category: disasters
From CNN.com:
The pilot of a twin-engine plane reported trouble shortly after takeoff and had decided to return to the airport, an official in Branson, Missouri, said. But the plane went down in a huge fireball near the center of the popular resort town, killing all four aboard the aircraft. Terry Ware, an employee of a plumbing company near the crash, said she hurried to the scene but could not get near the plane because of the intense fire. “You could hear the people screaming,” she said.
From CNN.com:
Another spate of grassland wildfires sprang up and spread across the southern Oklahoma prairie Wednesday, consuming numerous homes and forcing more than 500 people to evacuate, authorities said. Problems were compounded by 30 mph winds whipping across the prairie and 90-degree-plus temperatures. The blazes are spreading across the same region of the state where thousands of acres burned in December.
All this, with 90+ temperatures, and it’s still winter!
Stills from an amateur video showing a seaplane exploding in the air off the coast of Miami, Florida. Twenty people were killed. From CNN.com.
Pictures and text from a story this morning on CNN.com:
A Cypriot jet with “no sign of life” in the cockpit as it approached Athens, Greece, crashed today, killing 121 people, officials said. Reports say F-16 pilots escorting the jet after air traffic controllers lost contact with it said the pilot was not in the cockpit and the co-pilot was slumped over the controls. A passenger may have sent a text message to his cousin. “The pilot has turned blue,” reports quoted the message as saying. “Cousin farewell we’re freezing.”
“Although there are precedents for both pilots losing consciousness at the controls of aircraft in the past, for it to happen on a large airliner like a Boeing 737, with all the backup systems they have there, does seem to be really quite extraordinary,” said Kieran Daly, editor of Air Transport Intelligence.
“It really is all very peculiar at the moment, I rather suspect we’re heading for a very complicated investigation,” he said.
Terrorists have struck again, this time in downtown London. This particular picture that was just on cnn.com seems to capture the claustrophobic horror of what those poor people on one of the bombed subway trains must have gone through in the aftermath:
From Yahoo! News:
A boulder some 25 feet high blocks both lanes of the Topanga Caynon Road, Monday, Jan. 10, 2005, as electrical contractors fix broken power and communication lines in Malibu, Calif. No injures where reported, but the road remains closed. The storm system was blamed for at least nine deaths during the weekend in Southern California, including a man killed when his vehicle plunged into the surf off Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, and a homeless man killed when the hillside where his tent was pitched gave way. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Hurricane Ivan has the last laugh at Uhaul Tool Rentals in Meridian, Miss. Courtesy SF Gate’s Day In Pictures.
A car was crushed by an air conditioner blown off a roof by Hurricane Ivan in Pensacola, Florida. Courtesy CNN.com.
Here is an amazing survivor’s account from above the impact zone in World Trade Center Tower Two, from NOVA Online | Why the Towers Fell: Above the Impact: A Survivor’s Story.
From the LA Times — Firefighters work in the backyard of a home in Stevenson Ranch. (Anne Cusack / LAT / October 29, 2003):
“See the latest images from the Southern California wildfires, taken by people on the ground with camera phones and digital cameras. The fires are taking property and lives in San Diego and San Bernadino.”
Welcome to scenic Simi Valley, where California wildfires wreak havoc:
From an LA Times story:
“A statue is about all that is left of one of the homes destroyed in the Skyland Track area near Crestline. About 25 structures were lost in the areas of Skyland, Great View and Arrowhead Highlands.”
Rancho Cucamonga fire: man rescues aquarium — saving water from fire [from CNN.com]:
An Air Crane makes a water drop on the fire line Friday in Lytle Creek, California:
Any symbolism here is purely accidental:
Staten Island ferry crash
“The interior of the ferry was left a tangled mess.”
