New Orleans levee-risk study faulted

When the Army Corps of Engineers admitted in June that design flaws in the New Orleans levee system had caused most of the flooding during Hurricane Katrina, it seemingly left little to argue about.

But the fight wasn't over. The Corps is now engaged in an effort to predict how New Orleans would fare in the next big hurricane, and is once again being second-guessed by some of the nation's top civil engineers.

The National Research Council complains that the Corps' official investigation into the levee failures reaches premature conclusions, glosses over problems, and fails in its most important task: giving the public the information it needs to make informed decisions about living in New Orleans.

The Corps' analysis will play a major role in determining the city's future — including whether more than 200,000 former residents could rebuild abandoned neighborhoods and whether insurers can provide coverage at an affordable rate.

The stakes are high, not only for the integrity of the levees around New Orleans but for similar levees that protect millions of Americans who live along vulnerable coastlines and rivers across the nation. Many were built on the same mucky foundations and with the same flawed engineering assumptions as the notorious failed 17th Street levee in New Orleans.

from the LA Times

Huge Arctic ice break discovered

It is said to be the largest break in 25 years, casting an ice floe with an area of 66 sq km (25 square miles).

It occurred in August 2005 but was only recently detected on satellite images.

The chunk of ice bigger than Manhattan could wreak havoc if it moves into oil drilling regions and shipping lanes next summer, scientists warned.

"The Arctic is all frozen up for the winter and it's stuck in the sea ice about 50km (30 miles) off the coast," said Luke Copland, an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa.


"The risk is that next summer, as that sea ice melts, this large ice island can then move itself around off the coast and one potential path for it is to make its way westward toward the Beaufort Sea where there is lots of oil and gas exploration, oil rigs and shipping."

from the BBC

INDONESIA: SUMATRA FLOOD VICTIMS FALLING ILL

Disaster victims are beginning to suffer from diseases and a lack of clean water and food a week after floods and landslides first hit Aceh and North Sumatra, officials say. Rescue workers are continuing to struggle to provide aid and shelter for thousands of people displaced by the disasters, which killed at least 109 people in the two provinces.

Rescue workers continued to struggle Wednesday to provide aid and shelter for thousands of people displaced by the disasters, which have killed at least 109 people in the two provinces.

Indonesian Red Cross volunteer Iqbal said flood victims were turning up sick, hungry and dehydrated and were eating anything they could find.

"We tried to get through to Simpang Kiri village in Kejuruan Muda district by boat on Tuesday and saw many victims had started to eat the internal fronds of banana trees," Iqbal said.

Diseases in people the organisation treated ranged from skin rashes to respiratory illnesses and high fevers, he said.

In Aceh, 69 people have died in the floods. Eleven bodies were found in North Sumatra's badly hit Langkat district and 29 others were evacuated from a landslide in Mandailing Natal.

Indonesia's president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was upset by conflicting media reports on the scale of the disaster, which he said would only confuse relatives of disaster victims, detiknews.com reported. Yudhoyono urged officials to prioritise repairing communications infrastructure in disaster-hit areas.

from ADNKronos International

Levee upgrade may fall short of money

After months of delays in determining the true cost of upgrading the region's levees, with more delays expected, Army Corps of Engineers officials now fear they may not have enough money to pay for the improvements, the agency's director of civil works said Thursday.

Maj. Gen. Don Riley won't be able to confirm the existence or extent of the financing gap until June, when officials are expected to put cost figures to plans for protecting the region from a once-in-100-year flood. But he and members of the state congressional delegation worry that current allocations won't cover escalating costs.

At the time Congress appropriated the last chunk of the $5.7 billion the corps has on hand to raise levees, corps officials said a risk assessment study would be completed by September 2006, outlining the needed repairs and upgrades. The corps now expects to finish that study in March, but will need three more months to determine the cost of the work, Riley said.

from the Times Picayune

A hamlet built in harm's way

Like her neighbors in the quiet, riverfront hamlet of Hoffman Grove, Melissa Miller knew the area's history of flooding and the potential for loss of life and property.

Still, three years ago, when a chance arose to buy a relative's home in this secluded and low-lying section of Wayne Township, Miller snatched it up for $90,000 and moved in with her husband and two young sons.

Where else in New Jersey, she asked herself, could you find such a deal on a starter home? On the surface, it was a slice of the American dream, complete with good public schools, safe streets and the gently flowing Pompton River behind the house.

Then came heavy rains and melting snow that caused her yard and local streets to flood three times within months of her arrival.

Miller had bought into one of the hundreds of places in New Jersey -- from the barrier islands of southern New Jersey to the flood-prone Passaic River watershed -- that probably should never have been built upon.

"I looked at my husband and kind of jokingly said, 'We're selling the house,'" said Miller, a Hudson County native, as she described an escape in late December 2003. "Because it was already the third flood. And I said, 'Okay, we're done, I'm out of here, I'm not used to this.'"

from NJ Star-Ledger

Tsunami-Tossed City’s Survivors Struggle to Carry On

“This is it,” said Safrial, a carpenter, to his two young sons when a towering tsunami of black water rushed toward them two years ago. “This is the end of the world.”

For most people who lived around him it was, and today Mr. Safrial, 45, who uses only one name, hammers and sweats in the sun in a neighborhood where he knows the names of more of the dead than of the living.

He hammers constantly, even as he talks. “This was a test from God,” he said. “For those who died, it was disaster. But for the survivors, we must pass the test and become better people in every way.”


Not everybody has met the challenge, he said. Across Aceh Province, where the tsunami on Dec. 26, 2004, hit the hardest, the process of recovery has been a mixture of progress and disappointment.

All across the ravaged cityscape, scraped bare by the waves, thousands of tiny, toy-box houses have sprung up in recent months as a program of rebuilding gains momentum. But many of the new houses are empty because they lack water, sanitation and electricity and because there are no schools, clinics or commercial activity nearby. Many of the people whose homes they replaced were swept away to their deaths.


Old landmarks are gone, and it is bewildering to trace a remembered path through this sketch of a city. At night the heart of the ruined area is almost as dark and silent as it was before construction started. This rebuilt city of ghosts seems like a ghost town.

The tsunami, caused by an earthquake off the shore of Aceh, took 230,000 lives and left nearly two million people homeless in more than a dozen nations — large numbers in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand as well as here in Indonesia.

from the NY Times

Western wildfires linked to Atlantic Ocean temperatures

Using fire scars on nearly 5,000 tree stumps dating back 450 years, scientists have found that extended periods of major wildfires in the West occurred when the North Atlantic Ocean was going through periodic warming.

With the North Atlantic at the start of a recurring warming period that typically lasts 20 to 60 years, the West could be in for an extended period of multiple fires on the scale of those seen in 2002 and 2006, said Thomas W. Swetnam. He's director of the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research at the University of Arizona and a co-author of the study published in the Dec. 26 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This study and others have demonstrated that there is an underlying climatic influence on fuels and then on the weather conditions that promote fires," said Dan Cayan, climate researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who did not take part in the study.

Ron Neilson, a U.S. Forest Service scientist who has developed models that predict wildfire danger based on climate models, agreed with the study's conclusions, and noted all the oceans are affected by global warming. And that in turn could exacerbate the wildfire cycle.

from the AP via the Albuquerque Tribune

Tip of Louisiana falls off recovery map

Life on the bayou looks pretty sweet as the Hamilton family's oyster boat comes to dock. The sun bounces off blue water, the boat is full of plump oysters, the buyer is ready to load and three generations are happy with the day's work.


With sun-baked faces and mud-speckled clothes, they head for home, a place that is not so sweet. Home for the six is two trailers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency parked below an earthen levee that separates them from the mighty Mississippi, just miles from the river mouth.

That's life for most of the few thousand who reside in lower Plaquemines Parish, 50 miles (80 km) south of New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina made landfall 16 months ago, ripping everything on the narrow watery strip between the river and the Gulf of Mexico to shreds.

These people have weathered many a storm. When Betsy, Camille, Flossie, and others came through, they would tie their boats to trees and ride out the hurricane in the cabins.


But Katrina was bound to be different and almost everyone evacuated. With the erosion of wetlands and barrier islands over the years, there was little to stop the storm before it hit with brute force.

And because wind and flooding damage was so extensive, destroying much of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, money for rebuilding has been slow to come.

Now many fear it will never come.

from Reuters

China fears disasters, grain cut from global warming

Global warming threatens to intensify natural disasters and water shortages across China, driving down the country's food output, the Chinese government has warned, even as its seeks to tame energy consumption.

A forthcoming official assessment of the effects of global climate change on China will warn of worsening drought in northern China and increasing "extreme weather events", according to the Ministry of Science and Technology's Web site (www.most.gov.cn) on Wednesday.

A deputy director of the National Climate Centre, Luo Yong, was blunt about the risks for China's food production.

"The most direct impact of climate change will be on China's grain production," he said on Tuesday, according to the Science Times newspaper.

"Climate change will bring intensified pressure on our country's agriculture and grain production."

from Reuters

London-on-Sea: the future of a city in decay

This map reveals how Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and Canary Wharf will be among the areas at risk of flooding according to a new estimate of rising sea levels.

The need for new defences is underlined by a study that concludes that levels may rise more quickly in the coming decades than previously thought - by as much as an additional metre (39in) over the next century, according to Prof Stefan Rahmstorf, a leading climate expert at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

A sea level rise of a metre or more would be "very bad news" for major coastal cities, greatly increasing the risk of devastating storm surges. Particularly at risk are cities on or close to North Atlantic shores, such as London, according to his study in the journal Science.

from the London Telegraph

For New Orleans after Katrina, too many nights remain silent

The Church of All Souls began with a fresh coat of paint in a garage that survived Hurricane Katrina. Parishioners added the red, white and blue awning of an abandoned KFC, attaching it with metal salvaged from deserted homes nearby.

Such is the state of rebuilding here.


"Listen," says James Lemann, whose mother's garage became the sanctuary. Down the block, swinging metal groans in a slow breeze; otherwise, the street is silent. "It's a beautiful sunny afternoon," says Lemann, 48. "Do you hear saws? Do you hear any hammers?"


For month after month, it has sounded this way — here, in New Orleans' devastated Lower 9th Ward, and in other places hit hardest by Katrina. The U.S. government has spent more than $80 billion to help the region recover and rebuild. Yet in the nearly 16 months since the storm hit, these areas in coastal Louisiana and Mississippi remain silent shells, and the promise of rebuilding seems distant to those who once lived here.


Homeowners who want to return aren't getting much help. One $7.5 billion Louisiana program to help people rebuild or relocate has put money in the hands of just 87 of the 89,403 homeowners who applied. Along the Gulf Coast, almost 100,000 people still live in trailers and mobile homes issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.


In the Lower 9th Ward, a mostly poor section of the city, flood waters severely damaged more than 1,300 buildings, more than in almost any other part of New Orleans, according to city records. Yet by early December, the city had issued only four permits for new homes to be built there, a USA TODAY analysis of permit records shows.


"The bottom line is that the taxpayers of this country are going to spend literally tens of billions of dollars and be surprised and disappointed at how little they are going to be able to show for it," says Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La.

Why, despite massive aid programs, have so few residents been able to rebuild what Katrina washed away? USA TODAY found:

•Key disaster programs were unprepared for the breadth of Katrina's destruction. For example, the Small Business Administration couldn't keep up with demand for disaster loans, in part because it was understaffed, administrator Steven Preston concedes. FEMA grants to repay cities for rebuilding sewers and schools were backlogged by a cumbersome approval process, says Jim Stark, head of the agency's Louisiana recovery office.

•Homeowner grant programs in Louisiana and Mississippi have proved frustratingly complex. To qualify, property owners had to pledge to buy flood insurance — and pledge that anyone who bought the property also would do so. That required officials to sort through tens of thousands of real estate titles and liens.

•Many homeowners are waiting to see whether others return to their neighborhoods and how well sewers, streets and protective levees are repaired, says Andy Kopplin, executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. Moreover, homeowners who want to rebuild can't always find contractors to do the job because builders are so inundated with projects that some have months-long waiting lists, Kopplin says.


"We call it the new normal. Everybody is just overwhelmed," says Phil Bryant, the Mississippi state auditor, who is tracking rebuilding in the state. "People have come to realize that there's only so much anybody can do in a certain amount of time, and we're moving as quickly as we possibly can."

from USA Today

The last tide could come at any time.

It begins with the simple rising of the tide in the lagoon, above the flashing coral, and high up the beach where the thin canoes lie. Soon water is breaching the frail sea walls and running over the coconut palms and the dusty pathways of the village. The sea laps at the houses of palm and wood; in the middle of the islands saltwater bubbles up through holes dug by the crabs and floods the fields and gardens until half the land is swallowed up.

It happens every few months. But however many times they have seen it before it is never any the less terrifying for the people of the Carteret Islands. “The kids run around crying,” says Selina Netoi, who lived through the experience last year. “People try to comfort them and they carry them and leave everything else behind. I have seen houses washed away — swish! — and everything inside them. We are helpless when this thing happens. We can’t save anything.”

Every year the tidal surges are becoming stronger and more frequent; every month, a few more inches are being eaten away from the shrinking land of the tiny islands. It happened last March, it happened again in September and it may happen again tonight under the tug of the new moon.

from the Times of London

Rising sea levels engulfing Indian world heritage islands

Rising sea levels have submerged two islands in the Sunderbans, where tigers roam through mangrove forests in the Ganges River delta, and a dozen more islands are under threat, scientists say.

A six-year study of the impact of future climate change on the world natural heritage site that India shares with Bangladesh came up with alarming results.

Official records list 102 islands on the Indian side of the vast Sunderbans, where the Ganges and Brahmaputra empty into the Bay of Bengal.

But scientists have been able to map only 100 islands and found the other two have been swallowed up, says Sugata Hazra, director of Kolkata's School of Oceanography Studies at Jadavpur University.

Fifty-two of the islands are inhabited with a population of more than 1.8 million people.

"Two islands, Suparibhanga and Lohacharra, which have gone under water could not be sighted in satellite imagery. The (disappearance of the) two islands have rendered over 10,000 people homeless," says Hazra.

"A dozen others on the western end of the inner estuary delta are threatened.

"As the islands sink, nearly 100,000 people will have to be evacuated from the islands in the next decade," Hazra tells AFP at his office on the university campus.
from Terra News

As Climate Changes, Malaria Rises In Africa - In Altitude

The soft cries of children broke the morning stillness as parents brought them in to the hillside hospital one by one - feverish, racked by chills, drained by a disease once unknown in the high country of Kenya.

Just outside town later this day, scientist James Mutunga scooped water from an irrigation ditch, poured it into a plastic basin, and leaned down with a practiced eye.

"See, here, there's a larva. This one's about a day old," he said, scanning the murk for tiny, newly hatched "anopheles arabiensis," a malaria-bearing mosquito rarely found in Kenya's uplands.

Last year Mutunga's team detected them nearby at an altitude of 6,243 feet. "That's the highest ever in Kenya," the young entomologist said.

from the AP via the Hartford Courant

Shorelines may be in greater peril than thought

Previous estimates of how much the world's sea level will rise as a result of global warming may have seriously underestimated the problem, according to new research.

The study, published in Science, uses a new "semi-empirical" method instead of relying purely on computer modelling. While some modelling significantly underestimates the amount of sea-level rise that has already been seen over the last century, the new method matches the observed rise very closely, says Stefan Rahmstorf, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany, who conducted the new study.

The existing computer model deviates even more from the actual observations built into the new estimates included in a draft of the next report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due to be released in February 2007.

The draft report says newer climate models now suggest a rise only half as great as projected in the previous IPCC report. But that draft may be revised before its release to reflect the new research that suggests the rise will be greater than the IPCC's previous estimate, Rahmstorf told New Scientist.

from New Scientist

Tsunami funds languish in banks

BBC Newsnight has learnt that billions of dollars given by individuals and governments have still not been spent while two thirds of those who lost their houses are still waiting for them to be rebuilt.

UN tsunami envoy former US President Bill Clinton raised concerns about the slow pace of rebuilding.

"Only 30 to 35% of the people have been put back into permanent housing," he said. "We have to do better than that."

Newsnight has accessed the UN Department for Aid and Development database which tracks $6.7bn (£3.4bn) of money which has been pledged. Half of that - $3.3bn - has still not been spent.

from the BBC

Corps Proposal for Gulf Draws Criticism From Scientists

Ambitious federal plans to repair the Gulf Coast and defend it against future hurricanes are coming under fire from many coastal scientists who say they would only perpetuate a costly and wrongheaded approach to storm management.

he projects are still in the planning stages by the Army Corps of Engineers, which has been ordered by Congress to present its long-term, comprehensive plans by the end of 2007.

In addition to short-term repair projects, the corps is considering large and elaborate systems of walls and barriers, offshore breakwaters, dune reconstruction on offshore barrier islands, levees and mechanical barriers or gates that would close across inlets to keep surging storm waters out.

Many scientists have long objected to seawalls, other coastal armor and even some beach restoration projects as costly interventions that can damage the very beaches they are supposed to protect. But they say the larger projects will have the same effects, only worse.

“The most shocking thing to me is that they would even consider some of the things that they are considering,” said Robert J. Young, new director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, a project of Duke and Western Carolina universities.

from the NY Times

Perils of Somali Flood: Hunger and Beasts

The people here are surrounded by floodwaters that have drowned their animals, submerged their crops and swept away their homes. They are slowly starving, unable to sustain themselves on unripe fruit and filthy water.


At the faintest hum of an outboard engine, some 200 villagers, essentially the entire mobile population of Yagloo, run to the banks of the swollen Shabelle River with empty baskets and expectant eyes, hoping for powdered milk, a few handfuls of grain, some malaria pills, anything.

"You! You! You!" they yelled at a passing boat, which unfortunately on this Tuesday morning was carrying only journalists. "Don't forget us."

They held up mud-streaked palms and pointed to a darkening sky. More rain was on its way.

The floods here are yet another installment of a nation in crisis. At a time when Somalia seems inexorably close to an all-out war with Ethiopia, with a destructive potential that could dwarf the countless deaths from the last 15 years of anarchy, a deluge has arrived, plunging Somalia's breadbasket underwater, creating the conditions for an extended famine and taking the area's woes to a whole new level.

from the NY Times

Arctic sea ice 'faces rapid melt'

The latest data presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting suggests the ice is no longer showing a robust recovery from the summer melt.

Last month, the sea that was frozen covered an area that was two million sq km less than the historical average.

"That's an area the size of Alaska," said leading ice expert Mark Serreze.

"We're no longer recovering well in autumn anymore. The ice pack may now be starting to get preconditioned, perhaps to show very rapid losses in the near future," the University of Colorado researcher added.

The sea ice reached its minimum extent this year on 14 September, making 2006 the fourth lowest on record in 29 years of satellite record-keeping and just shy of the all time minimum of 2005.

from the BBC

1918 Flu Epidemic Teaching Valuable Lessons

New analysis of how American cities responded to the killer Spanish flu of 1918 suggests that closing schools, banning large gatherings, staggering work hours and quarantining households of the ill may have saved tens of thousands of lives.

Which of the many non-pharmaceutical interventions was especially effective in reducing mortality is unknown, but all would theoretically be available should pandemic influenza again sweep the country.

from the Washington Post

Shallow fuels bring bad news

Geologists have discovered underwater deposits of hydrates — icy deposits of frozen methane gas — at far shallower depths under the ocean floor than expected. The finding suggests that, in a globally warmed world, the hydrates could melt suddenly and release their gas into the atmosphere, thus warming the planet even more.

Hydrates are cage-like structures in which molecules of water surround frozen molecules of gas. When dug up and brought to the surface, they release fizzy bubbles of methane into the atmosphere.

As a greenhouse gas, methane has 20 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. Large amounts of the world's carbon is locked up in methane hydrates, both in polar permafrost regions and buried in marine sediments worldwide. So scientists have long worried about a potentially catastrophic melting of these hydrates, triggered by an underwater landslide or warming of the ocean waters above them, that could send temperatures soaring.

from Nature

Satellites weigh Africa's water

The volume of water lost from the land amounts to 334 cubic km, which is almost as much as all Africans have consumed over the period.

The data comes from Nasa spacecraft that can detect changes in gravity caused by water as it cycles between the sea, the atmosphere and the land.

Experts stress no firm conclusions should be drawn from the short study.

Professor Jay Famiglietti from the University of California-Irvine said much longer times series were needed to detect real trends and any signal that might indicate a significant shift in climate.

"There are natural climate variations, the natural ups and downs," he explained.

"Another big factor is human control of the water cycle - reservoir management, the storage of water on continents.

"Groundwater mining leads to heavy depletions of water. Wetland drainage, river diversion projects - all of those factors contribute to these storage variations that we see and we'll be working on trying to sort those out over the next few years," he told the BBC.

from the BBC

Warming Ocean Slows Phytoplankton Growth

Every day, more than 100 million tons of carbon dioxide are drawn from the atmosphere into the ocean by billions of microscopic ocean plants called phytoplankton during photosynthesis. In addition to playing a big role in removing greenhouses gases from the atmosphere, phytoplankton are the foundation of the ocean food chain.


For nearly a decade, the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS) has been making global observations of phytoplankton productivity. On December 6, 2006, NASA-funded scientists announced that warming sea surface temperatures over the past decade have caused a global decline in phytoplankton productivity. This pair of images shows changes in sea surface temperature (top) and phytoplankton productivity (bottom) between 2000 and 2004, after the last strong El Niño event, which occurred between 1997-1998. Places where temperatures rose between 2000 and 2004 (red areas, top image) are the same places where productivity dropped (red areas, bottom image). In general, the reverse situation was also true: where temperatures cooled, productivity rose. The sea surface temperature map is based on data collected by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sensors onboard several National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration satellites.

from NASA's Earth Observatory Newsroom

Lessons from abroad

Nearly 12 years after being mostly leveled in a cataclysmic earthquake, this port city halfway around the globe has a glittering new skyline, a model for New Orleans as it negotiates the early stages of recovery from an equally ravaging disaster.

One of the surest signposts of Kobe's revival: The population recently topped its 1995 level. And visitors unfamiliar with the city's pre-disaster streetscape would have a hard time detecting evidence of the quake's wrath. Even a local has to look closely to spot the odd reminder of the quake: a group of vacant lots, patched seams on a stucco wall.


Because Kobe is comparable to New Orleans both in size and in the extent of devastation it suffered, the two cities have forged an informal cultural alliance, one that has brought Japanese disaster experts to Louisiana to study the post-Katrina challenge and that more recently led a delegation of New Orleans civic leaders to spend a week in Kobe and elsewhere in Japan.

from the Times Picayune

rebuilding Kobe graphic

Indonesian Cities Lie in Shadow of Cyclical Tsunami, Scientists Say

Two Indonesian cities that escaped the devastating tsunamis of December 2004 are at risk of inundation over the next few decades from undersea earthquakes predicted along the coast of Sumatra, researchers say.

The researchers, using computer models, produced simulations showing that a major earthquake could send a series of waves 15 to 20 feet high sweeping ashore around Padang or Bengkulu, coastal cities of 800,000 and 350,000 just south of the Equator on Sumatra’s Indian Ocean coast. Many seismologists say such quakes are inevitable off the coast near those cities.

The analysis was published Monday on the Web by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

from the NY Times

Japanese Lessons

Here in this sprawling megalopolis, the world's biggest, citizens know the not-too-distant future could bring history's most expensive natural disaster, a trillion-dollar catastrophe that likely will be triggered by an earthquake and perhaps compounded by flooding and fires.

Officials forecast a death toll of anywhere from 4,000 to 150,000, depending on the quake's strength and location.

Though earthquakes cause more insomnia for emergency planners here than killer storms, Tokyo has plenty in common with New Orleans. In particular, much of Japan's most important city lies well below sea level, and to defend it, Tokyoites depend as much on levees -- about 180 miles of them -- as New Orleanians.



Indeed, the Japanese are so convinced of impending disaster that they have for two decades seriously debated moving the central government's functions out of the capital to a safer spot. The government regularly puts citizens through disaster drills.

And yet just like the lower reaches of the Mississippi River, Tokyo Bay pumps economic life into the country, and so demands a major population center on its flank. The fact that it's an even more dangerous place to build than New Orleans is simply a problem the Japanese have decided to solve. As best they can, anyway.

from the Times Picayune

After a Rush, Pace of Levee Work Downshifts

For months, the Army Corps of Engineers raced through the city, frantically patching broken levees and building floodgates to prepare for a hurricane season, now ended, that produced no hurricanes here.

That repair work is essentially complete and the corps has moved on to the task of strengthening flood protection in New Orleans beyond its pre-Hurricane Katrina level, hoping to entice residents back. But lately the bulldozers have been idle, and the trucks motionless. The pace has slowed, those in the region say, with little trace of the round-the-clock frenzy of the first phase.



“We don’t see that anymore,” said Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the hurricane center at Louisiana State University.

Contractors are waiting impatiently for the chance to bid on jobs. “By now, I would have expected there to be many more jobs bid and under way,” said Robert Boh, the head of Boh Brothers, a major local contractor. “We’re going to dance as soon as anyone asks us.”

from the NY Times

A Dream Blown Away

A place near the water has been an American dream for a very long time. Fifty-four percent of Americans live within 50 miles of a coast.

This is the year, however, in which the big boys in global finance got religion about climate change. As a result, this American dream -- as far north as the Washington area, and even New York and New England -- is under attack.

Follow the money. Insurance doesn't sound like a world-changer. It seems so banal and prosaic, like reliable electricity or clean water.

Yet without it -- you want a place to live? You cannot get a mortgage without insurance.

You want a job? A commercial enterprise cannot run without insurance.

from the Washington Post

Philippine Rescuers Dig Through Mud

Rescuers in the Philippines all but gave up hope Monday of finding survivors in mudslide-swamped villages on the slopes of the Mayon volcano, five days after Typhoon Durian killed an estimated 1,000 people.

A weakened Durian headed toward southern Vietnam, where authorities evacuated tens of thousands of people. The typhoon's winds were clocked at 82 mph Monday.

Durian lashed the Philippines on Thursday with 165 mph winds and a five-hour deluge that dislodged tons of debris from the slopes of the volcano. Walls of mud and boulders destroyed nearly every standing structure in their path.

''It was like bowling,'' said Guinobatan Vice Mayor Gene Villareal.

Official figures showed 450 dead, 507 injured and 599 missing, but Sen. Richard Gordon, head of the local Red Cross, said he believed more than 1,000 died in the thousands of homes buried under volcanic debris, mud and flood waters.

from the NY Times

Worst Floods For Years Devastate East Africa

The worst floods for years have killed at least 150 people and uprooted more than a million others in eastern Africa, aid workers said on Sunday.


Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda have all been hit by driving rains and rising waters in recent weeks that have destroyed homes and cut off some of the world's poorest people.

Somalia has been hardest hit, and efforts to deliver aid have been hindered by rampant insecurity.

Some reports say more than 100 people have died there, a few eaten by crocodiles swept from rivers into villages, but aid workers said few firm statistics were available.

"Many communities, especially in the Juba region, are still totally isolated," said Christian Balslev-Olesen, representative of the UN children's charity Unicef for Somalia.

read more

New crops needed to avoid famines

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) says yields of existing varieties will fall.

New forecasts say warming will shrink South Asia's wheat area by half.

CGIAR is announcing plans to accelerate efforts aimed at developing new strains of staple crops including maize, wheat, rice and sorghum.

At the network's annual meeting in Washington, scientists will also report on measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farmland.

from the BBC

India: Risk Rising From Rain and Floods

The frequency and intensity of rainstorms during India’s monsoon season has risen significantly since 1950, in concert with global warming, scientists report. An Indian climate research team describes the trend in the journal Science and predicts that further warming is likely to raise the risk of floods. The pattern was found by analyzing rain-gauge measurements. Over all, the total rainfall in June-to-September monsoons across central India had not appreciably changed, but more rain came in sudden bursts and less in light showers, the scientists said. “A substantial increase in hazards related to heavy rain is expected over central India in the future,” they added.

from the NY Times

10,000 Get Grant Letters on Rebuilding in Louisiana

In a sign of painstaking progress for Louisiana’s biggest rebuilding program, the state has sent letters to more than 10,000 families stating how much money they can receive to rebuild their homes under the $7.5-billion housing program Congress financed this year, state officials said yesterday.

But fewer than 50 families had actually collected the money as of Tuesday, prompting renewed concern among homeowners and some government officials about the pace of the program, which is called the Road Home and is widely considered the most important factor in rebuilding areas damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The spate of “award calculations,” as the program calls them, represents a big increase from early last month, when fewer than 2,000 families — out of almost 79,000 applicants at the time — had been told how much they were eligible to receive.

On Nov. 6, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco ordered the private contractor managing the program for the state to reach the 10,000 mark by the end of November. Yesterday, the governor said she would require the contractor, ICF International, to send out 15,000 more award letters before the end of the year.

from The NY Times

Typhoon in Philippines Kills 198 and Leaves 260 Missing

The fourth major typhoon to hit the Philippines in four months killed 198 people and left 260 others missing, officials said Friday.

Typhoon Durian caused flash floods and sent walls of muddy volcanic ash and red-hot boulders crashing down on several villages, the officials said.

The national Office of Civil Defense reported 198 people were killed and 260 were missing. Fernando Gonzalez, governor of worst-hit Albay province, said the figures included 109 people who died in mudslides on the slopes of the Mayon volcano that also injured 130.

''The disaster covered almost every corner of this province -- rampaging floods, falling trees, damaged houses,'' Gonzalez said.

With power and phone lines downed by powerful winds, helicopters were carrying out aerial surveillance of cutoff areas. Officials estimated that the storm affected some 22,000 people.

The magnitude of the destruction hampered relief operations.

from the NY Times