Sabtu, 28 Mei 2011

Husband gave life to save wife from tornado — ‘He was my hero’

Fri May 27, 11:39 am ET

Husband gave life to save wife from tornado — ‘He was my hero’

As a tornado tore his Joplin, Mo., home apart, Don Lansaw did what came naturally: He threw himself on top of his wife Bethany to protect her. And in doing so, he gave his life for her.

Lansaw's is just one of several tales of heroism, heartbreak, and amazing escapes that have emerged from the spate of violent weather events that swept the center of the country this week. As many as 125 people are thought to have been killed by the Joplin tornado alone.

"The house was ripping apart, it all happened so fast," Bethany Lansaw told NBC News. "All the pillows were flying off of us, the only thing I managed to do was keep one in front of my face."

You can watch the report on Don Lansaw's heroic sacrifice in this video, courtesy of NBC Nightly News:

Once the wind died down, Bethany recounted, she looked over to see that her husband was turning blue. He died before she could find an ambulance to get him to the hospital.

Don, 31, was a former high-school football star, and owned a machine shop. Bethany, 25, worked at a local university. The couple had been married six years and planned to start a family.

"You know, people kept saying he wouldn't have wanted it any other way, but if I could have taken twice as much damage just to have him alive, I would have," Bethany said.

"He did what he could to protect his family," she added. "He's my hero."

Also in Joplin, Will Norton was driving home from his graduation ceremony with his dad when the tornado struck. Norton, 18, looked to have a bright future: A YouTube channel he created called "Wildabeast," in which he posted comedy routines, had almost 1.5 million hits:

As the Hummer H3 started to flip, Norton's seat-belt snapped, and he went flying through the roof of the vehicle, as his dad tried in vain to catch him. Afterward, the only trace of him was his cellphone and graduation cap.

Meanwhile, in Oklahoma's Canadian County, Hank Hamil cried at a news conference after his 3-year old son Ryan was found dead, floating in a lake. Hamil's other son, 15-month old Cole, was also killed by Tuesday night's violent storm.

"I lost both of my boys," Hamil said through tears. "Ryan was my little buddy. Cole was too. I loved them both." You can watch the report on the Hamil's tragic loss here, courtesy of CNN:

But there were also happier stories. Cecelia Beveridge of Joplin showed CNN how she and her husband survived after taking refuge in a tiny closet.

"We stood huddled in here," she said. "The next thing we knew the roof was off, and we were getting hail and rain and everything on us."

"I had my arms locked around my husband and I was just saying please dear God in heaven, just please let us all get out of this alive," Beveridge recounted. "That's all I ask." The Beveridges' escape is chronicled in the video below, also from CNN:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110527/us_yblog_thelookout/husband-gave-life-to-save-wife-from-tornado-he-was-my-hero

2011 now deadliest year for tornadoes since 1950

By NOMAAN MERCHANT, Associated Press – 30 mins ago

JOPLIN, Mo. – The death toll from the monster tornado last week in Missouri has risen by seven to at least 139, city spokeswoman Lynn Onstot said Saturday. That makes this the deadliest year for tornadoes since 1950, based on an assessment of figures from the National Weather Service.

The tornado death toll for 2011 is now 520. Until now, the highest recorded death toll in a single year was 519 in 1953. There were deadlier storms before 1950, but those counts were based on estimates and not on precise figures.

Missouri says the number of people still unaccounted for since the Joplin tornado is now at 105. State Department of Public Safety deputy director Andrea Spillars said Saturday that within that number, nine people have been reported dead by their families, but state officials are working to confirm. She said that the temporary morgue has 142 human remains, but that includes partial remains.

"Some of those remains may be the same person," she said, adding that officials are trying to use scientific means rather than relying on relatives giving visual identifications.

The state has been working to pare down the list of people missing and unaccounted for in the wake of the deadliest single U.S. twister in more than six decades.

City manager Mark Rohr acknowledged Friday afternoon that there may be "significant overlap" between the confirmed dead and the remainder of the missing list. Still, search and rescue crews were undeterred, with 600 volunteers and 50 dog teams out again across the city.

"We're going to be in a search and rescue mode until we remove the last piece of debris," Rohr said.

The tornado — an EF5 packing 200 mph winds — was the deadliest since 1950 and more than 900 people were injured. Tallying and identifying the dead and the missing has proven a complex, delicate and sometimes confusing exercise for both authorities and loved ones.

Earlier Saturday, a family member said that a teenager believed to be ejected or sucked from his father's car on the way home from graduation in the massive tornado has been confirmed dead. Will Norton's aunt, Tracey Presslor, said Saturday that the family received confirmation of his death late Friday night.

Family members had previously told The Associated Press that Norton and his father were still on the road when the storm hit. Mark Norton urged his son to pull over, but the teen's Hummer H3 flipped several times, throwing the young man from the vehicle, likely through the sunroof.

Several social-networking efforts specifically focused on finding information about Norton.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_joplin_tornado

Seismologists Tried for Manslaughter for Not Predicting Earthquake

Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing Editor,
LiveScience.com – Thu May 26, 5:55 pm ET

Earthquake prediction can be a grave, and faulty science, and in the case of Italian seismologists who are being tried for the manslaughter of the people who died in the 2009 L'Aquila quake, it can have legal consequences.

The group of seven, including six seismologists and a government official, reportedly didn't alert the public ahead of time of the risk of theL'Aquila earthquake, which occurred on April 6 of that year, killing around 300 people, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

But most scientists would agree it's not their fault they couldn't predict the wrath of Mother Nature.

"We're not able to predict earthquakes very well at all," John Vidale, a Washington State seismologist and professor at the University of Washington, told LiveScience.

Even though advances have been made, the day scientists are able to forecast earthquakes is still "far away," Dimitar Ouzounov, a professor of earth sciences at Chapman University in California, said this month regarding the prediction of the March 11 earthquake in Japan.

L'Aquila faults

The decision to try the six members of a committee tasked with determining the risk of an earthquake in the area (along with a government official) was announced on Wednesday (May 25) by Judge Giuseppe Romano, according to a news article from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Some people said the committee should've seen it coming, because of the earthquake swarms that occurred days before the big one struck, Vidale said.

"We get swarms of earthquakes all the time without a big earthquake. There was nothing strange about this swarm to suggest a big earthquake," Vidale said in a telephone interview. [Album: This Millennium's Destructive Earthquakes]

Regarding the charges against the Italian seismologists, Vidale said "we're offended" that they are being charged with a crime "for telling the truth." That truth is, he added, there was nothing to say that the level of danger was enough to warrant any public action.

Why we can't see one coming

Talking with Vidale, one gets the impression that predicting an earthquake would take a miracle, as there are so many unknowns.

"One problem is we don't know how much stress it takes to break a fault," Vidale said. "Second we still don't know how much stress is down there. All we can do is measure how the ground is deforming." Not knowing either of these factors makes it pretty tough to figure out when stresses will get to the point of a rupture, and an earth-shaking quake, he explained.

To get measurements of the actual stresses, researchers have to drill miles beneath the surface — an engineering feat on its own — and would only be able to drill a couple places to put sensors along the fault. (Drilling has been done along the San Andreas fault, but no one has measured the stress at depth there, Vidale said.)

On top of all that, the L'Aquila region is a particularly complex nut to crack geologically. While mostly horizontal strike-slip faults, like the San Andreas, are much clearer faults to analyze, the L'Aquila fault system is complex, with several so-called "normal" faults moving mostly vertically.

And several tectonic processes are active in the region: The Adria micro-plate is being subducted under the Apennines from east to west, while at the same time continental collision is occurring between the Eurasia and Africa plates (responsible for the building of the Alps).

Digging into the past

With all the downers, earthquake prediction science, it seems, is coming back into fashion after a lull in the 80s when methods weren't showing any success, Vidale said. The key is to find some strange phenomenonthat occurs before, days before, an earthquake, that seismologists can recognize.

While they haven't found any silver bullet, scientists are digging up data on past earthquakes along fault systems to give them an idea of the probability another will occur. Even so, probability of an earthquake coming "doesn't help with predictions a day before an earthquake," Vidale said.

Another method involves detecting evidence of unusual amounts of radon gas in the atmosphere. Right before an earthquake, the fault may release more gases, including radon. In fact, Ouzounov and colleagues found such anomalous signatures in the atmosphere above Japan days before the March 11 quake struck.

No one has ever predicted an earthquake from atmospheric data, and plenty of supposed earthquake precursors, from weird animal behavior to groundwater flowing the wrong way, have proven hit-or-miss.

Of the radon gas method, Vidale said, "now we're pretty confident that's not reliable."

Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescienceand on Facebook.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110526/sc_livescience/seismologiststriedformanslaughterfornotpredictingearthquake

Rabu, 25 Mei 2011

Oklahoma Tornadoes: Inside the 'Bear Cage'

PHOTO: A funnel cloud forms near Canton, Okla., Tuesday, May 24, 2011.

Joplin, Missouri, Searches for Survivors

AUTO START: ON | OFF

REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK
By MATT GUTMAN (@mattgutmanABC)

CANTON, Okla., May 24, 2011

Within minutes of joining the Storm Chasers, a group of scientists and filmmakers from the Discover Channel who hunt down tornadoes to capture stunning severe weather video, my producer Seni Tienabeso and I nearly ran into a massive multi-vortex tornado.

Hail plunked off the exoskeleton of the Chasers' "Dominator" (a converted Chevy suburban), prowling country roads like some prehistoric creature at 80 mph.

Our driver and Storm Chasing vet Kevin Barton lowered the Dominator to the ground, saying, "That way the wind doesn't pick us up and toss us."

He hooted that we'd entered something chasers call the "bear's cage" -- the area within the storm cell where a tornado could strike. And directly overhead this giant swirling cloud, a giant overhead whirlpool nearly perfectly formed.

Seni Tienbaso/ABC News

A funnel cloud forms near Canton, Okla.,... View Full Size

Joplin, Missouri, Searches for Survivors Watch Video

Double Rainbow After Joplin Tornado Watch Video

Joplin, Mo., Tornado's 'Multi-Vortex'Watch Video

Barton now shouted against the wind: "You guys are members of the zero meter club. ... That means you've now been zero meters from a tornado. My third intercept in three seasons…"It rippled the wheat fields in a nearly perfect circle.

They seemed to anthropomorphize the storm, calling it "beautiful," as archeologists would a rare find.

"It's rare to see it this close," Barton said. "Not too many people see that. Absolutely gorgeous tornado, guys."

We drove on, finding another giant twister churning near Canton. The air smelled of freshly cut grass, the result of so much splintering and hacking of the forest. The debris field was immense, like a giant lawnmower had moved through a forest.

We moved on, and hours later we were back in Oklahoma City.

The Storm Chasers move so fast, we spent hours just trying to catch up with them. Reed Timmer and his crew literally stop for no man.

Finally, as they were forced to hook a U-turn, we simply drove our car in front of one of the Dominators, blocking it, nearly ramming it.

Clumsily, but quickly we swapped cars, jumping into the Dominator, for a ride of a lifetime.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/oklahoma-tornadoes-inside-bear-cage/story?id=13680575

Joplin death toll climbs

Tornado-struck US town rattled by new storm

– 3 mins ago

JOPLIN, Mo (Reuters) – The death toll from a monster tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri, on Wednesday rose to 125 after an overnight search turned up more bodies but no new survivors, authorities said.

Search teams pressed on through a harsh night of more stormy weather following the monster tornado that devastated the town of 50,000 on Sunday.

Using cadaver dogs and heavy equipment, they sought both the living and the dead amid the wreckage of homes, business, schools and churches.

About 1,500 people have been reported missing and some 750 people were injured, according to authorities.

A fresh line of tornadoes and thunderstorms rumbled through the Midwest again Tuesday night, bringing more death and destruction to the region, though sparing Joplin.

The storms killed at least seven people and injured many more as tornadoes ripped through Oklahoma, Kansas and into Arkansas.

(Reporting by Carey Gillam; Editing by Jerry Norton)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110525/ts_nm/us_usa_weather_tornadoes

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Sabtu, 28 Mei 2011