Sunday, August 12, 2012

Dozens Killed, Hundreds Injured in Iran Quakes


The quakes, which struck Saturday within 11 minutes of each other, measured 6.2 and 6.0.
Iran sits astride several major fault lines and is prone to frequent earthquakes, some of which have been devastating.

Rescue teams in northwest Iran strived Sunday to dig survivors out of the rubble of villages leveled by twin earthquakes that killed at least 180 people and injured more than 1,300, according to officials.

With telephone communications disrupted in the disaster zone, northeast of the city of Tabriz, emergency teams were relying on radios and traveling in person to hard-hit villages to rescue and assess the destruction.

The quakes, which struck Saturday within 11 minutes of each other, measured 6.2 and 6.0, according to Tehran University's Seismological Center.

ANALYSIS: Why You Should Get Online In An Earthquake

The US Geological Survey, which monitors seismic activity worldwide, ranked them as more powerful, at 6.4 and 6.3 on the moment magnitude scale, respectively.

"Unfortunately, the toll is mounting and we are now at 180 dead," Khalil Saie, the head of the regional natural disasters center, told state television. He put the number of injured at 1,350.

"Up to now, there are no deaths reported in the cities and all the victims come from rural areas," he said.

Earlier he urged residents in the zone not to panic, reassuring them that "help is arriving and rescuers are already at the scene."

Iran's Red Crescent took over a sports stadium to shelter the 16,000 people left homeless or too afraid to return indoors, the Fars news agency reported.

It also provided 3,000 tents, blankets and tonnes of food -- all a sign of years of preparedness in a nation prone to sometimes catastrophic seismic activity.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's office posted a statement on its website expressing condolences to those in the disaster zone and calling on authorities to "mobilize all efforts to help the affected populations."

ANALYSIS: Seismic Wallpaper Stabilizes Walls in an Earthquake

According to the official IRNA news agency, 66 rescue teams were at work, using 40 devices and seven dog squads to detect buried survivors. Some 185 ambulances were sent to the area.

Those hurt were taken to hospitals in Tabriz and Ardebil, the two biggest nearby cities, both of which escaped relatively unscathed from the quakes.

In contrast, villages outlying the towns of Ahar and Varzaqan, 60 kilometers (40 miles) from Tabriz, were decimated, being closest to the epicenters of the two quakes. Dwellings close to Heris, another town close by, were also badly shaken.

Residents in the region were terrified as their homes shook around them when the quakes hit, and they fled into the streets for safety, according to reports.

Tehran University's Seismological Center said the first earthquake occurred at 4:53 pm (1223 GMT) at a depth of 10 kilometers.

HOWSTUFFWORKS: How Earthquakes Work

The second actually a big aftershock rumbled through from nearly the same spot. A series of more than 17 smaller aftershocks rating 4.7 or less rapidly followed.

The disaster zone was located around 90 kilometers from the borders with Armenia and Azerbaijan, and around 190 kilometers from the border with Turkey.

Iran sits astride several major fault lines and is prone to frequent earthquakes, some of which have been devastating.

The deadliest was a 6.6-magnitude quake which struck the southern 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.



Thursday, August 09, 2012

China's Three Gorges Dam Opens


The Three Gorges opened its sluices for water discharge in Yichang, central China's Hubei Province on July 5, 2012. The water influx into the Three Gorges Reservoir reached 55,000 cubic meters per second on Thursday morning due to floodwater from the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, exceeding the expected peak amount.

Thursday, August 02, 2012

Colorado High Tornado Breaks Record


The non-supercell tornado, also known as a "land spout," formed due to a large mass of warm, moist air encountering colder air higher up.
The twister touched down at 11,900 feet (3,627 meters), making it the second-highest tornado ever recorded in American history.

Most of the time, Chris Kirby chases storms, but sometimes they come to him. During a drive through the mountains this Saturday afternoon (July 28) near his home in Aurora, Colo., to photograph mountain goats and test radio equipment, he got quite a surprise: a rare, high-elevation tornado.

Kirby, who's a registered storm-spotter with the National Weather Service (NWS), took a photo of the thin twister as it briefly touched down on the side of Mount Evans, he told OurAmazingPlanet. He sent his picture to weather service staff, who used maps and line-of-sight analysis to determine that the twister touched down at 11,900 feet (3,627 meters), making it the second-highest tornado ever recorded in American history, said David Barjenbruch, a meteorologist with the NWS in Boulder.

"The funnel briefly touched down on a ridge, just enough to be deemed a tornado," Kirby said. "I'm blessed to have seen such an extremely rare phenomenon."

The highest twister ever recorded was photographed by a hiker at 12,000 feet (3,658 m) in California's Sequoia National Park on July 7, 2004, Barjenbruch told OurAmazingPlanet.