Eideard

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Four people were pulled out alive Monday from the rubble of the Turkey earthquake after one managed to call for help with his mobile phone…

Dozens of people were trapped in mounds of concrete, twisted steel and construction debris after hundreds of buildings in two cities and mud-brick homes in nearby villages pancaked or partially collapsed in Sunday’s earthquake.

Worst-hit was Ercis – an eastern city of 75,000 close to the Iranian border that lies in one of Turkey’s most earthquake-prone zones – where about 80 multistory buildings collapsed.

Yalcin Akay was dug out from a collapsed six-story building with a leg injury after he called a police emergency line on his phone and described his location, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported. Three others, including two children, were also rescued from the same building in Ercis 20 hours after the quake struck, officials said…

As over 200 aftershocks rocked the area, rescuers searched mounds of debris for the missing and tearful families members waited anxiously nearby. Cranes and other heavy equipment lifted slabs of concrete, allowing residents to dig for the missing with shovels. Generator-powered floodlights ran all night so the rescues could continue.

Aid groups scrambled to set up tents, field hospitals and kitchens to help the thousands left homeless or too afraid to re-enter their homes. Many exhausted residents spent the night outside, lighting fires to keep warm…

The bustling, larger city of Van, about 55 miles (90 kilometres) south of Ercis, also sustained substantial damage, but Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin said search efforts there were winding down. Mr Sahin expected the death toll in Ercis to rise, but not as much as initially feared. He told reporters rescue teams were searching for survivors in the ruins of 47 buildings where dozens could be trapped, including a cafe…

More than 2,000 teams with a dozen sniffer dogs were involved in search-and-rescue and aid efforts.

Several countries offered assistance but Mr Erdogan said Turkey was able to cope for the time being. Azerbaijan, Iran and Bulgaria still sent aid, he said.

I decided a long time ago that life was tough enough without adding earthquakes to the potential of forces completely out of your control that could affect your life.

A Japanese company has developed a miniature version of Noah’s ark in case Japan is hit by another massive earthquake and tsunami – a floating capsule that looks like a huge tennis ball.

Engineering company Cosmo says its “Noah” shelter is made from enhanced fibreglass and could save users from disasters such as the earthquake and tsunami on 11 March that devastated Japan’s northern coast and left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing.

The company’s president, Shoji Tanaka, said the capsule could hold four adults and had survived many crash tests…

The company said it had completed the capsule earlier this month and had received 600 orders.

We could just add this as yet another transition for disaster companies in the United States that started out with fallout shelters – then moved on to tornado shelters. This would be a natural except the likelihood of tsunamis on either coast isn’t exactly as frequent as Japan and other island nations along the Pacific’s fiery rim.

An anonymous donor has left a wad of cash worth $131,000 in a public toilet in Japan, with instructions it be used to help victims of the March earthquake and tsunami…

A plastic shopping bag, containing 10 million yen, was found on September 22 in a toilet for disabled people in the city hall of Sakado, a commuter town north of Tokyo, a city official told AFP.

The city will give the money to the Japanese Red Cross if the anonymous donor doesn’t reclaim it within three months, city spokeswoman Masumi Sekiguchi said.

She said a hand-written note was attached to the cash, reading: “I’m all alone. I have no future so let the people in Tohoku use it.”

Tohoku is the country’s northeast region devastated by the catastrophe that killed 20,000 people and triggered an emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

“There was no witness to the act and we cannot guess what kind of person has been involved,” she said. “We were really surprised. We also feel thankful for such kindness.”

The kind of person was an ordinary human being. Someone guided more by kindness than greed. Someone guided more by love for fellow human beings than gold.

An ordinary human being.

“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians,” Bachmann said Sunday at a campaign appearance in Sarasota, Fla.

“We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?‘”

On Monday, a Bachmann campaign spokeswoman said the Minnesota congresswoman was just joking…

Speaking at a Tea Party-sponsored event in Sarasota, Bachmann slammed President Obama’s economic agenda and promised deep cuts in government spending, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported.

You know, at first I considered taking the word of Bachmann’s flunky – and skipping over this story.

But, [a] I don’t think she has a sense of humor and [b] her God is one of the fire-and-brimstone myths that people as dull as she is often believe in. I don’t think she’d have the courage to joke about “him”.

The earthquake-devastated New Zealand city of Christchurch has announced plans to rebuild its downtown area as a low-rise precinct dominated by parkland.

Much of the central city remains cordoned off after the 6.3-magnitude earthquake that killed 181 people in February, with the danger of falling debris from damaged buildings making it unsafe for the public to enter.

Christchurch Council unveiled a NZ$2 billion draft plan Thursday to rebuild the shattered city’s heart over the next 20 years, including a memorial to earthquake victims. “It’s a safe, sustainable, green, hi-tech, low-rise city in a garden,” Christchurch mayor Bob Parker told reporters.

Under the plan, buildings would be restricted to a maximum of seven storeys and constructed to rigorous standards to avoid the carnage seen in February, when collapsed office blocks accounted for most of the quake’s fatalities. “We have to build a safe city technically but it also has to feel safe for our community — low rise is what people want,” Parker said…

It calls for extensive parkland on the banks of the Avon river that runs through the city and proposes a light rail system linking the downtown area to the suburbs.

There would also be sporting facilities, including an aquatic centre, as well as convention facilities, a library and a redeveloped hospital.

Parker said the council formulated the plan after receiving more than 100,000 suggestions from residents and it would seek public feedback in the coming months. “It’s not the end of the job by any means, it’s a really strong starting point,” he said.

The only real benefit from a natural disaster is the opportunity to rebuild – better than before.

The Kiwis I’ve known are clearly folks who believe that building a better life for their family includes doing the same for their community. The United States and especially our politicians have given up on that idea.

Tomoharu and Miki Saito

Ceremonies to celebrate divorces have gained momentum in Japan after the massive March earthquake and tsunami, followed by an ongoing nuclear crisis, caused unhappy couples to reassess their lives.

The ceremony to mark a couple’s transition to being single again costs 55,000 yen, includes a buffet meal and culminates with the ritual smashing of their wedding rings with a gavel.

Tomoharu Saito, who took part in Tokyo with his wife Miki days before they were set to file for divorce, said crushing the rings felt cathartic…

The ceremony also includes a “divorce dress,” and Miki Saito chose a daisy-yellow summer dress. In Japan, daisies are believed to symbolize an “amicable or platonic relationship.”

Designer Akiue Go said he created the dress with emphasis on the back for a specific reason.

“I designed this dress so the woman’s back looks the most beautiful when she turns around and walks away,” he said.

Hiroki Terai, a 31-year-old former salesman, spotted a gap in the market and pioneered the divorce ceremony two years ago. Since then, he’s celebrated more than 80 breakups.

Requests for the ceremony have tripled since the March 11 9.0 magnitude quake set off a massive tsunami.

“The March 11 disaster made many couples rethink their priorities. Some found that work was a higher priority to them than family, and this helped people gain the confidence to decide on a divorce,” Terai said.

“Those who want an amicable divorce are doing these ceremonies.”

All my divorces were amicable. I think one of them even resulted in a celebration.

But, then, I finally found the right woman for me.

Photo taken a year-and-a-half after the earthquake
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Seven scientists and other experts were indicted on manslaughter charges on Wednesday for not warning residents before a devastating earthquake that killed more than 300 people in central Italy in 2009.

Defense lawyers condemned the charges, saying it’s impossible to predict earthquakes.

Judge Giuseppe Romano Gargarella ordered the members of the national government’s Great Risks commission, which evaluates potential for natural disasters, to go on trial in L’Aquila on Sept. 20.

Corriere della Sera’s web site and other Italian media quoted the judge as saying the defendants “gave inexact, incomplete and contradictory information” about whether smaller tremors felt by L’Aquila residents in the weeks and months before the April 6, 2009 quake should have constituted grounds for a quake warning.

Swarms of much smaller temblors had rattled L’Aquila in the months before the quake, causing frightened residents to wonder if they should evacuate…

Golly. I didn’t realize you needed advice from the government on whether or not to leave or stay if you feared an earthquake.

“As we all know, quakes aren’t predictable,” said Marcello Melandri, defence lawyer for defendant Enzo Boschi, a scientist who heads the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology. In any case, Melandri contended, the panel “never said, ‘stay calm, there is no risk…”‘

Many of the structures that collapsed in the 2009 quake were not properly built to standards for a quake-prone area like the central Apennine region of Abruzzo. Among the buildings which cracked and crumbled was L’Aquila’s hospital, just as it was struggling to treat about 1,500 injured.

Nobody inside the hospital, which was built in the 1970s, was killed or injured in the quake.

As far as Berlusconi is concerned, blaming anyone and everyone else for the horrors of this disaster also serves to distract people from his inaction and lack of aid since the earthquake took place.

He hopes.

Wen Jiabao, Naoto Kan and Lee Myung-bak at evacuation center in Fukishima City
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The leaders of China, Japan and South Korea publicly munched on farm produce grown near the stricken Japanese nuclear plant on Saturday in a show of solidarity with Japan’s recovery efforts.

Premier Wen Jiabao of China and President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea arrived in Japan on Saturday for a two-day meeting that was expected to focus on resolving differences over Japan’s handling of the nuclear crisis.

China and South Korea have criticized Japan for spilling radiation into the air and sea, and have banned imports of farm products from areas near the plant, citing what they call inadequate checks for radiation. Japan says the restrictions are unjustified.

Before the meeting began in Tokyo on Saturday night, the Japanese prime minister, Naoto Kan, took the leaders to visit a refugee shelter in Fukushima, 40 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Before entering the shelter, a converted gymnasium, Mr. Kan steered the group to a table displaying strawberries, cucumbers and other produce grown in Fukushima Prefecture.

The leaders, who did not appear to have been surprised by the photo op, smiled and nibbled gamely. “Very delicious,” Mr. Wen said…

Before meeting Mr. Kan, the two visiting leaders also paid separate visits to the city of Natori, which was devastated by the tsunami.

“The warm feelings of the two leaders came through in their visits to disaster areas and an evacuation center,” Mr. Kan told reporters. “I’m glad they came.”

No doubt import restrictions to China and South Korea will be reduced following this meeting. The interesting bits will be – what else is resolved over the weekend?

The earthbound disaster has pushed Japan’s economy into an artificial recession. Individual Japanese corporations have started working their way out of the context of parts suppliers and individual enterprises both being handicapped by the damage to physical plant and infrastructure. Collective effort will be welcomed – no doubt – to aid Japan’s recovery.

If tourists find Rome unusually quiet next Wednesday, the reason will probably be that thousands of locals have left town in fear of a devastating earthquake allegedly forecast for that day by a long-dead seismologist.

For months Italian internet sites, blogs and social networks have been debating the work of Raffaele Bendandi, who claimed to have forecast numerous earthquakes and, according to internet rumors, predicted a “big one” in Rome on May 11…

“I’m going to tell the boss I’ve got a medical appointment and take the day off,” barman Fabio Mengarelli told Reuters. “If I have to die I want to die with my wife and kids, and masses of people will do the same as me.”

Chef Tania Cotorobai also said she would be taking a day off in the country. “I don’t know if I really believe it but if you look at the internet you see everything and the opposite of everything, and it end up making you nervous,” she said…

Bendandi, who died in 1979 aged 86, believed earthquakes were the result of the combined movements of the planets, the moon and the sun and were perfectly predictable.

In 1923 he forecast a quake would hit the central Adriatic region of the Marches on January 2 the following year. He was wrong by two days but Italy’s main newspaper Corriere della Sera still ran a front page article on “The man who forecasts earthquakes.”

Bendandi’s fame grew and in 1927 he was awarded a knighthood by Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini…

However the current panic appears to be due more to fear-mongering in the age of internet than to Bendandi himself.

Fear and ignorance seem to be motivators as central to social and political phenomena today as they were in the Dark Ages.

I wonder if there’s some way the Holy Roman Catholic Church will make a buck off of this?

Buy your genuine survival shelters here!

Police in Taiwan are investigating a self-proclaimed prophet whose doomsday warnings on a blog have caused panic.

The man, identifying himself as Teacher Wang, said Taiwan would be struck by a magnitude-14 earthquake and 560ft high tsunami on 11 May.

More than 100 cargo containers have been bought and set up in a mountainous area of central Taiwan. Police said they were investigating if the blogger had conspired with a container business to defraud people.

“Teacher Wang” suggested people live in such containers to survive the disaster, which he said would kill millions of people and split the island in half.

Taiwan’s famous Taipei 101 skyscraper and the Presidential Office building would be toppled, he warned.

More than 100 cargo containers have been discovered in the town of Puli, Nantou county. Workers had been hired to fit them with doors, windows and air conditioning, says the BBC’s Cindy Sui in Taipei. The containers cost about $5,500 each, once water and electricity are included, our correspondent adds…

Officials say Japan’s recent devastating quake and tsunami may have led fraudsters to exploit people’s fears.

The police have not been able to trace “Teacher Wang“, who had touted his theory to TV reporters but insisted his face not be shown.

The authorities have removed his doomsday warnings from the internet.

The best – which means most profitable – doomsday preachers have learned to be less explicit and focus disaster scenarios which have happened previously. To Nervous Nellies that sounds reasonable enough to get the juices flowing – along with the dollars.