP SPIKES ON THE MAGNETOSPHERE @ APPROX 21:00, 21:30, 21:45 hrs UTC

**EXTREMELY URGENT**
  MEGA DIP SPIKES ON THE MAGNETOSPHERE @ APPROX 21:00, 21:30, 21:45 hrs UTC. FURTHER EARTHQUAKES, VOLCANO ACTIVITY & ADVERSE WEATHER PATTERNS WILL BE GREATLY INFLUENCED BY THE COSMIC RAYS STRIKING THE EARTH’S CORE

***BE ALERT***

Magnetogram 02.09.14  21.48 hrs UTC

MAGNITUDE 3.8 ICELAND REGION

Subject to change

Depth: 4.5 km
 

Distances: Latitude, Longitude  64.678  -17.459 
(5.3 km NE of Bárðarbunga)

Earthquake location   02 Sept 22:10 GMT

Map of earthquake epicentres

Time and magnitude of earthquake   02 Sept 22:10 GMT

Graph showing earthquake timing and magnitude

Landslides caused by heavy rain kills at least 8 in China

Rain-triggered landslide has left eight people dead and dozens missing in China's Chongqing municipality.
Landslides caused by torrential rains in the southwestern Chinese municipality of Chongqing has left eight people dead and dozens missing, state news agency Xinhua reports citing local rescuers.
 
Overall, 24 people remain unaccounted for, including 11 miners who were buried in the coal mine located in the Yunyang County. Earlier, one miner was rescued and is currently at a local hospital. His condition is reported as stable, according to al-Jazeera.
 
Hundreds of rescuers, including firefighters and police officers, relocated more than 7,000 residents of the nine affected townships to shelters. Heavy rainfall that started on Sunday left some communities without power and cut communication to over a dozen towns.
 
On Tuesday, torrential rains are expected in Chongqing and the bordering Sichuan Province, according to China’s National Meteorological Center.
On Sunday, the death toll from a landslide in the neighboring Guizhou Province reached 22 people, AFP reported adding that one person remained missing. Several dozens of people, mainly children and the elderly, were injured and 77 houses were destroyed as half of a 600-meter high hill collapsed and partially razed a village nearby on Wednesday evening.
 
Chongqing, a home to almost 29 million people, is the most populous municipality in China. Small towns scattered across the municipality are vulnerable to the high risks of river flooding, landslide, and soil erosion, according to a World Bank report titled “China – Chongqing Small Towns Water Environment Management Project: environmental assessment”.

MAGNITUDE 4.5 ICELAND REGION

http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=398098
    
Subject to change

Depth: 8 km

Distances: 222 km E of Reykjavík, Iceland / pop: 113,906 / local time: 13:55:04.3 2014-09-02
130 km S of Akureyri / pop: 16,563 / local time: 13:55:00.0 2014-09-02
111 km W of Höfn, Iceland / pop: 1,695 / local time: 13:55:04.3 2014-09-02

Global viewRegional view

PROTON PARTICLES HAVE DRAMATICALLY INCREASED

**URGENT PROTON ALERT**

PROTON PARTICLES HAVE DRAMATICALLY INCREASED. FURTHER EARTHQUAKES, VOLCANO ACTIVITY & ADVERSE WEATHER PATTERNS WILL BE GREATLY INFLUENCED BY THE COSMIC RAYS STRIKING THE EARTH’S CORE

***BE ALERT***

Proton Alert 02.09.14  13.00 hrs