Negative Blogs

A fire set off by rioting prisoners in an overcrowded facility near the Chilean capital has killed at least 81 inmates and left about 20 guards or inmates injured, officials say.

Early reports quoted officials as saying 83 people had been confirmed dead, but Santiago region Gov. Fernando Echeverria said the official toll was still 81.

The blaze broke out early Wednesday at the San Miguel prison, south of Santiago. Officials say inmates set fire to mattresses on the fourth floor of the No. 5 tower.

Chileans nationwide could hear the screams of dying inmates in the background as a prisoner used an illegal cellphone to call state television for help.

Relatives of inmates told state television that prison police had closed the gates to the prison, initially impeding access for firefighters.

Some relatives said they pleaded with authorities to let them rescue their loved ones themselves. They said they heard no news for hours, before officials appeared to read them a list, which only named some of the survivors.

National prison police director Luis Masferrer said the blaze broke out around 5:30 a.m. local time and was brought under control three hours later.

Chile’s health minister, Jaime Manalich, called the fire an “enormous calamity” after arriving at the prison, “probably the worst in the history of our penitentiary system. There’s a significant number of dead.”

Justice Minister Felipe Bulnes acknowledged that decades of overcrowding in the prison system played a factor in the high death toll and said officials were working to resolve the problem.

He admitted the San Miguel prison had been housing 1,960 inmates, but was only built to accommodate 1,100.

President Sabastian Pinera said prison overcrowding has left Chile with a “penitentiary system that isn’t worthy of our country.”

By cbc.ca

The deadly fire broke out on the fourth floor of No. 5 tower at the San Miguel prison near Santiago, Chile, on Wednesday. (Aliosha Marquez/Associated Press)

European aircraft dumped tons of water over flames raging through tall trees in northern Israel as firefighters struggled for a second day Friday to contain the country’s worst-ever forest fire, which has killed 41 people and displaced thousands.

Authorities raised the possibility of arson, saying several small fires that broke out in the same general area but were quickly contained appeared to have been deliberately set.

But the cause of the main fire, whipped by strong winds through one of Israel’s few natural forests, remained unclear. Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich told Channel 2 TV that if the big blaze did turn out to have several distinct centres, “then it would look like arson.”

But police chief David Cohen said later at a news conference that the fire broke out in a single centre and could have been caused by carelessness. Two Druze men arrested on suspicion they planned to set a smaller fire were cleared and released, Mr. Cohen said.

Flames nearly 30 metres high spread across a hilly pine forest toward the Mediterranean Sea, as the blaze reached the outskirts of Israel’s third largest city, Haifa. Helicopters and planes flew back and forth to the Mediterranean, scooping up sea water and dumping it on the fire. Turkish planes scattered white powdery material over the smoky hills. Banana trees were burned and cypress trees were stripped of their leaves with only thin trunks remaining.

One of the main country’s highways was closed to traffic as nearby trees smouldered and smoke billowed toward the Mediterranean coastline, with ash flying through the air and large red flames closing in on a hotel and a spa south of the city.

The eruption of the blaze Thursday overwhelmed Israel’s small firefighting force and prompted an unprecedented call for international help from a country better known for sending its own rescue teams and medical personnel to other countries’ disaster zones.

Yoram Levy, a spokesman for Israel’s fire and rescue service, said the fire was huge and that firefighters battling strong winds were having trouble accessing the mountains and valleys.

“We don’t have big aircraft that can carry a large amount of water,” Mr. Levy said. “It is not enough for a large-scale fire.”

Some 100 firefighters from Bulgaria arrived as well as fire extinguishing planes and crews from Greece and Britain, Israeli officials said. More aid was on its way from the United States, Russia, Egypt, Cyprus, Jordan, Spain, Azerbaijan, and Romania.

Turkey set aside tensions over Israel’s deadly raid on a Turkish Gaza-bound flotilla in May to lend a hand – though Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Ergodan underlined that the help didn’t mean ties were back to normal and said his country still wanted an apology for the raid and compensation for the victims.

Still, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu singled out Turkey for thanks as he expressed his appreciation to countries around the world for their help.

“We are amid a disaster of international proportions,” he said after an emergency Cabinet meeting to discuss the fire. “We have to admit that our firefighting services cannot handle a forest fire backed by such a strong wind. We don’t have the means for it.” Mr. Netanyahu then headed north to visit the injured in hospitals and inspect firefighting efforts.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel Radio that he was hopeful the fire could be suppressed by Saturday night.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak ordered the military to make all its resources available for the effort, which was being co-ordinated by the Israeli air force. The military said it sent soldiers and equipment, including helicopters, bulldozers, medics and army units.

The scorched woodland accounted for only 18 square kilometers of land. But because only 7 per cent of Israel’s land is forested, this worst forest fire in Israel’s history was felt here as a deep national loss.

By theglobeandmail.com

Foreigners help fight Israeli forest fire

China’s official Xinhua News Agency said the death toll of a fire that engulfed a highrise apartment building in Shanghai, China’s business centre, has risen to 42.

Monday’s fire occurred in a building under renovation. Previous reports said at least eight people had died and more than 90 were injured.

A witness said building materials caught fire, and the blaze spread to scaffolding and then to the 28-storey building, which houses a number of retired teachers, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

More than 80 fire trucks were called to battle the blaze, Shanghai state television said, and streams of water could be seen flowing into the building, which appeared to be gutted.

The fire appeared to have been put out about six hours later, and firefighters could be seen taking bodies from the building.

Photos posted online showed a man clinging to the scaffolding. A building resident identified as Mr. Zhou told Hong Kong broadcaster Phoenix TV that he and his wife were napping in their 23rd floor apartment when they smelled smoke. He said they climbed down the scaffolding four storeys before being rescued by firefighters.

At one point, helicopters could be seen hovering over the building, and witnesses said at least one resident was rescued, but thick smoke hampered further efforts. By evening, the helicopters were gone.

A doctor at Shanghai’s Jing’an Hospital surnamed Zhang said more than 20 seriously hurt people had been admitted.

The state-run news website Eastday.com cited a construction worker surnamed Qian who escaped from the 28th floor as saying crews were installing energy-saving insulation when the fire occurred.

Qian said thick, rolling smoke clouds surrounded the building and the room she was in filled with smoke, making it difficult to breathe, the report said. She said she called the city’s emergency hot line and then used a wet towel to cover her mouth and nose as she ran down a fire escape.

By cbc.ca

More than 80 fire trucks were called to fight a fire that engulfed a highrise apartment building in Shanghai, China's business centre. (Xinhua/Associated Press)

A shuttle bus carrying steel factory workers in eastern China burst into flame, killing 24 of those on board.

The accident happened in Wuxi, in Jiangsu province near Shanghai, on a bus from the Wuxi Xuefeng Steel Company.

Officials said there was no explanation for the fire yet, but investigations were continuing.

China’s safety record on the roads and at work is bad, with deadly accidents a regular occurrence.

The Chinese news agency Xinhua said the accident happened on Sunday night, with those on board being night shift workers.

“The reason for the fire is not yet known but the public security bureau is investigating,” a city official surnamed Wang told AFP.

Last year in Chengdu province, 27 people died when a worker ignited a can of petrol on a bus which had sealed windows and doors.

Residents took to carrying small hammers with them on public transport in order to break a way out should such an event happen again.

In May this year, 10 people were killed in a fire at a railway workers’ dormitory in Inner Mongolia.

By BBC

In this photo released by China's Xinhua news agency, a policeman checks on the wreckage of a shuttle bus in Wuxi, east China's Jiangsu province, on Monday July 5, 2010. Twenty-four people were killed and 19 others injured after fire engulfed a steel company's shuttle bus Sunday night in Wuxi city, Xinhua reported. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Cheng Binghong)

(CNN) — At least 11 people were missing and seven were critically injured after an explosion on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Coast Guard said Wednesday.

The explosion happened about 10 p.m. CT (11 p.m. ET) Tuesday on a rig named the Deepwater Horizon. It was about 52 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana, said Coast Guard Senior Chief Petty Officer Mike O’Berry.

At the time of the explosion, 126 were on board the rig, O’Berry said.

The Coast Guard said it sent helicopters from New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama, to help evacuate people from the rig and look for the missing. The Coast Guard also sent four cutters to the rig.

Several people were hospitalized, including at least two, who were taken to a mobile trauma center.

The company that owns the rig, Transocean Ltd., said most crew members are safe.

“A substantial majority of the 126-member crew is safe, but some crew members remain unaccounted for at this time,” the company said.

The company describes itself as the “world’s largest offshore drilling contractor,” saying it has 140 offshore drilling units.

Transocean said its crisis teams are working with the Coast Guard and lease operator BP Exploration & Production Inc. to “care for all rig personnel and search for missing rig personnel.”

“The names and hometowns of injured persons are being withheld until family members can be notified,” the company said.

The Coast Guard released two videos related to the blast.

One shows an injured person being hauled into a rescue helicopter.

“The survivor is just outside the cabin — take it up slow, take it up slow,” a voice instructs as a basket carrying the person is winched up from the platform. A rescuer steadies the cable with his hand and stops the basket’s spinning as the survivor reaches the helicopter.

The video shows a rescuer on the platform moving away from the basket after it lifts off.

The other clip shows a person being taken by stretcher off a Coast Guard rescue helicopter in New Orleans.

“Bring me two cots,” an emergency worker shouts as the first stretcher is wheeled away from the HH-60 helicopter.

By the CNN Wire Staff

Flames shoot up from the oil rig after Tuesday night's explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

A raging seven-alarm fire tore through a block of Lower East Side apartments last night, forcing residents to scramble for safety.

Four residents, including two elderly people, and 11 firefireghters were hurt. More than 60 families were left homeless.

It took more than three hours and 250 firefighters to battle the blaze, which broke out just after 10 p.m. at 283 Grand St., a six-story building with 16 apartments.

The fire quickly spread to neighboring buildings, including 285 Grand St., and then burned around the block to Eldridge St.

“There was a lot of smoke and then they \[firefighters\] told us to come out of the window onto the ladder,” said Anna Li, who lives on the top floor. “It was scary. My legs were shaking.”

Dinine Signorelle-Wong, 50, escaped with her sister-in-law and two young children - and her 21-year-old cat, Pepper.

“I lost everything else - my children’s photo albums, my wedding pictures, my grandma’s jewelry and my grandfather’s purple heart. It’s devastating,” said Signorelle-Wong, who lives at 91 Eldridge St.

Fire officials said the blaze reached a rare seven alarms - each alarm means another 65 firefighters are called in - after it spread to neighboring buildings.

“Because the buildings are old - the two buildings here are 110 years old - there’s an awful lot of voids and shafts in these buildings and the fire just travels all through the place,” FDNY Chief of Department Edward Kilduff explained. “It made it a catch-up operation.”

Both buildings were on Grand St. were gutted.

Signorelle-Wong said it was going to be tough for many residents to recover.

“Most of the people that live here are immigrants with no resources at all. They literally only have the clothes on their backs,” she said. “I hope anyone who could help with all this will.”

The cause of the blaze was not immediately determined.

Iran successfully test-fired a long-range, upgraded Sejil 2 missile on Wednesday, state television reported, a move likely to add to tension with Western powers worried by Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the launch was of serious concern to the international community and underlined the case for tougher sanctions against Iran, the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter.

Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said the test was part of efforts to boost the country’s deterrent capabilities

Al Alam, Iran’s Arabic-language satellite television, said the two-stage, solid fuel Sejil missile had a longer range than the Islamic Republic’s Shahab model.

Iranian officials have in the past said the Shahab 3 missile can reach targets up to 2,000 km (1,250 miles) away. Such a range would put Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf within reach.

The missile test coincides with increased tension over Iran’s nuclear program, which the West fears is aimed at making bombs. Iran denies the charge.

Neither Israel nor the United States have ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to resolve the dispute. Iran has vowed to retaliate against any attack.

State television showed a missile launched from desert-like terrain soaring into the sky with a long vapor trail.

“Iran successfully tests optimized version of Sejil 2 missile,” it said in a breaking news headline.

Vahidi said the missile, which he said was developed by Iranian scientists, needed a shorter launch time and was more accurate than the previous version, state television said.

The test came a day after the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation to impose sanctions on foreign companies that help supply gasoline to Iran, a measure lawmakers hope would deter Tehran from pursuing its nuclear work.

“SERIOUS CONCERN”

Iran has repeatedly shrugged off the impact of such punitive measures, that include three rounds of limited U.N. sanctions since 2006.

In Copenhagen, Britain’s Brown said after meeting U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: “I have expressed to him and he has also expressed concern about the test of a long-range missile by Iran.

“This is a matter of serious concern to the international community and it does make the case for us moving further on sanctions … We will treat this with the seriousness it deserves.”

In September, Iran test-fired missiles which a commander said could reach any regional target. The White House branded those tests “provocative.”

Washington suspects Iran is trying to develop nuclear bomb capability and has previously expressed concern about Tehran’s missile program. Iran says its nuclear work is solely for generating peaceful electricity.

Earlier this week, diplomats said intelligence suggested that Iran worked on testing a key atomic bomb component as recently as 2007, a finding which if proven would clash with Iran’s assertion its nuclear work is for civilian use.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry rejected the claim as “baseless.”

On Tuesday, Israeli military intelligence chief Major-General Amos Yadlin said: “Iran is striving to improve it surface-to-surface missile capability. It is developing missiles propelled by solid fuel and is expanding their range to other continents.”

The United States and five other major powers said on Tuesday that a planned meeting on Iran’s nuclear program will not take place this year because of scheduling conflicts, although consultations will continue by telephone.

In October, negotiators offered a deal under which Iran would send most of its low-enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment. However, Tehran has backed away from it, raising the prospect of additional sanctions. Hard money training.

Authorities moved thousands of villagers from harm’s way near the Philippines’ most active volcano Tuesday after it oozed lava and shot plumes of ash, and said they probably would spend a bleak Christmas in an evacuation center.

State volcanologists raised the alert level on the cone-shaped, 8,070-foot (2,460-meter) Mayon volcano overnight to two steps below a major eruption after ash explosions and dark orange lava fragments glowing in the dark trickled down the mountain slope.

Nearly 50,000 people live in a five-mile (eight-kilometer) radius around the mountain, and authorities began moving thousands of them in case it erupts, Albay provincial Gov. Joey Salceda said.

More than 20,000 people were evacuated to safety by nightfall Tuesday, Salceda said, adding he has placed central Albay province, where Mayon is located, under a “state of imminent disaster,” which will make it easier for him to draw and use emergency funds.

“Whatever the volcano does, our target is zero casualty,” Salceda told The Associated Press.

Albay province lies about 210 miles (340 kilometers) southeast of Manila.

Salceda said he had decided to cancel a trip to Copenhagen, where he was to attend the U.N. climate conference to discuss his province’s experience with typhoons and other natural disasters.

He said he would appeal for foreign aid to deal with the expected influx of displaced villagers to emergency shelters.

The first of 20 vehicles, including army trucks, were sent to villages to take residents to schools and other temporary housing, provincial emergency management official Jukes Nunez said.

“It’s 10 days before Christmas. Most likely people will be in evacuation centers, and if Mayon’s activity won’t ease down we will not allow them to return to their homes,” Nunez said. “It’s difficult and sad, especially for children.”

Although the alarm has been sounded, life throbbed normally in many laid-back farming villages near the restive volcano. Throngs of farmers flocked to the town hall in Guinobatan, which lies near the danger zone, for a Christmas party, then headed home bearing gifts.

Village leader Romeo Opiana said the 249 residents in his farming community of Maninila, near the volcano, readied packs of clothes but no one had left. An army truck was parked nearby, ready to haul people if the threat grows.

“We’re ready, but we’re not really alarmed,” said Opiana, 66. He could not remember how many times he had seen Mayon’s eruptions since childhood.

Magma had been rising at the volcano over the past two weeks and began to ooze out of its crater Monday night, but it could get worse in coming days, said Renato Solidum, head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

“It’s already erupting,” Solidum told the AP. He said the volcano had so far only gently coughed out red-hot lava, which had flowed half a mile (half a kilometer) down from the crater.

Some classes were suspended indefinitely near the danger zone. Officials will find a way to squeeze in classes in school buildings to be used as shelters, Salceda said.

Residents in Albay are used to moving away from Mayon, which spewed ash last month and prompted the evacuation of some villages.

About 30,000 people were moved when it last erupted in 2006. Typhoon-triggered mudslides near the mountain later that year buried entire villages, killing more than 1,000 people.

Mayon’s most violent eruption, in 1814, killed more than 1,200 people and buried a town in mud. A 1993 eruption killed 79 people. Hard money training.

Humans could become extinct, a new study concludes, but no single event, aside from complete destruction of the globe, could do us in, and all extinction scenarios would have to involve some kind of intent, either malicious or not, by people in power.

The determinations suggest that the human race itself will ultimately determine its fate.

“I think the ability to adapt very quickly is singular to humanity,” project leader Tobin Lopes told Discovery News. “Species progress and evolve to enhance their chances, but it’s done over a very long period of time.”

“Instinct guides a lot of what we do early in our lives, but the capacity to learn different behaviors as a result of different environments makes humanity capable of survival,” added Lopes, who is associate director of global energy management programs at the University of Colorado Denver.

For the study, accepted for publication in the journal Futures, Lopes and his team used a standardized approach for scenario planning called “intuitive logics,” which is normally applied to predict business, economic and certain other outcomes.

“The intuitive logics approach, and scenario planning as a practice, starts with the present and works forward to an unknown future,” he explained. Co-authors served as “stakeholders,” just as they would in planning a business, and identified key concerns that may adversely affect them.

The concerns were ranked according to possible impact and uncertainty before being plugged into the model, which also incorporated known outcomes, such as attack response times, prior pandemic death percentages, and detection-to-cure time frames.

The result was three scenarios in which humans could go extinct. Each consists of multiple events, such as pandemic, warfare, global warming-related occurrences and a meteor strike, which occur in relative succession and result in equally destructive domino effects, such as societal breakdowns leading to economic decline and escalated terrorism.

While any number and combination of doom-and-gloom happenings could destroy the human race, the researchers outlined four, more general types of events that may also serve as “signposts,” or events that may signal the unfolding of a defined scenario. In this case, that defined scenario is human extinction.

“The types were non-war human-caused — whether accidental or intended or purposeful, natural-viral, natural-environmental, and finally nuclear or near nuclear war/engagement between any two nations,” Lopes said. Hard money training

As the day care swiftly filled with smoke, caretakers, neighbors and parents fought to evacuate 142 children — many of them babies and toddlers — through a single working exit until rescue crews arrived.

No fire alarm or sprinkler system had gone off, and one mother said a second door to the day care was bolted shut and nobody could find the key.

Forty children were killed in the devastating fire, which raised doubts about safety standards at more than 1,500 centers where Mexico’s government provides low-cost care for at least 200,000 children.

President Felipe Calderon, who visited some of the 33 children hospitalized on Saturday night, pledged to launch a thorough investigation into the cause of a tragedy that has stunned Mexico.

Firefighters, parents and neighbors who rushed to help rescue the children said there was only one working exit — the front door — and that no fire alarm or sprinkler system went off. Several desperate civilians broke huge holes into the outer walls, including one man who rammed his pickup truck against the day care three times.