New storm dumps rain in flood-battered
Philippines
Published on Aug 13, 2012
A new storm is forecasted to dump more rain in the flood-battered northern Philippines a week after nearly 100 people died
in a monsoon deluge that submerged half of the sprawling capital city. -- PHOTO: AP
MANILA, Philippines (AP) - A new storm is forecasted to dump more rain in the flood-battered northern
Philippines a week after nearly 100 people died in a monsoon deluge that submerged half of the sprawling
capital city.
Officials in Cavite province south-west of Manila closed schools in Rosario town on Monday because of
downpours, and rescuers began evacuating landslide-prone areas in Manila's suburban Quezon City.
The weather agency says Tropical Depression Helen is whirling over the Pacific Ocean with sustained
winds of 55kph and will become a tropical storm. It's unlikely to hit land, but will bring heavy to intense
monsoon rains.
More than 400,000 people fled their homes last week when floods swamped Manila and nearby provinces.
Land burning in SE Asia kills nearly 15,000
in El Nino years
Published on Aug 13, 2012
PARIS (AFP) - Forest and land fires in South-east Asia kill an additional 15,000 people annually when the
El Nino weather phenomenon grips the region, scientists have estimated.
The deaths are caused by higher particle pollution and higher local levels of ozone, both of which are
stressors for the lungs and heart, they said. Environmental scientists in the United States looked at airborne
levels of particles from fires in South-east Asia from 1997 to 2006.
The fires are annual events, set by local farmers to clear fields or forests. But in dry conditions, the fires
can ignite carbon-rich peatland soil that can burn uncontrollably for months.
The risk was highest in years of El Nino, the disruptive weather pattern that causes drought and dryness in
the tropical western Pacific but heavy rainfall or flooding on the ocean's eastern side.
During the period under study, there were three El Ninos - a whopper in 1997-1998 that was the strongest
of the 20th century, followed by a second in 2002-3 and a third that began in 2006.
At these times, particle emissions from land fires were up to 50 times greater than during the La Nina
phase, when the pendulum swing of El Nino goes into reverse and the tropical west Pacific becomes wet.
During strong El Ninos, fires accounted for 200 days when air pollution exceeded guidelines by the UN's
World Health Organisation (WHO) for fine particulate matter, according to the mathematical model.
These particles, which measure less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter, are dangerous for health because
they can pass through the nose and throat and lodge in the lungs.
When extrapolated for the region's 540 million people, many of them living in cities close to the fires,
particulate pollution caused an average rise of 10,800 in annual deaths from cardiovascular causes during
the El Nino years.
Added to that, said the study, are a likely 4,100 deaths annually from ozone.
A triple-atom molecule of oxygen, ozone is beneficial in the upper atmosphere where it provides a shield
from harmful ultraviolet.
At ground level, however, it irritates the airways, causing a shortage of breath, coughing and chest pains,
thus posing a threat to the elderly and people with cardiac and respiratory problems.
The findings should put pressure on authorities to prevent deforestation and damaging fires, especially in
the context of climate change which could accentuate El Nino droughts, said the paper.
The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, was headed by Miriam Marlier at the
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, New York.
Photo gallery: Twin earthquakes in Iran kill
227, injure 1,380
Published on Aug 13, 2012
Rescue teams in north-west Iran strived on Sunday to dig survivors out of the rubble of villages levelled by twin earthquakes that
killed at least 180 people and injured more than 1,300, according to officials. -- PHOTO: AFP
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DUBAI (REUTERS) - Two powerful earthquakes killed 227 people and injured around 1,380 in northwest Iran, where rescue workers frantically combed the rubble of dozens of villages throughout the night
and into Sunday as medical staff desperately tried to save lives.
Thousands huddled in makeshift camps or slept in the streets after Saturday's quakes in fear of more
aftershocks, 40 of which have already struck.
Casualty figures are expected to rise, Iranian officials said, as some of the injured were in critical condition
while others were still trapped under the rubble inaccessible to rescue workers hampered by darkness in
the first hours after the quakes.
Six villages were destroyed and about 60 sustained more than 50 per cent damage, Iranian media reported.
About 110 villages were damaged in the quakes, Deputy Interior Minister Hassan Ghadami was quoted by
Fars as saying.
Photographs posted on Iranian news websites showed numerous bodies, including children, lying on the
floor of a white-tiled morgue in the town of Ahar and medical staff treating the injured in the open air as
dusk fell.
Other images showed massive destruction wrought by the earthquakes and rescue workers digging people
out of the rubble, some alive, many dead.
Iran is situated on major fault lines and has suffered several devastating earthquakes in recent years,
including a 6.6 magnitude quake in 2003 that reduced the historic south-eastern city of Bam to dust and
killed more than 25,000 people.
The US Geological Survey measured Saturday's first quake at 6.4 magnitude and said it struck 60km northeast of the city of Tabriz at a depth of 9.9km. A second quake measuring 6.3 struck 49 km north-east of
Tabriz 11 minutes later at a similar depth.
Mr Ghadami said 250 people had been killed and about 1,800 injured, Fars reported. A local emergency
official told the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) that about 2,000 people were believed to be
injured.
The second quake struck near the town of Varzaghan. "The quake was so intense that people poured into
the streets through fear," said the news agency Fars.
Hundreds of people were rescued from under the rubble of collapsed buildings but nightfall severely
disrupted emergency efforts.
"Unfortunately there are still a number of people trapped in the rubble but finding them is very difficult
because of the darkness," Fars quoted the national emergency head Gholam Reza Masoumi as saying.
IRNA quoted Bahram Samadirad, a provincial official from the coroner's office, as saying: "Since some
people are in a critical condition ... it is possible for the number of casualties to rise." Interior Minister
Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar has arrived in the area and was holding meetings with local officials meant to
coordinate the emergency response, ISNA reported.
The hospital in Varzaghan, staffed by just two doctors and with shortages of medical supplies and food,
was struggling to cope with about 500 injured, the Mehr news agency reported.
The earthquakes struck in East Azerbaijan province, a mountainous region that neighbours Azerbaijan and
Armenia to the north and is predominantly populated by ethnic Azeris - a significant minority in Iran.
Its capital, Tabriz, is a major city and trading hub far from Iran's oil-producing areas and known nuclear
facilities.
Buildings there are substantially built and the Iranian Students' News Agency said nobody in the city had
been killed or hurt.
Homes and business premises in Iranian villages, however, are often made of concrete blocks or mud brick
that can crumble and collapse in a strong quake.
Hospitals in Tabriz took in many of the injured from the surrounding villages, and city residents left their
homes and crowded the streets following the two quakes, residents said.
"We were in our home on the sixth floor when the earthquake struck," said Mr Massood, a Tabriz resident
who spoke to Reuters by phone. "It took a very long time. For about 40, 45 seconds everything was
shaking and we were ready for the building to collapse, but nothing happened."
His family was leaving their home and was in the stairwell when the second earthquake struck, Mr
Massood said. Ambulances were crowding a major Tabriz hospital from about midnight onward, he said,
and a sizeable aftershock around 3am local time brought people out of their homes again.
"I was just on the phone talking to my mother when she said,'There's just been an earthquake', then the line
was cut," one woman from Tabriz, who lives outside Iran, wrote on Facebook.
"God, what has happened? After that I couldn't get through. God has also given me a slap, and it was very
hard." Red Crescent official Mahmoud Mozafar was quoted by Mehr news agency as saying about 16,000
people in the quake-hit area had been given emergency shelter.
Iranian health minister Marzieh Vahid Dastejerdi said the government had despatched 48 ambulances and
500 blood bags to the worst affected areas, IRNA reported.
Officials said distribution of emergency shelter was ongoing and a field hospital was being set up in
Varzaghan on Sunday to treat the injured.
Fars quoted Iranian lawmaker Abbas Falahi as saying he believed rescue workers had not yet been able to
reach between 10 and 20 villages. Mr Falahi said people in the region were in need of bread, tents and
drinking water.
A local provincial official warned of more aftershocks over the next 48 hours and urged people in the area
to stay outdoors.
The Turkish Red Crescent said it was sending a truck full of emergency supplies to the border. Turkey's
Foreign Ministry said it had informed Iran it was ready to help.
Iran steps up relief efforts after quakes kill
227
Published on Aug 13, 2012
VARZAQAN, Iran (AFP) - Iran on Sunday stepped up relief operations in shattered villages in its northeast after saying rescue operations were completed following a double earthquake which cost 227 lives and
injured 1,380 people.
"Search and rescue operations have ended and we are now working to ensure survivors' needs in terms of
shelter and food," Interior Minister Moustafa Mohammad-Najjar told state television as he announced the
casualty toll.
He and other officials said the rubble left by Saturday's earthquakes hid no more survivors, making further
rescue activities unnecessary.
Around half of the 600 villages located in the disaster zone, an area north-east of the city of Tabriz, were
damaged, some of them badly, he said. A dozen or more were completely razed.
The first of the earthquakes registered a strong 6.4 on the moment magnitude scale, according to the
United States Geological Survey which monitors seismic activity worldwide.
The second, almost as strong at 6.3 on the scale, rumbled through just 11 minutes after the first. Many
smaller aftershocks followed.
While Tabriz and nearby towns escaped with only relatively minor damage, many outlying villages where
buildings are made of more flimsy mud and concrete bricks were decimated.
The interior minister said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had given orders for home reconstruction to
begin immediately because of the harsh winter that the mountainous region experiences.
The region declared two days of mourning for the lives lost in the disaster.
An estimated 16,000 people remained homeless by the quakes or too afraid to return to cracked homes
they feared unstable.
Iran's Red Crescent distributed thousands of tents and supplies of food and water to help them through the
days ahead, and put up 4,000 emergency shelters in a sporting stadium.
It also said it turned down offers of help from Turkey, Taiwan, Singapore and Germany because Iran was
able to cope with the disaster by itself.
The White House also stepped in to offer help and condolences to the people of Iran, with which
Washington has no diplomatic relations and has been locked in a tense stand-off for decades.
"The American people send the Iranian people our deepest condolences for the loss of life in the tragic
earthquake in north-eastern Iran," White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement.
"We stand ready to offer assistance in this difficult time," said the statement, which was addressed to the
"Iranian people" and made no mention of the government of the Islamic republic.
Iran's ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, sent his condolences to Ahmadinejad over the earthquakes,
Syria's state news agency Sana reported, while Pope Benedict XVI and German Foreign Minister Guido
Westerwelle voiced sympathies.
There were many stories of tragedy in Iran's disaster.
Zeinab, a 13-year-old girl seen outside a Red Crescent tent in the village of Mirza Ali Kandi, told AFP
how she saw her eight-year-old brother and 16-year-old sister die before her eyes.
"I was outside my home playing when it (the first quake) happened. I ran inside looking for my brother and
found him under a big pile of rubble. I tried to get him out. And then I heard my sister cry out and I turned
and she has a big stone in her head, and I ran out," she said, sobbing.
"I wish it had been me, too, I wish I hadn't run out," she yelled, prompting her uncle to try to console her.
Others were more fortunate.
"I was working on my farm, on my tractor, and I felt the earth shake and I was thrown off the vehicle," a
40-year-old farmer in one hamlet, Mr Qanbar Mehdizade, told AFP.
His family, who had been working with him, survived.
AFP journalists in the zone saw many exhausted residents mourning their loved ones. Grieving women
wailed over the bodies of the dead, many of whom were women and children.
"This village is a mass grave," said Mr Alireza Haidaree, an emergency worker who supervised a bulldozer
working in the village of Baje Baj, where 33 of the 414 inhabitants died.
"There are so many other villages that have been completely destroyed," he added.
Emergency workers from 14 provinces around Iran arrived to help on Saturday night, drawing on services
and resources built up through the country's long experience in dealing with seismic instability.
Iran sits astride several major fault lines and is prone to frequent earthquakes, some of which have been
devastating.
The deadliest in recent years was a 6.6-magnitude quake which struck the south-eastern city of Bam in
December 2003, killing 31,000 people - about a quarter of the population - and destroying the city's ancient
mud-built citadel.
Iran quake toll raised to 306: Health
minister
Published on Aug 13, 2012
TEHERAN (AFP) - Twin earthquakes that devastated rural villages in north-west Iran on the weekend
killed a total of 306 people - most of them women and children - and injured 3,037, Health Minister
Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi said on Monday.
The official toll, presented in a report to lawmakers and published on the parliament's website, was a big
jump over the last one given on Sunday by Interior Minister Moustafa Mohammad-Najjar, who quoted 227
dead and 1,380 injured.
Ms Vahid Dastjerdi said that, of the 306 deaths, hospital morgues counted 219 women and children and 49
men. The discrepancy with the total appeared to come from the fact that some of those killed were buried
by their families before officials arrived at the scene.
She also said that, of the 3,037 injured, most - 2,011 - were given first aid at the scene, while the remainder
were taken to hospitals for treatment.
Some 700 surgeries were performed, she said.
Two earthquakes measuring 6.4 and 6.3 on the moment magnitude scale rumbled through northwest Iran
on Saturday, levelling mud brick and concrete homes in villages to the northeast of the city of Tabriz.
Authorities called off rescue operations on Sunday after saying all possible survivors had been recovered.
Ms Vahid Dastjerdi said that "we are continuing the search for bodies."