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Monday, August 31, 2015

A fire in the eastern Saudi city of Alkhobar tore through a housing complex for oil workers yesterday, killing eleven, according to civil officials.

The Radium complex is rented by oil firm Aramco for their employees. According to nearby resident Mohammed Siddique the fire broke out early in the morning. Siddique says the building contains locals, as well as Westerners and Asians. The cause is unclear but the civil defence ministry tweeted “Cars and furniture caught fire in the basement of one of the towers”.

Over 200 people were injured. Firefighters scaled the burning tower on ladders, and helicopters were on-scene. Other towers in the complex were evacuated. Thick smoke from the blaze complicated rescue efforts.

Aramco CEO Amin H. Nasser said the firm is “deeply saddened to learn of the fatalities and injuries. We offer heartfelt condolences to the families. Our immediate priority is to provide full support to those affected by this tragic incident.” Aramco, which produces and exports more crude oil than any competitor worldwide, say the fire is under investigation.

Friday, July 21, 2006

Indonesia’s President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, visited the area worst hit by the tsunami that struck the Indonesian island of Java Monday afternoon. Mr Yudhoyono toured the small town of Pangandaran meeting people who were staying in a temporary camp. Many of them are too scared to return home after the huge wave killed nearly 550 people. The tsunami was produced by an underwater earthquake with a magnitude of 7.7 on the Richter scale.

At the camp, Mr Yudhoyono told one woman to “be strong”. According to a relief worker, about 3,000 people have taken refuge at the site, but only about 500 of them have lost their homes. She said people are too scared to go home because they live on the coast, a sentiment shared by one woman who told AFP: “I did not lose my home, and my husband and child are safe, but we are still traumatised by the tsunami and are too afraid to return home in case another one comes.”

West Java Governor Danny Setiawan told journalists that officials are persuading people to return home, and he said a return to normality “could take five to six years”.

Aid workers are working to provide relief to the 15,500 people who have been left homeless as a result of the two-meter high wave. Yesterday, 15 tonnes of rice and 1,600 boxes of instant noodles were dropped, but some residents have said government assistance is necessary for them to regain their livelihoods. One woman told Reuters, “I don’t have anything, only 5,000 rupiah (£0.30, $0.55) in my wallet. The government should give us money to buy houses and a boat.”

It is estimated over 300 people are still missing, and the army and police are using helicopters, boats and mechanical diggers in the hope of recovering survivors. Lieutenant Colonel Tri Yuniarta has told his 350-strong rescue team in Pangandaran to finish collecting bodies trapped under debris by next Monday.

The Indonesian government has been criticised for failing to inform residents that a tsunami was looming. After the underwater earthquake was detected, US and Japanese agencies issued warning notices, but the government has admitted it was unable to transmit the bulletins to coastal areas. Speaking yesterday, Mr Yudhoyono vowed to hasten efforts to build an early warning system planned after the 2004 Asian tsunami. “We want to expedite efforts to get infrastructure for the tsunami warning system in place,” AP quoted him as saying. “I will work with parliament to get the budget”.

Survivors have described the tsunami, which struck a 200km stretch of Java‘s southern coast. A Belgian tourist said he was in a beach side bar when the wave hit. “I saw this big cloud of dark sea water coming up to me”.

Indonesia is situated on the Pacific Rim of Fire where 90% of the world’s earthquakes and 81% of the world’s largest earthquakes occur.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

The UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says it will close some airspace in Scotland, after meteorologists cautioned that ash from Eyjafjallajokull, an erupting volcano in Iceland, may make it unsafe for airplanes to fly.

The CAA announced that the airspace will be shut down from 07.00 (06.00 UTC) local time on Wednesday; travellers are advised to check with their airlines to see if their flights will be operating. A spokesman for the agency also added that “[t]he forecasts also show that it is likely that the ash cloud will continue to move south, potentially affecting airports in the north-west of England and North Wales.”

“Met Office forecasts show that levels of ash in the atmosphere over Scotland and Northern Ireland will exceed the concentrations that engine manufactures have agreed are safe for operations,” said a spokesman for the authority. “Unfortunately, this means that the CAA anticipates all Scottish and Northern Ireland airports will be closed from 7.00 am local time.”

The Irish Aviation Authority, meanwhile, warned that aviation in the vicinity could face a “summer of uncertainty” as the volcano continues to sporadically erupt. “We could be faced with this periodically [in] the summer,” said Eamon Brennan, the chief executive of the group.

The restrictions come a day after a temporary ban on flights in Ireland was implemented yesterday, from 07.00 to 13.00 local time (06.00 to 12.00 UTC); flights from there have now resumed. Flights going to and from locations in mainland Europe have not been affected thanks to new flight rules that allow planes fly through low-density ash clouds.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Gordon Kubanek is running for the Green Party of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the Nepean-Carleton riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Early on Sunday morning, Amtrak’s passenger train number 91, the Silver Star, bound for Miami from New York, slammed into a stationary CSX freight train in Cayce, about ten miles (16 km) south of Columbia, capital of the US state of South Carolina. Two Amtrak employees were killed and at least 116 were injured, some seriously.

The two killed were 54-year-old engineer Michael Kempf of Savannah, Georgia, and 36-year-old conductor Michael Cella of Orange Park, Florida. Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told a press conference the passenger train had been diverted into a siding by a switch left “literally locked, with a padlock” in that position.

The collision happened at about 2:35 am local time (0735 UTC) at a switching yard in the small city of Cayce. The Amtrak train, with reportedly 139 passengers and eight employees aboard, collided head on with the freight train, which was parked with no one on board. The Amtrak locomotive and the leading locomotive on the freight train were destroyed; the Amtrak locomotive and some of its passenger cars derailed, and one of those cars was folded in half. Several freight cars were crumpled, Reuters reported. In a press conference, the state governor, Henry McMaster, said the Amtrak locomotive was “barely recognizable” and described it as “a horrible thing to see, to understand the force involved”.

Harrison Cahill, a spokesman for Lexington County, gave a count of 116 injured, up from an initial report of 70; according to Derrec Becker, public information officer for the South Carolina Emergency Management Division, injuries ranged “from cuts and bruises to severe broken bones”. On Monday a Palmetto Health spokesperson said two patients were in serious and two in critical condition at their facilities. A spill of approximately 5,000 gallons of fuel from the freight train posed no safety hazard, according to officials.

Passenger Derek Pettaway told the CNN network that like most others, he had been sleeping when the collision happened. He said Amtrak staff cleared the passengers from the train rapidly, and there was no panic; “I think people were more in shock than anything else”, he said.

“Key to this investigation is learning why the switch was lined that way”, Sumwalt said. Amtrak’s CEO, Richard Anderson, speaking to reporters on Sunday, held CSX responsible; he stated the track in that area is operated by CSX and the signals, which CSX operates, were not working at the time of the collision and a CSX dispatcher was therefore directing the Amtrak train’s movements. Sumwalt noted an automatic monitoring and braking system called positive train control, which was not in use on the stretch of line, could have forestalled the collision.

Several fatal incidents involving Amtrak trains have occurred in the past three months. On December 18, the inaugural train on a new route in Washington state derailed at high speed while crossing above a highway, killing three; on January 31, the driver of a garbage truck was killed in Virginia when he collided with an Amtrak train chartered to take Republican lawmakers to a retreat.

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

A car accident involving the car occupants and a dentist’s office happened on Sunday night in Santa Ana, California. A white Nissan sedan which was apparently driving too fast hit the raised concrete median on the road, after which it was launched into the air, slamming straight into the wall of the second floor of a two-story dental practice building, where the car got wedged.

According to the police, the car approached from a side street. The room of the dental office penetrated by the sedan was used as a storage space. A fire department crane was used to extract the vehicle from the building, which took several hours.

There were two people in the sedan. One of them managed to escape from the hanging vehicle on his own, while the other one remained trapped inside it for over an hour. They were both hospitalized with minor injuries, according to the Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA). According to the police, the driver of the car admitted narcotics use, and after toxicology tests the case is to be submitted to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.

The moment of the accident was captured by surveillance video from a bus which the car narrowly missed when becoming airborne.

According to OCFA spokesperson Captain Stephen Horner, there was a small fire after the crash, which was extinguished quickly.