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Petty squabbles earlier hindered the climate change battle.

Tackling climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing South Asia. Regional leaders are meeting in Bhutan this week, but are they any nearer agreeing to an action plan? The BBC’s Navin Singh Khadka reports.

The issue of climate change is the main item on the agenda of the summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) summit under way in the Bhutanese capital Thimpu.

But given the poor track record of co-operation achieved by the regional grouping over other sensitive issues in the past, will the thorny issue of climate change become bogged down in rhetoric and recriminations?

Experts say the vulnerability of the region to climate change means that there is an urgent need for concrete action.

Words not action

“South Asian countries have started to face the effects of climate change and are particularly at risk,” says the United Nations Environment Programme’s (Unep) 2009 outlook.

“Intense floods, droughts and cyclones have impacted on the economic performances of South Asian countries and the lives of millions of poor, it also puts at risk infrastructure, agriculture, human health, water resources and the environment,” it says.

This is not the first time that Saarc summit has discussed the issue.

The declaration of the 14th summit in Delhi in 2007, for instance, said leaders had agreed “to commission a team of regional experts to identify collective actions in sharing of knowledge on the consequences of climate change”.

A year later, the 15th Saarc summit adopted the Dhaka Declaration on climate change.

But, experts say, hardly any of these words have been matched by actions.

In its climate change national action plan launched two years ago, India - the main regional player - stressed the need for co-operation.

“We will need to exchange information with South Asian countries and countries sharing the Himalayan ecology,” the plan read.

“Co-operation with neighbouring countries will be sought to make a comprehensive network for observation and monitoring of the Himalayan environment, to assess fresh water resources and the health of the ecosystem.”

There have been no serious follow-up since this bold pronouncement was made.

Drought

With regional co-operation confined to academic papers, key issues like regional flood forecasting are just not happening.

“Some countries in the region are not willing to share water-related data because they regard it as confidential,” says Mats Eriksson, a senior hydrologist with the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development which has spent years trying to bring together South Asian countries for flood forecasting at a regional level.

But as millions of people in South Asia suffer from floods every monsoon, there is a worrying and growing uncertainty over the uneven distribution of monsoon rainfall in the region.

In recent years, some places have experienced heavy rainfall while others have seen far smaller amounts - and have even been hit by drought.

“Climate change could influence monsoon dynamics and cause lower summer precipitation, a delay to the start of the monsoon season and longer breaks between the rainy periods,” a study by Purdue University in the US found recently.

While everyone now seems to be well informed as to the extent of the problem, questions remain over Saarc’s response to it. But not everyone is pessimistic.

“This is the first time you have a Saarc summit where the leaders of countries in the region are getting together on a very specific subject and I am optimistic,” said the chairman of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, who also heads the Energy Research Institute in Delhi.

Ainun Nishat, climate chief for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Bangladesh, is also positive.

“I believe frequent contact between the leaders is essentially the first step that will lead to some concrete action because they always want to show progress.”

But recent international climate negotiations, such as last year’s Copenhagen summit, have shown that the countries in the region have different interests.

India’s fast-growing economy, for instance, wants a global climate treaty that requires rich nations - and not rapidly developing countries - to cut carbon emissions.

It also wants global temperature rises to be limited to 2C from pre-industrial levels.

Bitter disputes

Whereas least developed countries in the region that are most vulnerable to climate change are lobbying for an international treaty irrespective of who has to reduce carbon emissions.

They want global warming to be limited to 1.5C from pre-industrial levels.

“I therefore do not expect Saarc countries to take common action in terms of dealing with climate change,” says noted Indian environment activist Sunita Narain.

“I expect governments of the region to use Saarc as a meeting point in which they can put forward their respective actions against climate change.”

But is that possible when major region players like India and Pakistan, for example, are engaged in bitter disputes?

One of the latest disputes between the South Asian nuclear rivals is that of sharing of water resources which, experts fear, will get worse as the climate change problem itself remains unaddressed.

The climate change issue urgently demands a meeting of minds.

The second record storm that socked the Northeast this month was reduced to drizzle as it was winding down Wednesday, but the worst of widespread flooding was yet to come, forecasters said.

Rivers from Maine to New York were expected to crest later Wednesday or Thursday. And in Rhode Island, officials were bracing for what was expected to be the most severe flooding to hit the state in more than 100 years.

“None of us alive have seen the flooding that we are experiencing now or going to experience,” Rhode Island Gov. Don Carcieri said Tuesday night. “This is unprecedented in our state’s history.”

Interstate 95, a major East Coast thoroughfare, was closed for about a quarter-mile in Warwick, R.I., because of flooding and down to one lane in other areas of Rhode Island. Officials on Wednesday warned that stretches of the highway could remain closed for several days as the water recedes and to allow time for safety inspections.

Nonessential state employees were given the day off in Rhode Island and state offices were closed. Schools and private businesses were urged to follow the same policy. State officials asked drivers to stay off the road.

“If we end up with a gridlock, it’s going to impact the entire state,” said Amy Kempe, a spokeswoman for the governor.

President Barack Obama issued an emergency declaration late Tuesday for the state, ordering federal aid for disaster relief and authorizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate relief efforts.

The rain came as residents were still recovering from a storm two weeks ago that dumped as much as 10 inches on the region. Business owners in the flood zone are still grappling with the impact of lost income.

“It’s definitely devastating,” said liquor store owner Maria Medeiros, whose family-owned business in Providence now abuts raging rapids of water and streets barricaded by the police. “Situations like this, what can you do?”

Even fishermen were hit: Shellfish beds in Rhode Island and Massachusetts were closed because of sewage overflows and failures at wastewater treatment facilities caused by flooding.

National Guard troops were activated in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Pockets of home evacuations were reported in those states, as well, and more than 100 people were ordered to leave an apartment complex in Milford, N.H. No deaths were reported in those states as of Wednesday.

In Connecticut, heavy rains caused the earth under a Middletown apartment complex parking lot to give way, leaving two buildings teetering over the ravine of a river. Residents were taken to an emergency shelter at a local high school.

Authorities also evacuated 50 units at a condominium complex in Jewett City in eastern Connecticut because a sewage treatment plant next door was under at least 4 feet of water. Crews were rushing to put sand bags down to try to save the $16 million facility.

In Massachusetts, the biggest concerns were in the southeastern part of the state, where a highway was closed, said state Emergency Management Agency spokesman Scott MacLeod. A bridge gave out in Freetown, isolating about 1,000 residents, he said.

Records fell across the region.

The more than 14 inches of rain that fell this month in Boston broke the previous March record of 11, according to the National Weather Service. New Jersey and parts of New York City also set March records. And by Tuesday afternoon, Providence had recorded more than 15 inches of rain in March, becoming the rainiest of any month on record.

Cranston Mayor Allan Fung told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Wednesday that the city was facing “dire circumstances.” A sewer pump station gave out early Wednesday, and about 130 homes had been evacuated. Warwick also was urging residents to conserve water because of a failed sewer treatment facility.

In one water-weary neighborhood along the Pawtuxet River in Cranston, basements were flooded by early Tuesday morning as water levels approached waist-deep levels toward the end of the street. One resident hung a sign: “FEMA + State + City of Cranston. Buy our houses.”

“Right now it’s bad and getting worse,” said Brian Dupont, a real estate broker who owns two homes on the street. He feared the dozens of sandbags protecting the homes would offer minimal protection.

Standing water pooled on or rushed across roads in the region, making driving treacherous and forcing closures. Adjutant General Robert Bray, the commander of the Rhode Island National Guard, said the area south of Providence was like a “maze” with drivers repeatedly getting stuck.

In Maine, a dam in Porter let loose Tuesday morning, sending a torrent of water down country roads. No evacuations or injuries were reported.

North of New York City, a man in his 70s drove past a barricade onto a flooded section of the Bronx River Parkway and had to be rescued from the roof of his truck, Westchester County police said. On Long Island, rain coupled with tides inundated a 20-mile stretch of oceanfront road in Southampton.

In northeastern Pennsylvania, colder temperatures turned the storm into a surprise spring snowfall. Snowfall, which totaled more than 4 inches in some areas, caused dozens of car accidents, including a fatal crash in which a woman in her 20s lost control of her car on a snow-covered road in Dorrance Township. Hard money training.

A second major storm in less than a month continued to drench the East Coast as meteorologists predicted “very dangerous” flooding Tuesday in the Northeast and the wettest March on record in some places.

The National Weather Service called on commuters to be prepared to travel alternate routes in case of washed-out roads and posted flood warnings and advisories from Maine to the Carolinas, with as much as 5 to 7 inches of rain expected over the coming days.

The storm hits as the Northeast works to recover from a storm March 13-15 that dropped as much as much as 10 inches of rain, causing several rivers to rise and flooding basements throughout the region.

Wamed Mansour of Paterson, N.J., was scrambling Monday to move new computers, phone consoles and fax machines in his office to higher ground — about $10,000 worth of equipment he bought last week to replace what was destroyed earlier this month when his auto parts business flooded with 7 feet of water from the Passaic River.

“It’s been a really tiring few weeks, and now it might be all over again,” Mansour said.

In Rhode Island, meteorologists warned of a possible “life-threatening” situation along the Pawtuxet River, with heavy flooding by Tuesday afternoon that could be as severe as or worse than the mid-March storm.

“This is turning out to be a nightmare,” said Steve Kass, spokesman for the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency.

In Cranston, R.I., about 100 people were evacuated from their homes late Monday night because a bridge over the Pawtuxet was closed due to damage from the earlier storm, and authorities were concerned that residents would be without an escape route.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick declared a state of emergency Monday and mobilized as many as 1,000 National Guardsmen to assist in the event of major flooding.

The rainiest March on record in Boston was 1953, when 11 inches fell during the month; nearly 10 inches had already fallen before the start of the latest storm.

New York City was within 3 inches of the March record of 10.54 inches set in 1983, and forecasters said the storm could easily eclipse that mark.

“Our ground is so wet it’s like pouring water into an already saturated sponge,” said Tony Sutton, commissioner of Emergency Services for Westchester County, N.Y., north of the city. “Thank God we’re not expecting real strong winds. That’s a break.”

Coastal flooding from rain and high tides was a concern on Long Island beaches. Workers were busy Monday trucking tons of sand to the eastern end of the popular Robert Moses State Park to battle erosion, state parks spokesman George Gorman said.

Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell opened the state’s emergency operations center Monday as flood warnings were posted along many rivers and streams throughout the state.

Road closures were reported Monday in several states, including New Jersey.

Violent weather from the same system, including at least one tornado, was blamed for injuries to several people and damage to more than 30 homes Sunday night in the Carolinas. Two teenagers in North Carolina died after their car slid off a rain-slick road into a swollen creek.

The rain was tapering off in the Carolinas early Tuesday, but some flood warnings remained. Hard money training.

The Indian military has a new weapon against terrorism: the world’s hottest chili.

After conducting tests, the military has decided to use the thumb-sized “bhut jolokia,” or “ghost chili,” to make tear gas-like hand grenades to immobilize suspects, defense officials said Tuesday.

The bhut jolokia was accepted by Guinness World Records in 2007 as the world’s spiciest chili. It is grown and eaten in India’s northeast for its taste, as a cure for stomach troubles and a way to fight the crippling summer heat.

It has more than 1,000,000 Scoville units, the scientific measurement of a chili’s spiciness. Classic Tabasco sauce ranges from 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units, while jalapeno peppers measure anywhere from 2,500 to 8,000.

“The chili grenade has been found fit for use after trials in Indian defense laboratories, a fact confirmed by scientists at the Defense Research and Development Organization,” Col. R. Kalia, a defense spokesman in the northeastern state of Assam, told The Associated Press.

“This is definitely going to be an effective nontoxic weapon because its pungent smell can choke terrorists and force them out of their hide-outs,” R. B. Srivastava, the director of the Life Sciences Department at the New Delhi headquarters of the DRDO said.

Srivastava, who led a defense research laboratory in Assam, said trials are also on to produce bhut jolokia-based aerosol sprays to be used by women against attackers and for the police to control and disperse mobs. Hard money training.

For farmer Brian Thomas, getting to town for errands is no simple matter these days as floodwaters cover fields and sections of country roads in the rural areas near Fargo, N.D.

He wades through shallow rapids cascading across his driveway, then drives a mud-spattered pickup on a narrow dirt road until so much water blocks his path that he must hop into a motorboat and putt-putt over a cornfield resembling a sprawling lake. Finally, about four miles from home, he gets into his waiting car and drives to the nearest town.

“It’s kind of a hassle,” Thomas, 52, said Thursday as he jerked the rope to restart the boat motor.

As the cities of Moorhead, Minn., and next-door Fargo nervously wait for the Red River to crest on Sunday at 20 feet above the flood stage, some of the region’s farmland is already under water after smaller rivers, swollen with melting snow, overflowed. Even fields that aren’t buried in water are so saturated that they look like vast expanses of squishy black mud.

At this point it’s mostly an inconvenience, growers say. Spring planting is a month or more away for crops such as corn, soybeans and sugar beets. If the rain holds off and unusually warm temperatures don’t melt the remaining snowpack too rapidly over the next few weeks, the waters could recede, enabling a decent or even good growing season.

But a worst-case scenario — heavy spring rains and prolonged flooding well into April — could spell trouble for this year’s crops, while also causing problems for livestock producers during the crucial calving season.

“It’s definitely not going to help us any to have this flood, but I can’t say definitely that it’s going to hurt us either, because it depends on the weather from here on out,” said Andrew Swenson, an extension farm management specialist at North Dakota State University.

The region’s fertile soils yield an abundance of grain and beets. About 500,000 acres in Cass County — which includes Fargo — are planted in soybeans, more than in any other county in the nation.

Farmers prefer to get their corn and sugar beets in the ground by late April but can hold off until early May, when soybeans usually are planted, Swenson said.

Flooding in 2009 rendered almost 1.9 million acres unsuitable for planting in North Dakota, said Doug Hagel, regional director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Agency in Billings, Mont. The floods then gave way to a cool summer and rainy fall, leaving the ground unusually moist even before this winter’s snows began. In some places, up to 25 percent of last year’s corn couldn’t be harvested because of soaked fields.

“We may be looking at the same scenario this year and maybe magnified, because it was already so wet,” said Doug Goehring, North Dakota’s agriculture commissioner. Hard money training.

A torrential rainstorm that brought heavy winds to the Northeast, causing damage and flooding, created some minor headaches for commuters Monday.

At least eight people died in storm-related accidents over the weekend, and nearly half a million people were without electricity in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut at the peak of the storm.

Authorities warned that the storm could cause rush-hour delays on Monday morning, but the impact was relatively minor, especially compared with the havoc wreaked by nasty winter storms in recent months.

In Boston, the transit authority shut down some sections of subway and trolley lines on Sunday, but the lines were mostly reopened on Monday. Several highway ramps in Massachusetts remained closed.

NJ Transit briefly shortened the routes of some trains into Manhattan, but restored service later in the morning. The Long Island Railroad pumped out an East River tunnel, allowing trains to pass through normally.

In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie declared a state of emergency, which would allow National Guard troops to be called up if needed. In signing the declaration Sunday night, Christie said he wants to ensure local and county resources are supplemented if needed.

Utility crews were making headway in restoring power. In New Jersey, for example, about 100,000 customers were without service Monday, down from a peak of 235,000. In Connecticut, where a handful of schools were closed, two major utility companies said more than 57,000 customers were still without power, down from a peak of about 80,000.

The storm, which carried wind gusts of up to 70 mph, came about two weeks after heavy snow and hurricane-force winds left more than 1 million customers in the Northeast in the dark.

“I spent most of the past few months clearing snow and ice out my driveway, sidewalks, front walks, and now we’re picking up all these branches,” Jack Alexander said Sunday as he and his family worked to clear debris from the front yard of their Egg Harbor City home. “It seems like we’ve had every type of weather event you could have this winter — I’m almost afraid to see what else can happen.”

In Atlantic City, N.J., residents in a condominium complex and two apartment buildings were ordered to leave their homes Saturday after a crane snapped and twisted at the Revel Entertainment casino construction site, sending debris crashing through a window of a police cruiser. No one was hurt. The residents may not be able to return until Tuesday.

Hundreds of people remained out of their homes in the northern New Jersey community of Bound Brook, where flooding is common.

Among those in a shelter were the Malik family, including eldest son Norbert, who celebrated his ninth birthday Sunday. His mom said he had cried Saturday night because he was worried the storm would ruin his celebration. Instead, he said it was the best birthday he ever had.

“I got to ride in a police boat, and then a truck and a small bus,” said Norbert.

In Manhattan, Broadway’s sidewalks and trash cans were littered with hundreds of shattered umbrellas.

Falling trees proved to be a deadly hazard.

A New Jersey woman was killed and three others were injured in Westport, Conn., after a tree fell on a car Saturday night during the storm, police said. Another woman died when a tree struck her as she was walking in Greenwich, Conn., they said.

In the suburb of Teaneck, N.J., two neighbors were killed by a falling tree as they headed home from a prayer service at a synagogue. In Hartsdale, N.Y., another suburb, a man was killed when a large tree crushed the roof of his car and entangled it in live wires.

A 73-year-old woman was killed by a falling tree while walking to her car in Bay Shore, N.Y. Three people tried to save the Brooklyn woman.

In New Hampshire, a large pine tree fell on a car traveling on Interstate 93 on Sunday afternoon, killing a man and injuring his wife and child, state police said.

And in Rhode Island, an off-duty state trooper died early Sunday after his car hydroplaned in standing water left from the storm, state police said. Hard money training.

On Christmas Day, a passenger on a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit tried to blow up the plane with plastic explosives in his underwear. He failed, yet the very attempt shook the U.S. government, set federal agencies against each other and triggered months of political second-guessing.

In fact, short of mass casualties, the attack allegedly attempted by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had exactly the kind of reaction that al-Qaida is after. And, it appears, that lesson is resonating with the terror network’s leadership.

For the first time, the group that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and has prided itself on its ideological purism seems to be eyeing a more pragmatic and arguably more dangerous shift in tactics. The emerging message appears to be: Big successes are great, but sometimes simply trying can be just as good.

U.S. officials and counterterrorism experts say the airline attack and last November’s shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, prove that simple, well-played smaller attacks against the United States can be just as devastating to the democratic giant as complex and riskier ones.

In a recent Internet posting, U.S.-born al-Qaida spokesman Adam Gadahn made a public pitch for such smaller, single acts of jihad.

“Even apparently unsuccessful attacks on Western mass transportation systems can bring major cities to a halt, cost the enemy billions and send his corporations into bankruptcy,” Gadahn said in a video released and translated by U.S.-based Site Intelligence Group, which monitors Islamic militant message traffic.

It’s a message that officials believe has been evolving for the last year and has turned upside down the prevailing wisdom that the next al-Qaida attack against the U.S. must be bigger and bolder than the one on Sept. 11, 2001.

“It’s pretty clear that while al-Qaida would still love to have home runs, they will take singles and doubles if they can get them,” said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Saban Center and a former CIA officer. “And that makes the job of counterterrorism much, much harder.”

Counterterror officials note that al-Qaida leaders monitor the U.S. closely and watched the reverberations of the Abdulmutallab attack. They saw the scramble to boost security, the members of Congress blasting federal agencies for intelligence and screening failures, the political drumbeat against the Obama administration’s national security efforts and the agency leaders who rushed to blame each other. Hard money training.

A U.S. Navy warship  prevented an attack on a Tanzanian ship and apprehended eight suspected pirates in the process, the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania said on Tuesday.

USS Farragut dispatched an SH-60B Seahawk helicopter to MV Barakaale 1 after it raised a distress call saying it was under attack from a gang on a skiff, the embassy said in a statement.

“The helicopter then stopped the … skiff as it attempted to speed away, by firing warning shots across its bow,” it said.

“A boarding team from USS Farragut boarded the vessel and the eight suspected pirates were taken aboard the Farragut.”

The statement did not say when and where the incident occurred, nor give the pirates’ nationalities. The USS Farragut is a guided missile destroyer and part of Combined Task Force 151 that patrols the Gulf of Aden and the east coast of Somalia.

The task force, formed in 2009, comprises about three dozen ships from Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Pakistan, Canada, Denmark, Turkey, United States and United Kingdom among other countries.

The coast off Somalia is among the world’s most dangerous shipping lanes.

The number of piracy attacks worldwide jumped by 40 percent last year, with gunmen from the failed Horn of Africa state accounting for more than half the 406 reported incidents, according to the International Maritime Bureau. Hard money training.

Emergency crews used bulldozers and other heavy equipment Monday to search for at least four people still missing in Madeira after flash floods and rockslides killed 42 people on the Portuguese vacation island.

Rescue teams in more than 400 vehicles worked all through the night to clear tons of caked mud, boulders and snapped trees that had piled up in the capital of Funchal and other coastal communities, authorities said.

After a month’s worth of rain fell in about eight hours, a raging torrent of water and mud swept away people, houses and vehicles Saturday on the steep-sloped Atlantic Ocean island. Locals said the storm was the worst in living memory.

Only four people were officially unaccounted for on Monday, but officials said there could be further victims because blocked roads and downed phone lines made it difficult to get a complete picture of the damage.

Parts of downtown Funchal were cordoned off as crews pumped rainwater and sludge out of a shopping mall’s underground parking lot where officials fear more bodies may be found. The parking lot’s two levels were completely submerged.

“The recovery is going to be a hard work,” resident Miguel Eduardo told Associated Press Television News. “It will take us a few months to recover.”

More than 120 people were injured, and almost 120 others forced to leave their homes by the flooding were staying at a military barracks, according to the regional government.

Several main roads remained blocked by debris, but officials hoped to reopen all the island’s roads by the end of the week.

The victims, in white body bags, were taken to Funchal’s international airport where a makeshift morgue was set up. Among the dead was a local firefighter who was swept away in a muddy torrent as he tried to save a woman, his colleagues said.

The British Foreign office said one British national was killed and a few others had been hospitalized on Madeira. The island is popular with British tourists because of its mild climate.

Madeira is the main island of a Portuguese archipelago of the same name in the Atlantic Ocean just over 300 miles (480 kilometers) off the west coast of Africa. It has a population of around 250,000 people.

The head of the regional government, Alberto Joao Jardim, told people to stay at home if they could Monday and schools canceled classes for some 30,000 students.

The flash floods were so powerful they carved paths down mountains and ripped through the city, churning under some bridges and tearing others down.

“A woman came running and said the water is coming and then she started to run, and then we ran with her,” Danish tourist Luna Graigsson told APTN. “It was astonishing that the water came so fast.”

The Portuguese government was holding a special Cabinet meeting Monday and was expected to announce three days of national mourning for the victims. It may also grant financial aid to rebuild Madeira’s many destroyed roads and bridges.

The regional government says it has no estimate yet of its financial needs.

Portugal Telecom said 85 percent of the island’s cellular and fixed-line capacity was restored by late Sunday.

Environmental groups alleged that building on natural water runoffs and the island’s poor infrastructure management contributed to the disaster, but officials insisted it was impossible to prepare for such a freak deluge.

A Portuguese Navy frigate bringing troops to help with the cleanup was to dock in Funchal later Monday. A medical team with divers and rescue experts arrived Sunday aboard a military transport plane.

Light showers were forecast for the Atlantic Ocean island Monday and Tuesday. Hard money training.

A men’s Olympic luger from the country of Georgia died Friday after a high-speed crash during training. IOC president Jacques Rogge said the death hours before the opening ceremony “clearly casts a shadow over these games.”

Nodar Kumaritashvili lost control of his sled, went over the track wall and struck an unpadded steel pole near the finish line at Whistler Sliding Center. Doctors were unable to revive the 21-year-old luger, who died at a hospital, the International Olympic Committee said.

Rescue workers were at his side within seconds, chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation started less than one minute after the crash, and he was quickly airlifted to a trauma center in Whistler.

Kumaritashvili struck the inside wall of the track on the final turn. His body immediately went airborne and cleared the ice-coated concrete wall along the left side of the sliding surface. His sled remained in the track, and it appeared his helmet visor skidded down the ice.

“It’s a very rare situation,” three-time Olympic champion and German coach Georg Hackl said before learning of the death and was clearly shaken moments after seeing Kumaritashvili tended to furiously by medical officials.

Olympic competition in men’s luge is scheduled to begin Saturday. It’s unclear if that schedule would be affected.

It was Kumaritashvili’s second crash during training for the Vancouver Games. He also failed to finish his second of six practice runs, and in the runs he did finish, his average speed was about 88 mph — significantly less than the speed the top sliders are managing on this lightning-fast course.

It was unclear how fast Kumaritashvili was going, although many sliders have exceeded 90 mph on this course. The track is considered the world’s fastest and several Olympians recently questioned its safety. More than a dozen athletes have crashed during Olympic training for luge, and some questioned whether athletes from smaller nations — like Georgia — had enough time to prepare for the daunting track.

At the finish area, not far from where Kumaritashvili lost control, athletes, coaches and officials solemnly awaited word on Kumaritashvili before eventually being ushered away. Access to the crash area was closed within about 30 minutes.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Shiva Keshavan, a four-time Olympian from India.

The remainder of men’s training was canceled for the day, with VANOC officials saying in a release that an investigation was taking place to “ensure a safe field of play.”

Kumaritashvili competed in five World Cup races this season, finishing 44th in the world standings.

Earlier in the day, gold-medal favorite Armin Zoeggeler of Italy crashed, losing control of his sled on Curve 11. Zoeggeler came off his sled and held it with his left arm to keep it from smashing atop his body. He slid on his back down several curves before coming to a stop and walking away.

Training days in Whistler have been crash-filled. A Romanian woman was briefly knocked unconscious and at least four Americans — Chris Mazdzer on Wednesday, Megan Sweeney on Thursday and both Tony Benshoof and Bengt Walden on Friday in the same training session where Zoeggeler wrecked — have had serious trouble just getting down the track.

“I think they are pushing it a little too much,” Australia’s Hannah Campbell-Pegg said Thursday night after she nearly lost control in training. “To what extent are we just little lemmings that they just throw down a track and we’re crash-test dummies? I mean, this is our lives.”

At the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, Nicholas Bochatay of Switzerland died after crashing into a snow grooming machine during training for the demonstration sport of speed skiing on the next-to-last day of the games. He was practicing on a public slope before his event was to begin.

Austrian downhill skier Ross Milne died when he struck a tree during a training run shortly before the 1964 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria. British luger Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypecki also died in a crash during training in Innsbruck.

At the 1988 Calgary Games, an Austrian team doctor, Jorg Oberhammer, died after being hit by a snow grooming machine. Hard money training.