The crane crash also caused a gas leak, forcing authorities to shut off supply [Jason Szenes/EPA]
February 6, 2016 - NEW YORK, UNITED STATES - A crane has collapsed in New York City's Lower Manhattan, killing at
least one person and injuring three others, US authorities say.
Friday morning's incident also caused a gas leak, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, forcing the authorities to shut off supply in buildings around the Tribeca neighbourhood.
The crane's boom landed across an intersection and stretched much of a block after the accident around 8.25am, about 10 blocks north of the World Trade Center.
De Blasio originally said the victim was sitting in a parked car when the crane collapsed, but police later said he was on the footpath.
Firemen survey the damage of a fallen crane in Worth Street, Lower Manhattan, New York City [Jason Szenes/EPA]
Members of the New York City Fire Department survey the damage of a fallen crane on 40 Worth Street [Jason Szenes/EPA]
The large crane smashed the roofs of nearby buildings with debris littering the street.
De Blasio said the crane was being lowered as a precaution because of wind when the accident happened.
The crew had been directing people away from the area as the crane was being moved.
"It was right outside my window," Robert Harold, a witness who works at the Legal Aid Society, told the Associated Press news agency.
WATCH: Crane collapses in New York, kills 1.
"It was a crashing sound. You could feel the vibration in the building."
Harold said at least one person was trapped in a car, and he saw onlookers trying to get the person out.
He said he also saw a person lying motionless on the street.
The crane bore the name of Bay Crane company.
An employee at the company, who said he was a manager but did not give his name, told AP that an investigation was under way. He declined further comment. - AP.
May 24, 2014 - EARTH - The following stories constitutes some of the latest incidents of Earth changes across the globe.
Two Bolts Of Lightning Strike One World Trade Center
As a thunderstorm passed over New York City Friday night,
photojournalist Gary Hershorn captured two bolts of lightning hitting
the spire on top of One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.
A seasoned photographer and photo editor, Hershorn
described how he captured the photo: “I saw the storm clouds forming
while I was shooting some pictures of lower Manhattan from Jersey City
right across from One World Trade Center.
Here are two more images, courtesy of social media:
I was shooting with a point
and shoot camera so I raced home and grabbed my real camera and tripod
and went to a gazebo next to the Hudson River and shot endless 10 second
exposures hoping to catch the bolts of lightning. I shot about 150
pictures and 6 frames had lightning bolts. I missed about 5 others in
between frames.
WATCH: Here's looped video of the event, via NBC New York:
I was able to shoot from a covered spot in the pouring
rain. It feels like I spend half my life shooting the New York skyline
but have been waiting for years to have the perfect electrical storm
around sunset…[T]he light in the sky was nicely balanced with the
lightning and the brightness of the buildings on the skyline.”
- TIME.
Unusually Warm Pacific May Cause U.S. Winter Freeze, Study Finds
Eastern US had a series of winter storms earlier this year. Photo: Reuters
Unusually warm western Pacific waters linked to global warming may be the paradoxical cause of a bone-chilling winter in parts of the United States this year, a scientific study said on Thursday.
The theory contrasts with other experts' views, including that the freeze was simply a freak natural event or that it was linked to a thawing of the Arctic in recent years that sent a blast of cold air south.
"People's reaction when they sit under 10 feet of snow is to say 'this cannot be man-made climate change'," said Professor Tim Palmer of Oxford University, who published his research in the journal Science. "But there is a plausible link," he told Reuters.
He said a strengthening of trade winds had led to a build-up of warm water in the western tropical Pacific, aggravated in recent years by global warming from man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.
Thunderstorms linked to the warmth in turn disrupted the jetstream, high altitude winds which flow in vast meandering loops around the northern hemisphere, and sucked cold air from the Arctic. Detroit, for instance, suffered record snows and the coldest January since 1977.
Pinpointing the causes of the US chill, when climate change should make cold winters less likely, would help companies, farmers, city planners or even home owners wondering if they should invest in extra roof insulation.
Two other experts were unconvinced by Palmer's study.
Arctic link
Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, who wrote in 2011 that a melting of Arctic ice may cause cold snaps, said the Pacific had a similar pattern of heavy rainfall in 2011-12 but the winter was mild in the United States.
"In both cases the jet stream's path was extremely amplified or wavy, which is exactly the sort of behaviour we expect to occur more frequently in association with rapid Arctic warming," she told Reuters.
She said that the tropics might also be contributing, but that there seemed little evidence of this.
Martin Hoerling, of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Physical Sciences Division, said he reckoned the most plausible explanation of the cold North American winter was a "freak of nature".
He said that there was no sign of a link between Pacific sea temperatures and US winters in records from 1948 to 2012. And he also said Francis's Arctic theory "has not been affirmed by subsequent studies by a variety of researchers".
So far there is limited understanding of how weather in one part of the world can affect another.
Weather experts agree, however, that the El Nino weather phenomenon that mainly cools the eastern Pacific Ocean every few years can cause droughts or downpours on other continents.
Palmer told Reuters that his theory, building on a 1980s study he wrote suggesting a link between a chill 1976-77 US winter and a warm Pacific, could be tested because there are signs that an El Nino will form later this year.
An El Nino would also cool the western Pacific and that meant a cold US winter was less likely in 2014-15, he said.
A U.N. panel of climate scientists says it is at least 95 per cent probable that human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, are the main cause of warming since the 1950s, and will cause more heatwaves, floods and rising sea levels. - The Age.
China Earthquake Damages Homes, Causes Injuries
USGS earthquake location map.
A moderate earthquake struck southwest China on Saturday, injuring about a dozen people and damaging thousands of houses.
The earthquake struck early in the morning in quake-prone Yingjiang county in Yunnan province, near China's border with Myanmar. The U.S. Geological Survey said it had a magnitude of 5.6.
The province's seismological bureau said on its microblog that more than 9,000 houses were damaged, with a dozen collapsing. It said 13 people suffered minor injuries. - FOX News.
Floods Wipe Out Entire Towns In Balkans
Flooding and landslides destroyed homes in
Krupanj, Serbia. At least 49 people have been killed already by the
worst floods in central Europe for a century. Andrej Isakovic/AFP/Getty
Serbia on Tuesday declared three days of national mourning and reported another death in the worst rainfall to hit the Balkan region in living memory, even as the rising River Sava threatened more havoc.
Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said the death toll in the town of Obrenovac, southwest of Belgrade, alone had reached 14.
At least 40 people have died in Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia, after days of the heaviest rainfall since records began 120 years ago caused rivers to burst their banks and triggered hundreds of landslides.
On Serbia's border with Bosnia, the mayor of Mali Zvornik said an "entire hill" was threatening to slide into the River Drina and flood the town and neighbouring Zvornik. Obrenovac was almost deserted, evacuated by police and soldiers on fears of a new flood wave.
In northern Bosnia, the Sava broke sandbag defences overnight and flooded several villages near the town of Orasje.
The government in Bosnia says more than 1 million people, or a quarter of the population, have been affected by the flooding and landslides, comparing the destruction to that of the country's 1992-95 war.
Soldiers, volunteers and energy workers continued to reinforce flood defences at the Kostolac coal-fired power plant east of Belgrade, where Energy Minister Slobodan Antic said the "crisis isn't over".
"We need pumps, pumps and pumps," he told a televised cabinet session.
Officials said they believed the Nikola Tesla plant in Obrenovac, 30 km (18 miles) southwest of Belgrade, was largely out of danger. The plant covers roughly half of Serbia's electricity needs, but has been working at only partial capacity, forcing the country to boost imports.
Serbia's Vucic declared three days of mourning Wednesday-Friday. Bosnia held its own day of mourning on Tuesday.
Some Serbian media reports questioned whether authorities had reacted quickly enough to warnings of impending floods, after the skies dumped several months worth of rain on the region within the space of a few days.
Ratko Ristic, a professor at the state Forestry Faculty in Belgrade, said poor coordination, chaotic urban planning and a lack of proper flood-protection mechanisms after decades of negligence were to blame for the devastation.
"The weather conditions were really unheard of in the last 120 years, but the damage wouldn't have been so grave if we took more care of our rivers and if we had a proper flood protection system in place," Risic told state broadcaster Radio-Television Serbia. - Newsweek.
Rare Dust Storm Blew Over Reno, Nevada
Scott McGuire/National Weather Service
A giant cloud of dust shooting at least 5,000 feet in the sky blew through Reno Thursday evening for what meteorologists called a "very rare" occurrence.
"I've been here 10 years and I've never seen it in Reno," said Jim Wallmann, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Reno.
Dust storms are common in the Middle East and referred to as haboobs, derived from the Arabic term habb meaning "to blow."
And blow it did in Reno.
Just before 6 p.m. Thursday, meteorologists noticed thunderstorms in Fallon. In eastern and central Nevada locations - such as Fallon, Lovelock and Winnemucca - it's not rare for thunderstorms to shoot bursts of wind at the ground, picking up large amounts of dust.
Thursday's dust storm arrived with easterly gusts into Reno. At about 9 p.m., winds started pushing dust into the Truckee Meadows, lasting close to an hour for many locations in Reno and Sparks. Easterly winds resulted from a low-pressure system - the same one that brought rains this week - moving south.
The circulation of the low system created the easterly winds, which aren't rare in Reno, but usually aren't coupled with thunderstorms.
Gusts east of Reno reached 50 mph, and sustained winds of 30 mph kept the dust moving into the Truckee Meadows.
Authorities did not receive reports of damage, and the Reno-Tahoe International Airport said it did not have delays as a result of the dust storm, but photos taken resembled apocalyptic scenes from summer blockbuster films.
Visibility dropped to less than 1 mile in some areas, the weather service said in a tweet.
When asked if they kept recorded histories of dust storms in Reno, meteorologists with the National Weather Service said they did not.
- RGJ.
Mexico City Sinkhole Causes 20 Families To Evacuate
SPECIAL
With a length of 15 meters and a depth of at least 10 meters, the sinkhole forced security to evacuate. No injuries were recorded.
A sinkhole which originated on the corner of Águila Blanquinegra and James Watt, Perimeter Village San Simon Culhuacán, forced the the Iztapalapa authorities to evict at least 20 families.
The rupture of a water pipe with a diameter of 50 inches, belonging to the Water System of the City of Mexico, caused by several days of leaking, the cavity, which is 15 meters wide and almost 10 meters deep.
The local authorities have provided the affected families to stay at a hotel close by for elderly, while they have established a temporary shelter for the young.
Civil protection authorities have reported that there are five homes with severe damage.
