• NEWS from the Gulf...2010. 
  
• Does Katrina disaster illustrate the reverse of D-Snap Federal disaster response (in CT) the common thread?
  
• First lawsuit decision;  Commentary on it and President Obama's promise
  
• What next?  Scroll down our Internet source articles to examine the possibilities for this city/region.
  
• French Quarter  and levees in general.
  
• Geology;  how to fix why it happened...
• New city plan?
  
• UK Royalty visits "Big Easy"
  
• A.W.O.L. staff story;
  
• Catch 22 for re-development?
  
• Katrina totals;
  
• Next storm in Big Easy;
  
• Hurricane simulation
  
• Global warming;
  
• Emergency planning;
  
• Levee repair (I-BBC);
  
• Character of city;
• Demographics and other Census Data
• Prophetic column from online Houston Chronical in 2001 reports on FEMA study of fate of New Orleans and some other places.

How about seizing one of these?  No one would ever notice!

• New design for Mississippi River diversion (by Louisiana Coastal Area Planning groups) under review Army Corps, U.S.G.S., others;
  
• Army Corps of Engineers final report by outside analysts on why the levee system broke down.
• Times-Picayune series on why New Orleans is doomed (our conclusion):  http://www.nola.com/hurricane/images/goingunder.pdf

Baton Rouge, La. — In better times, before Hurricane Katrina washed away its tax base, the St. Bernard School District employed 1,200 people.

Now, with no money to make its payroll, the district has fewer than 12 employees, and this weekend, the parish government is expected to lay off a large share of its firefighters and emergency workers.

Next door in New Orleans, the school district has already laid off virtually every last employee — more than 7,000 people. The city has laid off half its work force, and the state university system is preparing for thousands of layoffs and serious cutbacks in services.

After weeks of coping with the initial shock of the hurricane and trying to help residents with immediate emergencies, local and state governments around the Gulf Coast are starting to grapple with the staggering size of their financial peril. The natural has produced what some are calling the worst municipal finance crisis in the nation's history.

“We've never seen anything like this, at least not in our lifetime,” said Roy Bahl, dean of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University and an expert in public finance.

“You think about the hurricanes that hit Florida last year,” Bahl said. “They were bad, but they didn't devastate the tax base of an entire metropolitan area. They didn't devastate the tax base of an entire region like happened here.”

Without money, governments cannot run buses so that residents without cars can search for jobs. They cannot educate the children of families that might try to return. They cannot pick up garbage or begin the detailed planning and engineering necessary to bring a city back to life. And so they are locked in a painful loop, unable to lure back exiled residents without services, but unable to provide the services without a tax base.

That has already become apparent in St. Bernard Parish, the one county in the state that was entirely engulfed in the storm. Already officials there have laid off more than half its work force of 650, including road crews and others they desperately need for restoration work, and by this weekend they may need to slash scores more.

“I can't ask people to work another two weeks,” said Larry J. Ingargiola, the parish director of emergency preparedness, “if I know there's a good chance I'm not going to be able to pay them. If you call this weekend and get no answer, you'll know why.”

The two hurricanes cost local municipalities in southern Louisiana at least $3.3 billion in lost taxes and fees, according to the state legislative office that audits the books of local governmental bodies. Local governments are desperately hoping for a bailout from the state and federal governments, but they have not been pleased by what they have received so far.

The state has problems of its own, and the federal assistance provided so far has strings and payback requirements that many localities consider onerous. 

OSLO (Reuters) - Hurricane Katrina has spurred debate about global warming worldwide with some environmentalists sniping at President George W. Bush for pulling out of the main U.N. plan for braking climate change.

Experts agree it is impossible to say any one storm is caused by rising temperatures. Numbers of tropical cyclones like hurricanes worldwide are stable at about 90 a year although recent U.S. research shows they may be becoming more intense...

Australia's Greens and even Sweden's king said the disaster, feared to have killed thousands of people in the United States, could be a portent of worse to come.

"As climate change is happening, we know that the frequency of these disasters will increase as well as the scope," European Commission spokeswoman Barbara Helfferich said.

"If we let climate change continue like it is continuing, we will have to deal with disasters like that," she said. She said it was wrong to say Katrina was caused by global warming widely blamed on emissions from cars, power plants and factories. Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf told reporters he was deeply shaken by the damage and suffering of millions of people.

"It is quite clear that the world's climate is changing and we should take note," he said. "The hurricane catastrophe in the United States should be a wake-up call for all of us." Climate change policies sharply divide Bush from most of his allies which have signed up for caps on emissions of greenhouse gases under the U.N.'s  Kyoto protocol. Bush pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, saying it was too expensive and wrongly excluded developing nations from a first round of caps to 2012...

SEA LEVEL RISE

U.N. studies say a build-up of greenhouse gases is likely to cause more storms, floods and desertification and could raise sea levels by up to a meter by 2100.

Sea level rise could expose coasts vulnerable to storms because levees would be swamped more easily. Some scientists dispute the forecasts and the United States is investing more heavily than any other nation on climate research.

In Australia, the opposition Greens party said Katrina was aggravated by global warming and criticized Bush for pulling out of Kyoto. The United States, the world's biggest polluter, and Australia are the only rich nations outside Kyoto.

"It demonstrates the massive economic, as well as environmental and social penalties, of George Bush's policies," Greens leader Bob Brown told Reuters. He did not believe Bush would shift to embrace Kyoto-style caps on emissions. Concerns were also voiced in Germany.

"The U.S. must be more involved," Gerda Hasselfeldt, a leading German candidate to become environment minister if the conservative opposition wins the September 18 election, told n-tv television. In the United States, the focus has been far more on tackling the human disaster than on links to climate change.

"People are still reeling from the tragedy," said Katie Mandes, a director at the Washington-based Pew Center, a climate change think-tank. "Politically it's too early to tell what it will mean for Americans' views." Ian Johnson, the World Bank's top environmental official, said Katrina could also be a wake-up call for developing nations, many of which are vulnerable.

An opinion survey published this week showed that 79 percent of Americans feel global warming poses an "important" or "very important" threat to their country in the next 10 years. Worries among Europeans were even higher. Taken before Katrina in June, the Transatlantic Trends survey showed that Americans felt more threatened than Europeans by terrorism, Islamic extremism, weapons of mass destruction and economic downturn.

Some individual climatic disasters in the past have changed perceptions about climate change. Steve Sawyer, climate change director at Greenpeace, said that ice storms in Canada in the late 1990s had dramatically raised public concerns. Greenpeace called Katrina a "wake-up call about the dangers of continued global fossil fuel dependency."

Recent research by Kerry Emanuel, a leading U.S. hurricane researcher, shows the intensity of hurricanes -- the wind speeds and the duration -- seems to have risen by about 70 percent in the past 30 years.

"Globally a new signal may be emerging in rising intensity," said Tom Knutson, a research meteorologist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Higher water temperatures in future may lead to more storms. Hurricanes need temperatures of about 26.5 C (80F) to form.

(Additional reporting by Michael Perry in Sydney, Elaine Lies in Tokyo, Jeff Mason and Paul Taylor in Brussels, Iain Rogers in Berlin, Timothy Gardner in New York)

But after four days in the hospital's reeking darkness, he escaped via a Black Hawk helicopter that landed on the roof of the University Hospital under heavy guard because of the threat of sniper fire.

It was not the evacuation plan authorities had envisioned for its sick, its elderly and its poor. As the floodwaters recede, serious questions remain about whether New Orleans and Louisiana officials followed their own plans for evacuating people with no other way out.

The mayor's mandatory evacuation order was issued 20 hours before the storm struck the Louisiana coast, less than half the time researchers determined would be needed to get everyone out.

City officials had 550 municipal buses and hundreds of additional school buses at their disposal but made no plans to use them to get people out of New Orleans before the storm, said Chester Wilmot, a civil engineering professor at Louisiana State University and an expert in transportation planning, who helped the city put together its evacuation plan.

Instead, local buses were used to ferry people from 12 pickup points to poorly supplied "shelters of last resort" in the city. An estimated 50,000 New Orleans households have no access to cars, Wilmot said.

State and local plans both called for extra help to be provided in advance to residents with "special needs," though no specific timetable was prepared. But phone lines for people who needed specialized shelters opened at noon Saturday — barely 30 hours before Katrina came ashore in Louisiana.

Many people from New Orleans ended up staying home or using a "last resort" special needs shelter state authorities and the city health department set up at the Superdome. Those who made it out of town initially found limited space. The state of Louisiana provided shelter in Baton Rouge and five other cities for a total of about 1,000.

In the city of New Orleans alone, more than 100,000 of the city's residents described themselves as disabled in a recent U.S. census.

Early mistakes

The consequences came to bear in the images hours and days later: Elderly people dying outside shelters and hospitals that were losing power and, finally, their patients. Now, hurricane evacuation experts around the country are asking why New Orleans failed to prepare for the flood scenario from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane.

"Everybody knew about it. There's no excuse for not having a plan," said Jay Baker, a Florida State University associate professor who is an expert in hurricane evacuations and is familiar with New Orleans hurricane studies.

Tami Frazier, a spokeswoman for Mayor C. Ray Nagin, currently working out of Houston, refused to comment on direct questions this week or to answer several written questions sent via e-mail. She cited the need to focus on rescuing citizens and recovering bodies.

Robicheaux, the cancer patient who was trapped in a downtown New Orleans hospital, said he thought the city "decided basically to let it ride."

"When you're in a city like New York and there's a big snowstorm, you expect them to have plows. That's not the way it is here. There are no resources to stockpile supplies."

Saturday evening, Hurricane Katrina had intensified to Category 4, with the possibility that it could strike land as a killer Category 5 storm. About 8 p.m., Mayor Nagin fielded an unusual personal call at home from Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, who wanted to be sure Nagin knew what was coming.

Still, Nagin waited to issue a mandatory evacuation, apparently because of legal complications, said Frazier. She said the city attorney was unavailable for an interview to explain. But Kris Wartelle, spokeswoman for the attorney general of Louisiana, said state law clearly gives the mayor the authority to "direct and compel the evacuation of all or part of the population from any stricken or threatened area."

"They're not confused about it. He had the authority to do it," Wartelle said. The mandatory evacuation order came at 10 a.m Sunday.

Former Kemah Mayor Bill King, who has spent years trying to boost funding and organization for hurricanes planning in the Houston-Galveston area, said Nagin's decision to wait to order people out compounded the tragedy.

"To call an evacuation on Sunday morning when the storm was going to hit on Monday morning at 6 a.m. is just ... negligence," King said. "If he'd called it better than that he would have saved lives."

Special-needs evacuation

The city of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan suggested people develop their own way to get out. "The potential exists that New Orleans could be without sufficient supplies to meet the needs of persons with special considerations, and there is significant risk being taken by those individuals who decide to remain in these refuges of last resort," it says.

People who called for information on special needs shelters Saturday were directed to sites in Alexandria and in Monroe, La. — cities 218 and 326 miles away. The state scrambled to find 20 ambulances and some specialized vans to pick up fragile residents who needed rides.

"There were transportation systems in place to take people out of New Orleans, which was the preferred solution," said Kristen Meyer, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Hospitals. But she's not sure how many got out.

Some, including Lower 9th Ward resident Lois Rice, a paraplegic, became trapped in their homes when the floodwaters rose. She was rescued after using her air mattress to float into her attic.

Florida, by contrast, for two decades has required counties to establish and maintain permanent databases of "special needs citizens," and arrange rides for people with no transportation. The state also has shelters established for myriad medical conditions.

Florida emergency officials agree that last-minute planning simply doesn't work.

"Unless you planned in advance, it would be a catastrophe," said Guy Daines, a retired Florida emergency manager who is considered an expert in specialized evacuations.

In New Orleans, many people with special medical needs ended up at the last resort shelter in the Superdome.

New Orleans' own special needs evacuation plan, however, says that shelter is "NOT TO BE INTERPRETED AS A GUARANTEE OF SAFETY, and the City of New Orleans is not assuring anyone protection from harm within the facilities that are being offered or opened for this purpose."

"When I saw them loading special needs people into the Superdome the day before the storm, my heart was breaking," said Patti Moss, a Texas nursing professor who has developed a tracking system for such vulnerable citizens here. "They were in the path of the storm."

Two of the city's hospitals dedicated to serving the city's poor, University and Charity hospitals, quickly lost power, according to Leslie Capo, a spokesman for the Louisiana State University health sciences department.

After days in the dark, it took the National Guard, the U.S. Army and a Black Hawk to rescue Robicheaux.

"We had been kind of left on our own and I thought, 'This is a fine thank you,' " he said.

Planning for the poor

But in an interview published July 18 in New Orleans City Business, Jefferson Parish hurricane planner Walter Maestri insisted New Orleans needed to do much more for those who didn't have cars.

"New Orleans has a significantly larger population without means of transportation, so it's a much bigger problem for the city. ... The answer is very simple — evacuation," he said.

As Hurricane Katrina approached Sunday morning, New Orleans officials advertised city buses would be used to pick people up at 12 sites to go to the "last resort" shelters.

It's unclear how many buses were used. Planners decided not to use any of the New Orleans school buses for early evacuation, Wilmot said.

Photographers recorded images of them lined up in neat rows and submerged — though one was commandeered by Jabbar Gibson, 20, who ferried 70 passengers to safety in the Reliant Astrodome.

It is drowned in a filthy flood. Vibrant neighborhoods, the incubators of its soul, are lost. Its economy, largely dependent on tourists seduced by its quirky, decadent charm, is in ruins. It has been abandoned by its people, tens of thousands of whom may never return.

Can New Orleans, one of only a handful of unique American cities, survive? Could any major city, anywhere, survive such a calamity?

Galveston did after the 1900 hurricane swept it away, even though it never fully recovered. Chicago underwent an architectural renaissance after the Great Fire of 1871. San Francisco came back from the 1906 earthquake and fire that virtually leveled it.

Experts who have studied those and other urban disasters said that New Orleans, too, probably will rise again from its sodden ruins.

But it will be a different New Orleans, one that may not be recognizable to those who know it best.

New Orleans, to a degree matched by few other American cities, is about much more than bricks, mortar and materialism. What sets it apart is its indomitable spirit, its cultural gumbo, its intangibles that emanate in significant measure from its poorest neighborhoods. Many of these communities, their music halls, their barbershops, their mom-and-pop Creole restaurants, could be irretrievably lost.

Fats Domino's house and his entire neighborhood are gone. A park in the historic Treme neighborhood named for Louis Armstrong is flooded. The Lower 9th Ward, home of the trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, is under water.

So, too, is Bywater, and the 7th Ward, and other neighborhoods that were home to countless jazz and blues greats, the Mardi Gras Indians and some of the world's best and oldest Po' Boy emporiums.

If the new New Orleans is to resemble the old New Orleans, these communities will have to be rebuilt in their own image. Above all, the ingredients that made them what they were must be included in the recipes of their future.

"The spirit of New Orleans is all about the people," said Jacob Wagner, a professor of urban planning at the University of Missouri at Kansas City who studied the relationship between memory and place in New Orleans. "If the people come back and rebuild, the spirit will survive. If they don't, fragmentation of local culture could occur. Maintaining the local character of the city must be part of the discussion about how to rebuild."

Poor most vulnerable

Others might decide that rebuilding their lives on the delta of one of the world's great rivers, in a city that must try to tame it to survive, is not worth the risk.

When New Orleans comes back, a sizable portion of its residents will not.

"It's never going to be the same city," said Mary Comerio, an architecture professor at the University of California at Berkeley who has conducted extensive research into how urban areas recover from disasters. "It will be a functioning city. But you are going to lose a segment of your population, and this means New Orleans will be a smaller city."

The French Quarter, the literal and figurative heart of the city, appears to have escaped the full impact of the flooding but not the looters.

Its survival is vital to New Orleans' future because it is the principal reason tourists and convention planners flock to the city.

"The French Quarter has to survive, the conventions have to come back," said Chuck Taggart, a New Orleans native who lives in Los Angeles, where, among other things, he hosts a Cajun music show on public radio and runs a Web site devoted to Louisiana cuisine. "If it does, then the ultimate survival of the city and its culture will depend on the drive and commitment of its people to put it back together."

Few cities struggling to recover from major catastrophe ever are exactly the same as they were before.

Galveston was poised to become a major Texas city until the great hurricane wiped it out. And reconstruction takes time and a huge amount of money, Comerio said.

Based on the experiences of other cities in such crises — Kobe, Japan, after the devastating earthquake in 1995, or San Francisco and the Oakland area after the Loma Prieta quake in 1989 — Comerio predicts that New Orleans' recovery could take 10 years and cost as much as $50 billion.

It is still way too early to tell just how many structures in New Orleans will have to be rebuilt after the waters recede. But with hundreds, maybe thousands, of houses flooded to their roofs, many will have to rebuilt from the ground up.

Comerio and other experts warned against seeing this as an opportunity for "urban renewal."

Redevelopment must take into account the geographic factors that contributed to the disaster in the first place. It also must cater to the poor.

"The big issue is to be very careful in the process of rebuilding and build with nature in mind," said Susan Cutter, a professor of geography at the University of South Carolina and a recognized expert in hazard and risk management. "What would have happened if all those houses had been elevated? They also have to include affordable public housing in their plans and keep in mind the racial and ethnic diversity of the city."

Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans' economy was only slightly less stagnant than the water that has covered the city. Tourism and conventions are a vital component of its economy, but so too are oil and gas production and the port, one of the busiest in the nation and a hub for the movement of a host of commodities.

Much of that commerce will return. But it is safe to say that many smaller businesses will not survive, and some will consider leaving the city.

Jon Seals, editor of Disaster Recovery Journal, a St. Louis-based magazine, said it is widely considered a rule of thumb that only two of five businesses survive a disaster of the magnitude that engulfed New Orleans.

Ironically, a mere three days before the city fell to Hurricane Katrina, Mayor C. Ray Nagin declared real estate was "hot" in the city after Donald Trump signed on to build a 70-story building on a downtown parking lot, the first high-rise in the city in more than 25 years.

The deal was hailed as a sign that the city's sluggish real estate market was showing signs of life.

It is not yet known whether Trump intends to move forward with the deal, but it is highly possible that the flood could stop the real-estate boom in its tracks.

"Outsiders are going to have second thoughts about investing in the city," said John Maginnis, a longtime Louisiana political commentator, journalist and author.

Ultimately, while New Orleans will have to rely heavily on "outsiders" — the federal government, private donations, investors — to come back from the brink of extinction, it will be the spirit of the people who love the city and will never leave that will determine whether it is the New Orleans of old.

As Jack Fines, a 78-year-old trumpet player and leader of the Palmetto Bug Stompers, said in a television interview last week as he sat in his house with a bottle of gin and watched the waters rise:

"Anything's possible in New Orleans. Anything."

DAY
By Cain Burdeau, Associated Press Writer    
Published on 7/2/2007

New Orleans — The government's repairs to New Orleans' hurricane-damaged levees may put the French Quarter in greater danger than it was before Hurricane Katrina, a weakness planners said couldn't be helped, at least for now.

Experts say the stronger levees and flood walls could funnel storm water into the cul-de-sac of the Industrial Canal, only 2 miles from Bourbon Street, and overwhelm the waterway's 12-foot-high concrete flood walls that shield some of the city's most cherished neighborhoods.  The only things separating Creole bungalows and St. Louis Cathedral from a hurricane's storm surge are those barriers, similar in design to the walls that broke during Katrina.

“A system is much like a chain. We have strengthened some of the lengths, and those areas are now better protected,” said Robert Bea, a lead investigator of an independent National Science Foundation team that examined Katrina's levee failures.

“When the chain is challenged by high water again, it will break at those weak links, and they are now next to some of the oldest neighborhoods, including the French Quarter, Marigny, and all of those areas west of the cul-de-sac.”

J. David Rogers, another engineer with the National Science Foundation team, concurred with Bea's assessment that the French Quarter may now be in more peril than before Katrina.  Officials from the Army Corps of Engineers knew the levee repairs would heighten the risk to the French Quarter. One commander even called it the system's “Achilles' heel.”

To curb the danger, the corps reinforced the existing barriers. But engineers didn't have enough time or money to entirely replace the flood walls with higher, stronger ones.
Bea and other independent experts say those steps were insufficient.

“It wasn't, 'Get all the repairs done and then look at the rest of the system,”' said Ed Link, a University of Maryland engineer and a top adviser on the reconstruction work. “It was all being done in parallel.”

The system, he said, is stronger now, but “it's misinformation to infer that it's an unintended consequence.”

The possibility of a heightened risk came as a surprise to many residents of the French Quarter and districts such as New Marigny, where jazz great Jelly Roll Morton once lived.

“Is that what they're saying? Oh, boy, that's not good,” said Nathan Chapman, president of Vieux Carré Property Owners, Residents and Associates Inc., an advocacy group that defends the quality of life in the French Quarter. “It's not on enough people's radar.”

Adolph Bynum was unconvinced about the potential new threat to his restoration of an 1840 Creole cottage damaged by Katrina's winds in Treme, a charming neighborhood next to the French Quarter where plantation owners once housed their black mistresses.

“If the cottage floods or Treme floods, so will the French Quarter. If that happens, everything is flooded,” Bynum said.

The city's oldest neighborhoods were settled long ago because they were the only dry ground in a wilderness of swamp. When Katrina struck, flooding only reached the outer limit of the French Quarter, creeping into places such as St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, the site of voodoo priestess Marie Laveau's tomb.  With their open-air markets, flamboyant artists, baroque churches and carefree lifestyle, the neighborhoods next to the Industrial Canal are some of the city's most prized real estate and give New Orleans its old-world soul.

“If we lose them, gosh, New Orleans would no longer be New Orleans,” Chapman said.

As for the new threat posed by the Industrial Canal, corps officials argue that there are other low and weak spots along the channel that might be the first to go, taking pressure off of the section near the French Quarter.

But Bea cautioned that a set of navigational locks on the French Quarter side would likely cause water to accumulate and even create a whirlpool effect. He said there is evidence the locks were a factor in the collapse of the flood wall next to the Lower 9th Ward during Katrina. The Lower 9th Ward sits on the other side of the canal from the French Quarter.  Corps officials also say that if water spilled over the walls near the Quarter, or even breached them, low-lying neighborhoods would flood first.

But Army engineers don't plan on taking any chances. They may eventually add steel plates to raise and armor the walls, block storm surge with sunken barges, and install flood gates.  However, there is no plan to beef up the protection for this year's hurricane season.  Cecil Soileau, a corps consultant and former corps engineer who designed many of the levees, said alarm over the threat to the Quarter is overblown.

“We've had people in the past saying Jackson Square would be inundated with 26 feet of water and only the steeple of the cathedral would be sticking up,” Soileau said. “And I don't think that's a realistic situation.”

By JOBY WARRICK And MICHAEL GRUNWALD, Washington Post
October 24, 2005

 
Mystery surrounds floodwall breaches
Could a structural flaw be to blame?

By John McQuaid, Staff writer
Times-Picayune
September 13, 2005

One of the central mysteries emerging in the Hurricane Katrina disaster is why concrete floodwalls in three canals breached during the storm, causing much of the catastrophic flooding, while earthen hurricane levees surrounding the city remained intact.

It probably will take months to investigate and make a conclusive determination about what happened, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. But two Louisiana State University scientists who have examined the breaches suggest that a structural flaw in the floodwalls might be to blame.

"Why did we have no hurricane levee failures but five separate places with floodwall failures?" asked Joseph Suhayda, a retired LSU coastal engineer who examined the breaches last week. "That suggests there may be something about floodwalls that makes them more susceptible to failure. Did (the storm) exceed design conditions? What were the conditions? What about the construction?"

Ivor Van Heerden, who uses computer models to study storm-surge dynamics for the LSU Hurricane Center, has said that fragmentary initial data indicate that Katrina's storm-surge heights in Lake Pontchartrain would not have been high enough to top the canal walls and that a "catastrophic structural failure" occurred in the floodwalls.

Corps project manager Al Naomi said that the Corps' working theory is that the floodwalls were well-constructed, but once topped they gave way after water scoured their interior sides, wearing away their earth-packed bases. But he said some other problem could have caused the breaches.

"They could have been overtopped. There could have been some structural failure. They could have been impacted by some type of debris," Naomi said. "I don't think it's right to make some type of judgment now. It's like presuming the reason for a plane crash without recovering the black box."

Officials long had warned about the danger of levees being topped by high water from a storm surge. Absent topping, floodwalls are supposed to remain intact.

The floodwalls lining New Orleans canals consist of concrete sections attached to steel sheet pile drilled deep into the earth, fortified by a concrete and earthen base. The sections are joined with a flexible, waterproof substance.

Floodwalls were breached in the 17th Street Canal, at two places in the London Avenue Canal, and at two places in the Industrial Canal, Suhayda said. Naomi said last week that one of the Industrial Canal breaches likely was caused by a loose barge that broke through it.

Suhayda said that his inspection of the debris from the 17th Street Canal breach suggests the wall simply gave way. "It looks to have been laterally pushed, not scoured in back with dirt being removed in pieces," he said. "You can see levee material, some distance pushed inside the floodwall area, like a bulldozer pushed it."

He suggested that because the walls failed in a few spots, the flaw may not be in the design but in the construction or materials.

"Those sections in the rest of the wall should have been subjected to the same forces as that section that failed," he said. "Why did one side fail, not the other side?"

Drainage canals typically are lined with floodwalls instead of the wider earthen levees that protect the lakefront because of a lack of space, engineers say.

"It's a right-of-way issue," Naomi said. "Usually, there are homes right up against the canal. You have to relocate five miles of homes (to build a levee), or you can build a floodwall."

Constructing a more expensive earthen levee also would require building farther out into the canal itself, reducing the size of the canal - and the volume of water it could handle.

Naomi said that an earthen levee also could have been breached if the surge had pushed water over the top. "A levee failure might be more gradual than with a floodwall," he said. "It means you may have flooded a little slower."

The central question for engineers investigating the breaches will be whether the floodwalls were topped - and that's still unclear.

The levee system, floodwalls included, is designed to protect against an average storm surge of 11.5 feet above sea level. The Corps adds several more feet of "freeboard" to account for waves and other dynamics.

Naomi said the Industrial Canal floodwalls were topped by water coming in from the east. But scientists don't yet know exactly whether Katrina's Lake Pontchartrain surge was high enough to go over the wall in the two other canals.

Many storm surge gauges stopped functioning during the storm, LSU climatologist Barry Keim, though initial data point to a mi-lake height of eight or nine feet. Heights typically are higher at the Lakefront area because wind pushes water higher against the levees.

Suhayda said the debris line on the lakefront levee adjacent to the canal was "several feet" below the top. The levees are 17 or 18 feet high in that area. The canal levees, however, average only 14 feet. Storm surges have waves and other dynamics that push water still higher than the average height.

"There are big implications for as little as a one-foot change in elevation" of the storm surge, Suhayda said.

If the water did not top the levees, the breaches could prove more mysterious. Typically, the pounding of wave action would be the most likely way to cause a breach, scientists say. But there isn't much wave action in canals.

"Waves constantly breaking on the structure start to erode it and make it become unstable," said LSU coastal geologist Greg Stone, who studies storm-surge dynamics. "But I don't think that was a major factor in the canals. You just don't have the (open area) to allow wave growth to occur."

Geologist: Katrina ripped up La. coastline:Talks surface on how to protect La., coast

Acting Police Chief Warren Riley said the termination letters he mailed Friday represented the easy cases because those officers have not contacted the department since leaving their posts. Of the AWOL cops, all carried the rank of patrol officer except for one ranking commander, a sergeant, Riley said. Six civilian employees also were sent "abandonment letters," he said. Riley did not release the names of those dismissed.

"It is unfortunate that some members did not uphold their oath of office to support the city of New Orleans and the dedicated men and women of the NOPD," Riley said.

Since the Aug. 29 storm, 15 officers resigned while under investigation, 45 officers resigned citing personal reasons, nine officers retired and two committed suicide, Riley said. Added to Friday's firings, the department has lost 116 officers altogether -- about 7 percent of the force -- but their absence has hardly been felt in the past month because much of the city has been emptied of citizens, dropping crime to record low levels.

"We're still functioning and we're a very effective department," spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo said. The force stood at 1,650 before the storm. Including officers who are out with injuries or illness, it now numbers 1,448, including the 228 who are under investigation for leaving their posts.

Of the city's eight police districts, the 7th District -- covering eastern New Orleans -- lost the most officers, Riley said. But that area also suffered some of the most severe flooding and loss of residents, making the normal contingent of officers unnecessary.

Riley said the city has no plans to recruit new officers to fill the vacancies. But the ultimate size and shape of the force won't be determined until the Public Integrity Bureau investigates the remaining 228 officers who left at some point during the crisis.

Once the facts are gathered, those officers will face a tribunal of the department's top commanders to determine what disciplinary action should be taken against them, if any. The officers will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, Riley said. That process is expected to take at least four months.

The officers under review fall into two categories: those who didn't report to duty as the storm hit and those who left without permission during the tumultuous aftermath.

Some of those who didn't report may have found themselves stuck by floodwaters or, in the case of officers who were out of town, unable to return because of the high water, Riley said. Others were at their posts as Katrina swept ashore, but later left without notifying their superiors.

"Some went to check on their families. Some went to check on their homes," Riley said. "Many of them returned within two or three days, some didn't return for 10 or 12 days. But we still have a problem with that because they should have been here and they left without permission."

Another 13 officers are under investigation concerning possible looting, Riley said.

Rafael Goyeneche, president of the nonprofit Metropolitan Crime Commission, said the ongoing attrition should not come as a surprise given the scale of the disaster. In fact, the losses ultimately could make the force stronger, he said.

"Hurricane Katrina was a tremendous gut-check for the department," Goyeneche said. "They've now seen up close and under the most trying circumstances who is really devoted to the city. One of the things the department always does in hiring is put applicants through psychological testing, but there's no substitute for seeing someone perform in a crisis. Ultimately, this could be a real uniting event for this police force."

Weston Commission for the Arts link here...

On Friday evening at 8PM in the Library...

Alolf Duda,

On Sunday afternoon at 3PM in the historic and beautiful Town Hall Meeting Room...

AT TOWN HALL...
The playwright, at Town Hall for reading of "Miss Crandall's Classes" - hear it now and be in the know when it hits Broadway later!

"Miss Crandall's Classes"

A play reading

by Catherine Gropper of Weston

 

Ten actors tell the story of the Connecticut heroine Prudence Crandall who, in the 1830s, opened her academy to black women thus advocating the right to an education for all women in America.

 

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 3:00pm

Weston Town Hall, 56 Norfield Road

        

Free.  All are cordially invited! 

Reception following.  Call 454-4774 for info.

Sponsored by the Weston Commission for the Arts

Gerda Da Rif - Art Opening - breaks all (unofficial) records for turn-out!!!  Must see!!!
Weston Public Library - 56 Norfield Road
Champagne Reception was Sunday, October 30, 2005, 4-6pm
Exhibit through November 12th.
The Weston Commission for the Arts
The Weston Historical Society

Crowd of 200+ plus photographers and videographers cluster by the wall at the Town Hall greensward...which looks as if had been designed for just this event!!!

In the shadow of Mount Rainier, a father pushes his son on a squeaky swing set. A small dog sleeps undisturbed in the middle of a dead-end road. The tall firs lining the main street whisper in the spring breeze.

What's St. Helens' current status? It's currently at the second highest alert level. This indicates heightened concern about hazards but not an imminent life- or property-threatening event. Under current conditions, small, short-lived explosions may produce ash clouds that rise to 30,000 feet. Ash from such events can travel 100 miles downwind. Is it going to erupt? By geologic standards, the mountain has been erupting since October, but scientists aren't sure if another large eruption is coming. So far, the mountain has emitted steam and a little ash. A major eruption could produce a flow of superheated rock and ash that destroys anything in its path, as in 1980. Can people visit the volcano? The mountain can be viewed from several places, including Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center, about seven miles away, and the Johnston Ridge Observatory, five miles away, which has a stunning view into the crater. Current conditions and restrictions are posted at www. fs.fed.us/gpnf/ recreation/current- conditions.

One day, the peaceful hush of this small town will be broken by a rumble that sounds like a thousand freight trains. If everything works right, sirens will wail and the town's 4,400 residents will have 45 minutes to evacuate - or be buried by an avalanche of mud and debris tumbling off the flank of Mount Rainier.

Scientists know Mount Rainier, an active volcano, will one day reawaken as Mount St. Helens did in 1980. It could gradually build up and explode, or part of it could simply collapse, perhaps with little or no warning. It could happen in 200 years, or it could happen tonight.

"People get burned by these kind of events because they think it can't happen in their lifetime," said U.S. Geological Survey volcano expert Willie Scott. "We can't rule out a flow of troublesome size being generated almost at any time."

A mudflow would likely be troublesome indeed for Orting. Two rivers, the Carbon and the Puyallup, drain off the mountain, hug the town and converge just beyond it, putting Orting squarely in the mountain's strike zone. The town was built atop a 500-year-old mudflow that buried the valley 30 feet deep.

Construction crews working on new housing developments for Orting's growing population have dug up massive tree stumps - the remnants of a forest buried there the last time Mount Rainier erupted.

The USGS ranks Mount Rainier as the third most dangerous volcano in the nation, after Kilauea on Hawaii's Big Island and St. Helens, both of which are currently active. Other studies call Rainier the most dangerous volcano in the world, not just for its explosive potential but because of the 3 million people who live in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metropolitan area. At least 100,000 people live on top of old Rainier mudflows that have solidified.

Disaster could strike in at least three different ways. The mountain could go through a Mount St. Helens-type buildup, with magma rising in the mountain's core and then literally blowing Rainier's top and sending mudflows crashing down on the valleys below.  Or the magma could build up inside the mountain and never explode, but trigger mudflows by weakening the rock and melting the glaciers lacing the mountain.

Or part of the mountain could simply collapse without any magma buildup, weakened by centuries of hot, acidic liquid coursing through the rock. Scott said the west flank of Rainier, overlooking the Puyallup River valley, is the oldest part of Mount Rainier and thus the most likely to collapse.
In any case, rock and mud would mix with melted glaciers to create a flow the consistency of concrete but moving as fast as 50 miles per hour. The mudflow would sweep down the valleys, picking whatever was in its way.

Most of the mudflows from Mount Rainier were triggered by an eruption, Scott said. But the most recent, the Electron mudflow that buried Orting 500 years ago, didn't seem to follow that pattern.

"Maybe it was just a gradual weakening," Scott said. "That one sort of keeps us honest."

About 5,600 years ago, the Osceola mudflow blanketed about 200 square miles northwest of the mountain. The flows reached as far north as Kent, a Seattle suburb, and drained west into Commencement Bay, now the site of the Port of Tacoma.

The risk of catastrophe every couple of thousand years hasn't stopped brisk development on ancient mudflows. But as scientists identified Rainier as a threat in the decades after Mount St. Helens' eruption, government officials and citizens have begun preparing.

Last week, federal, state and local officials gathered at Fort Lewis for an exercise called Cascade Fury III - simulating the emergency response to an earthquake, eruption and massive mudflow from Mount Rainier. Later this month, Orting schools will practice a drill familiar to most students by now, evacuating and walking two miles to higher ground.

Chuck Morrison has been lobbying for years to make that walk faster and easier. He wants to build bridges and a path so Orting students can evacuate to a bluff about a half-mile away, rather than hightailing it across town.  This year's state budget includes $1.7 million to start engineering and planning for the project. Morrison hopes to get more money from the federal government and private donors to finish the "Bridge for Kids."

Some locals have welcomed his activism, while others roll their eyes.

"Don't keep talking about that mountain! I'm sick of hearing about it," said James Nunnally, 69. He'd rather see the state spend money on roads to handle Orting's growing number of commuters than on a pedestrian bridge.

"It's a farce," Nunnally said.

Mount Rainer in distance (one big mountain looking out from our hotel room - Edgewater)!
Mount Rainier (background) looms behind Mount St. Helens in September. The U.S. Geological Survey ranks Mount Rainier as the third most dangerous volcano in the nation after Mount St. Helens and Hawaii's Kilauea.

Other volcanoes

Mount St. Helens is just one in a 1,000-mile chain of more than 30 volcanoes. Here are some of the other principal peaks:

British Columbia

Silverthrone Glacier, 10,428 feet, inactive for 100,000 years.

Franklin Glacier, 7,389 feet, future activity possible.

Meager Mountain, 8,790 feet, future activity possible.

Mount Cayley, 7,838 feet, future activity possible.

Mount Garibaldi, 8,787 feet, future activity possible.

Washington

Mount Baker, 10,778 feet, future activity likely.

Glacier Peak, 10,541 feet, future activity possible.

Mount Rainier, 14,411 feet, future activity likely.

Mount Adams, 12,276 feet, future activity likely.

Oregon:

Mount Hood, 11,245 feet, future activity likely.

Mount Jefferson, 10,495 feet, future activity possible.

Three Sisters area: North Sister, 10,085 feet, probably extinct for 100,000 years; Middle Sister, 10,047 feet, may be inactive; South Sister, 10,358 feet, future activity likely; Broken Top, 9,175 feet, inactive for probably 100,000 years; and Mount Bachelor, 9,065 feet, future activity likely.

Newberry Caldera, 7,985, future activity likely.

Mount Thielsen, 9,178 feet, future activity unlikely.

Mount McLoughlin 9,495 feet, future activity uncertain.

Mount Mazama-Crater Lake, 8,156 feet, future activity possible

HISTORY LESSON FROM I-BBC...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/asia_pac/05/china_japan/html/introduction.stm

Introduction
Tensions are high between East Asian neighbours China and Japan. China accuses Japan of failing to repent for historical wrongs, while Japan accuses China of dwelling on the past.

But behind the talk of the past there are also fears and ambitions for the future.

As China speeds towards economic parity with the Japanese heavyweight, competition for resources and markets is growing. Both wish to match their economic prowess with leading roles in world diplomacy. Both are anxious to take maximum advantage of a rapidly changing regional power balance...

By December 2006, the Indian Ocean should be fully kitted out with a brand new hi-tech tsunami early warning system.

The arsenal of wave and pressure sensors, seismographs, data-crunching computers and orbiting satellites will cast a watchful eye over the ocean, looking out for any sinister changes.

If another devastating wave takes shape, a warning will fire off immediately and scientists should be able to predict where, when and just how hard the water will hit.

But that is only half the story. Even if the early warning system can be relied upon to do its job, we still cannot breathe easy.

Coasts around the Indian Ocean are often populated by poor communities who do not have access to modern technology. How is every lonely fisherman and every beach dweller without a phone connection going to be warned in the event of an emergency?

The technology goes a long way but the final mile - leading right up to every door across the region - is by far the hardest.

According to some experts, the spanking new technology is the iron link in a dangerously papery chain.

Effective disaster response drills in surrounding countries are not unachievable - indeed many are working hard towards them - but they are likely to be on a slower timetable than the high-tech installation.

If a tsunami struck again next year, the technology would be ready, but the people might not be.

"I have no doubt that the technical element of the warning system will work very well," said Professor Bill McGuire, of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre, London, UK.

"But there has to be an effective and efficient communications cascade from the warning centre to the fisherman on the beach and his family and the bar owners."

Infrequent reports

Plans to develop the tsunami early warning technology are steaming ahead.

The operation is being co-ordinated by the UN with the help of scientists from all around the Indian Ocean. The final result will resemble the system already existing in the Pacific Ocean, and will be able to pick up storm surges (big waves caused by storms) as well as tsunami.

The Indian Ocean already has 15 sea level gauges, which broadcast information about changes in water swells. At the moment, they only generate data every hour or so, which is clearly far too infrequent for effective tsunami detection.

But after an upgrade, these sensors will send sea-level updates every three minutes.

"The upgraded instruments will be able to measure sea level accurately and also broadcast it at a faster rate to international centres," said Patricio Bernal, of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (Unesco) Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC).

"We expect this to be complete within the next few months."

The next stage will be to install a series of pressure gauges, which sit under the sea and monitor the weight of water on top of them. They transmit data to a buoy floating on the surface, which relays the information to a satellite that alerts a computer in an international early warning centre.

The pressure gauges are expensive pieces of equipment - each buoy unit costs $300,000 (£160,000). The UN has not yet decided how many buoys will be installed, but it is likely to be several.

The Pacific Ocean has several million dollars worth of early warning equipment and, although nobody is able to put a figure on the Indian Ocean system, it will probably be in the same ball-park.

All the ocean sensors and seismographs will broadcast their information first to an international early warning centre and then on to national centres.

Emergency response

It is there that the iron link ends. Although the UN is overseeing the technology installation, it will be up to individual governments to co-ordinate and plan their own emergency responses.

"I think there is a lot to do there," admitted Dr Bernal. "Usually, emergency infrastructure is not very high on the list of priorities for most governments.

"Detecting a tsunami is only a fraction of the problem - the big problem is how to prepare societies and local populations so they can act appropriately to a warning."

They say that, because the tsunami risk is actually extremely low, the important thing is to take a multi-hazard approach - otherwise, over the years, interest will fade. In other words, people will be taught how to behave in the event of a cyclone, earthquake, storm surge or tsunami.

"Even after a year, you see how the interest is fading," said Eva Vonn Oelreich, head of disaster preparedness at the humanitarian society. "That is why we strongly advocate a multi-hazard response."

Each community with a high hazard risk will contain a series of volunteers. These are the people who will be told first about an impending disaster and they will inform their local population.

They may have hand megaphones or whistles and will cycle around their villages warning people.

The community as a whole could be trained how to react to this warning through a series of live performances.

"In Bangladesh, which suffers badly from cyclones, the preferred way to raise awareness is through dramas," said Ms Vonn Oelreich.

"The volunteers perform as if in a disaster. You see women on their own rushing to get to evacuation centres, which is very important because women cannot always go out alone and we need to show that in situations like this different rules apply."

However, this type of effort takes a long time to achieve results.

"It is an enormous job," said Ms Vonn Oelreich. "After three years you have solid work on the ground, but it is not institutionalised unless you see it can work for a 10-year period.

"The hi-tech part can take eight months, but to build up to volunteer level will take longer. It will be quite a few years before the communities are trained in alert signals and evacuation mechanisms."

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (AP) -- A few hundred tsunami survivors traded their cramped and dirty tents for government barracks with kitchens and latrines Tuesday in a sign that aid pouring into this province is shifting away from emergency relief toward more permanent reconstruction.

About 100,000 people in the shattered Aceh province have been living in tents in overcrowded camps, many built on ground still swampy from the tsunami since soon after the Dec. 26 disaster.

But 600 of them on Tuesday became the first to move to government-provided wooden barracks-style accommodations, said Totok Pri, a coordinator for Indonesia's public works department.

Three buses filled with the survivors arrived in the camp on the outskirts of Banda Aceh, the devastated provincial capital, and began unpacking their meager belongings in the 10 homes.

"I can accept moving to the relocation center because the place looks like a house and not a tent," said Mardiyah, 29-year-old survivor whose parents were killed. "I am no longer worried that I might get evicted."

The new housing in Indonesia highlighted a larger shift in aid priorities among donor nations that rushed to help the nearly dozen nations affected by the tsunami, but more than six weeks later are focusing on longer-term reconstruction...

Annan Selects Clinton for Tsunami Effort

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Secretary-General Kofi Annan has selected former President Clinton to be the U.N. point man for tsunami reconstruction and ensure that the world doesn't forget the immense needs of the countries devastated by the Dec. 26 disaster, a well-informed U.N. diplomat said Tuesday.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard refused to confirm the appointment but said "a statement will be released on the subject by my office in the next few hours."

The U.N. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the appointment of Clinton as Annan's top envoy for the rehabilitation of tsunami-devastated countries would expand on the former president's current efforts to raise money in the United States.

Soon after the disaster, President Bush named Clinton and his father, President George H.W. Bush, to head a nationwide private fund-raising effort to help countries devastated by the deadly wall of water that killed more than 157,000 people and displaced millions of others.

The two ex-presidents have been traveling throughout the country raising money and Bush said last week they hope to go to the tsunami-ravaged Indian Ocean region to illustrate the need for continued financial help from Americans to rebuild the area. He didn't say when.

Indonesia has again raised its estimate of the number of people killed by December's earthquake and tsunami.

Health Minister Fadilah Supari said more than 220,000 people died or are missing, bringing the total killed throughout the region to 280,000.  A month after the disaster, relief workers in Aceh province are still pulling corpses from the wreckage.

But daily life is slowly returning, and the province's schools were reportedly set to reopen on Wednesday.  "One of the best things you can do for children is to establish a sense of normalcy and routine," Save the Children spokeswoman Eileen Burke told Reuters news agency.

Dr Supari told the BBC that between 95,000 and 100,000 bodies had now been found and buried in Aceh and northern Sumatra.  But she added that another 133,000 people were still missing, presumed dead...

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters) - The global death toll from the Asian tsunami shot above 226,000 Wednesday after Indonesia's Health Ministry confirmed the deaths of tens of thousands of people previously listed as missing.

The ministry raised the country's death toll to 166,320. It had previously given a figure of 95,450 while Indonesia's Ministry of Social Affairs had put the death toll at around 115,000 before it stopped counting.

Dodi Indrasanto, a director at the health ministry's department of health affairs, said the new death total reflected the latest reports from the provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra, which were directly in the path of the killer tsunami spawned by a magnitude 9 earthquake the day after Christmas.

The new figure lifted the total global death toll from the tsunami disaster to 226,566, although the number continues to rise as more deaths are reported around the region.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, speaking before the health ministry released its latest figures, told a donors conference in Jakarta that the true extent of the catastrophe defied description.

"Perhaps we will never know the exact scale of the human casualties," he said...

Threat of Disease Fades, But Agencies on Guard
By Jeff Franks and Karima Anjani, Friday, January 14, 2005

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters) - The threat of disease decimating survivors of Asia's tsunami has receded but aid agencies are remaining on their guard, the U.N. said on Friday as doctors reported children dying from pneumonia.

Indonesia found almost 4,000 more bodies of tsunami victims, taking the global death toll from the disaster above 160,000. Despite that increase, signs of recovery were emerging.

Life was starting to return to normal in towns and villages on battered Indian Ocean coasts with markets reopening and fishermen casting their nets at sea again after the Dec. 26 earthquake and the tsunami that it triggered...

Press Release Source: NASA
NASA Details Earthquake Affects on the Earth
Monday January 10, 11:26 am ET

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA scientists using data from the Indonesian earthquake calculated it affected Earth's rotation, decreased the length of day, slightly changed the planet's shape, and shifted the North Pole by centimeters. The earthquake that created the huge tsunami also changed the Earth's rotation.
Dr. Benjamin Fong Chao, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. and Dr. Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. said all earthquakes have some affect on Earth's rotation. It's just they are usually barely noticeable.

"Any worldly event that involves the movement of mass affects the Earth's rotation, from seasonal weather down to driving a car," Chao said.

Chao and Gross have been routinely calculating earthquakes' effects in changing the Earth's rotation in both length-of-day as well as changes in Earth's gravitational field. They also study changes in polar motion that is shifting the North Pole. The "mean North pole" was shifted by about 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) in the direction of 145 degrees East Latitude. This shift east is continuing a long-term seismic trend identified in previous studies.

They also found the earthquake decreased the length of day by 2.68 microseconds. Physically this is like a spinning skater drawing arms closer to the body resulting in a faster spin. The quake also affected the Earth's shape. They found Earth's oblateness (flattening on the top and bulging at the equator) decreased by a small amount. It decreased about one part in 10 billion, continuing the trend of earthquakes making Earth less oblate.

To make a comparison about the mass that was shifted as a result of the earthquake, and how it affected the Earth, Chao compares it to the great Three-Gorge reservoir of China. If filled the gorge would hold 40 cubic kilometers (10 trillion gallons) of water. That shift of mass would increase the length of day by only 0.06 microseconds and make the Earth only very slightly more round in the middle and flat on the top. It would shift the pole position by about two centimeters (0.8 inch).

The researchers concluded the Sumatra earthquake caused a length of day (LOD) change too small to detect, but it can be calculated. It also caused an oblateness change barely detectable, and a pole shift large enough to be possibly identified. They hope to detect the LOD signal and pole shift when Earth rotation data from ground based and space-borne position sensors are reviewed.

The researchers used data from the Harvard University Centroid Moment Tensor database that catalogs large earthquakes. The data is calculated in a set of formulas, and the results are reported and updated on a NASA Web site.

The massive earthquake off the west coast of Indonesia on December 26, 2004, registered a magnitude of nine on the new "moment" scale (modified Richter scale) that indicates the size of earthquakes. It was the fourth largest earthquake in one hundred years and largest since the 1964 Prince William Sound, Alaska earthquake.

The devastating mega thrust earthquake occurred as a result of the India and Burma plates coming together. It was caused by the release of stresses that developed as the India plate slid beneath the overriding Burma plate. The fault dislocation, or earthquake, consisted of a downward sliding of one plate relative to the overlying plate. The net effect was a slightly more compact Earth. The India plate began its descent into the mantle at the Sunda trench that lies west of the earthquake's epicenter. For information and images on the Web, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/indonesia_quake.html

For the details on the Sumatra, Indonesia Earthquake, visit the USGS Internet site:
http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2004/eq_041226/

For information about NASA and agency programs Web, visit:  http://www.nasa.gov

Touring the devastation of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, introduced U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays to the unfathomable.

"It's not something to be believed," Shays, R-Bridgeport, said during a telephone interview yesterday. "There was a whole community that was just totally wiped out. No houses, no debris, just sand."

He compared the destruction left in the wake of the Asian tsunami, which has killed more than 150,000, to another grim day in modern world history.

"In my imagination this is what Hiroshima or Nagasaki must have looked like," he said, referring to the Japanese cities destroyed by U.S. atomic bombs at the end of World War II.

Shays was part of a seven-member congressional delegation that left for Indonesia Wednesday. The group has spent the past few days traveling across the northern tip of Sumatra by helicopter, surveying the damage and aid needs for the region.

The death toll for Indonesia alone tops 104,000.

Delegates have met with Indonesian leaders and refugees, as well as volunteers from Australia, Great Britain and other parts of Asia. They plan to travel to Thailand and Sri Lanka in the next few days before returning to the United States Wednesday.

For the past decade, Shays, who is chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, has traveled to other devastated areas , such as Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo. But the magnitude of the tsunami is still hard for Shays to describe, even after being there for a few days.

"Colin Powell told me it was like nothing he's ever seen and he's seen a lot," Shays said, referring to the secretary of state's recent visits to the region. "I've seen a lot of devastation too . . . But this? I've just never seen anything like that."

What was most shocking to Shays was how parts of the island left untouched by the tidal wave looked compared with the tip of Aceh province.

"The other side of the island looked like a thriving metropolis," he said. "The contrast was clear."

When he returns home next week, Shays said he will discuss his experience with Save the Children, a Westport-based international development nonprofit organization. As a lead sponsor of a proposed law that would authorize funds to protect women and children in humanitarian emergencies, Shays said he was concerned for the thousands of children orphaned in the region and vulnerable to sexual exploitation and trafficking.

"He's been great on all fronts as far as Save the Children is concerned," said Carol Miller, associate vice president for public policy and advocacy for Save the Children. She added that it is great "to have someone in the U.S. government in a senior leadership position who wants to make sure that children are protected during these efforts."

The rehabilitation of Southeast Asia "is a long-term thing and could take a decade-plus," Shays said, who also noted that more than 400 schools were wiped away.

"They have to start from scratch. Nothing was salvageable," he said.

Shays also defended accusations that U.S. relief has been too stingy.

"I think that was very unfair and not true," he said. "There is no question that there has been a sense of urgency and crisis and that the U.S. is playing a major role and providing major financial assistance."

Shays also said there has been no shortage of support from his constituents in lower Fairfield County.

"One person called me and said he wanted to give $100,000," he said. "I think it's good for these people to see American faces. It's good to know that we care for so many people."

Summit approves tsunami warning
Kofi Annan wants pledges of immediate aid for tsunami survivors
6 Jan. 2005 I-BBC
World leaders have pledged to set up an Indian Ocean early warning system which could save lives in the event of a repeat of December's tsunami.

A declaration signed at the end of the aid conference in Indonesia also calls on the UN to mobilise the international community for the relief effort.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged donors at the conference to convert aid pledges into $1bn cash for urgent use.  Global pledges exceed $3bn but promises have not always come good in the past.  More than 140,000 people are now known to have died in the disaster, and hundreds of thousands more are homeless...

Early warning technology - is it enough?
By Julianna Kettlewell, BBC News science reporter
6 Jan. 2005

The Pacific system works in quite a simple way...There is a sense of helplessness and soul-searching after the tsunami last week that killed more than 140,000 people.  Naturally, nations have turned their attention to exploring how such massive loss of life might be prevented in future.

A summit has now decided to create a tsunami early warning system for the Indian Ocean. The high-tech equipment could detect tsunamis that are still miles out at sea.

See how the warning system works

If disaster strikes twice, it could buy time - enough time, perhaps, to save hundreds of thousands of lives.  But unless you can warn people in remote areas, the technology is useless.

"There's no point in spending all the money on a fancy monitoring and a fancy analysis system unless we can make sure the infrastructure for the broadcast system is there," said Phil McFadden, chief scientist at Geoscience Australia, which has been tasked with designing an Indian Ocean system by the Australian government.

"That's going to require a lot of work. If it's a tsunami, you've got to get it down to the last Joe on the beach. This is the stuff that is really very hard."

Emergency response

The Pacific basin already has a warning system and, when there was a rash of tsunamis in the 60s, it proved invaluable.    The solution need not be high-tech.  The Pacific system, which cost tens of millions of dollars to install, works in quite a simple way. A pressure sensor sits on the bottom of the ocean and measures the weight of water above it.

If a tsunami passes overhead the pressure increases and the sensor sends a signal to a buoy sitting on the sea surface.  The buoy then sends a signal to a satellite, which in turn alerts a manned early warning centre.  But, as Dr Whitmore put it: "The warning system is more than just a warning centre. You have to have communication from the centre and then you need some sort of emergency response infrastructure.

"And that is really the hardest part, getting a localised emergency response."

An operator sitting in an early warning centre in Jakarta might know about an impending tsunami, but how does he warn the fisherman in Sumatra, the sweet seller in Sri Lanka, the tribesman on Nicobar island?  In many of these places TV, radio, even a telephone, is not an option.

Therefore, many experts say the biggest challenge is to establish an effective infrastructure, which can reach everybody - no matter how remote.

"The population must be educated about tsunamis and how to respond when it comes," said Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre at University College London.

"It is also critical that the final chain in the communication cascade - from emergency managers to population - is efficient and effective."

Communication failure

Tragically, it seems it was the final chain in the communication cascade that failed on Boxing Day. The truth is people did know about the earthquake, they did know about the tsunami threat, they just didn't know how to tell people.
 

The warning system could save lives, say some experts
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii picked up the earthquake. But despite the phone calls they made, the emergency response in Asia did not exist.

Powerful computers in a Vienna office building also picked up the seismic activity. Computers at the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organisation are designed to monitor nuclear explosions anywhere in the world but, as a side-effect, they also detect earthquake vibrations.

Unfortunately, the organisation's staff were on holiday, and the information was not sent to the countries that needed it most.

Nearly everyone agrees an early warning system is needed in the Indian Ocean. But the hard part will be developing a way of informing every swimmer and every fisherman.

Professor McGuire says that although the response infrastructure does need to be organised, it doesn't need to be complex.

"I think sirens could play an important role," he told BBC News website. "Also, in Bangladesh they have dramatically reduced casualties in cyclones by using officials on bicycles blowing whistles to get people to the cyclone shelters.

"The solution need not be high-tech."

JAKARTA, Indonesia - The key to averting a health catastrophe emerging from the tsunami ruins will be basic hygiene — clean water and toilets — medical officials said Saturday, reporting no major disease outbreaks but warning the worst may be just around the corner.  Dirty drinking and washing water combined with lack of proper sewage disposal, they said, are a recipe for explosive outbreaks of life-threatening diarrhea diseases such as cholera, typhoid and dysentery, as well as some forms of hepatitis.

"These are the sort of diseases that could occur any time now," Dr. Michelle Gayer, an infectious diseases specialist at the World Health Organization, said Saturday.  More than 123,000 people are reported dead and officials say the toll is likely to climb as more bodies are found. Most of the victims were killed by the massive tsunamis that smashed coastlines after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake last Sunday off Indonesia's coast.

However, the United Nations has warned that disease may claim almost as many lives.  Hospitals left standing after Asia's killer tsunami haven't been swamped by severely injured survivors. Most casualties either have light wounds or are dead.  But sources of clean water and sanitary toilets have been largely wiped out in many areas by the devastation of the tsunami in Southeast Asia.

The waterborne illnesses threatening the region are caused by bugs in traces of feces, which can easily end up in the mouth not only when people don't wash their hands before eating or preparing food, but also if plates and utensils are washed in sewage-contaminated water.  A common way that such diseases get spread is by fetching buckets of water from rivers and lakes where people bathe and defecate.

"We don't really know how the water is being supplied at the moment," Gayer said. "If it (smells and looks) dirty, people tend to avoid it, but these organisms don't make the water visibly dirty."

"These things are completely preventable and they are reasonably easily preventable," Gayer said. "In this case it's a massive logistical nightmare, but it is possible to do it."

According to the World Food Program, there have been no reports of starvation in tsunami-stricken areas, and experts say they don't expect a threat of starvation. There are food shortages in many areas, but not critical shortages.  However, a nutrition problem is emerging in the worst hit location at the northern tip of Sumatra, the Indonesian island nearest to the epicenter of the quake, said Dr. Georg Petersen, the WHO representative in Indonesia.

There is enough food coming in, but it's mostly rice and noodles, which is not enough, even in the short term, to maintain the immune systems of the struggling survivors, he said.  Malnutrition increases vulnerability to infections. Efforts are under way, Petersen said, to bring in more nutritious food, such as high-protein biscuits.

Dead bodies are not a disease threat, scientists say.

The germs that cause the feared waterborne diseases die with their host, or within hours afterward. Cholera can survive a while, but most of the tsunami victims did not have cholera when they died, so their bodies would not be a health threat.  Medical experts say there are no disease-causing byproducts from the decomposition of human flesh.

A second health hazard wave will likely come from malaria and dengue fever, spread by mosquitoes that breed in stagnant water. Those illnesses, also life-threatening, are not expected to show up for another three or four weeks because it is too early now for the mosquitoes to proliferate and complete the cycle that spreads the diseases.

The impact of these two killers can also be stifled if shelters are sprayed with insecticides and if as many pools of water are eliminated as possible.

Besides water and sanitation, other priorities include shelter, food and basic medical services so that if people do get sick they can be treated quickly, reducing the risk that diseases will spread.  The United Nations Children's Fund is coordinating much of the water and sanitation effort, preparing a mass distribution of emergency health kits that include water purification tablets and disinfectant.

Huge water containers called bladders, which carry 2,640 gallons each, are on their way to the hardest hit areas and technicians in water and sanitation are being drafted from around the world.

Bottled water is not considered sustainable after a while, especially because so many people need the water. The medium-term goal is to find a dam or lake locally that can provide water that can then be chlorinated by the aid agencies, trucked to various locations in huge bladders and distributed in a systematic way.

Banda Aceh, Indonesia— Pilots dropped food to Indonesian villagers stranded among bloating corpses Thursday, while police in a devastated provincial capital stripped looters of their clothing and forced them to sit on the street as a warning to others. The death toll topped 119,000, and officials warned that 5 million people lack clean water, shelter, food, sanitation and medicine.

American planes delivered medical staff to Sri Lanka and body bags to Thailand, while a Thai air base used by B-52 bombers during the Vietnam War was becoming a hub for a U.S. military-led relief effort that will stretch along the Indian Ocean...

Indian women at a makeshift camp in a marriage hall said their children were going hungry. “For the past few days we were at least getting food,” said Selvi, 35, who uses one name. “Today, we didn't even get that because aid workers fled the town after a fresh alert was issued this morning.”

The false alarm from the Indian government was just one of the new and sometimes unexpected threats facing survivors.  Sister Charity, a 32-year-old nun rescued by an Indian navy ship from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands on Wednesday, said confused and hungry crocodiles were on the loose.

“As we were returning (to the ship), two or three crocodiles started coming toward us. The navy officers had to fire their revolvers to ward off the crocodiles to protect us,” she told The Associated Press...

Thursday, Dec. 30, 2004
Manchester Union-Leader:
UNH experts: Tsunamis possible, but unlikely along New England coast
By BRIAN DeKONING

DURHAM — Could it happen here?

With homes, livelihoods and the culture of the region tied to the sea, some area residents are wondering if a tsunami like the one that killed thousands in Asia could hit coastal New England.

But geological factors make that chance slim, according to University of New Hampshire scientists.

"There's a possibility but it's significantly more remote (than in the Indian or Pacific oceans) because there are many fewer large earthquakes in the Atlantic Ocean," said Jamie Pringle, a physical oceanographer at the UNH.

One reason is that the Atlantic Ocean floor is in a different state than the Indian Ocean's, where plates of the earth can rub against each other and create earthquakes that in turn can cause tsunamis like the one that struck Asian nations Sunday.

"Where this earthquake originated that set off the tsunami is known as a subduction zone where a piece of earth is riding over another plate," said Larry Dingman, a UNH professor of hydrology and water resources.

Far off coastal New Hampshire's Rye Beach, the underwater Mid-Atlantic Ridge on the Atlantic Ocean floor is susceptible to quakes, but the tremors are normally caused by plates of the earth moving apart, according to Dingman.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration describes a tsunami as a series of waves moving at speeds of up to 600 mph across the ocean surface. In addition to earthquakes, tsunamis can be caused by volcanic eruptions, landslides and in rare scenarios, by meteors hitting the sea, according to NOAA.

"It's similar to the force of a large ocean wave," Pringle said. "The bigger deal is that it ends up in places where waves usually aren't."

There have been instances, such as in Portugal in the 1700s or Newfoundland in the 1920s, when tsunamis struck Atlantic Ocean communities, according to Larry Mayer, the director of UNH's Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping.

Topography could be another factor making New England less susceptible, according to Mayer. Several of the Asian nations devastated Sunday were at or near sea level. While New England has some low-lying areas, tsunami damage may be lessened because of higher elevation. 

Like a colossal ripple racing across the world's seas, waves from the killer tsunami that devastated coastal communities on the Indian Ocean leaked into the Pacific Basin, reaching Alaska by early Monday morning.

A four-inch uptick in sea level was recorded by a tide gauge in Sand Point along the Alaska Peninsula about 2 a.m., said Bill Knight, a scientist at the West Coast & Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer.

Tsunami warning models had predicted a tiny wave would reach Alaska almost a day earlier, on Sunday morning, but none was detected, Knight said.

"The wave might have arrived at that point but wasn't really big enough to stand out from the noise. So this might have been a second wave."

No other tide gauge in Alaska recorded a pulse that could be traced to the tsunami, but that doesn't mean more waves didn't reach Alaska, Knight said.

Local surf and wind-driven waves could easily have masked such small sea-level shifts.

Other small waves were observed at Pacific islands and on North America's West Coast over the weekend, ranging from a 2-inch wave in Hilo, Hawaii, to an 81/2-incher in San Diego, to a 2-foot wave observed in New Zealand, according to a tsunami advisory issued by the warning center early Monday morning.

The biggest recorded impact in the Pacific Basin struck Manzanillo, Mexico, where the shape of the sea bottom produced a large wave measuring about 81/2 feet from trough to crest.

"This is the biggest thing to hit in 40 years," Knight said.

International tsunami warning systems, like the one sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Pacific, aren't created until after tragedy strikes, Knight said.

"People tend to forget about tsunamis because they don't occur every day," he said.

The Richard H. Hagemeyer Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was established in Hawaii after an Aleutian earthquake or landslide generated a tsunami in 1946 that killed 165 people, most of them in Hilo. The West Coast & Alaska Tsunami Warning Center was established after Alaska's 1964 quake triggered tsunamis that killed at least 122 people, including victims in California.

"I think these sites are always started in response to a natural disaster," Knight said. "There certainly hasn't been anything in history (in the Indian Ocean) that matches what we've just seen."

From the other coast...
Tsunami possible here, but less lethal
By Scott North, Everett WA Herald
Tuesday, December 28, 2004

EVERETT - Could it happen here?

Is Snohomish County, with its western edge made up of beaches and bluffs overlooking Puget Sound, at risk of one day being inundated by a massive tsunami similar to the one that killed more than 22,500 people in Asia on Sunday?

The answer is good news and bad news, said Lee Hazlewood, homeland security manager with the Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management.

A tsunami spawned by the 1964 Alaskan earthquake caused some damage on the Washington coast. Experts believe it is unlikely that a wave kicked up by an earthquake beneath the Pacific Ocean would travel far enough into Puget Sound to cause much damage along local beaches, Hazlewood said.

People living here are at risk, however, from waves caused by earthquakes or landslides into Puget Sound.

Scientists have found evidence of soil deposited by a tsunami at Cultus Bay on the south end of Whidbey Island. Deaths linked to that type of disaster also are part of the community's oral history.

Localized tsunamis, sometimes called seiche (pronounced sigh-shh), are an identified risk to people who live along enclosed or partially enclosed bodies of water, such as Puget Sound, Hazlewood said.

Seiche are produced when a basin containing water is shaken, causing waves to form. The process is similar, on a giant scale, to what happens when liquid sloshes over the lip of a bucket when it is given a sharp jolt. Waves also can be formed when earth slides into a basin, kicking up a wave.

Members of the Tulalip Tribes tell of a horrific slide in the 1820s or 1830s that buried a summer village on the south end of Camano Island. More than 100 people died in the slide at Camano Head, which is said to have sent a wave up over much of nearby Hat Island, drowning still more.

Some historians believe the disaster was triggered by a powerful earthquake, but that was decades before written records were kept of seismic activity in the area.

When a tsunami threatens, there is sometimes an opportunity to evacuate areas where the wave is predicted to make landfall. That isn't the case with a seiche, which can make it particularly deadly, Hazlewood said.

"The earthquake happens here and the tidal waves occurs," he said.

Combined Wire Services

MADRAS, India -- On a balmy Sunday morning at Marina Beach, Brajita Poulose, 45, her husband, two sons and four other relatives strolled along the shore in the sunshine, enjoying the ocean breeze. Young men were playing cricket, joggers trotted past food vendors, fishermen hauled in their nets. Then, without warning, the placid ocean turned violent.

"I was holding my cousin's hand, my two sons were walking behind me, and suddenly ... we saw a huge wave coming at us," said Poulose, who lay exhausted in a hospital bed, as her eldest son, Jiyo, sat weeping at her side. "We did not have enough warning."

 The water quickly rose to Poulose's shoulders, she recalled, and a torrent caused by a tsunami in the Indian Ocean swept her inland, across the main road along Marina Beach, a broad ribbon of golden sand at the edge of this bustling commercial city in the state of Tamil Nadu.

Jiyo, 29, tried to keep his mother in sight, but the surging current pushed them apart. "In no time, I was alone and I couldn't see anyone," he said. "It was one continuous wave."

He caught up with her hours later at a government hospital. The bodies of his father and younger brother Sebastian were in a nearby morgue. The rest of the family was missing.

THAILAND

PHUKET, Thailand - Cars, window panes and chairs littered the sea. Pickup trucks were on top of walls. People in shock, some blood-covered, were evacuated into the hills or packed the hospital wards of this popular southern Thai resort.

For Ann Sophie Spetz, a holiday dream of white, sandy beaches and turquoise waters had turned into a "nightmare."

"It was horrible," said Spetz, of Uppsala, Sweden, who was having breakfast on Kamala beach with her husband when one of her three children raced over, crying out before the waves touched down. "People had blood all over them and they screamed and screamed."

The family followed other foreign tourists who were evacuated to the hills, staying for hours without food. Locals brought them water, and finally they returned to the seaside to eat, but their relief was short-lived.

"The Thai people came again and shouted, `The waves are coming, the waves are coming,' and we threw down our food and ran into the hills again," said Spetz.

Trond Schistad, 38, of Rognan, Norway, said he did not know that tidal waves were pounding Kamala beach while he and his relatives were swimming in the waters off Phi Phi island, where hundreds of boats sank and some 200 seriously injured people were evacuated.

Schistad said the waters were calm. The only giveaway was the window panes and chairs floating in the waters.

"We were wondering why there was so much trash in the sea," he said.

INDONESIA

JAKARTA, Indonesia - The most powerful earthquake in the past 40 years was felt first in Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra island, the Indonesian province closest to the undersea epicenter.

The shaking lasted for about four minutes. But what felt like mild swaying in further-flung cities across Southeast Asia was violent in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, collapsing buildings and toppling the minaret on the centuries-old mosque that dominates the skyline.

Soon after, rumors began spreading that water levels in the river that cuts through Banda Aceh's heart were rising, an aid worker in the city told his colleague in Jakarta, the capital. Flooding and quake damage then cut all links to the city.

Twelve hours later, at least 1,400 people had died in and around the stricken city, the Health Ministry said, basing the figure on short-wave radio reports received from officials on the scene.

Banda Aceh, a city of about 400,000 people, was unusual in Sunday's disaster in that the quake caused many of the deaths. Elsewhere, thousands died from flooding caused by huge tsunami waves.

"People are fleeing their houses in panic, and the talk is that the river is rising," said Arista Idris, an official with the International Organization of Migration, quoting a colleague in Banda Aceh.

By late Sunday, they hadn't heard from the colleague again.

SRI LANKA

Waves also caused devastation in Sri Lanka, a teardrop-shaped island off the southern tip of India, surging across roads and railroad tracks and pouring through coastal villages, markets and beach resorts.

The island is known for its lush tropical forests, tea plantations and idyllic, crescent-shaped beaches. It has experienced a tourist boom since government forces and rebels from the country's ethnic Tamil minority declared a cease-fire in 2002.

Roland Buerk, a BBC correspondent vacationing in Sri Lanka, was in bed in his hotel room in Unawatuna, a resort town on the southwestern coast, when the waves struck. "We suddenly heard some shouts from outside," he wrote on the BBC News website. "Then the water started coming under the door. Within a few seconds it was touching the window."

He and a companion pushed through the rushing water to a tree and climbed into its branches, but it collapsed under the force of the current. "We were swept along for a few hundred meters, trying to dodge the motorcycles, refrigerators, cars and other debris that were coming with us. Finally, about 300 meters inshore, we managed to get hold of a pillar, which we held onto, and the waters just gradually began to subside."

Buerk described shattered buildings and cars in trees. He said he had counted four bodies, including two Sri Lankans - an elderly woman and a young woman - and a Western boy "who looked to be about 5 years old."

Another eyewitness in Unawatuna, Swati Thiyagarajan, described the wave to an NDTV reporter: "It was literally like the sea stood up and walked to your door."

MALAYSIA

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Tidal waves that struck villages on Malaysia's northwestern coast were a terrifying experience for many people, even hardy fishermen and other residents who are accustomed to tropical downpours and regular monsoon flooding.

A wedding ceremony turned into bedlam when the reception became the site of a flash flood. A government health inspector lost his wife and four siblings when they were swallowed up by the sea during a beach picnic. Residents who parked their cars near river banks returned to learn their vehicles were swept away. Preschool children enjoying an afternoon dip in usually placid waters ended up drowning.

Associated Press and Washington Post reports are included. 

CENTER, N.D. - The emergency medical technicians in this town are familiar faces from the high school, the county clerk's office and the coal mine. And like many of their counterparts around the country, members of the Center squad are worried that proposed national standards could more than double the amount of training they must have and thin their ranks.

"A lot of people can't comprehend what it's like to drive 345 miles and not see a house, not see anything, and to have to cover that," said Mickie Eide, the squad's leader. "If you keep requiring us to do more, there's going to be less of us to do it."

The revamped certification rules are being developed for federal regulators by doctors, EMTs and state emergency medical directors.  Supporters say more training requirements would ensure a better qualified national corps of emergency medical providers. But in rural areas where volunteer crews are the rule, many fear the change will limit the pool of new recruits and force experienced EMTs to drop out.

"This is one of the most difficult decisions that I have been involved in in EMS (emergency medical service) in the last 20 years at the national level," said Bob Brown, director of the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians.  The goal is a national standard that would guarantee highly trained workers in ambulances across the nation, Brown said.

"When those ambulance people come up to your side following your incident, you want them to be the best. Capitalize it — The Best," he said. "And those EMS workers want to be the best as well. But it's a bridge too far."   The proposed changes were designed to give EMTs the skills to treat conditions they commonly encounter, said Bob Bass, the Maryland state emergency medical director who sits on a national committee overseeing the reclassification efforts.

"They decided that an EMT could handle more than we currently handle," he said.  For example, the new level of training would allow EMTs to administer such emergency medications as epinephrine, a form of adrenaline given to people suffering severe allergic reactions.  In North Dakota, basic-level EMTs need 110 hours of training to get their initial certification. To meet the new standards as currently proposed, the state Emergency Medical Service Association estimates that basic EMTs would at least have to double that.

In places like Center, a town of about 680 people, crew leaders think a change that steep could push about half their volunteers out of the service.

"It could even affect more," said Eide, a teacher's aide who leads Center's ambulance crew. "We have squad members that are between 10 and 15 years anyway, and are kind of wanting to cut back."  Bass said the minimum requirements might increase, but he said regulators may be able to eliminate some outdated sections to make room for the new lessons.

"I think that the first draft was the flag up the pole," Bass said. "I think there's still a lot of work to be done."   North Dakota officials estimate that 90 percent of North Dakota's 140 ground ambulance services are staffed by volunteers.  Many EMTs likely will find the new requirements too difficult to meet, said Dean Lampe, director of the North Dakota EMS Association.

"These guys have jobs. They work at the Cenex store, they work at the butcher shop. They're farmers trying to get their crops in," he said.  Emergency medical services in other states have found similar problems. In Texas, officials estimate that about a third of the state's emergency medical providers are volunteers.

"I think that there would be a lot of services that would have to make some major adjustments," said Pete Wolf, chief of the volunteer fire department in the north Texas town of Windthorst.

Public comments on the plan are being accepted through January, and the group drafting the rules is set for a new meeting in March.

Wolf sees benefits in national standards, but says a major increase in training requirements could hurt services that already have trouble holding on to members for more than a few years.

"It's fun and great and exciting," Wolf said. "But after a couple of years, you start to look back and reflect, and you have to feed your family as well."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/guides/457000/457023/html/default.stm

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