Salem-News.com Disaster articles Page 13

Oregon`s Date with Destiny

Geologists studying Oregon's coast continue to find evidence that our history has been one of periodic upheaval, intermingled with and somewhat obscured by fluctuations in sea level due to climate.

(SALEM, Ore.) - The legendary landscape of the Pacific Northwest beckons today much as it did centuries ago when lone mountain men returned with tales of a western world that stirred the imagination.

Every year thousands of tourists flock to see wonders such as the volcanic symmetry of Crater Lake, or the inexorable renewal of Mt. St. Helens.

Post-Earthquake Photos of Haiti by Daniel Cima

Incredible images from a still stricken land.

(WASHINGTON D.C.) - This past week in Washington, D.C., I met with award-winning Argentine photographer Daniel Cima, who spent over a month in Haiti following the January 2010 earthquake.

The following series of Cima’s photographs is an example of disaster-inspired creativity of a different nature than that espoused by hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean, who preferred to channel his artistic talents into a bid for the Haitian presidency before settling for a musical album entitled “If I Were President, the Haitian Experience”.

Environment News: Climate Change in Baja California

Currently, Baja California Sur and more than a dozen other Mexican states are considering state climate action plans.

(LAS CRUCES, N.M.) - A new study sponsored by the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur (UABCS) and three other Mexican academic institutions lays out some of the possible consequences of climate change in the ecologically-fragile Baja California Peninsula.

Among the predictions are stronger hurricanes, changes in arroyo flows, loss of vegetation and soils, accelerated desertification, and negative impacts on fisheries and biodiversity.

Hurricane Katrina Survival:
The Fred Holley Story *Documentary

The process to restore all that nature swept away has been painfully slow.

(GULFPORT, Miss.) - There was a night when Hurricane Katrina Survivor Fred Holley, a Vietnam Veteran, wondered if he would ever feed the seagulls along the Gulf Coast again.

I met this man one year after the tragic event, while enroute to cover the war in Afghanistan. He toured me through the devastation of his homeland.

Hurricane of Inhumanity: Five Years after Katrina

Witness accounts show that there was almost a sense of official contempt for the people of New Orleans that often went beyond criminal negligence.

(LONDON) - Five years after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans – a natural disaster with unnatural responses – led to the death of an estimated 1,800 people and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of others, the lesson has not yet been learned.

While US President Barack Obama acknowledged that the disaster was "a man-made catastrophe – a shameful breakdown in government that left countless men, women and children abandoned and alone" – he still missed the point, not only in New Orleans, but also in earthquake-wrecked Haiti and flood-hit Pakistan.

Is Jesus God, or What?

God is not a political Being, as the Republican Party would have us believe, and Democrats often tend to support.

(PASO ROBLES, Calif.) - Republican candidates seem obsessed with the notion that God is on their side, but do they really know what they are saying, or is what they say what the Republican Holy See wants them to say? The presumption, of course, is that Jesus is God and that Christianity is the source of all good.

Politically speaking, it may prove helpful to the Republican cause which relies on the assumption that Jesus is a personal God which supposedly is politically inclined in favor of the Republican agenda.

Rhetoric + Greed = Carnage inside DRC

The rhetoric heard by Washington does not match the actions, or lack of such to alleviate the suffering inside DRC.

(KINSHASA / PORTLAND) - The mass carnage committed in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is horrifying, in its longevity and atrociousness.

The lack of public United States (US) discourse and knowledge of the country is astonishing and disgraceful. We have the ability to connect with one another by computer hundreds of miles away, send men to the moon; yet we have not found the courage or tenacity to actively engage in protecting a country that is being ravaged daily by greed and bloodshed.

Toxic Coal Ash Report: Oregon`s Boardman Plant Listed as a Contamination Site

Oregon plant listed among 39 Water-Contamination sites in 21 states highlighted as EPA Rule Hearings near.‏

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - Days before the USEPA kicks off a series of regional hearings on whether and how to regulate toxic coal ash waste from coal-fired power plants, a major new study identifies 39 additional coal-ash dump sites in 21 states that are contaminating drinking water or surface water with arsenic and other heavy metals.

The report documents the fact that state governments are not adequately monitoring the coal combustion waste (CCW) disposal sites and that the USEPA needs to enact strong new regulations to protect the public.

EPA to End All Use of Bird-Killing Pesticide

Aldicarb Production to Cease in 2014; New Restrictions Implemented.

(WASHINGTON D.C.) - Environmental groups are welcoming the decision by the EPA and Bayer CropScience to cease production of the pesticide aldicarb in 2014, begin phasing out its more dangerous uses immediately, and end all uses by 2018.

Aldicarb, marketed under the trade name Temik® and produced by Bayer CropScience, is one of the most toxic insecticides on the market.

BP Gulf Oil Spill`s Walking Dead

"And I think the media now has to...tell the American people who’s getting money for poisoning the millions of people in the Gulf." - Hugh Kaufman, senior EPA analyst, admits millions have been poisoned in the Gulf states.

(CHICAGO) - A biochemical bomb went off in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010--as dangerous and destructive as a nuclear blast.