Taylor Strowger, 10, from Darfield explores earthquake damage to Highfield Road, 30km west of Christchurch

It sure has been a sweltering summer thus far. It seems like every day in July the high temperature has been well into the 90s with heat indexes past the century mark. Maybe it’s the hot sun just baking all that oil bubbling under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe it’s all the hot air blowing down from Washington D.C. Or anger from those who think we can deport every illegal in Arizona. Or maybe Al Gore finally found a way to make global warming real by doing dirty things with massage therapists. Fuck if I know.

I do know that yesterday I began plotting what I ate in a food diary. If it sounds a little gay, it probably is. But essentially you figure out all what you ate and how good or bad you ended up on main items like calories, fat, sodium, and stuff like that. Considering I’m nearing 32 years old and don’t have any health care, I probably need to be doing some watching of what I’m eating. I’m adding a bit of exercise to the whole thing too. But don’t call it a diet program. (And don’t call it a mid-life crisis either.)

In other news: Courtney (Elf) still looks fucking hot, DJ Rick Walsh is retiring from his duties behind the turntables at Heretic on Friday, and I’m really getting back into this Magic: The Gathering hobby again. I also still RP with Stephanie, play a few video games, and am looking forward to a jam packed fall season that includes DragonCon, Alchemy, my birthday, Atlanta Gay Pride Weekend, Halloween, and writing a new novel.

I still could find time for a boyfriend though. Any takers?

It’s July! JULY! You know, that month that brings America independence, fireworks, BBQ, and afternoon and evening thunderstorms. It also means we’re about 6 weeks away from BP possibly finally maybe probably not cutting off their massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Hurrah! Wait, whut?

The summertime song is allegedly destined to be “California Gurls” by Katy Perry featuring Ludacris. But you know, I’m more particular to Kat DeLuna’s “Push, Push” (featuring Akon, cause you know everything features someone.) And then there is that patently silly “Pretty Boy Swag” by Soulja Boy. Wait, he’s a pretty boy? Oh… wait.. no… he says “no homo” in the song. Psha! Like us respectful fags would accept you, assclown.

On to more important news: The economy seems to still blow for most, but thankfully my local economy is really picking up some steam. I’m trying very hard to adjust and make sure I’m putting some away now that I’m not spending so much on things like car payments and full coverage insurance. I could use some health care, god knows. And I don’t mean the kind that comes in a cocktail glass.

Pride Weekend is once again moving in Atlanta. We didn’t have it in June -again- which blows donkey balls. Last year, it was on Halloween which apparently worked out really well. I just went to the parade which was cold but nice as always. The Latinos looked like they were celebrating the hardest. The rest of us should look to that and be reminded what it’s like to have some real fire in our pride. This year Atlanta Gay Pride is on my birthday weekend, October 9th.

But before that happens, I gotta do the Alchemy thing with Kaze up in the North Georgia Mountain. It’s kind of like Burning Man, but on a smaller scale.

Also coming up is another fine edition of DragonCon. It’s Labor Day Weeekend, always, always, always. Maybe you should come and join me. It’s a lot of fun, the most accessible geek celebrities, and will make you rethink that whole “nerds don’t get laid” stuff.

Finally, I’ve been thinking a lot about Magic: The Gathering again suddenly. I bought a terrible terrible version of it on Steam the other day called Duels of the Planeswalkers. It’s also on XBOX. It’s horrid. Don’t buy it. It was a waste of money to be sure. You can’t even build your own deck? WHAT? Magic: Online is cheaper and certainly is making me think about it a bit. There’s also a new Core set coming out in two weeks. Is this something I could get into again? If it’s still played, maybe I could even make some new friends. I’d chalk this nostalgia up to the fact that I’m 31 (almost 32), but that would imply that I’ve grown up in the meantime, which we all fucking know is not true.

Anyway, that’s the update for now. Don’t forget to buy some books.

1. World Cup.  Alright, everyone’s got their vuvuzula stuff out of their system by now right?  I mean, this thing has been underway for a while and the competition is heating up.  There are bad ref calls and whatever.  What I just learned is that the United States wants to host the Cup in the future.  Why?  While the US Team is doing fine and dandy, people don’t really care.  They may pretend to care just like they pretend to like classic films like Casablanca when they haven’t ever really seen it.  I’m more than okay letting the world enjoy their World Cup without America feeling like she has to get all into it.

2. Oil Spill. OMFG, is that shit still going on? You know, when I made my first Facebook post about that, it was already two weeks old. Now it’s more than two MONTHS old. Beaches are getting trashed, lives are being devastated, and it’s become quite the nightmare environmental scenario. Worse, the relief wells are still not due to be complete for over another month and you know, I am not all that confident that’ll fix things either. This situation cannot be minimized. It really is THE most important thing in America right now. It practically screams what’s wrong with our government, our industry, and our energy policy what with all the corruption and inaction across the board.

3. Afghan War. A big time general got kicked out because he said lots of negative things about those in charge in an article published in Rolling Stone. First, Rolling Stone still exists? Secondly, I want to know why we’re still in Afghanistan. It ain’t to fight Al Qeada like was originally planned. They’ve moved on to Pakistan. Is it to fight the Taliban? Is it to fight people that only fight us because we’re there fighting them fighting us? I thought I elected Obama to get us out of these wars. Wait, that brings me to…

4. President Obama. He hasn’t closed down Gitmo. He hasn’t brought home our troops. He hasn’t really done a very good job at bringing our economy back. He kept many of the Bush era policies of warrant-less wiretapping and secret prisons. He’s half-assed the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. He’s half-assed nominated liberalish people to the Supreme Court. I’m going to say what many of my liberal friends won’t… he’s not been an effective leader. Yes, I know it’s only been such and such many months. Yes, I know he inherited many problems. But he’s had plenty of time to suck on his own. He completely has bungled the Oil Spill. He continues to not be a good leader in economic policies that reform the way things are done. Handing out cash isn’t a solution. His one big win of Health Care isn’t even really that impressive considering it lacks a Public Option and the implementation of the effects are all way diluted with time. He has squandered a majority in the house and senate and now with mid-term elections looming, under his leadership or lack thereof, there are overwhelming predictions that Republicans (and even more terrifying Tea Party members) are going to be roaring back. Son, I am disappoint.

5. “Later, Skater: On Tour!” Buy your copy for summer reading today. Sales haven’t been great, which is confusing me. I mean, I sold and gave away lots and lots of copies of the original “Later, Skater” The sequel is bigger and better and downloadable for instant gratification for only 5 dollars. FIVE DOLLARS! Get it today to help keep me encouraged about my writing.

New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) — BP said Wednesday that efforts to contain and clean up oil gushing from a ruptured pipe in the Gulf of Mexico have made a “measurable difference” even as Louisiana’s governor announced that thick, heavy oil has begun polluting the state’s wetlands and estuaries.

Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said at a news conference that the company is “very pleased” with the performance of an insertion tube that was put in place over the weekend to suck crude oil from the well and funnel it to a surface vessel.

The flow rate from the tube has reached 3,000 barrels of crude (126,000 gallons) and 14 million cubic feet of gas a day, Suttles said, adding that crews hope to increase those numbers in coming days.

He said favorable weather conditions have also played a major role in cleanup efforts. About 14,000 barrels of oily water was skimmed Tuesday, and 50 percent of that mixture was oil, he said, adding that crews continue to deploy boom and conduct controlled burns.

But Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana says the efforts haven’t stopped oil from reaching his state’s coastline. Thicker, heavier oil than seen in previous days has blanketed some of the state’s precious interior wetlands, he said, and he called for the Army Corps of Engineers to approve an emergency permit to dredge sand from barrier islands to create sand booms as another line of defense.

“These are not tar balls, this is not sheen, this is heavy oil that we are seeing in our wetlands,” Jindal said.

(more at CNN.com)

Dacula, GA: Ryan Lewallen was supposed to meet Jacob Bullock and Marvens Mathurin, fellow eighth-graders at Osborne Middle School, in a Dacula subdivision Saturday afternoon. But he was running a little late.

Lewallen’s father, David, can’t help but wonder what would have happened had Ryan gotten there earlier. The day before, David Lewallen had lectured his son not to try walking on their iced-over swimming pool.

“Children being children, you don’t know what could have happened,” David Lewallen said Sunday. “I would like to think he would have stopped them altogether.”

Bullock, 14, and Mathurin, 13, died after falling in an iced-over lake in the Daniel Park subdivision. Another friend, Mill Creek High freshman Alex Paul, was able to climb out of the water. He suffered hypothermia but was released from the hospital late Saturday night.

The boys were playing in the middle of the lake when the thin sheet of ice cracked, fire officials said.

David Lewallen said Mathurin fell in first, prompting Bullock and Paul to try to save him.

Rescue workers were dispatched at 2:29 p.m. Saturday. Paul was out of the water and trying to find the other two when crews arrived, Fire Capt. Tommy Rutledge said.

The lake, surrounded by houses, sits beside a covered pavilion, basketball courts and a grassy area where neighbors say the boys likely accessed the lake. Rescue workers backed their trucks into the grass to try to rescue the boys.

Firefighters used a boat to move across the lake, through broken ice. Using 10-foot poles, they were able to locate the boys at the bottom of the lake, estimated at 8 to 10 feet deep.

“They were in there for almost an hour,” Rutledge said.

On Friday, Ryan Lewallen and his 8-year-old sister were in the backyard talking about walking on their frozen swimming pool.

“That’s children — they’re drawn to that,” their father said. “Even my 15-year-old, he’s like, ‘Dad, I can walk on that. Even if you fell through, you can just come right back up.’ I was trying to explain to him, ‘Son, it’s not that simple. When you’re talking about freezing water, it doesn’t happen that way.’”

Bullock and Mathurin were pronounced dead Saturday evening at Gwinnett Medical Center. Rescue workers had hoped their youth would help them survive the incident.

“This is a very tragic situation,” Rutledge said. “Our thoughts and prayers are now with the family and friends.”

The teens’ deaths come after nearly 30 reports of children playing on frozen bodies of water in Gwinnett County, Rutledge said. Although frozen ponds and lakes might look safe to walk across, they’re often not strong enough to support a person’s weight.

“We cannot stress [it] enough,” Rutledge said. “We know it is tempting, but it is important that people stay off the ice.”

Kellogg Company said that due to “a confluence of events” — including flooding at its Bucknell Drive manufacturing facility — Eggo brand frozen waffles will be in short supply for some time to come.

Grocery store inventories, the company said, are expected to remain limited through the first half of 2010.

The Atlanta plant, south of I-20 and west of I-285 near Thornton Road, opened in 1969 when it was owned by Fearn International. Kellogg temporarily halted production in September due to flooding driven by heavy rains, the company said.

Kellogg said the Atlanta facility is back in production. But problems with equipment at the company’s largest waffle bakery in Rossville, Tenn. require extensive repairs and improvements, taking several lines out of operation.

The Eggo shortage is nationwide, the company said.

“We are working around the clock to restore Eggo store inventories to normal levels as quickly as possible,” Kellogg spokesperson Kris Charles said.

Kellogg said that for competitive reasons it doesn’t disclose the number of employees at the Bucknell Drive plant, or the number or variety of waffles it produces annually.

“Epic” is how officials are describing the floods that hit metro Atlanta earlier this week.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the floods were a “once in 500 years flood,” meaning the odds of such a thing happening are less “than 0.2 percent in any given year.”

“It is epic!” said Brian McCallum, assistant director for the USGS Water Science Center in Georgia. “The USGS can reliably say just how bad these floods were.”

They are calling this a 500-year flood because of the likeliness of it occurring is so rare, said McCallum. “We could have another flood next year, or floods back-to-back and still be considered 500-year floods because of the probability.”

The data was gathered from their “real-time stream-gauging network,” said the USGS.

Here’s some data gathered from the Atlanta area:

* USGS crews measured the greatest flow ever recorded on Sweetwater Creek near Austell as 28,000 cubic feet per second.

* The Yellow River stream gauges in Gwinnett, DeKalb and Rockdale counties measured flows between the 1 percent chance (100-year) and 0.5 percent chance (200-year) flood magnitude.

* Flows caused by the rain at Peachtree Creek in Atlanta were only near the 10 percent chance (10-year) flood magnitude, but the backwater effects from the Chattahoochee River pushed water levels over the 0.2 percent chance (500-year) flood at the gauge location.

* On the Chattahoochee, USGS measured a 1 percent chance (100-year) flood at Vinings and Roswell.

Twenty gauges were damaged during the downpour.

“We expect that all but one gauge should be operational by the end of the day,” said McCallum. “Fixing the gauges is our priority now.”

Four people have been confirmed dead after heavy rains have flooded many parts of metro Atlanta, closing highways, railroads and schools. Emergency crews across the region are searching for countless more reported missing amid the flooding waters.

A 2-year-old boy was found dead in Carroll County Monday afternoon after his family’s mobile home was swept into a rain-swollen creek, WSB-TV is reporting. The mobile home split apart after being carried away by Snake Creek. After about three hours in the water, other family members, including a 1-year-old child, were rescued, but the 2-year-old remained missing until 1:30 p.m. Monday.

The fire chief in Carroll County told WSB-TV that Snake Creek had risen to 20-feet deep. It’s typically 2-feet deep, he said.

Two men died in Douglas County in separate incidents, officials said. Spokesman Wes Tallon said a man’s body had been found downstream from where a car was swept into a creek on North Helton Road. WSB-TV is reporting a second man, identified as 29-year-old Kevin Hodges, was found along Banks Mill Road.

Also in Douglas County, five or six people have been reported missing, including a mother and two children, according to authorities.

A Gwinnett County woman has also died. Seydi Burciaga, 39, was driving on Desiree Drive near Lawrenceville Highway in the unincorporated Lawrenceville area around 5 a.m. when her van was swept into a rain-swollen creek. Firefighters arrived to find the area under several feet of water with one motorist standing on the roof of his car to escape the deluge, said Gwinnett fire spokesman Capt. Thomas Rutledge.

A swiftwater rescue team deployed an inflatable boat and firefighters on foot also used a rope system to help them navigate the rising tide as they waded in to search for the woman. They found her deceased inside the van, Rutledge said.

Relatives told authorities that they had been on the phone with Burciaga during her ordeal and relaying information about her condition and location to 911. However, they eventually lost contact with her, Rutledge said.

Albert Lester, who lives two houses up from the swollen creek, said he saw the van drive past at a fast pace just before it hit the water.

“I saw her coming and wondered why she didn’t brake or anything,” Lester said. “I heard her hit (the water). She didn’t have a chance.”

Lester said this is the second time he has seen the creek rise this high in his 33 years in the neighborhood.

A next-door neighbor, Chad Sullivan, 28, said Burciaga had a husband and two kids, a girl and boy who appeared to be about 4 or 5 years old.

Burciaga was swept away just a few feet from the front door of Emanuel Istudor, 26, who lives adjacent to the creek on Desiree Drive. There are no street lights on that stretch of the road. With heavy rain, visibility would have been practically nil, Istudor said.

“You’d think it was a puddle if you were driving with no visibility at 4 a.m., but it was really six feet of water,” Istudor said.

He said that water was knee-deep on the first floor of his house at 4 a.m. when he and his parents woke up, and cars were floating in the front yard. The family pushed the cars into the street to block people from attempting to drive on it and then left at 5:15 a.m. to get to higher ground.

“We feel horrible, but there was nothing we could do,” Istudor said.

Neighbors said Burciaga was coming home from her job at a local Sam’s Club store when the incident occurred.

LONDON — “Titanic” stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet have pledged to help the last survivor of the sinking of the ocean liner. The stars say they have thrown their support behind a fund that would subsidize Millvina Dean’s nursing home fees.

Dean was 2 months old when the Titanic sank beneath the waves on the night of April 14, 1912. She has been living at a nursing home in the English city of Southampton since she broke her hip about three years ago but has struggled to pay the fees.

In October she sold several Titanic mementoes to raise cash.

DiCaprio and Winslet said in a statement that they hoped Dean could rest easier knowing that her future was secure. The Millvina Fund was launched Monday in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

State health officials have confirmed a case of swine flu involving a 14-year-old student at Eagles Landing Christian Academy in McDonough.

The private Henry County school is now closed for the next 14 days, officials said.

Elizabeth Ford, director of the state Division of Public Health, also revealed more information on three additional probable cases of swine flu: A 36-year-old pregnant woman from DeKalb County; an 8-year-old girl from Clayton County; and a 3-year-old boy from Cobb County.

Ford said the testing indicates there is a high likelihood that the three probable cases also will be confirmed as swine flu by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ford said the 14-year-old at Eagle’s Landing may have obtained the illness from a younger sibling who had flu-like symptoms during the school spring break. That 12-year-old sibling is now well.

Eagle’s Landing is about 25 miles south of Atlanta. According to the school’s Website, it has an enrollment of over 1,100 on its 86-acre campus.

On Monday, 16-year-old Matthew Calhoun recalled how anytime classmates coughed last week, they were ribbed for possibly having the H1N1 virus, commonly called swine flu.

But last Friday during a prayer request at the private Christian school, another student asked that they pray for a sick middle-schooler suspected of having the virus.

“Then I just wanted to go home,” he said.

On Sunday, Matthew received a text from his best friend that school was canceled because of suspected swine flu. Moments later, officials from the school in Henry County phoned his father, Dwayne Calhoun, and said school was canceled indefinitely as authorities tried to determine whether the unnamed student had contracted swine flu.

The H1N1 virus has sickened more than 200 people and killed one in the U.S., according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .

Dwayne Calhoun, whose 6-year-old son also attends Eagle’s Landing, said he was impressed with the school’s handling of the case.

“I’m thankful they are taking the precautions they are,” he said. “They keep the parents pretty well informed.”

Calhoun said his family isn’t alarmed by the news and is taking basic precautions of frequent hand-washing. Matthew said he and his friends are a bit shaken by the news.

“At first there was only one case in Georgia, and then the odds of the second case [possibly] being in our school is pretty wild,” he said.

In the first case, a woman visiting Georgia from Kentucky was sent on to the CDC for final testing, and it tested positive for swine flu. She remains in a hospital in stable condition in LaGrange.

Matthew and his friends do not know the student in question.

On its web site Monday, Eagle’s Landing President Tim Dowdy said the school is undergoing a deep cleaning as a precaution.

Cowdy added that the health department will be contacting any student who may have been exposed to the virus.

(Ed note: Oh lawd! Shota’s got swine flu in my area!)

* White House aide’s family suspected of swine flu.

* 1st US death a toddler in Houston, Texas

* Mexico closes federal government, asks businesses to shut down.

* A few schools close in US.

* N95 Masks are big sellers.

* 130 confirmed cases in the US, including 1 now in Georgia.

* France wants to suspend flights to Mexico

* World Health Organization says there have only been 7 deaths, not 152.

* Threat level moved upwards signifying widespread human contraction of virus.

* Centers for Disease Control: 91 Cases in the United States

* More closures in Mexico City including taco stands, movie houses, and soccer games.

(map)

* 2,000+ cases in Mexico City.

* Closing US/Mexico Border “bends to politics, not science.”

* European Union warns against travel to both United States and Mexico

* UK may have seventeen cases itself.

* Russia to inspect planes coming from The Americas.

* 28 confirmed cases in NYC, 17 more are “probable”

* Deaths however have been extremely limited to Mexico.

* Students in NYC come down with sudden flu-like symptoms, 8 confirmed Swine Flu. In total 5 states in the US have confirmed cases. California, Kansas, Ohio, Texas, and New York.

* Mexico City grinds to standstill as residents stay home.

* Cases are also confirmed in Canada, suspected in New Zealand, Israel, Spain.

* US Government releases some of its stockpiles of Tamiflu and Relenza to combat possible pandemic.

* CDC recommend planning for school closures.

(more)

MEXICO CITY/GENEVA (Reuters) – A new flu strain that has killed up to 68 people in Mexico could become a pandemic, the World Health Organization warned on Saturday, as health experts tried to track the disease’s spread.

Hospitals tested patients with flu symptoms for the never-before-seen virus, which has also infected eight people in the United States. No further deaths had come to light since Friday afternoon, but officials warned the person-to-person infections meant there was a risk of a major outbreak.

“It has pandemic potential because it is infecting people,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said in Geneva.

“However, we cannot say on the basis of currently available laboratory, epidemiological and clinical evidence whether or not it will indeed cause a pandemic.”

The new flu strain — a mixture of swine, human and avian flu viruses — is still poorly understood and the situation is evolving quickly, Chan said.

Mexico city’s health secretary, Armando Ahued, said no new flu deaths had been reported since Friday, when Mexico gave the death toll as 20 confirmed and 48 other possible deaths. In all, 1,004 suspected cases have been reported nationwide.

Mexico has shut schools, cinemas and museums and canceled public events in its sprawling, overcrowded capital of 20 million people to try to prevent further infections. Weekend soccer matches were played in empty stadiums and people on the street wore face masks.

The strain of flu has spread fast between people and infected some individuals who had no contact with one another.

The WHO says the virus from 12 of the Mexican patients is genetically the same as a new strain of swine flu, designated H1N1, seen in eight people in California and Texas. All of the eight later recovered.

An emergency committee of WHO experts, convening on Saturday, will advise Chan on issues including possibly changing the WHO’s pandemic alert level, currently 3 on a scale of 1 to 6.

“We do not yet have a complete picture of the epidemiology or the risk, including possible spread beyond the currently affected areas,” Chan said, adding the situation was seen as “serious.”

Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova, speaking on Friday’s evening television news, encouraged people to avoid crowds and wear face masks, noting there was no guarantee that a vaccine would help against the new strain.

LAKE WYLIE, S.C. — A man escaped from a tanning bed as it burst into flames, sparking a fire that evacuated a Lake Wylie shopping center and damaged several stores Monday, authorities said.

No one, including the man in the bed, was hurt. But several stores in the Bethel Commons strip mall off S.C. 274 and S.C. 49 suffered smoke damage that will likely keep them closed most of the week, said Bethel Fire Chief Don Love.

Authorities are investigating what ignited the bed at Ultratan.

The man who escaped declined to give his name but said he was working on his tan when he heard a popping noise, then saw a flame at the corner of the tanning bed near his foot. He threw open the lid and jumped out, he said.

When firefighters arrived around 4:15 p.m. “smoke was pouring out of all sides of the building,” said Bethel Assistant Fire Chief David Long. By 5:30 p.m. the fire was out and smoke cleared.

TACOMA, Wash. — Debris flew into the grandstands at a monster truck show in Washington state, killing a 6-year-old boy and injuring another spectator, witnesses and city officials said Saturday.

A red truck came apart while doing doughnuts during the freestyle competition of Friday night’s Monster Jam show, the witnesses said. Debris from the truck flew 30 to 50 feet over a safety barrier into the stands.

“Parts were falling off and a piece flew up and hit a little boy,” Christine Moe told King Television of Seattle.

Police Officer Mark Fulghum said officers serving as security at the Tacoma Dome investigated the accident.

“At this point, there’s nothing to indicate that there’s anything criminal,” Fulghum told The Associated Press on Saturday night. “Right now it looks like a tragic accident.”

The Pierce County medical examiner’s office identified the boy killed as Sebastian Hizey of Puyallup.

The boy’s father, Jessie Hizey, issued a statement to KIRO-TV on Saturday that said his son was hit in the head by a Frisbee-sized piece of metal, weighing between 7 and 12 pounds.

“I cannot get the images” out of my head, the father said.

The man who was injured was taken to a hospital Friday night, but Robert McNair-Huff, community relations manager for the city, said the man’s identity was not available Saturday.

Some spectators told the TV station they had to throw cups off the stands to get the attention of medics. The show continued after the two were hurt, and many spectators left.

“They just kept going,” Moe said. “We grabbed our kids and just bee-lined out of there.”

Laurie Deranleau, 32, a nurse from Westport, told The News Tribune, “Everybody sitting around thought they should have dropped the show and gave the family some respect. Nobody was paying attention to the show.”

The Tacoma Dome was continuing with four Monster Jam shows on Saturday and Sunday.

McNair-Huff said the promoter, Feld Motor sports, promised more inspections of trucks in the show and that the truck involved in the accident would be withdrawn.

“All of us at Feld Motor Sports are saddened by the accident that occurred last night at the Monster Jam Show in Tacoma when two of our customers were seriously injured,” the Aurora, Ill., company said in a statement Saturday to the AP. “Feld Motor Sports is looking into this tragic accident as the safety of all our customers is our top priority and this type of incident has never happened before in the history of Monster Jam events.”

A U.S. Airways airplane crashed into the Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after a bird apparently entered the engine causing it to malfunction, CBS 2 has learned.

Miraculously, all passengers were said to have been rescued from the frigid waters thanks to a “remarkable” emergency landing procedure by the pilots.

Officials report the airplane is Flight 1549, an Airbus a320 that took off from La Guardia Aiport and was headed to Charlotte, N.C. There are reports that there were 151 people on board. It went down around 3:30 p.m.

“About three or four minutes into the flight the left engine just blew, fire and flames came out of it and it just started smelling a lot like gasoline. A couple minutes after that the pilots said we had to brace for a hard impact, and that’s when everyone started saying prayers,” said a passenger who was sitting in seat 22A on the plane.

Officials believe a bird strike caused the plane to go down, meaning a bird may have entered the engine, causing a malfunction. A large flock of geese was said to have flown in front of the plane at the time of the bird strike.

The bird strike disabled both engines.

“I could see flames spewing out of the left engine. It looked like he was having trouble maintaining altitude,” said CBS 2 Engineer Bob Simms, who witnessed the crash. “It was just horrible to see.”

It’s believed rescuers were able to evacuate every passenger from the plane, though many reportedly suffered various injuries. One passenger said he saw a woman who may have lost her leg in the crash.

The flight was in air for about six minutes before it went down, at a maximum altitude of 3,200 feet. The last reported air speed was 172 mph. It went down around 46th Street in Manhattan and before the fuselage came to a rest around 23rd Street.

It’s believed the pilots conducted a very controlled emergency landing after the engines went out, likely why the plane was able to remain upright as it landed.

“You have compromised engines, you don’t have much altitude, you don’t have much speed…it looks like a remarkable effort,” said CBS News Analyst Bob Orr.

Passengers could be seen standing on the wing of the plane and entering rescue boats, and a rescue ferry almost immediately after it crashed. More than 100 firefighters were sent to the scene. A second crew of divers was also sent to the scene, but it’s believed the most urgent part of the rescue operation was over by 4:20 p.m.

Passengers were being treated for hypothermia and shock, according to CBS 2′s Marcia Kramer.

According to Kramer, survivors told her that about two minutes after takeoff, a loud “boom” was heard and the plane began descending. She reported seeing a flight attendant being taken away on a stretcher, though she said it appeared that was among the more serious injuries.

“As we got lower and lower the pilot said brace for impact and we landed,” one survivor told CBS 2.

“It was just going down further and further and further and then all of a sudden it was gone,” a witness named Peter Chinchino told CBS 2. “I’m shaking, it was crazy. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was nothing wrong with the plane, it wasn’t wobbling, there was no smoke coming out of it!”

Temperatures at the time of the crash in the city were just about 20 degrees, with the water temperature about 40 degrees.

According to Dr. Max Gomez, a person in 40 degree water will likely lose consciousness after 30 minutes.

The FBI is reporting that there is no indication that terrorist activity was involved in the crash.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – The death toll in the collapse of a ramshackle school in Haiti rose above 90 on Saturday after rescue workers uncovered a room full of dead, many of them children, officials said.

Civil protection service head Alta Jean-Baptiste said there were 84 people confirmed dead and 150 injured as of noon. Another civil protection official, Michel Joseph Jr., said he had seen eight more bodies, bringing the count to 92.

“We haven’t been able to get them out yet,” Joseph said as rescue workers arrived from the United States and the French Caribbean island of Martinique to help the ill-equipped and impoverished country and U.N. peacekeepers posted there search for survivors.

Officials said 700 children were enrolled at the three-story La Promesse school, but it was not known how many were in the building when it caved in on Friday while class was in session.

Rescuers worked frantically at the school site on the outskirts of Port-of Prince, the Haitian capital, bringing in a crane to lift blocks of concrete. Firefighters from Virginia and rescue workers from Martinique brought sniffer dogs. The search was set to continue for a second night.

President Rene Preval said the church school had been built with hardly any structural steel or cement to hold its concrete blocks together. Debris crushed neighboring residences in the Nerettes community.

The owner of the school and church, Protestant minister Fortin Augustin, was arrested.

“He told me he built the building all by himself. He said he didn’t need an engineer because he had good knowledge of construction,” said prosecutor Joseph Manes Louis, adding that Augustin stated he had once worked on construction sites as a foreman.

Preval, who was at the scene on Saturday, said searchers dropped water and biscuits through gaps in the rubble overnight to children and focused their efforts on reaching them.

“Last night we were sure there were still seven children alive. We got one of them but we have lost all signs of the other six being alive,” Preval said. “Some say they might be sleeping. Others believe they have died.”

As Preval spoke, a rescue worker told him a room full of new victims, mostly students, had been discovered. Officials later said at least 21 bodies were in the room.

At least 35 students, 13 girls and 22 boys, were pulled from the rubble alive overnight.

Two of Chimene Rene’s children were found alive, but two sons, Stevenson Casamajor, 13, and Jeff Casamajor, 15, were still missing.

“We’ve been everywhere. We’ve been to the hospital, we’ve been everywhere looking for them,” she said. “It seems there is no more hope now because it seems that nobody will come out alive from the rubble.”

Crowds of screaming and crying parents searched for their children in the ruins, and roads around the school were so jammed with people that some rescuers had to be brought in by helicopter.

A rescue worker said the dead included an entire philosophy class with the exception of one girl who was alive because she had asked for permission to leave to use the bathroom just before the collapse.

“It is a tragedy, particularly when it involves children,” U.N. mission chief Hedi Annabi said. “I share their sorrow and express my profound sympathy to the relatives of the victims.”

As you may have read in my previous post on the subject, HSX, a website that I have come to love and appreciate and involve myself in over the last several years has gone 2.0.

I have prepared a statement:

I wished I were not the KIDS Fund manger so I didn’t have to return.

The core game was overshot by a terribly installed facebook-type design and cover-game. This caused the original to lose functionality.

Considering my complete and total disdain for Web 2.0 and my years long reluctance to join MySpace and then later Facebook speaks volumes.

The only reason why I do continue to use Facebook is because it is not ugly as shit (which Myspace and HSX) and it is actually a good and popular representation of a social networking site which is what I want it to be.

Unlike HSX, which I wanted to be a stock market simulation game based on movies.

All hell continued to break loose in the United State’s financial markets. More investment banks failed (Lehman Brothers). Others were quickly married to other banks (Bank of America / Merrill Lynch). Oh, and still others are teetering on the edge of failing as well (AIG, WaMu, Wachovia.)

The Dow dropped over 500 points.

The Fed pumped in another 70 Billion. Not that that money actually exists in any real sense of the word.

Pretty much devastation every where you look. But hey, McCain says the fundamentals of the economy are strong. ORLY?

Meanwhile, oil prices continue to go down, not that it will help much at the pumps. Refining capacity continued to be at a declined pace due to the fallout destruction from Hurricane Ike. The price at the pump in much of the Southeast is well above the highest rates in history.

Speaking of Ike. There are around 37,000 people in Galveston that are overcrowding shelters that are low on food and water and other resources. While many are to blame for not heeding the evacuations in the first place, it does beg the question were any lessons learned from Katrina?

At this rate we won’t need the colliders in France to create black holes in late October to ruin everything.

As a massive storm pounded through the heart of America’s oil zone, the pumps of metro Atlanta were feeling the impact Saturday.

In what hinted at a replay of the near-panic that followed Hurricane Rita, prices around the region exceeded $5 a gallon in some places. Some stations ran out of gasoline, and some of those still open found lines forming.

At an Ingles in Cumming, usually a discount station, regular sold for $5.20 a gallon before dropping later in the day.

The national average cost for regular unleaded was $3.73 Saturday, compared to $3.68 Friday, according to AAA. The highest recorded average price nationally was July 17 at $4.11.

Prices had started to tick up early in the week as Hurricane Ike took aim at the Texas coast. Then the refineries, production platforms and rigs shut down as Ike drew closer, and price hikes accelerated.

Metro Atlanta’s average price for unleaded was $3.75 as of late Friday afternoon, up from $3.61 on Thursday, according to atlantagasprices.com, which compiles motorist reports. That’s up 19 cents from one week ago.

Late Friday, Gov. Sonny Perdue signed an executive order activating a state statute against price gouging that allows prosecution of stations that raise prices excessively.

Houston Mayor Bill White told residents to boil drinking water and to stay off the roads this morning as emergency crews work to remove the downed power lines and debris that littered the streets in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike.
Street flooding also made many roadways impassable, White said, even for high-water vehicles.

“No matter how brave you feel, we don’t need to be rescuing people who do not need to be on the roads,” he said, noting that those rescue missions divert resources needed to help people facing storm-caused life-threatening emergencies.

Fire and EMS crews were back on the street by 9 a.m. after Ike’s powerful winds forced them to suspend services earlier this morning, Houston Fire Department Executive Assistant Chief Rick Flanagan said. The city’s 911 service has received 4,700 calls in the past 24 hours, and crews were working as quickly as possible to answer them, he said.

However, he noted the same downed power lines, billboards and trees that made driving hazardous for civilians was impeding their ability to reach some locations.
“It’s going to be a slow process for us to get out there to you this morning,” he said.

After churning Texas-ward through the Gulf of Mexico for days, Hurricane Ike’s center hit Galveston Island at 2:10 a.m. today. Its 110 mph winds — Ike was a strong Category 2 hurricane — propelled a 12.4 foot storm surge into the downtown area, leaving much of the district inundated in 6 to 7 feet of water.

Ike scoured the city’s seawall, demolishing landmarks including the Balinese Room, a historic nightclub and one-time gambling establishment dating to the 1940s. Also destroyed were Murdoch’s Pier and a Hooters restaurant, the latter said to have crashed into the sea at 1 a.m. with an explosive roar.

Galveston officials today worried about the fate of about 23,000 people who ignored a mandatory evacuation order.

“We don’t know what we’re going to find,” said Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas. “We hope we’ll find that the people who didn’t leave here are alive and well.”
Galveston firefighters received about 100 calls for rescue after they had ceased operations as the storm approached.

At least one death was directly attributed to the storm. The Associated Press said Montgomery County Sheriff’s Lt. Dan Norris said a woman was crushed by a tree as she slept in her home.

In Houston, Ike flooded streets, uprooted trees, sucked windows out of downtown high-rise office buildings, damaged Reliant Stadium — leading to a cancellation of the Texan’s Monday season-opener against Baltimore — and left millions of residents without electricity.

Late this morning the Harris County Toll Road Authority closed the Houston Ship Channel Bridge for safety reasons, noting the bridge would reopen when winds subsided.

Shortly before noon, the storm was approaching Lufkin in East Texas with 80 mph winds.

White today asked residents to conserve water because the city’s water supply was reaching low-pressure levels amid a power outage at a crucial pumping station. Using tap water to bathe or clean up could lower the pressure even further, he said.
CenterPoint crews had made restoring that power a top priority, he said. Residents who absolutely must drink tap water should bring it to a rapid boil for a minute, he said, in case the supply has been contaminated. There was no evidence of contamination, but it was possible since water pressure had fallen to such a low level.

Hurricane Ike knocked electricity offline for virtually the entire Houston area as it continued to roar across the area today.

CenterPoint Energy said about 90 percent of its roughly 2 million customers were in the dark before daybreak even as the storm continued to pack a 100 mph punch with the eye still near Kingwood as of 6 a.m. That means nearly 4.5 million residents were without power and doesn’t include the service area of Entergy Texas.

CenterPoint spokesman Floyd LeBlanc said downtown Houston and the Medical Center, both of which have underground power lines, were the only large areas with reliable electricity. He said CenterPoint had braced for more than half its customer base losing service, and full restoration could take “several weeks.”

Entergy spokesman David Caplan said 96 percent of its customers throughout its service area — or 380,000 – are in the dark. Two generating stations in Bridge City and Willis are down, so they and transmission lines have to be back up before crews can focus on restoring power to customers. Caplan says the process could take weeks.

“As soon as it’s safe to travel – it’s still blowing out there – we will get a couple hundred scouts to go out and do the assessments, either in vehicles or in helicopters, to fly over the lines, see where the damage is and begin to pull together a restoration plan. That could take 24 to 48 hours, depending on the weather.”

In Galveston this morning, storm battered residents who declined to evacuate gingerly crept from their homes to assess the damage.

Kim Sexton, 47, who remained in Galveston with her father, who refused to leave, was grateful for surviving safely. “I knew it was going to be bad, but not like this,” she said. “But we’re OK. We made it through the storm, Baby!”

In Galveston’s Central City neighborhood, 79-year-old Ernestina Espinoza was awakened by the storm at 1:30 a.m. When she stepped from her bed, water came higher than her knees.

“I said, ‘Oh no!’” she recalled today. “I started crying.”

Galveston Fire Chief Michael Varela, speaking to reporters in the San Luis Hotel, where the city’s mayor and emergency personnel are staying, said they would respond to needs on the west end of the island first, since it was hardest hit.

At least eight to 10 feet of water was on the streets when they ceased operations, and the second half of the storm, which came after that point, was far worse than the first, he said.

Asked how hard he believed Galveston had been hit, Varela said: ”For us, one to 10, I’d say it’s a 10.

”I was back here in Alicia (in 1983), and we didn’t have this type of water, so this is definitely a worse storm than we’ve had.”
City Manager Steve LeBlanc went so far as to ask the media not to photograph “certain things” in the aftermath, referring to the possibility of dead bodies.

In Austin, state emergency officials said water was encroaching from both ends of the island as well as over the seawall. The University of Texas Medical Branch was taking on water, officials said.

Vee Thrasher saw the storm surge first-hand today. After the ceiling caved in on her mother’s bedroom in their second floor Galveston apartment, Thrasher moved into the bathroom and took in some neighbors from the first floor, which had already flooded.
The water reached about halfway up the staircase leading up to her apartment, which is across the street from Seawall Boulevard in the middle of the island, near the famed 61st Street Pier, which was washed away.

”The wind, it’s terrible,” said Thrasher, whose mother was visiting her from Germany. ”It keeps shaking the building. I just moved here a few months ago. This is not my idea of fun.”

Officials in Brazoria County said as many as 35 percent of residents in mandatory evacuation zones stayed behind, or about 67,000. That would put about 90,000 Texans in potentially surge-susceptible areas in the two counties.

LeBlanc said he didn’t know how long it would take before evacuated residents could return. The city may briefly allow them back in to check on their homes, but will then ask them to leave again until the city is safe.

Officials did not know how many Harris County residents ignored mandatory evacuation orders, but Emmett said those people were in his prayers.

Asked if more areas should have been evacuated, Emmett said that would have resulted in a chaotic mess as large numbers of evacuees tried to return home to assess the damage to their properties.

Galveston ordered an 8 p.m. curfew which ended at 5 a.m. today but will continue along the same overnight schedule for Galveston and Pelican Island through Monday morning.

“We’re going to make sure these homes are safe when (evacuees) return,” said Thomas, the mayor.

In Harris County, a curfew started at 7 p.m. and was in place until 6 a.m. today for the areas covered by the mandatory evacuation. The Harris County curfew also will be in effect Saturday night for the nine evacuated ZIP codes only.

Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt and Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas said they would be strictly enforcing those curfews to protect evacuees’ homes.

The anticipated surge prompted Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, to remark: “This is pretty much a worst-case scenario for flooding the Gulf Coast area.”

FEMA anticipates about 100,000 homes will be flooded.

”It is a potentially catastrophic hurricane,” Chertoff said. ”We will move as swiftly as possible to relieve suffering.”

Once Ike moves through, thousands of people could be without power and food, said FEMA Administrator David Paulison. Emergency personnel have shipped in 2.5 million MREs (meals ready to eat) in Texas, and another 3 million will be brought in, he said.

The Red Cross expects to feed 500,000 people.

Ike, when its core was still 135 miles at sea, indirectly claimed its first victim Friday when a 10-year-old Montgomery boy was killed by a falling branch as his parents cut down a tree.

Montgomery County authorities said Joel Caleb, was killed about 9 a.m. as his father cut down the tree, apparently in preparation for the coming storm. The boy was struck in the head.

The boy was dead on arrival at Tomball Regional Medical Center.

A 19-year-old Corpus Christi man was presumed drowned after storm surge from Hurricane Ike swept him from a jetty, Corpus Christi Police Chief Bryan Smith said.
Three people were injured in a two-alarm fire at Brennan’s restaurant early today, a Midtown institution on Smith Street.

In an early bit of good news, the Coast Guard said today that the disabled Cypriot freighter Antalina and her 22 crewmembers were weathered the storm’s passage and the ship was awaiting a tow back to port.

The ship, loaded with petroleum coke floated helplessly as Hurricane Ike approached, and a rescue attempt was unsuccessful.

“The rescue of these 22 crewmembers was one of our highest priorities, but now that we know they are safe, we can dedicate all our aircraft and resources to people along the Texas coast who may need rescuing after the Ike passes,” said Chief Petty Officer Mike O’Berry, assistant public affairs officer for the Eighth Coast Guard District.

GALVESTON, Texas (Reuters) – Hurricane Ike moved on Friday within 24 hours of striking the densely populated Texas coast near Houston with a possible 20-foot wall of water in what may be the worst storm to hit Texas in nearly 50 years.

Ike was a Category 2 storm with 105 mph winds and likely will come ashore late on Friday or early on Saturday as a dangerous Category 3 storm on the five-step intensity scale with winds of more than 111 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.

The National Weather Service warned that persons not heeding evacuation orders “may face certain death” and many homes of average construction on the coast will be destroyed.

Hundreds of thousands fled the island city of Galveston and low-lying counties under mandatory evacuation orders and authorities urged holdouts to move before Ike’s winds started to make car travel dangerous.

“If you think you want to ride out the storm, and you’re looking at a 20-foot wall of water coming at you, you better think again,” said Houston Mayor Bill White, whose sprawling city of 2 million encompasses low areas in extreme danger.

In Galveston — site of a 1900 hurricane that was the deadliest weather disaster in U.S. history — residents nervously eyed the surf pounding the sea wall and splashing over the coast road early Friday.

“I’ve never seen it like that before. I’m scared, I’m leaving,” said motel manager Roy Patel. He had boarded up the office of the Economy Motel on the sea front and was headed out to the mainland by car.

In central Houston, the administrative hub of the nation’s oil industry around 50 miles inland from Galveston, businesses closed and boarded up windows Thursday night in preparation for possible hurricane-force winds and flooding. But officials said most residents should “shelter in place” since the city is some 50 feet above sea level.

A slew of oil refineries located in Galveston Bay that account for around 12 percent of U.S. capacity were also in the storm’s likely path. U.S. crude futures rose $0.50 to $101.38 a barrel.

Weather forecasters at Planalytics saw “major and long-term damage likely at the major refining cities.”

At 8 a.m. EDT on Friday, the hurricane center said in its latest advisory Ike was about 230 miles southeast of Galveston. It was moving west-northwest at 13 mph

Much to authorities’ frustration, holdouts harked back to the bad experience of the last large-scale evacuation in Texas in 2005, when 2 million people fled Hurricane Rita, getting stranded on highways for hours and running out of gasoline. Rita largely skirted the Houston area.

“We have pets, we can’t travel,” said Monette Baugh, clutching her poodle as she walked the Galveston sea wall. “We stayed for Rita, and we are staying this time. You listen to the TV and you are petrified. They have a tendency to exaggerate. But yes, this is scary.”

Local television said Ike looked to pose the biggest threat to the Texas coast since Hurricane Carla in 1961, which struck as a Category 4 storm and caused over $2 billion in damage and 43 deaths.

>> John McCain picked a chick as his VP nomination. Now it’s being revealed that that woman has a preggers 17 year old. Oh, and the VP choice Mrs Palin is totally against anything other than abstinence as a baby preventing method. Oopsie.

>> With Hurricane Gustav winding down, Tropical Storm Hanna runs along the islands in the Caribbean. Landfall could occur in South Carolina by midnight Friday. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Ike is in the mid-Atlantic hanging out. He was quoted as saying, “Babhabha baa cookie monster.”

>> Time Warner will join Comcast in capping the internet usage of “high end” users. America’s series of tubes will soon get a lot less free flowing.

>> Google is putting out a web browser. It’s called Chrome and it’s supposed to be designed for how the internet works in more modern times. But are they tracking your surfing information? Oooooooh.

Another year, another DragonCon, another hurricane striking.

It’s been a long, long weekend so I’m pretty much dead. Hopefully work will allow me to miss unloading the truck tomorrow morning. I couldn’t imagine lifting 4000 pounds at this point! I did decimate my finances pretty sufficiently enough, but hopefully if one payment gets posted correctly I won’t have gone into the negative.

I’m very sorry for those affected in the Gulf Coast area by Hurricane Gustav. It’s so cyclical the way the weather works bring death and destruction year after year. Please continue to be safe.

I’m going to recover from the con now and we’ll get back to regular updates on both of the sites possibly as early as tomorrow.

–love, PIXIE

NEW ORLEANS — With Gustav approaching hurricane strength and showing no signs of veering off a track to slam into the Gulf Coast, authorities across the region began laying the groundwork Thursday to get the sick, elderly and poor away from the shoreline.

The first batch of 700 buses that could ferry residents inland were being sent to a staging area near New Orleans, and officials in Mississippi were trying to decide when to move Katrina-battered residents along the coast who were still living in temporary homes, including trailers vulnerable to high wind.

The preliminary planning for a potential evacuation is part of a massive outline drafted after Hurricane Katrina slammed ashore three years ago, flooding 80 percent of New Orleans and stranding thousands who couldn’t get out in time. As the region prepared to mark the storm’s anniversary Friday, officials said they were confident those blueprints made them ready for Gustav.

“There are a lot of things that are different between now and what we faced in 2005 when Katrina came ashore,” said U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who flew to Louisiana to meet with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Bobby Jindal. “We’ve had three years to put together a plan that never existed before.”

With Gustav still several days away, authorities cautioned that no plans were set in stone, and had not yet called for residents to leave. Projections showed the storm arriving early next week as a Category 3 storm, with winds of 111 mph or greater, anywhere from the Florida Panhandle to eastern Texas. But forecasts are extremely tentative several days out, and the storm could change course.

Governors in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas pre-declared states of emergency in an attempt to build a foundation for federal assistance. Batteries, bottled water, and other storm supplies were selling briskly. Roughly 3,000 National Guard troops were on standby in Louisiana, and another 5,000 were readying in Texas. Hotels in the region reported being booked solid by coastal residents planning ahead.

“We’re almost sold out,” said Sheila Harris, the administrative assistant at the Comfort Inn in Tupelo, Miss, which is about 300 miles inland from the Mississippi coast. She said most of the 83 rooms at the hotel had been booked by New Orleans and southern Mississippi residents.

Many residents found themselves repeating the same things they did in the days before Katrina. The New Orleans Saints were set to play the Miami Dolphins in the team’s final NFL preseason game Thursday night; the Saints played their final game of the 2005 preseason just three days before Katrina. Running back Deuce McAllister, who was planning to shore up his suburban home, found it a little weird to be preparing for a possible storm again.

“It’s out of our hands,” said McAllister. “We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”

The city was expected to announce later Thursday whether officials would go ahead with events to mark the Katrina anniversary. Among the events that have been planned are a jazz funeral to bury remains of unidentified Katrina victims and a candlelight vigil at Jackson Square.

If a Category 3 or stronger hurricane threatens, New Orleans plans to institute a mandatory evacuation order. Depending on the churn of this system, the call could come with a slow-moving Category 2, the city’s emergency preparedness director, Jerry Sneed, said.

Nagin said in interviews Wednesday that the clock on an evacuation would start three days, or 72 hours, from an anticipated landfall.

Unlike Katrina, there will be no massive shelter at the Superdome, a plan designed to encourage residents to leave.

Residents who need help — the elderly, disabled, those without their own transportation — would be moved out by buses, bound for shelters in other Louisiana cities such as Alexandria, Shreveport and Monroe, and Amtrak trains headed to Jackson, Miss., officials have said. Others are expected to leave on their own by vehicle.

The city said it is prepared to move 30,000 residents; estimates put the city’s current population between 310,000 to 340,000 people. There were about 454,000 here before Katrina hit.

Though officials urged residents to prepare by securing their homes, finding valuables and locating personal documents, some were taking a wait-and-see attitude. In Alabama, many tourists and residents were taking a wait-and-see attitude, and were more focused on the upcoming Labor Day weekend.

“We plan to sit in a bar and watch the whole thing,” joked Greg Lee, a tourist from Clarksville, Tenn. He was grocery shopping with family members, stocking up on cold beverages and planning to stay through the holiday at their beach house at Fort Morgan, down a beach road from Gulf Shores.

Hurricane-seasoned officials also were hoping for the chance forecasts were wrong. Joey Durel, president of Lafayette’s city and parish governments, said officials in that south-central Louisiana community may begin handing out sandbags to residents as early as Friday — but hoped they wouldn’t need them.

“We’re glad to see we’re in the (forecast) path because they never get it right this far out,” Durel said. “I say that slightly tongue in cheek, but it’s true.”

(FLASHBACK)

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. – Emergency crews launched airboats into submerged streets Wednesday to rescue central Florida residents trapped by rising floodwaters from a stalled Tropical Storm Fay, which soaked the state for a third consecutive day.

Calling the flooding “catastrophic,” Gov. Charlie Crist requested an emergency disaster declaration from the federal government to defray rising debris and response costs. The White House said the Federal Emergency Management Agency was reviewing the request.

Flooding was reported in hundreds of homes in Brevard and St. Lucie counties, some by up to 5 feet of standing water. In three towns, rising waters backed up sewage systems. It wasn’t immediately clear how many residents had been displaced or were stranded, but county officials reported making dozens of rescues.

“We can’t even get out of our house,” said Billie Dayton of Port St. Lucie, as waters lapped at her porch. “We’re just hoping that it doesn’t rain anymore.”

The storm could dump 30 inches of rain in some areas of Florida and the National Hurricane Center said up to 22 inches had already fallen near Melbourne, just south of Cape Canaveral on the state’s central Atlantic coast.

Forecasters originally expected Fay to energize over the ocean and possibly become a hurricane before landing in Florida for the third time later this week. The erratic storm first struck Monday in the Florida Keys, then veered out to sea before traversing east across the state, briefly strengthening, then stalling. For much of Wednesday, the storm barely moved, dumping inches and inches of rain over coastal central Florida.

If Fay crosses into the Atlantic and strikes Florida again, as expected, it would be just the fourth storm in recorded history to hit the peninsula with tropical storm intensity three separate times. The most recent was Hurricane Donna in 1960, said Daniel Brown, hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center.

In St. Lucie County an estimated 150 residents have been assisted in evacuating by boat or high-clearance vehicle, and water was 3 to 5 feet in some people’s homes, Erick Gill, a county spokesman, said.

The Florida National Guard mobilized about a dozen guardsmen and some high-water vehicles to assist with damage assessment and help with evacuations.

Billy Johnson, 45, and his girlfriend walked four blocks through waist-high water to reach rescue vehicles after his Melbourne apartment was flooded with knee-high water.

“Everything I had is all underwater,” he said. “You can’t grab your food. You can’t grab your TV… Grab what you can and go.”

For many, however, it was just a major inconvenience.

Steve Grenon, 40, was sitting in the bed of his truck in front of his house. He said he’d been holed up there for two days, unable to leave with water was up to six feet deep in the street in front of him. A dodge sedan was partly submerged in front of him.

“I had no idea what it looked like out there until today,” Grenon said.

The storm was 30 miles north of Cape Canaveral at 5 p.m. EDT Wednesday. Its maximum sustained winds were back up to about 50 mph and it was expected to resume slowly moving north later Wednesday at about 2 mph.

Gill said hundreds of homes had been flooded, though a count was incomplete. Homes also were flooded in Brevard County, said Bob Lay, the county’s emergency operations director. Floodwaters also had caused sewage to back up, affecting another 40,000 to 50,000 people in three towns.

Fay formed over the weekend in the Atlantic and was blamed for 20 deaths in the Caribbean before hitting Florida’s southwest coast, where it first fell short of predictions it could be a Category 1 hurricane when it came ashore.

Though no one in Florida had been killed, some were close. Joe McMannis, 27, said he jumped into floodwaters to help three people in a submerged truck in Jensen Beach. McMannis said the driver accidentally drove into a retention pond, confusing it for a driveway.

“It pretty much came up to my ears and chin,” he said. “I saw this little kid coming toward me so I grabbed him and swam him back to the shore line and went back for the other two guys.”

The rain was welcome in dry Florida and Georgia cropland, but could also hurt farmers’ production. Forecasters predicted parts of northern Florida could get 10 to 15 inches of rain, while southern Georgia could receive 3 to 6 inches.

“They’re probably areas of the state that found the rains very beneficial,” said Terence McElroy, spokesman for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

But McElroy said the rain could pool around and damage citrus trees and flood pastures and hay fields. He couldn’t yet quantify damage.

Before moving east, the storm flooded streets in Naples, downed trees and cut power to some 95,000 homes and businesses. Tornadoes spawned by the storm damaged 51 homes in Brevard County, southeast of Orlando, including nine homes that were totaled. In the Keys, officials estimated 25,000 tourists evacuated.

In Florida communities north of the flooding and in southeast Georgia, storm preparations included canceling school, clearing storm drains and ditches and encouraging mobile home residents to find sturdier shelter.

Someone floated the idea and they all went with it.

But once in the water, trying to swim a few lengths was suddenly out of the question.

In fact, there was treading room only when thousands of swimmers crowded into a pool in Penglai in Sichuan, western China.

Families are gradually returning to the area after May’s devastating earthquake-In one of the world’s most populous countries, the fact there was no elbow room in the pool was not going to stop the fun.

But despite their collection of colourful rubber rings, the swimmers couldn’t float about for too long.

The resort has become popular with China’s rising middle class who take day-trips to the scenic spot.

Government officials say the increase in tourists is due to it now being safe to return to the Sichuan area after the devastating earthquake in May.

Official figures say around 70,000 people died in the natural disaster, which left 4.8 million people homeless. It is the biggest natural disaster to hit China since 1976.

BLENCOE, Iowa — Boy Scouts who came to each others’ aid after a tornado that killed four of their comrades and injured 48 people were hailed as heroes Thursday for helping to administer first aid and search for victims buried in their flattened campsite.

Iowa rescue workers cut through downed branches and dug through debris amid rain and lightning Wednesday night to reach the camp where the 93 boys, ages 13 to 18, had huddled for safety through the twister. They and 25 staff members were attending a weeklong leadership training camp.

Lloyd Roitstein, an executive with the Mid America Council of the Boy Scouts of America, reminded reporters at a news conference Thursday that the Boy Scouts motto is “Be Prepared.”

“Last night, the agencies and the scouts were prepared,” he said. “They knew what to do, they knew where to go, and they prepared well.”

Iowa Gov. Chet Culver praised the boys for “taking care of each other.”

The tornado through the scout camp killed three 13-year-olds and one 14-year-old, Roitstein said. A tornado siren went off at the camp, but the scouts had already taken cover before the siren sounded. There was no time to remove them from the isolated retreat, he said.

The boys had been in two groups when the storm hit the Little Sioux Scout Ranch in the Loess Hills. One group managed to take shelter, while the other was out hiking.

Boy Scout officials identified the dead as Aaron Eilerts, 14, of Eagle Grove, Iowa and Josh Fennen, 13, Sam Thomsen, 13, and Ben Petrzilka, 14, all of Omaha.

At least 42 of the injured remained hospitalized Thursday morning, with everything from cuts and bruises to major head trauma, said Eugene Meyer, Iowa’s public safety commissioner.

Three were flown to Mercy Medical Center in Sioux City, Iowa, and a fourth was taken there by ambulance. All were listed in serious condition.

All the scouts and staff were accounted for, Meyer said, adding that searchers were making another pass through the grounds to make sure no one else was injured. The camp was destroyed.

Thomas White, a scout supervisor, said he dug through the wreckage of a collapsed fireplace to reach victims in a building where many scouts were seeking shelter when the twister struck at about 6:35 p.m.

“A bunch of us got together and started undoing the rubble from the fireplace and stuff and waiting for the first responders,” White told KMTV in Omaha, Neb. “They were under the tables and stuff and on their knees, but they had no chance.”

The nearest tornado siren, in nearby Blencoe, sounded only briefly after the storm cut power to the town, said Russ Lawrenson of the Mondamin Fire Department.

Taylor Willoughby, 13, said several scouts were getting ready to watch a movie when someone screamed that there was a tornado. Everyone hunkered down, he said, and windows shattered.

“It sounded like a jet that was flying by really close,” Taylor told NBC’s “Today” on Thursday. “I was hoping that we all made it out OK. I was afraid for my life.”

Ethan Hession, also 13, said he crawled under a table with his friend.

“I just remember looking over at my friend, and all of a sudden he just says to me, ‘Dear God, save us,’” he told “Today.” “Then I just closed my eyes and all of a sudden it’s (the tornado) gone.”

Ethan said the scouts’ first-aid training immediately compelled them to act.

“We knew that we need to place tourniquets on wounds that were bleeding too much. We knew we need to apply pressure and gauze. We had first-aid kits, we had everything,” he said.

Ethan said one staff member took off his shirt and put it on someone who was bleeding to apply pressure and gauze. Other scouts started digging people out of the rubble, he said.

The injured were taken to Burgess Health Center in Onawa, Alegent Health Clinic in Missouri Valley and Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha.

The 1,800-acre ranch about 40 miles north of Omaha includes hiking trails through narrow valleys and over steep hills, a 15-acre lake and a rifle range.

CHENGDU, China (CNN) — A woman who survived on rainwater has been freed after being trapped in rubble for 195 hours in the aftermath of the Chinese earthquake, which has now killed more than 40,000. The 60-year-old woman escaped with just facial bruises and a minor fracture during her eight-day ordeal.

The official Xinhua news agency identified her as Wang Youqun, a retiree, and said she had been unconscious for a day when a falling girder hit her head in the May 12 quake, The Associated Press reported.

She was apparently trapped in a landslide that swept away a temple in the city of Pengzhou and was intially able to move, but a later aftershock trapped her between two rocks, according to AP.

Her dramatic discovery came hours after rescue teams pulled two men men from the rubble in Sichuan province.

One of the men was found in a mine in Qingchuna county and a second in a hydroelectric plant in Wenchuan county, state-run media reported.

They had been buried for six days and 20 hours and seven days and 11 hours, respectively, according to China’s Xinhua news agency.

The rescues give a glimmer of hope amid the rising daily death toll. Official figures show the number of victims has risen to 40,075 in the Sichuan province alone.

The United States announced Tuesday it would send a shipment of specialized recovery equipment and a team of specialists to southwestern China this week. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) says more than $815,000 worth of additional assistance will be sent to China.

That brings the total USAID assistance to China to more than $1.3 million. Last weekend, the United States sent U.S. Air Force C-17s carrying aid to China, including tents and generators.

After signing a sympathy book with the first lady at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, President Bush vowed to “stand ready to help in any way the Chinese government would like.”

NEW YORK – A time-lapse video of a man trapped in an elevator for 41 hours has become something of an Internet sensation after surveillance camera footage emerged after nearly a decade.

“After a certain period of time I knew that I was in pretty big trouble because it was the weekend,” Nicholas White said Monday on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America.”

Video of his Oct. 15, 1999, ordeal in an elevator in New York’s McGraw-Hill building was posted online to accompany an article in the April 21 edition of The New Yorker. It can be seen on the magazine’s Web site and had been viewed more than 280,000 times on YouTube by Monday morning.

White said he understood why the video has captured people’s attention: So many have wondered what they would do if it happened to them.

Edited to a soundtrack of classical piano music, the video shows him pacing, trying to climb the walls, lying down, curled up in a fetal position, prying apart the doors. (He said he relieved himself down the shaft when the doors were open.)

White sued the managers of the midtown skyscraper and the elevator maintenance company and won an undisclosed settlement.

He was a production manager for Business Week when he left his office about 11 p.m. Friday for a cigarette break. According to the article, it was never determined exactly why the elevator stalled though there was talk of a voltage dip.

What was supposed to be a celebration after another successful Wrestlemania, ended up with dozens of people injured when fireworks and cables landed on part of a near sell-out crowd at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando on Sunday night.

Orlando Fire Department spokesman Greg Hoggatt says a cable holding the fireworks collapsed at the end of the show. The collapse sent sparkles from fireworks into the crowd. He says there were burn injuries, “up and down the stadium.”

The show experienced a problem earlier in the show when power was temporarily lost to the lights surrounding the ring, leaving the announced crew confused as to what was going on.

At least 40 people were injured when the fireworks and cable collapsed. Officials say all the injuries were minor, but at least three people were taken to area hospitals.

World Wrestling Entertainment has had serious problems at a pay-per-view event in the past, most notably, the death of wrestler Owen Hart, who fell from a scaffold atop the ring while preparing for a stunt.

The Associated Press reported the phone number for the press relations office at the WWE Corporate Headquarters stayed busy for much of the day. Stadium officials have yet to comment on the story. The WWE typically launches fireworks as a show begins and multiple times during a show as certain wrestlers enter a venue.

The company released this statement on the accident:

“We’re investigating the incident and doing everything we can to find out why it happened and to make sure it never happens again. While we apologize to anyone who was injured and/or alarmed by this occurrence, we take solace in the fact that the reported injuries were minor.”

Estimates for last night’s crowd for Wrestlemania topped 74,000.

(Ed note: I hate TMZ but here is the link to the video. Obviously Undertaker should leave the pyro to his brother, Kane.)

Six bodies were found in the rubble of a sugar refinery that exploded and burned Thursday night, according to authorities.

Savannah-Chatham Police Chief Michael Berkow said rescue efforts had shifted from a rescue to a recovery operation because the building is too unstable for firefighters to enter.

About 40 workers were injured, many critically, in the blast. Of those treated at Memorial University Medical, 19 were flown to Augusta to the Joseph M. Still Burn Centers in Augusta, where 15 were reported to be in critical condition.

Hospital officials in Augusta told Channel 4 that most of the patients were on ventilators. They put out a plea for blood to assist their efforts.

Officials had not determined what caused the explosion Thursday night but said they suspect sugar dust, which can be volatile.

“There was fire all over the building,” said Nakishya Hill, a machine operator who escaped from the third floor of the refinery on the Savannah River.

“All I know is, I heard a loud boom and everything came down,” said Hill, who was uninjured except for blisters on her elbow. “All I could do when I got down was take off running.”

The fire was partially contained early Friday, said Capt. Matthew Stanley of the Savannah Fire Department. “We have diminished it considerably, but we’re still struggling to get to parts of it,” he said.

The fire had been extinguished in the area where the explosion happened, but structural damage was keeping firefighters out, Stanley said.

Ninety-five to 100 people were believed to be working in that area, authorities said.

Firefighters hoped to enter the area Friday. Authorities also were talking with the military about bringing in Chinook helicopters to dump water on the fire, Stanley said.

Police Lt. Alan Baker and his wife, Joyce, told CNN they were among the first on the scene. Alan Baker said he went with a maintenance worker to turn off a gas main while his wife, a Red Cross first aid instructor, treated the injured.

“It was like walking into hell,” Joyce Baker said. “We had approximately 13 men who were coming out and they were burned, third-degree burns on their upper bodies. And they were trying to sit down and the only thing that they wanted was to know where the friends were.”

Some of the burned men had “no skin at all” and some had skin “just dripping off them,” Baker said.

Michael Notrica, spokesman for Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah, said 33 injured people were brought there from the plant explosion Thursday night. Of those, seven were treated and released and 19 were flown to a burn center in Augusta. Seven people remained in the Savannah hospital Friday in serious or critical condition, Notrica said.

Beth Frits, a spokeswoman for the Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital in Augusta, said 15 fire victims were there Friday in critical condition and three in serious condition. Officials said the 19th person sent from the Savannah hospital was en route Friday morning to the Augusta burn center.

The plant is owned by Imperial Sugar and is known in Savannah as the Dixie Crystals plant.

“A far as we know, it was a sugar dust explosion,” Imperial Sugar CEO John Sheptor said. He said it happened in a storage silo where refined sugar is stored until it is packaged.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Lynn said the river was closed to ship traffic from the Port of Savannah while the river was searched for possible victims.

“It’s a large facility, and there is still a significant amount of fire,” said Clayton Scott, assistant director of Chatham County Emergency Management Agency. He described the refinery as covering an area the size of a Super Wal-Mart.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board said Friday it is sending an investigative team to the plant.

Sugar dust is combustible, according the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration’s Web site. Static electricity, sparks from metal tools or a cigarette can ignite explosions. Sugar dust is suspected of sparking a nonfatal explosion last summer at a factory in Scottsbluff, Neb., and one that killed a worker in Omaha in 1996.

Imperial Sugar, based in Sugar Land, Texas, acquired Savannah Foods & Industries, the producer of Dixie Crystals, in 1997. The acquisition doubled the size of the company, making it the largest processor and refiner of sugar in the U.S., according to the company’s Web site.

Imperial markets some of the country’s leading consumer brands, Imperial, Dixie Crystals and Holly, as well as supplying sugar and sweetener products to industrial food manufacturers.

More than 30 people were seriously injured Thursday night when an explosion rocked a sugar refinery near Savannah.

The explosion occurred shortly before 7:30 p.m. in a back room of the Imperial Sugar Co. facility, but the cause of the blast was unknown, said Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police spokesman Sgt. Mike Wilson. Wilson said 38 were carried to hospitals with serious injuries, but no fatalities had been confirmed at 11 p.m.

Five people were still unaccounted for shortly after 11 p.m., Wilson said.

Of the 38 seriously injured, 12 were taken to Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctor’s Hospital in Augusta for treatment of severe burns. Several dozen others had minor injuries.

The plant, known to locals as the Dixie Crystals factory, an area landmark, is in Port Wentworth, about seven miles outside Savannah, and near the Savannah River.

Emergency personnel spent the first hour pulling people out of the building, officials said, and struggled to stop the spread of the fire.

“There was fire all over the building,” said Nakishya Hill, a machine operator who said she escaped from the third floor of the refinery, near the Savannah River.

“All I know is, I heard a loud boom and everything came down,” said Hill, who was uninjured except for blisters on her elbow.

“When I got up, I went down and found a couple of people and we climbed out of there from the third floor to the first floor. Half of the floor was gone. The second floor was debris, the first floor was debris. All I could do when I got down was take off running,” she said.

After the explosion, the Chatham County Emergency Management Agency activated its emergency and hazardous materials response plan.

More than 100 police and firefighters came to the scene, and a triage was set up to treat the wounded, who were loaded onto ambulances.

At about 9 p.m., firefighters were reporting trouble with water pressure and were attempting to tap into a 500,000-gallon water tank on the refinery’s property. About two hours later, with water pressure problems continuing, fire officials decided to divert water from homes along I-95. Tugboats on the nearby Savannah River converged and turned water cannons onto the blaze.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Lynn said the river was shut down to ship traffic while the river was searched for possible victims.

“It’s a large facility, and there is still a significant amount of fire,” said Clayton Scott, assistant director of Chatham County Emergency Management Agency. He described the refinery as covering an area the size of a Super Wal-Mart.

Lafayette, Tenn. — Residents in five Southern states tried to salvage what they could Wednesday from homes reduced to piles of debris, a day after the deadliest cluster of tornadoes in nearly a decade tore through the region, snapping trees and crumpling homes. At least 52 people were dead.

Rescue crews, some with the help of the National Guard, went door-to-door looking for more victims. Dozens of twisters were reported as the storms swept through Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama.

Seavia Dixon, whose Atkins, Ark., home was shattered, stood Wednesday morning in her yard, holding muddy baby pictures of her son, who is now a 20-year-old soldier in Iraq. Only a concrete slab was left from the home.

The family’s brand new white pickup truck was upside-down, about 150 yards from where it was parked before the storm. Another pickup truck the family owned sat crumpled about 50 feet from the slab.

“You know, it’s just material things,” Dixon said, her voice breaking. “We can replace them. We were just lucky to survive.”

In many places, the storms struck as Super Tuesday primaries were ending. As the extent of the damage quickly became clear, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee paused in their victory speeches to remember the victims.

Twenty-eight people were killed in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky and four in Alabama, emergency officials said. Among the victims were Arkansas parents who died with their 11-year-old daughter in Atkins when they stayed behind to calm their horses. The community town of about 3,000 some 60 miles northwest of Little Rock was among the hardest hit.

Shannon Barnes, his mother and her husband waited out the storm in the basement of the woman’s house near the St. Vincent community, not far from Atkins. After not hearing anything, Barnes went upstairs and found the tornado bearing down on the house.

“It wasn’t like they say. They say it sounds like a freight train,” Barnes said Wednesday as he collected his clothes and other belongings. “It was silent. A bunch of wind.”

Ray Story tried to get his 70-year-old uncle, Bill Clark, to a hospital after the storms leveled his mobile home in Macon County, about 60 miles northeast of Nashville. Clark died as Story and his wife tried to navigate debris-strewn roads in their pickup truck, they said.

“He never had a chance,” Story’s wife, Nova, said. “I looked him right in the eye and he died right there in front of me.”

President Bush said he called the governors of Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee and assured them the administration was ready to help.

“Loss of life, loss of property — prayers can help and so can the government,” Bush said. “I do want the people in those states to know the American people are standing with them.”

The system moved eastward to Alabama on Wednesday, bringing heavy rain and gusty wind, causing several injuries in counties northwest of Birmingham. The National Weather Service posted tornado watches for parts of southern Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and western Georgia, but the storms appeared to weaken as they approached the coast.

Northeast of Nashville, a spectacular fire erupted at a natural gas pumping station. The station took a direct hit from the storm, but no deaths connected to the fire were reported.

About 200 yards from the edge of the plant, Bonnie and Frank Brawner picked through the rubble of their home for photographs and other personal items. The storm sheared off the second story of the home.

“We had a beautiful neighborhood, now it’s hell,” said Bonnie Brawner, 80.

More than 20 students were stuck behind wreckage and jammed doors, mostly for short periods, in battered dormitories at Union University in Jackson, Tenn. Tornadoes had hit the campus in the past, and students knew the drill when they heard sirens, university President David S. Dockery said.

“When the sirens went off the entire process went into place quickly,” Dockery said. Students “were ushered into rooms, into the bathrooms, interior spaces.”

About 50 students were taken to a hospital and nine stayed through the night, but all would be fine, he said.

In Memphis, high wind collapsed the roof of a Sears store at a mall. Bricks, air conditioners and other debris were scattered in the parking lot, where about two dozen vehicles were damaged.

Winter tornadoes are not uncommon. The peak tornado season is late winter through midsummer, but the storms can happen at any time of the year with the right conditions.

But this batch was the nation’s worst in a 24-hour period since May 3, 1999, when some 50 people died in Oklahoma and Kansas. The death toll ranks among the top 15 from tornado outbreaks since 1950, said Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist at the center in Norman, Okla., just south of Oklahoma City.

The tornadoes could be due to La Nina, the cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean that can cause changes in weather patterns around the world. It is the opposite of the better-known El Nino, a periodic warming of the same region.

Driving sleet, freezing temperatures and a blanket of snow across southern China have paralysed trains and aircraft, stranding tens of millions of people trying to get home for the biggest holiday in the Chinese calendar.

The worst weather in 50 years pummelled swaths of central, southern and eastern China as migrant workers and students, business travellers and officials assigned to provincial postings battled for tickets to join their families for the lunar new year holiday.

The human tide strains public transport every year even though the authorities pull dozens of extra trains into service and lay on additional flights to try to cope. With new year’s day falling on February 7 this year, the bad weather has swept China just as the number of travellers is reaching its peak.

The China Meteorological Administration issued a red alert warning of more snowstorms and blizzards in central and eastern China, particularly around Shanghai, the country’s commercial hub. It placed a notice on the central forecast website that said: “Cut unnecessary outdoor activities.”

Among the worst-hit cities is southern Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province that borders Hong Kong. The province is one of China’s most important manufacturing regions, with thousands of factories making everything from T-shirts to electronics staffed by millions of migrant workers from poorer inland provinces.

Hundreds of thousands of those workers, many with young children, found themselves stranded at the Guangzhou railway station after snowstorms snapped power lines to passenger trains from neighbouring Hunan province, an important hub for trains on the main line between Guangzhou and Beijing.

Officials struggled to control an estimated 200,000 travellers at the station — a number expected to swell to 600,000 over the next couple of days. Temporary shelter was being arranged for the migrant workers in schools and conventions centres. Soldiers were deployed to stand guard around the station and police barked orders through bullhorns to try to maintain order.

Notice boards inside the station were a sea of red, showing that almost every train had been cancelled. Radio announcements urged people not to go to the station since most trains had been cancelled and tickets were no longer being sold until new year’s day.

Liu Si, who hoped to travel back to the western metropolis of Chongqing, had been stuck at the station for days. “The number 1059 train to Chongqing didn’t go on the 26th, it didn’t go on the 27th and there’s no way it’s going today on the 28th.”

With officials warning that it could take until the end of the week to work through the backlog of passengers, Mr Liu was not optimistic of spending the festival with his family. “I’ve been in Guangdong a decade. I’ve never spent a Chinese New Year here. This year I might have to. It just won’t feel right.”

The freakish weather has already affected 67 million people and economic losses so far have been placed at 18.2 billion yuan (£1.3 billion).

Chinese New Year sees the biggest human migration on earth, with an estimated 2.47 billion journeys over the holiday season this year — almost double the entire population of 1.3 billion.

More than a dozen airports around the country were closed because of icy conditions, including one of China’s busiest airports — the Hongqiao hub for domestic flights serving Shanghai.

In a sign of official anxiety that the travel chaos could trigger social unrest, Premier Wen Jiabao ordered local officials to mobilise all possible resource to ensure people get home. He said: “More heavy snow is expected. All government departments must prepare for this increasingly grim situation and urgently take action.”

Jamaica opened shelters nationwide on Saturday and Cuba declared a “state of alert” as the Caribbean’s warm waters fueled a strengthening Hurricane Dean, with forecasters predicting the storm could grow to a powerful Category 5.

Now a Category 4 storm with sustained winds at 150 mph, Dean was expected to pass south of Hispaniola but dump as much as five inches of rain to the two countries on the island — Haiti and the Dominican Republic — which are both prone to devastating floods and mudslides.

As dark clouds rolled in from the south and a light rain began to fall, residents of the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo, calmly ran errands at stores with fully stocked shelves, despite government advisories about heavy rains and possible flooding.

“Nothing’s going to happen here — a lot of water of nothing else,” said Pedro Alvajar, 61, as he sat in a doorway selling lottery tickets.

Dean killed three people and devastated banana and sugar crops a day earlier as it crossed small eastern Caribbean islands. The National Hurricane Center in Miami said its winds could surpass 155 mph as it approaches the Yucatan Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico on Monday.

By Thursday, there is a chance Dean could threaten the U.S., though it is expected to lose some strength as it travels over the Yucatan.

NASA shortened the last spacewalk for astronauts aboard the shuttle Endeavour and scaled back the mission, to allow the spacecraft to return to Earth on Tuesday — a day early — if the storm appeared to threaten the Houston home of Mission Control.

In Jamaica, which expected to take a direct hit Sunday, tourists including Shante Morgan of Moor Park, Calif., began lining up outside the Montego Bay airport before dawn to book flights out ahead of the storm.

On this map, it’s kind of hard to see any of Idaho. Montana isn’t looking much better. So many acres are being burned in huge wildfires.

The worst part: The National Guard, who would normally be helping put out such blazes, are in Iraq serving their 4th deployments in a pointless continual war.