Wanderlust

Tag: Disaster Accident

  • Magnitude 5.9 quake shakes northern Haiti

    A magnitude 5.9 earthquake shook northwestern Haiti late Saturday, damaging homes, a church and at least one hospital. Officials reported that people had been injured, but had not confirmed local medi

    PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A magnitude 5.9 earthquake shook northwestern Haiti late Saturday, damaging homes, a church and at least one hospital. Officials reported that people had been injured, but had not confirmed local media reports of deaths.

    The U.S. Geologic Survey said the quake hit at 8:11 p.m. (0011 GMT) and was centered 12 miles (19 kilometers) northwest of Port-de-Paix on Haiti’s north coast. It was 7.3 miles (11.7 kilometers) below the surface.

    The country’s civil protection agency issued a statement saying several people were injured and some houses destroyed in Port-de-Paix, Gros Morne, Chansolme and Turtle Island. Among the structures damaged was the Saint-Michel church in Plaisance.

    Other rescue workers reported the collapse of part of a hospital and an auditorium as the quake hit on a rainy evening.

    The quake was felt lightly in the capital, Port-au-Prince, as well as in the neighboring Dominican Republic.

    Impoverished Haiti, where many live in tenuous circumstances, is especially vulnerable to earthquakes. A vastly larger magnitude 7.1 quake damaged much of the capital in 2010 and killed an estimated 300,000 people.

  • Desperation explodes to anger as Indonesia quake toll rises beyond 1,200

    Desperation exploded into anger four days after an earthquake and tsunami decimated parts of the central Indonesian island of Sulawesi, leaving hungry residents grabbing food from damaged stores on Tu

    PALU, Indonesia (AP) — Desperation exploded into anger four days after an earthquake and tsunami decimated parts of the central Indonesian island of Sulawesi, leaving hungry residents grabbing food from damaged stores on Tuesday and begging the president for help. The confirmed toll exceeded 1,200 dead with hundreds severely injured and still more trapped in debris.

    Most of the attention of rescuers so far has focused on the biggest affected city, Palu, which has 380,000 people and suffered considerable damage. Other hard-hit areas have been largely cut off due to impassable roads and downed power and phone lines after the magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Friday and generated a tsunami said to have been as high as 6 meters (nearly 20 feet) in places.

    “We feel like we are stepchildren here because all the help is going to Palu,” said Mohamad Taufik, 38, from the area of Donggala, who said five of his relatives are still missing. “There are many young children here who are hungry and sick, but there is no milk or medicine.”

    The death toll for all affected areas reached 1,234, national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said in Jakarta. More people remain trapped in Sigi and Balaroa, meaning the toll is likely to rise.

    “With all the logistical aid coming in, the service to the refugees is better,” Nugroho said. “We still need more time to take care of all the problems.”

    He said 153 bodies were buried Monday in a mass grave and the operation continued Tuesday.

    A special aircraft carrying 12,000 liters (3,170 gallons) of fuel had arrived and trucks with food were on the way with police escorts to guard against looters. Nugroho said many gas stations were inoperable either because of quake damage or from people stealing fuel.

    In Donggala, the frustration of waiting for days without help boiled over for some.

    “Pay attention to Donggala, Mr. Jokowi. Pay attention to Donggala,” yelled one resident in a video broadcast on local television, referring to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and the lack of aid reaching his town. “There are still a lot of unattended villages here.”

    The town’s administrative head, Kasman Lassa, all but gave residents permission to take food – but nothing else – from shops.

    “Everyone is hungry and they want to eat after several days of not eating,” Lassa said on local TV. “We have anticipated it by providing food, rice, but it was not enough. There are many people here. So, on this issue, we cannot pressure them to hold much longer.”

    Desperation was visible in Palu as well. Signs propped along roads read “We Need Food” and “We Need Support,” while children begged for cash in the streets and long lines of cars snarled traffic as people waited for gas.

    Teams were searching for trapped survivors under destroyed homes and buildings, including a collapsed eight-story hotel in the city, but they needed more heavy equipment to clear the rubble. Nearly 62,000 people have been displaced from their homes, Nugroho said.

    Many people were believed trapped under shattered houses in Balaroa, where the earthquake caused the ground to heave up and down violently.

    “I and about 50 other people in Balaroa were able to save ourselves by riding on a mound of soil which was getting higher and higher,” resident Siti Hajat told MetroTV, adding her house was destroyed.

    In Palu’s Petobo neighborhood, the quake caused loose, wet soil to liquefy, creating a thick, heavy mud that resulted in massive damage. “In Petobo, it is estimated that there are still hundreds of victims buried in mud,” Nugroho said.

    Residents who found loved ones – alive and dead – over the weekend there also expressed disgust that it took rescue teams until Monday to reach the area.

    President Jokowi authorized the acceptance of international help, Nugroho said Monday, adding that generators, heavy equipment and tents were among the most-needed items. The European Union and about 10 countries have offered assistance, including the United States and China, he said.

    Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Tuesday that his government has given $360,000 to help victims and is in talks with Indonesian authorities about a second round of aid. The initial funds are to go to the Indonesian Red Cross for the most obvious emergency aid needs, such as tarpaulins.

    Nugroho said only two of the 122 foreigners in the area remained unaccounted for – one from South Korea and the other from Belgium.

    The coastline at Palu was strewn with rubble and a few brightly colored cargo containers poking out of the water. Buildings near the water were ruined shells. The arches of a large yellow bridge rested in the water and eerie drone video showed a Ferris wheel, untouched, on a beach scraped bare by the waves.

    In Petobo, Edi Setiawan said he and his neighbors rescued children and adults, including a pregnant woman. His sister and father, however, did not survive.

    “My sister was found embracing her father,” he said. “My mother was able to survive after struggling against the mud and being rescued by villagers.”

    Indonesia is frequently struck by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis because of its location on the “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin. A powerful quake on the island of Lombok killed 505 people in August, and two moderate quakes near an eastern island on Tuesday reportedly damaged a bridge.

    The vast archipelago is home to 260 million people on more than 17,000 islands that stretch a distance similar to that between New York and London. Roads and infrastructure are poor in many areas, making access difficult in the best of conditions.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Margie Mason and Ali Kotarumalos in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.

  • Rebel attack disrupts Ebola response in Africa

    Aid groups on Monday said a rebel attack near a city in the Democratic Republic of Congo has disrupted efforts to respond to an Ebola outbreak that’s now killed 100 people.

    Aid groups on Monday said a rebel attack near a city in the Democratic Republic of Congo has disrupted efforts to respond to an Ebola outbreak that’s now killed 100 people.

    The violence near Beni, in North Kivu province, forced World Health Organization responders into “lockdown, unable to move because of security concerns following violence by armed rebel groups over the weekend when many civilians were killed,” WHO’s emergencies director, Peter Salama, said on Twitter.

    The attack began Saturday afternoon, lasted several hours and resulted in the death of 18 people, including 14 civilians, according to the BBC.

    The Norwegian Refugee Council and other aid groups suspended their field activities, including vaccination, due to the violence.

    “It’s a worst-case scenario for any aid group to have to suspend relief work that helps communities in need,” NRC area manager Stephen Lamin said. “But this weekend’s attack on Beni town has left us in an impossible position.”

    The NRC said the suspension reflects an “increasingly worrisome security situation” in the country, since food aid will also be disrupted.

    “The recent attack has made the situation even worse as families have had to flee from their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs,” Mr. Lamin said. “Donor countries must open their purse strings as rapidly as possible to help stem a humanitarian situation that is quickly getting out of control.”

    The Ebola outbreak in the region has resulted in nearly 150 cases and had been linked to 100 deaths as of Saturday, Dr. Salama said in a series of Twitter posts Monday.

    The outbreak is the country’s 10th since Ebola was discovered in the 1970s and second this year. A previous outbreak in a remote part of northwestern part of the country near the Congo River was stamped out after a massive response, yet the ongoing outbreak was discovered about a week later, in early August.

    For weeks, the WHO and other responders have openly worried about insecurity in North Kivu — a mineral-rich part of DRC riven by decades of conflict between government forces and militant groups that have multiplied or splintered over the past two decades.

    As a result of the unrest, the population in Ebola-affected towns are highly migratory, sparking fears that deadly virus could spread further or spill into neighboring Uganda.

    Dr. Salama said an infected person, who evaded response teams and refused care, introduced the disease into a previously unaffected area near the Ugandan border. WHO sent a response team to the area on Sunday.

  • Officials say company in Cuba crash had safety complaints

    The Mexican charter company whose plane crashed in Havana, killing 110 people, has been the subject of two serious complaints about its crews’ performance over the last decade, according to authoritie

    HAVANA (AP) – The Mexican charter company whose plane crashed in Havana, killing 110 people, has been the subject of two serious complaints about its crews’ performance over the last decade, according to authorities in Guyana and a retired pilot for Cuba’s national airline.

    The plane was barred from Guyanese airspace last year after authorities discovered that its crew had been allowing dangerous overloading of luggage on flights to Cuba, Guyanese Civil Aviation Director Capt. Egbert Field told The Associated Press on Saturday.

    The plane and crew were being rented from Mexico City-based Damojh airlines by EasySky, a Honduras-based low-cost airline. Cuba’s national carrier, Cubana de Aviacion, was also renting the Boeing 737 and crew in a similar arrangement known as a “wet lease” before the aircraft veered on takeoff to the eastern Cuban city of Holguin and crashed into a field just after noon Friday, according to Mexican aviation authorities.

    A Damojh employee in Mexico City declined to comment, saying the company would be communicating only through written statements. Mexican authorities said Damojh had permits needed to lease its aircraft and had passed a November 2017 verification of its maintenance program.

    Late Saturday, Mexico’s government released a statement saying its National Civil Aviation Authority will carry out a new “operational audit” of Damojh to see if its “current operating conditions continue meeting regulations, as well as collecting information to help the investigation.”

    Cuban Transportation Minister Adel Yzquierdo Rodriguez told reporters Saturday afternoon that Cubana had been renting the plane for less than a month under an arrangement in which the Mexican company was entirely responsible for maintenance of the aircraft. Armando Daniel Lopez, president of Cuba’s Institute of Civil Aviation, told the AP that Cuban authorities had not received any complaints about the plane in that month. He declined to comment further.

    Yzquierdo said it was routine for Cuba to rent planes under a variety of arrangements because of what he described as the country’s inability to purchase its own aircraft due to the U.S. trade embargo on the island. Cuba has been able to buy planes produced in other countries, including France and Ukraine, but has pulled many from service due to maintenance problems and other issues.

    “It’s normal for us to rent planes,” he said. “Why? Because it’s convenient and because of the problem of the blockade that we have. Sometimes we can’t buy the planes that we need, and we need to rent them.”

    He said that with Damojh, “the formula here is that they take care of the maintenance of the aircraft. That’s their responsibility.”

    He said Cuba didn’t have pilots certified to fly the Boeing, so it had hired the Mexican crew with the expectation that they were fully trained and certified by the proper authorities.

    Yzquierdo also said the jet’s “black box” voice recorder had been recovered and that Cuban officials had granted a U.S. request for investigators from Boeing to travel to the island.

    Eyewitness and private salon owner Rocio Martinez said she heard a strange noise and looked up to see the plane with a turbine on fire.

    “It had an engine on fire, in flames, it was falling toward the ground,” Martinez said, adding that the plane veered into the field where it crashed, avoiding potential fatalities in a nearby residential area.

    Field told AP that the Boeing 737 with tail number XA-UHZ had been flying four routes a week between Georgetown, Guyana, and Havana starting in October 2016. Cubans do not need visas to travel to Guyana, and the route was popular with Cubans working as “mules” to bring suitcases crammed with goods back home to the island, where virtually all consumer products are scarce and more expensive than in most other countries.

    After Easy Sky canceled a series of flights in spring 2017, leaving hundreds of Cubans stranded at Guyana’s main airport, authorities began inspecting the plane and discovered that crews were loading excessive amounts of baggage, leading to concerns the aircraft could be dangerously overburdened and unbalanced. In one instance, Guyanese authorities discovered suitcases stored in the plane’s toilet.

    “This is the same plane and tail number,” Guyanese Infrastructure Minister David Patterson said. He and other Guyanese authorities said they did not immediately know if the crew suspended last May was the same one that died in Friday’s crash. Damojh operates three Boeing 737s, two 737-300s and the 737-201 that crashed Friday, according to Mexican officials.

    Ovidio Martinez Lopez, a pilot for Cubana for over 40 years until he retired six years ago, wrote in a post on Facebook that a plane rented from the Mexican company by Cubana briefly dropped off radar while over the city of Santa Clara in 2010 or 2011, triggering an immediate response by Cuban aviation security officials. As a result, Cuban officials suspended a captain and co-pilot for “serious technical knowledge issues,” and Cuba’s Aviation Security authority issued a formal recommendation that Cubana stop renting planes and crews from Damojh, Martinez wrote.

    “They are many flight attendants and security personnel who refused to fly with this airline,” Martinez wrote. “On this occasion, the recommendation was overlooked and they rented from them again.”

    Contacted by AP in Havana, Martinez confirmed his Facebook account but declined to comment further.

    Mexican officials said the Boeing 737-201 was built in 1979.

    In November 2010 a Global Air flight originating in Mexico City made an emergency landing in Puerto Vallarta because its front landing gear did not deploy. The fire was quickly extinguished, and none of the 104 people aboard were injured. That plane was a 737 first put into service in 1975.

    Mexican aviation authorities said a team of experts would fly to Cuba on Saturday to take part in the investigation.

    ____

    Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez in Havana and Maria Verza in Mexico City contributed to this report.

  • Company in Cuba plane crash had received safety complaints

    The Mexican charter company whose 39-year-old plane crashed in Havana had been the subject of two serious complaints about its crews’ performance over the last decade, according to authorities in Guya

    HAVANA (AP) – The Mexican charter company whose 39-year-old plane crashed in Havana had been the subject of two serious complaints about its crews’ performance over the last decade, according to authorities in Guyana and a retired pilot for Cuba’s national airline.

    Mexico’s government said late Saturday that its National Civil Aviation Authority will carry out an operational audit of Damojh airlines to see if its “current operating conditions continue meeting regulations” and to help collect information for the investigation into Friday’s crash in Cuba that left 110 dead.

    The plane that crashed, a Boeing 737, was barred from Guyanese airspace last year after authorities discovered that its crew had been allowing dangerous overloading of luggage on flights to Cuba, Guyanese Civil Aviation Director Capt. Egbert Field told The Associated Press on Saturday.

    The plane and crew were being rented from Mexico City-based Damojh by EasySky, a Honduras-based low-cost airline. Cuba’s national carrier, Cubana de Aviacion, was also renting the plane and crew in a similar arrangement known as a “wet lease” before the aircraft veered on takeoff to the eastern Cuban city of Holguin and crashed into a field just after noon Friday, according to Mexican aviation authorities.

    A Damojh employee in Mexico City declined to comment, saying the company would be communicating only through written statements. Mexican authorities said Damojh had permits needed to lease its aircraft and had passed a November 2017 verification of its maintenance program. They announced a new audit late Saturday.

    Cuban Transportation Minister Adel Yzquierdo Rodriguez told reporters Saturday afternoon that Cubana had been renting the plane for less than a month under an arrangement in which the Mexican company was entirely responsible for maintenance of the aircraft. Armando Daniel Lopez, president of Cuba’s Institute of Civil Aviation, told the AP that Cuban authorities had not received any complaints about the plane in that month. He declined to comment further.

    Yzquierdo said it was routine for Cuba to rent planes under a variety of arrangements because of what he described as the country’s inability to purchase its own aircraft due to the U.S. trade embargo on the island. Cuba has been able to buy planes produced in other countries, including France and Ukraine, but has pulled many from service due to maintenance problems and other issues.

    “It’s normal for us to rent planes,” he said. “Why? Because it’s convenient and because of the problem of the blockade that we have. Sometimes we can’t buy the planes that we need, and we need to rent them.”

    He said that with Damojh, “the formula here is that they take care of the maintenance of the aircraft. That’s their responsibility.”

    He said Cuba didn’t have pilots certified to fly the Boeing, so it had hired the Mexican crew with the expectation that they were fully trained and certified by the proper authorities.

    Yzquierdo also said the jet’s “black box” voice recorder had been recovered and that Cuban officials had granted a U.S. request for investigators from Boeing to travel to the island.

    Eyewitness and private salon owner Rocio Martinez said she heard a strange noise and looked up to see the plane with a turbine on fire.

    “It had an engine on fire, in flames, it was falling toward the ground,” Martinez said, adding that the plane veered into the field where it crashed, avoiding potential fatalities in a nearby residential area.

    Field told AP that the Boeing 737 with tail number XA-UHZ had been flying four routes a week between Georgetown, Guyana, and Havana starting in October 2016. Cubans do not need visas to travel to Guyana, and the route was popular with Cubans working as “mules” to bring suitcases crammed with goods back home to the island, where virtually all consumer products are scarce and more expensive than in most other countries.

    After Easy Sky canceled a series of flights in spring 2017, leaving hundreds of Cubans stranded at Guyana’s main airport, authorities began inspecting the plane and discovered that crews were loading excessive amounts of baggage, leading to concerns the aircraft could be dangerously overburdened and unbalanced. In one instance, Guyanese authorities discovered suitcases stored in the plane’s toilet.

    “This is the same plane and tail number,” Guyanese Infrastructure Minister David Patterson said. He and other Guyanese authorities said they did not immediately know if the crew suspended last May was the same one that died in Friday’s crash. Damojh operates three Boeing 737s, two 737-300s and the 737-201 that crashed Friday, according to Mexican officials.

    Ovidio Martinez Lopez, a pilot for Cubana for over 40 years until he retired six years ago, wrote in a post on Facebook that a plane rented from the Mexican company by Cubana briefly dropped off radar while over the city of Santa Clara in 2010 or 2011, triggering an immediate response by Cuban aviation security officials. As a result, Cuban officials suspended a captain and co-pilot for “serious technical knowledge issues,” and Cuba’s Aviation Security authority issued a formal recommendation that Cubana stop renting planes and crews from Damojh, Martinez wrote.

    “They are many flight attendants and security personnel who refused to fly with this airline,” Martinez wrote. “On this occasion, the recommendation was overlooked and they rented from them again.”

    Contacted by AP in Havana, Martinez confirmed his Facebook account but declined to comment further.

    Mexican officials said the Boeing 737-201 was built in 1979.

    Mexican aviation authorities said a team of experts would fly to Cuba on Saturday to take part in the investigation.

    ____

    Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez in Havana and Maria Verza in Mexico City contributed to this report.

  • Ebola outbreak isn’t a global emergency yet: WHO

    The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is not considered a global health emergency — at least not yet, the World Health Organization announced Friday, saying it is hopeful it can stam

    The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is not considered a global health emergency — at least not yet, the World Health Organization announced Friday, saying it is hopeful it can stamp out the widening outbreak despite fear the disease will travel along the Congo River “highway” to major capitals.

    In the U.S., meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it has a dozen disease fighters who are ready to help the ground effort, if needed.

    The outbreak in the DRC, where Ebola is endemic, has resulted in 45 reported cases, of which 14 have been confirmed, and 25 people have died. Three of the reported cases involve health care workers.

    However, the robust response on the ground provides “a strong reason to believe that this situation can be brought under control,” said Dr. Robert Steffen, the chairman of WHO’s emergency committee.

    Vaccination of people at risk of infection will begin Sunday, according to WHO.

    Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the shots flown in from Switzerland are just one part of the global response to the outbreak centered in the remote area of Bikoro, although one case appeared in Mbandaka, a city of more than 1 million people.

    Global responders are setting up mobile labs, isolating patients and tracking down contacts are risk of infection.

    “This is a vaccine that we believe can help us,” Dr. Ghebreyesus said. “But we will not just rely on the vaccine.”The CDC said it submitted the names of 12 people from its Atlanta headquarters to the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), from which the WHO can draw personnel to support lab diagnostics, vaccinate “rings” of at-risk people and help local health workers protect themselves against infection.

    Logistics in the affected region are challenging, however, so responders on the ground will likely have to establish an aircraft link before drafting the CDC’s people. If that happens, WHO will pay for their activity through the response network.

    As it stands, the WHO is citing the swift response in declining to name the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.

    To constitute such an emergency, it must be “serious, unusual or unexpected” situation that requires an international response to contain, and there must be a high risk of spread across borders.

    WHO said it could reconsider its determination if things worsen.

    It has warned nine neighboring countries to stiffen their defenses against Ebola — particularly the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo and Angola, given river routes in the area.

    There are dozens of small ports along the Congo River, a major artery that flows from the affected area of DRC to its capital, Kinshasa, and Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo.

    “That, of course, has very significant traffic across very porous borders there,” Dr. Steffen said.

    Ebola is a serious illness that is transmitted to people from wild animals and spreads from human to human through the bodily fluids of people who exhibit symptoms. About half of those who contract Ebola die from it.

    WHO officials said they’re looking to avoid a repeat of the 2013-2016 outbreak that killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa.

    The organization, the public health arm of the U.N., was criticized for failing to react fast enough to that outbreak, before it spiraled out of control.

    Global responders quickly stamped out an Ebola outbreak in DRC last year, and front-line workers on the ground have been supportive during this latest round, according to WHO.

    Dr. Ghebreyesus said local officials in Bikoro were worried about WHO personnel who arrived. They thought they might catch Ebola, and didn’t expect the foreigners to be there.

    “We were really moved and touched, because they are not caring about their life — they were caring about our lives,” he said.

    Dr. Ghebreyesus praised the officials for being the ones on the front line.

    “We have to also share the risk,” he said.

  • Latest lava flow destroys 4 homes, sparks evacuation prep

    Lava creeping across roadways destroyed four homes and left dozens of others in the shadow of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano isolated Saturday, forcing more residents to plan for a possible evacuation.

    PAHOA, Hawaii (AP) — Lava creeping across roadways destroyed four homes and left dozens of others in the shadow of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano isolated Saturday, forcing more residents to plan for a possible evacuation.

    Hawaii County Civil Defense said a fissure near the neighborhood of Lanipuna Gardens has been continuously erupting, releasing a slow-moving lava flow. If that lava threatens a nearby highway, more people will be told to prepare for voluntary evacuation.

    On Friday, fast-moving lava crossed a road and isolated about 40 homes in a rural subdivision, forcing at least four people to be evacuated by county and National Guard helicopters.

    Police, firefighters and National Guard troops were securing the area of the Big Island and stopping people from entering, Hawaii County Civil Defense reported. The homes were isolated in the area east of Lanipuna Gardens and Leilani Estates. Both neighborhoods had 40 structures, including 26 homes, decimated by lava over the past two weeks.

    Officials said three people were still in that area but not in imminent danger. They were advised to shelter in place and await rescue by helicopter first thing Saturday.

    County officials have been encouraging residents in the district to prepare for potential evacuations.

    Edwin Montoya, who lives with his daughter on her farm near the site where lava crossed the road and cut off access, said he was at the property earlier in the day to get valuables.

    “I think I’m lucky because we went there this morning and we got all the batteries out, and all the solar panels out, about $4,000 worth of equipment,” he said. “They have to evacuate the people that are trapped up there right now in the same place that we were taking pictures this morning.”

    He said no one was on his property, but his neighbor had someone on his land.

    “I know that the farm right next to my farm . he’s got somebody there taking care of the premises, I know he’s trapped,” Montoya said.

    Montoya said the fissure that poured lava across the road opened and grew quickly.

    “It was just a little crack in the ground, with a little lava coming out,” he said. “Now it’s a big crater that opened up where the small little crack in the ground was.”

    Experts are uncertain about when the volcano will calm down.

    The Big Island volcano released a small explosion at its summit just before midnight Saturday, sending an ash cloud 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) into the sky. The U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said eruptions that create even minor amounts of ashfall could occur at any time.

    This follows the more explosive eruption Thursday, which emitted ash and rocks thousands of feet into the sky. No one was injured and there were no reports of damaged property.

    Scientists said the eruption was the most powerful in recent days, though it probably lasted only a few minutes.

    It came two weeks after the volcano began sending lava flows into neighborhoods 25 miles (40 kilometers) to the east of the summit.

    A new lava vent – the 22nd such fissure – was reported Friday by county civil defense officials.

    Several open fissure vents are still producing lava splatter and flow in evacuated areas. Gas is also pouring from the vents, cloaking homes and trees in smoke.

    The fresher, hotter magma will allow faster lava flows that can potentially cover more area, said Janet Babb, a geologist with the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

    Much of the lava that has emerged so far may have been underground for decades, perhaps since a 1955 eruption.

    Meanwhile, more explosive eruptions from the summit are possible.

    “We have no way of knowing whether this is really the beginning or toward the end of this eruption,” said Tom Shea, a volcanologist at the University of Hawaii. “We’re kind of all right now in this world of uncertainty.”

    It’s nearly impossible to determine when a volcano will stop erupting, “because the processes driving that fall below the surface and we can’t see them.” said volcanologist Janine Krippner of Concord University in West Virginia.

    U.S. government scientists, however, are trying to pin down those signals “so we have a little better warning,” said Wendy Stovall, a volcanologist with the observatory.

    Thus far, Krippner noted, authorities have been able to forecast volcanic activity early enough to usher people to safety.

    The greatest ongoing hazard stems from the lava flows and the hot, toxic gases spewing from open fissure vents close to homes and critical infrastructure, said Charles Mandeville of the U.S. Geological Survey’s volcano hazards program.

    Authorities have been measuring gases, including sulfur dioxide, rising in little puffs from open vents.

    The area affected by lava and ash is small compared to the Big Island, which is about 4,000 square miles. Most of the island and the rest of the Hawaiian chain is unaffected by the volcanic activity on Kilauea.

    State and local officials have been reminding tourists that flights in and out of the entire state, including the Big Island, have not been impacted. Even on the Big Island, most tourist activities are still available and businesses are open.

    ___

    Associated Press journalists Jae Hong and Marco Garcia in Pahoa, Sophia Yan, Jennifer Kelleher and Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, Seth Borenstein in Washington, D.C., and Alina Hartounian in Phoenix contributed to this report.

  • Van hits at least 10 people in Toronto, say Canada police

    A van apparently jumped onto a sidewalk Monday at a busy intersection in Toronto and struck down pedestrians before the vehicle was found and the driver taken into custody, Canadian police said.

    TORONTO — A rented van plowed down a crowded Toronto sidewalk Monday, killing 10 people and injuring 15 before the driver fled and was quickly arrested in a confrontation with police, Canadian authorities said.

    Witnesses said the driver was moving fast and appeared to be acting deliberately, but police officials would not comment on the cause or any possible motive.

    Speaking at a news conference Monday night, Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders raised the initial death toll of nine to 10, saying another victim had died at a hospital. He said 15 others were hospitalized.

    Saunders identified the man detained after the incident as Alek Minassian, 25, a resident of the Toronto suburb of Richmond Hill. He said the suspect had not been known to police previously.

    Asked if there was any evidence of a connection to international terrorism, the chief said only, “Based on what we have there’s nothing that has it to compromise the national security at this time.”

    But a senior national government official said earlier that authorities had not turned over the investigation to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a sign that investigators believed it unlikely terrorism was the motive. The official agreed to reveal that information only if not quoted by name.

    Authorities released few details in the case, saying the investigation was still underway, with witnesses being interviewed and surveillance video being examined.

    “I can assure the public all our available resources have been brought in to investigate this tragic situation,” Toronto Police Services Deputy Chief Peter Yuen said earlier.

    The incident occurred as Cabinet ministers from the major industrial countries were gathered in Canada to discuss a range of international issues in the run-up to the G7 meeting near Quebec City in June.

    Minister of Public Safety Ralph Goodale said that it was too soon to say whether the crash was a case of international terrorism and that the government had not raised its terrorism alert.

    The driver was heading south on busy Yonge Street around 1:30 p.m. and the streets were crowded with people enjoying an unseasonably warm day when the van jumped onto the sidewalk.

    Ali Shaker, who was driving near the van at the time, told Canadian broadcast outlet CP24 that the driver appeared to be moving deliberately through the crowd at more than 30 mph.

    “He just went on the sidewalk,” a distraught Shaker said. “He just started hitting everybody, man. He hit every single person on the sidewalk. Anybody in his way he would hit.”

    Witness Peter Kang told CTV News that the driver did not seem to make any effort to stop.

    “If it was an accident he would have stopped,” Kang said. “But the person just went through the sidewalk. He could have stopped.”

    Video broadcast on several Canadian outlets showed police arresting the driver, dressed in dark clothes, after officers surrounded him and his rental Ryder van several blocks from where the incident occurred in the North York neighborhood of northern Toronto. He appeared to make some sort of gesture at the police with an object in his hand just before they ordered him to lie down on the ground and took him away.

    Witness Phil Zullo told Canadian Press that he saw police arresting the suspect and people “strewn all over the road” where the incident occurred.

    “I must have seen about five, six people being resuscitated by bystanders and by ambulance drivers,” Zullo said. “It was awful. Brutal.”

    Police shut down the Yonge and Finch intersection following the incident and Toronto’s transit agency said it had suspended service on the subway line running through the area.

    Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed his sympathies for those involved. “Our hearts go out to everyone affected,” Trudeau said in Ottawa. “We are going to have more to learn and more to say in the coming hours.”

  • Algerian military plane crashes, killing 257 people

    Algeria’s defense ministry said Wednesday 257 people have died when a military plane carrying soldiers and their families crashed soon after takeoff in a farm field in northern Algeria.

    Algeria’s defense ministry said Wednesday 257 people have died when a military plane carrying soldiers and their families crashed soon after takeoff in a farm field in northern Algeria.

    The ministry said in a statement that 247 passengers and 10 crew members were killed. It said most of the victims are soldiers and their relatives. It says the victims’ bodies have been transported to the Algerian army’s central hospital in the town of Ain Naadja for identification.

    The crash occurred Wednesday soon after takeoff from the Boufarik air base southwest of the capital Algiers.

  • Russia mourns victims of deadly mall fire in Siberia

    Flags flew at half-staff across Russia on Wednesday as the country mourned 64 victims — many of them children — of a shopping mall fire in Siberia.

    MOSCOW (AP) — Flags flew at half-staff across Russia on Wednesday as the country mourned 64 victims — many of them children — of a shopping mall fire in Siberia.

    The blaze engulfed the four-story mall in the eastern city of Kemerovo on Sunday while it was packed with parents and children on the first weekend of the school recess.

    Investigators identified a short circuit as a possible cause and said the emergency exits were locked shut, hampering any evacuation. Some of the victims, many of them young children, died inside a locked movie theater.

    Wednesday was declared a day of mourning in Russia, and thousands of people have been bringing flowers and stuffed toys to makeshift memorials across the country.

    The bodies of all 64 victims have been recovered and no one is unaccounted-for, Deputy Emergency Situations Minister Vladlen Aksyonov told the RIA Novosti news agency.

    The investigators have released 21 bodies for burial. The first funerals for the victims were held Wednesday morning in Kemerovo, a city of half a million people 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) east of Moscow that has been paralyzed with grief.

    Among the first people buried were a grandmother and her two grandchildren— 8 and 10 — who died in the locked movie theater while watching cartoons. They were all buried in the same grave.

    Elsewhere in Kemerovo, residents were mourning English teacher Tatyana Darsaliya who also died in the fire. Deputy Principal Irina Borisova told the Tass news agency after the requiem service that Darsaliya was “much loved and pupils loved her classes.”

    On Tuesday, thousands of angry, distraught residents rallied on Kemerovo’s main square for 10 hours, demanding that local officials conduct a full and transparent probe of the tragedy. Some mistrust the official death toll of 64, saying it must be higher.

    A court in Kemerovo is expected to rule later Wednesday on the arrests of one of the mall’s tenants, the mall’s technical director, two employees of a company maintaining the fire alarm system and a security guard who the investigators said turned off the fire alarm.

    Speaking in court Wednesday, security guard Sergei Antyushin said in remarks carried by the Dozhd television station that the mall’s fire alarm did go off and that he called emergency services when it did. He did confirm, however, that the mall’s public announcement system has not been operational for two weeks.