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A sermon preached by the Rt Revd Dr Alan Smith, Bishop of Shrewsbury at a confirmation at Christ Church, Shelton and Oxon on 11th May 2008 As Delivered Scripture: Acts 2 1 - 21 There are inevitably two focuses to our worship today. Gathered here are the candidates for confirmation with families and friends. It’s a joyful occasion as we come to celebrate with them this stage in their spiritual life. But we’d be kidding ourselves if we don’t face the fact that the other factor behind our worship today is the plight of those people in Myanmar (the place...

Lloyd's of London warned yesterday that an absence last year of natural disasters or man-made accidents was putting pressure on firms to reduce premiums in 2008. The world's oldest and biggest insurance market said that though the lack of major disasters had allowed firms to push up profits 5% in 2007, underwriting margins were being squeezed. Almost half of the 320-year-old market's business was conducted in the US last year. It is a major insurer of the Florida seaboard and oil rigs in the gulf of Mexico. In 2005, a series of natural disasters culminated in Hurricane Katrina clattering into...

New fires continue to break out around Greece The European Commission will put forward proposals this autumn for a standing EU force to respond to fires, floods and other major emergencies. The commission says the current system has its limits. In 2007, there has been flooding in the UK, a heat wave in central and southern Europe, and now forest fires in Greece, in which at least 60 people have died. But critics say the EU should release financial aid faster, rather than set up a civil protection force of its own. 'Better way' When Greece appealed for help...

I don't DO many vanity type posts, but this subject requires input from folks all over the nation. My wife and I were discussing the HUGE proposed hike of storm insurance rates for us here in Florida due to increased hurricane activity. My genius wife had the BRILLIANT idea that legislation should be passed at the Federal level that would allow such insurance to be tax deductible. Not just the hurricane prone states (which this year runs from Maine to Mexico -- very unusual predictions) but also areas subject to earthquake, forest fire, tornado, etc. Pretty much everywhere in this...

New York warned to prepare for hurricanes NEW YORK (Reuters) - A hurricane with only moderate intensity could wreak havoc in New York City because it has been years since the nation's financial center faced severe weather, government forecasters warned on Tuesday. "The first time we get hit here with a Category 2, it's going to be disastrous," said meteorologist Michael Wyllie of the National Weather Service, referring to the scale used to rate hurricane strength. Wyllie said powerful storms have missed New York in recent years, unlike parts of the Gulf Coast, where periodic storms "thin out the trees...

Bill forbids taking of weapons during emergencies By HOWARD FISCHER Friday, February 17, 2006 8:25 AM CST PHOENIX -- State lawmakers want to make sure that state officials do not take your guns the next time a hurricane strikes Arizona. Or an earthquake, flood, invasion or pandemic. The Senate Government Committee approved legislation Thursday that would specifically make it illegal for the governor or any official to confiscate legally kept firearms during a state of emergency. The 5-2 vote sends the measure to the full Senate. Sen. Dean Martin, R-Phoenix, said this isn't some academic exercise. He said that in...

The destruction from hurricane Katrina unleashed a disaster like our nation has never encountered. Like a guided missile, Katrina executed a mission of utmost devastation. Despite our advancements in technology, computers, satellites, healthcare and tons of mind-boggling innovations – the nation stood speechless and helpless. It seemed everything that could go wrong – went wrong. The breaking of the New Orleans levees; the thousands of trapped victims; the incessant looting; the perverse crime; the escalating gas prices; the complete collapse of the nation’s infrastructure for disaster aid – each day after Katrina brought new nightmares – each day after Katrina...

Hurricane victims in Florida and along the Gulf Coast have to be asking themselves something survivors of tornadoes, blizzards and earthquakes also wonder: Is there any place you can go that is safe from natural disasters? The West has earthquakes and wildfires. Move to the Midwest and you could find yourself in Tornado Alley. The Northeast? Blizzards, ice storms and heat waves. Experts say trying to escape catastrophic weather is a little like trying to escape from, well, the weather. Short of building a new Biosphere, it is pretty near impossible to completely avoid quakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards or heat...

Equal Earthquakes with Unequal Results December 29, 2003 By Rabbi Daniel Lapin President, Toward Tradition Our television screens fail to convey the full horror of the recent earthquake in Iran that inflicted terrible deaths on over twenty thousand souls. America has once again led the international relief effort. It might seem callous to analyze thisdisaster even before all the victims have been buried, were it not for one timely parallel. Only a few days earlier, a small town on the California coast also endured an earthquake. Even taking the logarithmic nature of the Richter scale into account, from an objective...

Deforestation and logging do not increase the risk of major floods, according to a new report. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Center for International Forestry Research (Cifor) say the evidence shows no link. Loss of forest cover does play a role in smaller floods and in the loss of fertile topsoil, it says. It accuses Asian governments of blaming floods on small-scale loggers and farmers to deflect criticism. Widespread but wrong The belief that deforestation causes major floods and increases the damage which they do appears to be widespread. China's catastrophic floods of 1998, when the...

The Peruvian authorities have begun to evacuate at least 1,400 people - many of them tourists - stranded at the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu by a mudslide. On Wednesday, the railway line leading up the Andes mountains to Machu Picchu was covered by a mudslide more than three metres (9.8ft) deep. Peruvian officials said the slippage of mud and rocks was caused by snow melting on a nearby mountain peak. A spokeswoman for Peru Rail said no-one was hurt in the incident. The trapped people were being brought to safety by bus. Many of those trapped at the site...

Experts studying the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina say the breach of key floodwalls might have been caused by soft soil under the walls, a problem the Army Corps of Engineers had been warned about. Engineers from the American Society of Civil Engineers and the University of California at Berkeley said Friday there was no evidence that the floodwaters surged over the tops of the floodwalls at 17th Street or London Avenue Canals, as previously thought. Instead, they said, soft soil may have given way underneath the walls - a danger a contracting company pointed out to the...

China will no longer regard natural disaster death tolls as a state secret, reversing a practice that has been standard for years. The Chinese government describes this switch as part of an effort to improve transparency. However, the government continues to maintain tight control over information most other countries consider public. Official news media report China will declassify figures and documents regarding natural disasters. The report explain that the move will help disaster prevention and relief work, and will also help build a transparent government. Normally, China announces death figures from disasters such as earthquakes, flood, and typhoon through government...

I've decide that from this date forward I will no longer donate to any national calamity in any of the so called "Blue States".They don't deserve my help, and afterwards I don't feel they appreciate my help anyway.

U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones remembers attending an emergency training session in August 2001 with the Federal Emergency Management Agency that discussed the three most likely catastrophes to strike the United States. First on the list was a terrorist attack in New York. Second was a super-strength hurricane hitting New Orleans. Third was a major earthquake on the San Andreas fault. Now that the first two have come to pass, she and other earthquake experts are using the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as an opportunity to reassess how California would handle a major temblor. Jones, scientist-in-charge for the...

MAN-MADE MISTAKES INCREASE DEVASTATION OF "NATURAL" DISASTERS Daily Policy Digest ENVIRONMENT Thursday, September 08, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While storms such as Hurricane Katrina are sometimes called an act of God or a natural disaster, the devastation they leave behind is not. But the actions that humans take contribute to the damage caused by extreme weather, say observers. For example: People continue to live in mobile homes, although tornadoes turn them into matchsticks and one-third of all deaths from tornadoes occur among people living in mobile homes. Mobile-home communities and poor neighborhoods are also much more likely to be situated in flood...

When the water is finally drained from New Orleans and the other areas struck by Hurricane Katrina, it can then be determined just how many homes and other buildings can be saved. Damage recovery experts are surveying the scenes before bringing in their salvaging equipment. David Liebl is vice-president of the Atlanta-based firm Disaster Services, Incorporated. His workers have been to the damaged areas in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. "The first problem is the issue of logistics, from our standpoint. The logistics of food, fuel, lodging and of course merely getting to our locations. That has been a critical issue....

Lacking scientific backing doesn't seem to prevent many commentators from seizing on untestable, religious or paraphysical reasons for this past year's devastating natural events Two devastating natural disasters in eight months have been too much to bear for a large number of commentators, who have managed to find both solace and heartfelt smugness in the indubitable righteousness that the Asian tsunami and the New Orleans hurricane were performed for them. Katrina was ``the fist of God,'' or maybe ``the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence,'' or, no, it was ``payback of this racist, white supremacist American culture''. The tsunami was equally...

The nation's airlines, temporarily unable to provide commercial service to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, have been putting aside their financial troubles to fly supplies to and bring evacuees out from devastated areas. Relief flights arrived at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport at a rate of about four an hour Friday. The flights started a day after Delta Air Lines executives piloted a plane that dropped off supplies at New Orleans' main airport and returned with 140 refugees on board. United Airlines, meanwhile, flew 24,000 pounds of food and water and 30 medical technicians from Chicago to New Orleans and returned...

A top U.S. State Department official says the United States will accept Venezuela's offer of humanitarian aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but does not view the offer as a signal of change in the strained relations between the two countries. The official made the comment to VOA Friday in a wide-ranging interview as he prepares to leave his post later this month. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roger Noriega, says Washington has received offers of relief assistance in the wake of Hurricane Katrina from some 15 countries in the Americas, including Venezuela. The oil-rich...

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, those affected have had to deal with many challenges, and now there is another growing concern -- disease. Floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina cover a large portion of New Orleans Thousands of displaced people in New Orleans, still without food or water... Survivors making their way past corpses left on the street ... "We want help! We want help," they chant. And the floodwaters that submerged approximately 80 percent of the city of New Orleans have now become a dangerous sea of gasoline, sewage, decay... and a breeding ground for disease. Dr. Julie Gerberding of...

It may be many weeks until all the water is removed from New Orleans. Before all the vital pumping stations can be reactivated, the city swamped by Hurricane Katrina has to be drained and its floodwalls and levees (embankments) repaired. Much of it was under 2.4 metres (8 feet) of water this week though the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) said the level seemed to be stabilising on Friday. The weather will largely dictate the speed of work and the hurricane season is predicted to run into October. Whether patching up a breached floodwall to keep water out or...

In the wake of all that has happened and watching the events that unfold hourly, and keeping up with the Katrina live threads, I thought I would post a thread that could help all of us on FR and those visiting, lurkers etc... I know that we are an intelligent, creative, and ingenuous bunch, so I am tapping many of you and others to contribute your emergency preparedness plans, ideas, or homebrew solutions to emergency problems. Just to start off, here are a few things my family and I have decided during an emergency, be it natural disaster, civil insurrection,...

Boeing to Contribute $1 Million to American Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina Relief; Will Match Employee Contributions CHICAGO, Sept. 1, 2005 - The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] announced today that it will donate $1 million to the American Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts and will match employee and retiree contributions to that organization through the company's Employees Community Fund. The match is dollar-for-dollar for employees and 50 cents-on-the-dollar for eligible employees retired from Boeing. It extends through September 26. Employees all over the company responded soon after the scale and scope of the tragedy emerged, according to Toni...

One of the areas badly hit by the floods in Switzerland is Matte, in the capital's historic old town. Containing hundreds of 17th- and 18th-Century houses, the old town - surrounded on three sides by the River Aare - is classed as a Unesco heritage site. Hundreds of people have had to be evacuated, Imogen Foulkes reports. Matte is residential but also has waterside cafes and clubs When the rains started at the weekend, the river levels rose, but, at first, not dramatically. Although the Matte district is at water level - and has a canal carrying water from the...

Rescue operations are continuing across Europe to help thousands of civilians affected by devastating floods which have killed 36 people. In the Swiss capital, Bern, helicopters were used to pluck people from rooftops as rising water and strong currents hampered evacuations. Worst affected is Romania, where seven elderly people were killed on Wednesday bringing deaths there to 25. The rain has eased in some parts, but forecasters warn there is more ahead. Click here for map showing flood-hit countries At least 11 people are reported dead or missing in Switzerland, Austria and Germany, where the authorities are struggling to restore...

Portugal said it could not cope alone in tackling the fires Dozens of wildfires are still raging out of control across Portugal, despite desperate efforts to contain them. The worst-hit areas include the central region, where fires are threatening the outskirts of the third-largest city of Coimbra, firefighters say. Fire-fighting aircraft from several EU states joined some 3,000 Portuguese firefighters following an urgent appeal for help by the government in Lisbon. The blazes have left at least 15 dead and 140,000 hectares destroyed. State of emergency Firefighters say more than 25 fires fanned by high winds are burning across Portugal,...

Below is excerpt of interest => whole article worth read, though: Exploitation of tragedy is a sport played not only by environmentalists. Insurer Munich Re used the event to renew its call to fight global warming, which the insurance industry has recently begun blaming for natural disasters. Concerned about large payouts for natural disaster claims, insurance companies are very eager to establish global warming as contributing to those disasters, so they can sue deep-pocket businesses supposedly responsible for that global warming.

I have been thinking about the earthquake that occurred in the Indian Ocean and the resulting massive ocean wave, a tsunami, that wreaked havoc throughout the area, affecting Sri Lanka, Thailand, and parts of Indonesia. Estimates of the toll are expected to exceed 40,000 dead. Some people would call it an act of God, but a term lawyers use is “force majeure.” Literally, a major or greater force and one understood to be a natural and unavoidable catastrophe that interrupts the expected course of events. It is a clause that excuses a party to a contract from liability. The Bible...

I was just reading another thread on this subject, when I came to the line stating that the quake intensity and frequency had diminished on Monday. That it complete eyewash - for whom I don't know. Evidently they don't want to scare the masses - just in case. The thread I'm referring to is located here.Below I'm posting the last three seismographs for you to see that this claim is bogus indeed. This swarm is appearing to grow, with over 1,000 earthquakes so far since Thursday. The depth of the quakes is still near the surface, and they are saying...

Tenta faces another cancer hurdle 'Earthquake' John Tenta has revealed that he is facing yet another type of cancer, this time in his lungs. After disclosing that he had cancer of the bladder in May, ending his in-ring career, Tenta endured chemotherapy for months. But Monday, he told his fans on the WrestleCrap.com newsboard that things had taken a turn for the worse... remainder of article

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Swamped by the worst floods in more than a century, citizens in Central Europe are fighting losing battles against rivers swelled to as much as four times regular depth. Lending a helping hand, one neighbor reaches out to another in Grimma, in German Saxony.In Dresden, Germany, the famous Semper opera house looms above swirling muddy brown water from the Elbe river that has jumped its banks.Regensburg, Bavaria: The Danube turns a basketball court into a water polo arena.Even small streams turn into raging destroyers overnight: the small town of Zeista (Saxony) is ravaged by the formerly placid Seidewitz.In Krems (Austria),...

Officials: Florida's emergency operations a model for the nation Monday, June 10, 2002 By BRENDAN FARRINGTON, Associated Press TALLAHASSEE - With no storms swirling in the Atlantic, the state emergency operations center is quiet. The big room is empty and all but one of five huge video screens are blank. The other just shows scattered thunderstorms crossing the Florida Panhandle. But the first sign of a hurricane and the room will begin jumping with life. "When you're in here and you feel the environment and look up at all five of those screens ... and you've got satellite up...