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In pictures: Foot-and-mouth across Europe
BBC News - Thursday, 15 March, 2001, 15:07 GMT
As France deals with the outbreak of foot-and-mouth, across Europe measures are being taken to stop the disease spreading further.
 The grim result of
foot-and-mouth - dead pigs are loaded onto trucks to be
taken for incineration |
 Thousands of pigs,
sheep and cattle are being destroyed after |
|
 Smoke clouds the
landscape of north-western France as the animals are
incinerated |
 Italy too has
slaughtered animals suspected of being in contact with
the infection. |
|
Germany is trying
to stop France's tragedy crossing its border |
 And Spain tries to
prevent a sea invasion |
|
 Norway is even
confiscating visitors food as they arrive from Sweden |
 These passengers
on a train from Germany to the Czech Republic must also
give up their food |
Meat industry losses in Argentina
15 March 2001
Meat packing plants in Argentina have started to close down as a result of outbreaks of foot and mouth disease in several parts of the country.
s
A French trader prepares for his flock's
slaughter
The managers of one plant in Mar del Plata said they had to shut down after losing at least seventy-million dollars following the bans on Argentinian beef products imposed by the United States and the European Union.
Three hundred people have already lost their jobs.
Thursday March 15 1:20 AM ET
Foot-And-Mouth Scare Rocks Mideast, Latin
America
By David Evans and Mike Miller
BRUSSELS/CHICAGO (Reuters) - Mideast health authorities sought to contain the damage from the importation of foot-and-mouth disease-infected cows to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on Thursday as Argentina reported two new outbreaks in its cattle-ranching heartland.
Eight cows imported into the UAE were found to have the disease, the daily al-Khaleej reported on Wednesday. The UAE cases were ``limited and contained,'' according to UAE Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Saeed al-Ragabani.
The official Saudi Press Agency said two calves had been diagnosed with the highly contagious disease in neighboring Saudi Arabia. The cases were the first to be found in the Gulf states, which import most of their meat.
Tourists travelling from Germany to the Czech Republic help their elderly relative step on a disinfection pad at the Rozvadov border crossing, March 15, 2001. World governments scrambled to build defenses against foot-and-mouth disease that has now spread to livestock in parts of the Middle East and threatens to cripple Europe's meat industry. (Petr Josek/Reuters)
In Argentina, where the Farming and Food Health Agency confirmed an outbreak of the disease in Buenos Aires province on Tuesday, officials said on Wednesday they had discovered two new outbreaks in the nation's cattle-ranching heartland.
Countries around the world were stepping up efforts to stay free of the disease, banning meat and grain imports from the European Union (news - web sites) and increasing checks on travelers from Europe.
U.S. To Take Every Precaution
The United States was one of a string of countries from Canada to Australia to halt imports of EU meat, and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said on Wednesday her government would take every precaution to keep the disease out of the United States, which has not had a case since 1929.
Britain is the epicenter of the latest outbreak of the disease, which attacks livestock including cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. France announced its first case on Tuesday.
Portugal has detected antibodies to foot-and-mouth disease in two cows imported from the Netherlands, the country's agriculture minister said on Wednesday. The presence of antibodies does not mean the cows have the disease, but Portugal destroyed the animals ``as a precaution,'' he said.
Within the EU, German police began guarding border crossings with France. Police checked everything from British soccer fans to frozen veal schnitzels. In Britain, tens of thousands of carcasses were being burned on giant pyres and much of the countryside is effectively a no-go zone.
U.S. Department of Agriculture Beagle Brigade member 'Comet' inspects luggage belonging to passengers coming from London on March 14, 2001, at Dulles International Airport outside Washington. World governments scrambled to build defenses March 15 against foot-and-mouth disease that has now spread to livestock in parts of the Middle East and threatens to cripple Europe's meat industry. (Hyungwon Kang/Reuters)
World governments' response to the foot-and-mouth outbreak took on aspects of a trade war on Wednesday, as EU Food Safety Commissioner David Byrne criticized countries that had taken ''unnecessary and excessive'' measures.
The European Commission (news - web sites) on Wednesday urged four countries -- Morocco, Hungary, Slovakia and Tunisia -- to end what it called unjustified bans on imports of EU grain imposed over fears of the spread of foot-and-mouth.
Potential For Economic Catastrophe
Foot-and-mouth is a virulent disease in which fever is followed by the development of blisters, chiefly in the mouth or on the feet. It is not believed to readily affect humans, but the U.S. Agriculture Department has labeled it ``one of the most dreaded of all animal diseases'' because of its potential for economic catastrophe as it disables entire herds.
Also on Wednesday, Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul state said it wants to close its borders to all wheat, rice, corn and alfalfa from Argentina and Paraguay as a precaution against the spread of foot-and-mouth into its prime cattle-ranching area.
Chicago commodity markets gyrated on Wednesday in response to the outbreak. At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the price of pork bellies, the raw material for making bacon, rose to their highest level since last July a day after the United States and other countries banned meat imports from the European Union. Hog prices also closed sharply higher.
Prices of corn, soybeans and soybean meal, used in livestock feed, tumbled at the Chicago Board of Trade on expectations of reduced demand as producers slaughter herds.
The U.S. government was taking steps to prevent foot-and-mouth from entering the United States, adopting strict new measures, including disinfecting some European travelers' shoes, to protect American livestock from the disease.
Extra U.S. health inspectors, foot-sniffing dogs and close questioning of airline passengers returning from the European countryside were among the tools being used by the U.S. Agriculture Department to prevent the spread of the highly contagious disease that has thrown Europe into a panic.
``If this were to spread to the United States ... the losses would reach into billions of dollars quickly,'' said Alfonso Torres, deputy administrator of USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
World Governments Scramble to Halt Foot-And-Mouth
By Elizabeth Piper and Mike Miller
March 16 2001
LONDON/CHICAGO (Reuters) - World governments scrambled to build defenses against foot-and-mouth on Thursday as Britain declared all-out war on the disease and commodity markets were buffeted by worries about its spread.
Britain, the epicenter of the latest outbreak of the highly contagious disease, stepped up its cull to ``slaughter on suspicion,'' and planned to destroy even healthy animals that have loose connections to affected areas.
Pork prices at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange rose sharply on Thursday, as traders expected bans on meat imports from Europe to increase demand for U.S. meat. But at the Chicago Board of Trade, prices of feed ingredients such as corn and soybean meal tumbled because of fears that widespread slaughter of livestock herds will leave fewer animals to feed.
Chicago wheat prices fell sharply after it appeared less likely that some importing countries would shun European wheat in their efforts to avoid foot-and-mouth. Morocco and Tunisia said they had not banned such imports, contrary to some earlier reports.
A Spanish worker from Catalonia's health department sprays disinfectant on logs strapped on a truck arriving from France in a bid to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease, at the La Junquera border crossing March 15, 2001. British Agriculture Minister Nick Brown confirmed 240 cases in the U.K. of the devastating disease which has crossed into northern France, causing countries such as the United States to ban meat imports from the European Union. (Albert Gea/Reuters)
The head of a world animal health organization said no official scientific basis exists to ban imports of grain from a country that has had an outbreak of foot-and-mouth.
``The risk linked to grain is close to zero,'' Bernard Vallat, director-general of the Office International des Epizooties (World organization for animal health), told Reuters.
Just A Matter Of Time
In Germany, which has not had a case of foot-and-mouth since 1988, but where a French case found on Tuesday has put health authorities on high alert, a regional environment minister said it was only a matter of time until the disease spread to Germany.
``I expect that the disease will hit Germany too,'' Baerbel Hoehn, environment minister in the big western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, told the Rheinische Post newspaper. ``The chances are much higher now because it's clear the disease has arrived on mainland Europe.''
Officials in the central German region of Thuringia were relieved when diseased animals found earlier at a 6,000-pig farm were cleared of having foot-and-mouth disease.
Portugal said it would vaccinate livestock if the disease were to spread from France to Spain. The European Union (news - web sites) does not currently allow vaccination, which is expensive and not wholly effective. The Netherlands plans to seek a lifting of the ban on preventive vaccination at a meeting of European agricultural ministers next Monday in Brussels.
The United States, which banned imports of raw meat from the European Union earlier this week, on Thursday issued a similar ban on meat from Argentina, where an outbreak was confirmed on Tuesday. The ban was expected to have little impact since Argentina, the world's No. 5 beef exporter, had already suspended its meat exports.
HAS U.S. GONE TOO FAR?
A European Union official complained on Thursday that the United States had gone too far in banning shipments of live animals and raw meat from the entire 15-member EU, since only Britain and France have confirmed outbreaks of the disease.
``An all-out ban in our view is disproportionate and it's the simple option,'' Gerry Kiely, agriculture counselor for the European Commission (news - web sites)'s delegation in Washington, told Reuters. ''On issues like this, where the U.S. leads, there is always the risk of others following and its effect on other markets.''
As the rest of the world went on red alert after Gulf Arab states began to erect barriers against imported cattle, Britain said it would bring in the army for logistical support.
``We are intensifying the slaughter of animals at risk in the areas of the country, thankfully still limited, where the disease has spread,'' British Agriculture Minister Nick Brown told parliament.
Foot-and-mouth can affect cattle, sheep, pigs and goat but rarely affects humans. It can spread like wildfire on clothes, vehicle tires and even the wind, causing fever and blisters mainly on the mouth and feet of cloven-hoofed animals.
Slaughter, Quarantine, Hope
In the United Arab Emirates, Ali Arab, head of the livestock department at the Agriculture Ministry, told Reuters in Dubai that eight infected cattle had been killed and a quarantine imposed on farms where the cases had been found.
That outbreak and a report from Saudi Arabia that two calves had been found with the disease were the first in Gulf states. ``The UAE is now free of foot-and-mouth disease,'' he said, denying media reports of further cases.
Even as Morocco and Tunisia, important export markets for the region's wheat, said they would not ban EU grains, new meat bans came thick and fast, some including Argentina after it reported a case of the disease.
Bulgaria was the latest country to ban imports from Argentina, following the United States and the EU. Romania, meanwhile, banned imports of cattle, pigs, sheep and goats from all European Union countries.
Austria pinpointed France, slapping a ban on its imports of cloven-hoofed animals and related meat products, while Turkey said it was due to ban imports of all milk products except those made of pasteurized milk, as well as animal skins and wool from countries with disease outbreaks.
The fresh bans will spur meat markets in the United States, and traders in Japan were saying importers were scrabbling for pork from the United States and Canada.
Wednesday March 14 3:45 PM ET
U.N.: Foot-and-Mouth Global Threat
ROME (AP) - No country is safe from foot-and-mouth disease because of increased international trade, tourism and the movement of animals and animal products, the U.N. food agency said Wednesday.
The risk of the disease spreading was exacerbated by ``the difficulty that the world is facing because of globalization,'' said Yves Chaneau, head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (news - web sites)'s veterinary health department.
The warning came a day after the United States and several other countries banned meat imports from the European Union (news - web sites) because of outbreaks in Britain and France.
``Our society is based on freedom of movement and it is extremely difficult to control all and every risky passenger or immigrant or traveler or truck,'' Chaneau said.
The Rome-based U.N. agency urged countries most at risk for the disease to inspect vehicles returning from infected areas at border posts and to impose stricter controls on imports of foodstuffs - including those carried by travelers and wastes from aircraft and ships.
France reported its first case of foot-and-mouth Tuesday, confirmation that the disease had spread to continental Europe.
According to the agency, feeding pigs with waste food posed a ``particular risk'' and this was the ``likely origin'' of the introduction of the virus in Britain. But the agency said the disease remains endemic in many countries in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and South America.
It said countries should destroy animal carcasses and, as a last resort, provide emergency vaccination to animals.
Wednesday March 14 6:54 PM ET
Foot-And-Mouth Scare Spreads to Middle East
By David Evans and Mike Miller
BRUSSELS/CHICAGO (Reuters) - The scare over foot-and-mouth disease that has rocked Europe spread to the Middle East on Wednesday, as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates reported finding 10 cases.
Eight cows imported into the UAE were found to have the disease, the daily al-Khaleej reported. The UAE cases were ''limited and contained,'' according to UAE Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Saeed al-Ragabani. He added that it was not yet clear where the imported cows had originated.
A sheep carcass of unknown origin is dumped from a skip into a lorry in Meaux, France March 14, 2001. More than 50 sheep, cows, and goats were destroyed at a slaughterhouse, some 30 miles from Paris, after France confirmed its first case of foot-and-mouth disease on March 13. (Jean-Christophe Kahn/Reuters)
The official Saudi Press Agency said two calves had been diagnosed with the highly contagious disease in neighboring Saudi Arabia. The cases were the first to be found in the Gulf states, which import most of their meat.
Countries around the world stepped up efforts to stay free of the disease on Wednesday, banning meat and grain imports from the European Union (news - web sites) and increasing checks on travelers from Europe.
U.S. Vows To Take Every Precaution
The United States was one of a string of countries from Canada to Australia to halt imports of EU meat, and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said her government would take every precaution to keep the disease out of the United States, which has not had a case since 1929.
The U.S. Agriculture Department said on Wednesday it would reassess its ban on imports of live animals and raw meat from Britain ``at a future date'' after weighing input from livestock groups and animal experts.
Britain is the epicenter of the latest outbreak of the disease, which attacks livestock including cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. France announced its first case since 1981 on Tuesday.
Portugal has detected antibodies to foot-and-mouth disease in two cows imported from the Netherlands, the country's agriculture minister said on Wednesday. The presence of antibodies does not mean the cows have the disease, but Portugal destroyed the animals ``as a precaution,'' he said.
Within the EU, German police began guarding normally unmanned border crossings with France. Police checked everything from British soccer fans to frozen veal schnitzels. In Britain, tens of thousands of carcasses are being burned on giant pyres and much of the countryside is effectively a no-go zone.
Eu Criticizes 'Excessive' Measures
World governments' response to the foot-and-mouth outbreak took on aspects of a trade war on Wednesday, as EU Food Safety Commissioner David Byrne criticized countries that had taken ''unnecessary and excessive'' measures.
``If necessary we will make full use of our bilateral contacts and our WTO (World Trade Organization (news - web sites)) trade arrangements to have these restrictions lifted,'' Byrne told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
The European Commission (news - web sites) on Wednesday urged four countries -- Morocco, Hungary, Slovakia and Tunisia -- to end what it called unjustified bans on imports of EU grain imposed over fears of the spread of foot-and-mouth.
A German border officer stops a truck transporting meat from France in Strasbourg, March 14, 2001. German authorities decided to tighten controls on the French border after European Union veterinary experts recommended banning all live animal exports from France until March 27, following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in western France. (Vincent Kessler/Reuters)
Foot-and-mouth is a virulent disease in which fever is followed by the development of blisters, chiefly in the mouth or on the feet. It is not believed to readily affect humans, but the U.S. Agriculture Department has labeled it ``one of the most dreaded of all animal diseases'' because of its potential for economic catastrophe as it weakens and disables entire herds.
Argentina, the world's No. 5 beef exporter, on Tuesday confirmed the existence of a foot-and-mouth outbreak, its first case since 1994. Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul state said on Wednesday it wants to close its borders to all wheat, rice, corn and alfalfa from Argentina and Paraguay as a precaution against the spread of foot-and-mouth into its prime cattle-ranching area.
Chicago commodity markets gyrated on Wednesday in response to the outbreak. At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the price of pork bellies, the raw material for making bacon, rose to their highest level since last July a day after the United States and other countries banned meat imports from the European Union. Hog prices also closed sharply higher.
But prices of corn, soybeans and soybean meal, all used as livestock feed ingredients, tumbled at the Chicago Board of Trade on expectations of reduced demand as producers slaughter their herds.
McDonald's Corp., the world's largest restaurant company, warned on Wednesday that its first-quarter earnings would be hurt by the growing consumer beef scare in Europe, where foot-and-mouth is starting to add to mad cow troubles, which have caused consumers to avoid hamburgers.
U.S. To Disinfect Travelers
The U.S. government took steps on Wednesday to prevent foot-and-mouth from entering the United States. The government adopted strict new measures, including disinfecting some European travelers' shoes, to protect American livestock from the disease.
Extra U.S. health inspectors, foot-sniffing dogs and close questioning of airline passengers returning from the European countryside were among the tools being used by the U.S. Agriculture Department to prevent the spread of the highly contagious disease that has thrown Europe into a panic.
``If this were to spread to the United States ... the losses would reach into billions of dollars quickly,'' said Alfonso Torres, deputy administrator of USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
The Agriculture Department staged a demonstration at Dulles International Airport outside Washington on Wednesday to show how arriving passengers from Europe will be questioned and inspected.
British visitors flying into Florida's tourist mecca of Orlando had their shoes sprayed with disinfectant as airport inspectors joined the campaign to keep foot-and-mouth at bay.
The U.S. state of Alabama plans on Thursday to begin disinfecting some 100 tractors shipped from Britain and quarantined at a U.S. port for fear the equipment could carry foot-and-mouth. The U.S.-made tractors had been displayed at a farm trade show in Britain.
Hottest
summer for 95 years
01mar01
- The Advertiser Australia
ADELAIDE
has recorded its hottest summer in almost 100 years.
The Bureau of Meteorology said last night the city had recorded
29 days at or above 35 degrees between December 1 and February
28.
The mean maximum temperature was 31.2 – 2.8 above average – making it the hottest summer since 1905-06.
Bureau senior forecaster Alan Cusworth said the city's nights also had been warmer than normal.
Adelaide recorded a summer minimum mean temperature of 18.8, which was 2.6 above average.
Mr Cusworth said this was the highest minimum mean temperature recorded in the 114 years that records had been kept. The previous record mean minimum was 18.3 in 1967-68.
The bureau was also predicting a warm autumn for South Australia, including agricultural regions, Mr Cusworth said.
But
the chance of above-average rain was about 50 per cent.
NSW flood crisis taskforce surveys devastation
NineMSN - 14 March 2001
The New South Wales government's north coast disaster task force will inspect flood ravaged towns today to devise a clean-up strategy.
Disaster recovery centres will be set up at Kempsey and Grafton, while the Department of Community Services will provide financial assistance for emergency accommodation and food.
Residents have begun returning home now the worst of the floods are over but face a massive clean-up estimated to take up to six months.
To date, about 3,000 people have been evacuated from their homes.
The task force was set up to take a whole of government approach and will meet in Coffs Harbour on the mid north coast today, Country Labor MP Tony Kelly said.
"The task force will assess the damage and determine immediate priorities," Mr Kelly said in a statement.
"The task force is important because families and businesses need a single point of contact so they can get the help they need.
"While councils are attempting to deal with the floods as best they can, a disaster of this magnitude requires a coordinated and streamlined approach."
Roads and bridges in Thora, Bellingen Valley, Kempsey, Grafton and Ulmarra need to be rebuilt.
The State Emergency Service (SES) was dropping food and medical supplies to about 1,000 people throughout the region, which has been declared a natural disaster zone.
Smithtown and Gladstone still faced health risks from sewage contamination and it would be several days before the Kempsey CBD reopened, the SES said.
Other towns remain isolated.
The damage bill from these latest floods is expected to run into tens of millions of dollars, the state government said.
Over the past six days, 500 SES volunteers have been involved in flood relief efforts assisted by 250 Rural Fire Service volunteers and 50 from the NSW Fire Brigade.
AAP - Wednesday 14 March 1:28 PM
Australia today banned all meat and dairy products and livestock from the European Union following the spread of foot-and-mouth disease in France.
The move by the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) extends the ban it imposed yesterday on all livestock, including horses, from Britain and Ireland.
AQIS has imposed the ban after the confirmation of a foot-and-mouth outbreak in north west France overnight, and fears the disease may have spread to Italy.
Agriculture Minister Warren Truss said Australia had to take all available precautions to prevent an outbreak of the disease.
Mr Truss said the disease outbreak was spreading so quickly Australia had to increase its preventative measures to stop it entering the country.
"We enjoy a disease-free status in relation to foot-and-mouth disease in Australia. It is very important for our clean, green image, and we're determined to protect it," he told ABC radio.
The ban effectively means Australian meat and dairy imports will be restricted to products from the US and New Zealand.
Australia had banned meat products from the EU, the United Kingdom and Ireland in January over fears of mad cow disease.
Today's ban now extends to livestock including horses, which will have an impact on the Australian thoroughbred breeding industry.
Meanwhile, an outbreak of foot-and-mouth was today confirmed in Argentina, one of Australia's biggest beef competitors.
It has been forced to suspend meat exports to the US, Canada and Chile.
Tuesday March 13 7:09 PM ET
U.S. Bans EU Meat After France Finds
Foot-And-Mouth
By Paul Holmes
PARIS (Reuters) - The United States banned meat imports from the European Union (news - web sites) on Tuesday after France reported that an outbreak of the financially ruinous foot-and-mouth disease had spread from Britain to mainland Europe.
The news was a fresh blow to the EU, which had already asked non-EU members to lift some restrictions on EU agricultural products, arguing they were not justified in view of its own measures to limit the spread of the highly contagious disease.
 The French farm ministry confirmed its first
case of |
After France confirmed the presence of foot-and-mouth
in the northwesterly Mayenne department, the EU
veterinary committee banned exports of cloven-hoofed
livestock -- cattle, sheep and pigs -- from France for
two weeks. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture (news - web sites), followed swiftly by Canada, went further, banning the import of all animals and animal products from the European Union. It said it would quarantine and inspect all EU meat imported since February 21. The U.S. move is likely to affect over $500 million in trade, mostly of goods from Italy, the Netherlands and Britain. A spokeswoman for EU health commissioner David Byrne said the EU executive, the European Commission (news - web sites), would be seeking urgent clarification. The EU's top vets had earlier said tough measures were being taken ``which are suitable to prevent any spread of the disease to third countries.'' They ``invited'' non-EU countries to lift some of their bans on EU farm and other products as ``excessive and not supported by any technical arguments'' -- notably bans on EU grain. Britain has already slaughtered or planned to slaughter some 170,000 animals in an effort to contain its three-week-old outbreak of the disease, which is not harmful to humans but can ravage farming by causing severe weight loss in livestock. |
Effect On Wider Economy
The French case was found in a herd of 144 cattle near the village of La Baroche-Gondouin in Mayenne, at a farm next to another holding that had imported British sheep in February.
The new case, the first in France since 1981, stoked fears that Europe's latest food scare would have a knock-on effect on the economy, with farming and tourism at risk of crippling losses and higher meat prices fuelling inflation.
It also showed the disease had eluded a host of protective measures that France had already put in place, having ordered the destruction of 20,000 sheep imported from Britain in February and 30,000 French sheep that had contact with them.
The French farm ministry confirmed its first case of foot-and-mouth disease March 13, 2001, saying in a statement that cows on a farm in the Mayenne department of northwest France had tested positive for the infection. Cows are burned March 11 at a British farm near Uttoxeter as cases of the disease continue to rise. (Dan Chung/Reuters)
The entire herd of cattle in La Baroche-Gondouin was slaughtered and due to be incinerated.
Norway, not in the EU, banned imports of all French farm products while EU members Portugal and Spain closed their borders to French livestock. Germany warned tourists returning from France to leave food behind to avoid spreading the
France is the EU's primary farm producer. Farm Minister Jean Glavany said the virus might already have spread because the sheep imported from Britain had gone to 20 separate areas.
At least 11 more suspected cases were reported in the Seine-et-Marne department east of Paris and in southeast France.
Foot-and-mouth can be carried on the wind or even on clothing and has already infected 200 sites in Britain.
With carcasses piling up despite pyres burning round the clock, the crisis was threatening to derail British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s build-up to a general election he is widely expected to call for May 3.
Fear Spreads Over Europe
Blair met farmers, tourism chiefs and small business executives and his spokesman said he had promised them all the resources they needed to tackle the crisis.
Until Tuesday, there had been no confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth in continental Europe, where authorities had banned livestock movement and imposed import restrictions.
``This is very bad news,'' said Bernhard Kruesken, meat and animal products expert at German cooperatives' association DRV. ''With the disease having reached France, it considerably increases the risk of it reaching us.''
The Netherlands widened its ban on the movement of sheep to all cloven-hoofed animals and Ireland stepped up border defenses against the disease after a suspect case was reported in a sheep in British-ruled Northern Ireland on Monday.
In the Italian province of Pescara, nearly 400 sheep from France showed possible symptoms and were slaughtered.
In Munich, the Bavarian Farmers' Association asked local farmers going to Wednesday's soccer tie between Bayern Munich and Arsenal of London to keep their distance from the British fans.
A prolonged export ban in France would pile on the agony for an industry already reeling from consumer fears about mad cow disease. Rising meat prices have also stoked inflation, French official data on Tuesday showed.
Separately, Argentina, the world's number five beef exporter, also confirmed an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.
It had already stopped certifying meat exports to markets with restrictions on foot-and-mouth, a move which effectively suspended exports to Canada, the United States and Chile.
$0.5m damage at Coral
Coast
Wednesday March 14, 2001
Damage caused by high seas and tidal waves which battered villages along the Coral Coast on March 3 and Vatulele island is estimated at close to half a million dollars.
This was calculated following a survey by district officer Sigatoka Peni Nadredre and a government team from the district. Mr Nadredre said a total of 118 homes in 11 villages and two settlements were damaged by waves and high seas.
He said the damaged villages were mainly located in the stretch of coast between Namatakula and Sanasana near the famous Natadola beach. "The cost were mainly attributed to damage sustained by dwelling houses.
Some houses were partly damaged and others severely.
The cost also includes their household items including kitchen wares," Mr Nadredre said.
The damage suffered by the 11 villages and the two settlements estimated at $296,500. No structural damage was reported from Vatulele but damaged root-crops stand at $177,000.
The team also surveyed damage sustained by sea walls. However Mr Nadredre said they did not prepare an estimate since they did not have the necessary expertise.
"Government or Military engineers should survey the damage as they would be in better position to estimate the cost," he said.
"Most of sea walls suffered extensive damage and need to be repaired. We also recommend that Government construct sea walls for villages that have none".
Mr Nadredre in his submission to the District Officer Western Division, recommended that sea-walls be rebuild to protect the villages. He said tents should be supplied to families who have lost their homes and recommended that Government assist in the rebuilding of damaged homes.
"This office has made its recommendations and its now up to the authorities to work on it. All this needs money," Mr Nadredre said. The villages were hit by huge waves on Saturday morning of March 3, as Cyclone Paula was passing over the country.
A report has been tabled to the Disaster Management Committee ((DISMAC)) which will later be submitted to Cabinet. A Government team from Suva that visited the Lau group on the Government vessel Tokalau returned on Saturday.
It has tabled its report to the DISMAC office
Permanent secretary for Ministry of Regional Development and Multi Ethnic Affairs Eliesa Tuiloma has said, there were no life threatening or medical reports which need urgent attention to date.
Fiji's Daily Post
Monday March 12 2:22 PM ET
U.K. Fears for Newborn Animals
By SUE LEEMAN, Associated Press Writer
NAZEING, England (AP) - James Moncur's sheep don't have foot-and-mouth disease, but he's feeling the pain of Britain's fast-spreading epidemic.
Some of his 800 pregnant ewes might have to lamb in the fields, prevented from going to sheds because of the ban on livestock movements imposed to curtail the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.
Moncur says that means more newborns will probably die from cold or because farm workers cannot deal with difficult births - another blow on top of severe cuts in livestock prices caused by the disease.
``We're in a nightmare, and it's only getting worse,'' he said, surveying a muddy field full of well-fed, glossy-eyed English hybrid sheep known as North Country Mules.
More than two weeks into the ban, there are no signs of a slowdown in the number of new cases: 19 fresh cases were confirmed Monday - including the first in the southern counties of Kent and Gloucestershire - bringing the total to 183.
In addition, 150 farms and slaughterhouses are under investigation.
In Ireland, junior agriculture minister Eamon O'Cuiv said Britain had not done enough to stop the spread of the disease.
``They don't seem to have got it under control, and that is of major concern to us here,'' he said. ``Not only are we getting fresh outbreaks every day in Britain, but they are very, very dispersed in terms of geography.''
A spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) said it would take time to eradicate the disease, ``but we have taken the right approach and it is a tough regime.''
Agriculture Minister Nick Brown insisted the disease was under control, although he acknowledged that ``we are now dealing with the problem which is on a different scale to the one it was three weeks ago.''
Some 114,000 animals had been slaughtered and a further 30,700 have been earmarked for culling. On some farms piles of animals carcasses have built up, awaiting incineration, and farmers have urged the government to deploy the army to help with the destruction.
Instead, the government has authorized a rendering plant at Widnes in Cheshire, northwest England, to help clear the backlog, but there are fears trucks could spread the disease to a county that has so far escaped contagion.
The government has agreed to grant farmers licenses to move animals short distances on their own land in special circumstances - including for lambing.
However, Brown said Monday he is considering culling up to 500,000 pregnant sheep stuck in winter pastures because moving them risked spreading infection.
And Moncur is concerned that 120 of his ewes are beyond the 5-mile limit for moving sheep under the new regulations.
``If the sheep have to give birth in the fields, I would expect a lot more young animals to die,'' said Moncur, who is applying for licenses to move the bulk of his pregnant animals. He will need fresh licenses to move them back to pasture later.
His farm is just 20 miles from Brentwood, the town near London where the disease was first detected last month.
Moncur is already losing money on 600 of last year's lambs that he had hoped to sell this month. Normally, he would expect about $75 a head, but says he will be lucky to get $60 in the current market. In the meantime, feed and veterinary bills mount up.
Rural footpaths and many countryside attractions have been closed in an attempt to stem the disease, and many sporting events have been canceled. Monday's casualties included the Devizes-to-Westminster International Canoe Race from western England to London.
The English Tourism Council says business is 75 percent below its usual levels for this time of year, with operators - including country hotels, pubs and parks - facing losses of more than $150 million a week.
Tuesday March 13 6:31 AM ET
France Confirms Foot-and-Mouth Case
By ELAINE GANLEY, Associated Press Writer
PARIS (AP) - France on Tuesday announced its first case of foot-and-mouth disease, confirming suspicions that the highly contagious livestock disease had spread from Britain to continental Europe.
Officials immediately set up a 11/2-mile security parameter, limiting access to the farm in the Mayenne region, and a further ``surveillance parameter'' of 6 miles, the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.
Mainland Europe has been taking drastic steps in an attempt to prevent the disease from crossing the Channel from Britain, where the outbreak that was first discovered Feb. 19 has severely hurt the livestock industry.
Though the disease is not dangerous to humans, an outbreak on the continent would be another economic problem for an industry suffering from plummeting beef sales and consumer panic.
Foot-and-mouth disease strikes cloven-hoofed animals such as sheep, pigs and cows, and in those it does not kill it reduces the production of milk and meat. Its danger is heightened by the ease of its transmission: The virus can be carried for miles by the wind, people or cars, or spread by contaminated hay, water and manure.
The origin of the afflicted cows in France was not immediately clear. The ministry said they belonged to a farm that is near one that imported British sheep in February.
The ministry said tests had confirmed the cases in the cows from a herd of 114 cattle on the farm. All 114 cows were destroyed, it said, and their carcasses were to be incinerated on Tuesday.
This first case ``justifies all the draconian measures that we have taken over the past 15 days,'' Agriculture Minister Jean Glavany said on French radio.
``I fear that there are other cases and, at the same time, I'm doing everything to limit (the disease's spread) as much as possible,'' Glavany said.
Veterinary officials had had a ``strong suspicion'' on Monday that the farm was infected, the ministry said. Overnight analysis of tests by France's food safety agency, AFSSA, confirmed the suspicions, the ministry said.
Britain halted dairy, meat and livestock exports shortly after the first case of foot-and-mouth was confirmed on Feb. 19. More than 150,000 livestock have been destroyed or earmarked for slaughter. So far, 183 infected areas have been reported in Britain and Northern Ireland.
Movement by people in the countryside has also been discouraged, and those who travel to rural areas are being asked to walk through troughs of disinfectant.
After tests on nine herds in France raised suspicions of the disease, France moved Monday to virtually shut down its livestock business, barring the export of animals at risk for 15 days and banning all movement of such animals inside the country, except those being taken to slaughterhouses. Horses were also banned from traveling inside France.
The government had already decided to kill 20,000 imported sheep and 30,000 French sheep that had been in contact with the British animals.
Germany, meanwhile, said it was still free of foot-and-mouth disease Tuesday, after tests on suspect animals from a farm showed no trace.
The farm at Damme, in Lower Saxony state, was sealed off after symptoms similar to those of the highly contagious disease were detected among 99 calves. The animals were slaughtered Sunday. An official from the state Agriculture Ministry said subsequent tests proved negative.
In Brussels, European Commission (news - web sites) spokeswoman Beate Gminder said it was too early to talk about a ban on French exports. EU veterinary experts were to consider the issue at a meeting later.
Sky News - March 8 2001
The death toll from heavy flooding in the Ukraine rose to five as the mopping-up operation continued in neighbouring Hungary.
Some 20,000 villages have been submerged in western Ukraine and the north east of Hungary with water levels in the region the highest in more than a century.
Residents and soldiers in both countries were working round the clock to stem the waters, caused by heavy rain and melting snow from the Carpathian Mountains.
Flood defences
In the former Soviet republic, more than 35,000 people have been evacuated from the Zakarpattia region since Tuesday. Two more bodies were discovered on Thursday, raising the death toll to five.
In Hungary, 2,300 soldiers and 12 helicopters began work on a second line of defence after a dyke burst at Vasarosnameny, 150 miles east of Budapest. President Ferenc Madl called on all citizens to help.
But he paid tribute to the work already done to build flood defences, erected after the 1998 floods. He said without them, the floods would have caused far more damage.
Road torn up
Tearing up parts of a main road between the villages of Takos and Csaroda, near the Ukrainian border, has helped to ease some of the flooding of the Tisza River.
The road, which had acted as a dam because it was raised and prevented flood waters from receding, was demolished in two places, letting floodwaters flow to low-lying areas.
But the small village of Gergelyiugornya is paying a hefty price, as the dyke protecting it broke due to excessive pressure. The water is now slowly and relentlessly rising.
"This one village is still left. We are trying to save it," said the village's civil defence chief, Laszlo Kis.
Sky News - March 7 2001
More than 25,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in Hungary but many more are refusing to leave despite rising flood waters.
Among those determined to stay put are hundreds of elderly people who say they would rather die than leave their homes which have been swamped by the Tisza River which burst its banks in northeastern Hungary.
Many say they have to stay to look after sheep and other valued possessions. "My family will not leave," said one young woman whose house was inundated but still contained her parents and brother and their flock of 120 sheep.
Rain and snow
It's the first time dykes along the river have burst in more than 20 years. Hungary blames deforestation along the river in neighbouring Ukraine and Romania which has significantly increased run-off into the river from melting snow.
"The level of water is still rising, it has come up half a metre in the last two hours," said the mayor of one of the towns now virtually under water. "We don't know what to expect. It depends on how much water comes from Ukraine," he added.
Emergency volunteers
It's the fourth year in a row that record flood levels have hit Hungary. Millions of dollars worth of damage have been caused by the rising water. Thirteen thousand people have volunteered to work on raising the height of the countries first line of defence - dykes.
The flood waters are expected to continue rising into Thursday.
BBC News - Monday March 12, 09:00 AM
Farmers are bracing themselves for further cases of foot-and-mouth outbreaks.
Sunday saw the biggest jump in cases in a 24-hour period since the crisis began, with 25 new outbreaks bringing the total in the UK to 164.
The government is under increasing pressure to contain the disease but has rejected suggestions that the system is overwhelmed by the number of carcasses that need to be destroyed.
The National Farmers' Union (NFU) says it believes the number of cases will rise rapidly during the week.
So far 114,082 animals have been slaughtered and another 30,739 are scheduled to be destroyed.
Despite Sunday's number of new cases, Agriculture Minister Nick Brown said he was "absolutely certain" that the crisis was under control.
Cows are burnt at a farm near Uttoxeter as the Foot and Mouth disease epidemic spreads on March 11, 2001. The foot-and-mouth outbreak showed no signs of abating on Sunday despite government assurances that the devastating livestock disease was under control. REUTERS/Dan Chung - ouktp
Conservative agriculture spokesman Tim Yeo said the situation was approaching a "national emergency".
He wants the Army to be called in to help with incinerating animal carcasses left lying in fields.
Mr Yeo contrasted the government's response to the crisis with the response in the Irish Republic and France, where "drastic" preventative measures had protected both countries from an outbreak.
Nearly 500 vets are dealing with the disease in the UK, including experts from the United States, Australia and Europe.
The new cases were nine in Cumbria, four in Devon, three in Scotland, two inCounty Durham and single cases in Kent, Powys, Worcester, Derbyshire, Gloucester, Tyne and Wear, and Herefordshire.
Farmers in Sussex are concerned that a racing fixture at Plumpton on Monday could bring the disease to their county, as yet unaffected.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the British Horse Racing Board have given the all-clear for racing to go ahead as long as disinfecting precautions are in place.
But chairman of the South of England Agriculture Society, Carola Godman-Law, who farms near Plumpton racecourse, said a temporary ban on racing across the UK should be imposed while the crisis continued.
"The local farmers around here are dismayed and quite frankly very frightened that racing will take place at Plumpton," she said.
She said allowing the event risked the disease being brought into Sussex on horses, horse-boxes, lorries and race-goers.
"What most people don't understand is that this is the most virulent disease known to man," she told Radio 4's Today programme.
Outbreaks are 'no suprise'
Outbreaks across the UK include 39 in Cumbria, 26 in Devon, 22 in Dumfries andGalloway, 12 in County Durham, 10 in Tyne and Wear and eight in Essex.
Since the beginning of the crisis a total of 897 premises have been placed under restrictions.
Gloucestershire recorded its first case at a farm in Blakeney in the Forest of Dean on Sunday.
The county's NFU representative, Jan Rowe, told BBC Radio 5Live that he was horrified but not surprised by the development.
He said Gloucestershire was surrounded by counties already affected by the disease and that it was on either side of the Forest of Dean.
"We pray that it doesn't get out into the livestock in the forest," he said, adding that the number of wildlife in that area complicated attempts to contain the disease.
An eight-mile exclusion zone was set up around the first farm in Kent to be hit by the crisis.
A total of 72 cattle were destroyed at Newhall Farm at Allhallows, near Rochester.
Local farmer Kathy MacClean, who lives two miles from the latest Kent outbreak, said it was "emotionally devastating".
She said: "This is a beef herd my husband has built up for years. He's a brilliant stockman, respected all over the county and here we are two miles from foot-and-mouth."
On Sunday, animals were slaughtered at what is believed to be Britain's first organic farm with foot-and-mouth disease at Venny Tedburn in Devon.
AAP - Monday 12 March 7:11 AM
The Queensland Government is expected to activate natural disaster relief arrangements today for victims of last Friday's severe storm that struck the south-east of the state.
The storm yesterday claimed its second victim when a man drowned after a car was swept off a swollen causeway at Waterford West, south of Brisbane.
Its first victim was 12-year-old Joshua Bohun, who drowned on Friday night in a creek at Lawnton on Brisbane's northern outskirts.
Two men were in the car yesterday. One was rescued while the body of a 50-year-old man was later recovered by State Emergency Service workers.
The storm swept through south-east Queensland on Friday afternoon dumping up to 250mm of rain and whipping up winds of 100km an hour.
Emergency Services Minister Mike Reynolds said the storm caused significant damage to roads and up to 600 homes and businesses across the city.
Immediate state government funding of $100 to individuals and $500 to families would provide for victims' basic needs like accommodation and food.
Mr Reynolds said emergency services and local governments were working together to repair damage and assess the level of destruction.
"As more reports flow in and the picture becomes clearer the state disaster arrangements may be extended and in fact increased," he said.
"It's very possible that some parts of the south-east will be declared a natural disaster (area)," Mr Reynolds said.
AAP - Monday 12 March 12:02 PM
A man watched in horror as flood waters swept his wife to her death during a canyoning accident in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, yesterday.
Police said the 28-year-old woman, an experienced canyoner, became stranded on a rock in waist-deep water at Bowens Creek, 4km south of Mt Wilson, about midday.
The waters were rising rapidly because of the rain, police said.
The others in the party had not yet entered the water.
The man, also an experienced canyoner, stayed behind with his wife while the two others left the valley to raise the alarm, a police spokeswoman said.
When ground crews reached the distressed man they called in a Polair helicopter to search for the woman, the spokeswoman said.
The woman's body was found about 6.45pm.
Bowens Creek is not prone to flash flooding, a local canyoning expert said.
"It's not a narrow, confined environment," managing director of Bushsports, Konrad Lippmann, told AAP.
"It's pretty high up in the catchment area and would not typically flash flood," he said.
"There's no major congested areas or blockages which would build up and causes flash flooding."
However, the recent rains had made areas throughout the Blue Mountains more dangerous, he said.
Last June, two young canyoners died in the Blue Mountains when they became trapped behind the freezing waters of the Corra Beanga Falls overnight.
Police said the woman's name was expected to be released later today.
AAP - Monday 12 March 12:02 PM
Raw sewage is washing through two northern New South Wales towns after floodwaters inundated sewers at Smithtown and Gladstone, according to the State Emergency Service (SES).
Emergency workers have urged hundreds of people in the area to evacuate their homes to avoid a potential public health crisis.
Floodwaters now affect thousands of people on the state's north coast from Ballina to as far south as Port Stephens, near Newcastle.
The Pacific Highway is cut in several locations.
SES spokeswoman Laura Goodin said 300 people in and around Smithtown and Gladstone on the Macleay River had been advised to leave until the sewerage system was repaired.
"We're encouraging people to evacuate, particularly those who are vulnerable - the elderly and people with young children," she told AAP.
"The sewerage system has been inundated and it's washing raw sewage around," Ms Goodwin said.
The towns themselves are not actually flooded but sewers below the towns have been.
The cost of the disaster is expected to run into tens of millions of dollars.
Australian Defence Force helicopters and flood boats will be deployed today to evacuate anyone stranded in the area, Ms Goodwin said.
She estimated some 3,000 people had been evacuated from their homes over the weekend, with some in outlying properties in the Clarence Valley needing to be rescued by helicopter from their rooftops.
"There are some people who postponed evacuation until their homes were isolated by floodwaters and some have been needed to be evacuated from rooftops," she said.
Properties could still flood for up to another week but the clean-up could take months, Ms Goodwin said.
With a surge in the mosquito population, there are fears that conditions were ripe for an outbreak of Ross River fever.
At the Mount Seaview Resort, in the Doyles River State Forest near Wauchope, 40 people aged between 70 and 80 were isolated yesterday when the Oxley Highway was cut by flooding. The Wauchope SES will coordinate their evacuation today back to their homes in Newcastle.
In Thora, on the Bellinger River, all three of the town's bridges have been washed away and flooding has caused extensive damage to roads.
The SES will continue to re-supply isolated communities and properties with food and vital medicine.
The Pacific Highway is closed at several locations between Grafton and Ballina.
It is closed just south of Grafton at Alipou Creek and a detour has been established via Boundary Road through South Grafton.
The highway is also closed from the southern side of the Kempsey Town Bridge to the BP Roadhouse at Clybucca, 20 kilometres north of Kempsey.
These have been the worst floods to hit Kempsey since 1963.
On the mid-north coast, all roads in the Bellingen Valley, except the Pacific Highway, are closed.
Bellingen remains isolated with all roads in and out flooded.
Dorrigo mountain is closed and is expected to remain so for some time.
On Friday, the government declared a natural disaster for regions from Wingham, near Taree, on the mid-north coast to the Queensland border, enabling residents to apply for financial assistance.
The impact of the floods has spread also to metropolitan areas, with shoppers facing a vegetable price hike expected to last another month.
AAP - Monday 12 March 7:11 AM
Army helicopters will today evacuate two northern New South Wales towns after sewage contamination posed a serious health risk to residents.
Up to 300 people will be evacuated from the twin towns of Smithtown and Gladstone on the Macleay River today after the area's sewerage system failed.
An engineer has been called in to inspect the system and if it can't be fixed immediately, hundreds more will be evacuated in coming days, State Emergency Services (SES) spokesman Angus Fergusson (Fergusson) said.
"The sewerage infrastructure in those towns has failed and the SES is strongly advising residents to evacuate the area due to health concerns," Mr Fergusson said.
Residents will be taken to South West Rocks with evacuations due to begin at 8am (AEDT) today.
Mr Fergusson said although the worst of the flooding was over for the larger towns of Grafton and Kempsey, the fate of smaller towns downstream was not clear.
Premier Bob Carr inspected the region yesterday, arriving in Grafton to view damage from the area's worst floods in more than 50 years.
On Friday, the government declared a natural disaster for regions from Wingham, near Taree, on the mid-north coast to the Queensland border, enabling residents to apply for financial assistance.
Towns remain isolated with military helicopters supplying food and other essentials to inundated areas.
The NSW Fire Brigade and Rural Fire Service carried out pump and salvage operations in the centre of Maclean, while Ulmarra, downstream from Grafton, remained under water yesterday.
Yamba is expected to remain isolated for several days, Mr Fergusson said.
These were the worst floods to hit Kempsey since 1963.
"We have seen the worst of it certainly for Kempsey and Grafton," Mr Fergusson said.
"Their floodwaters have receded but it's difficult to say with the smaller towns downstream. We'll just keep monitoring the situation."
The impact of the floods has spread to metropolitan areas of the state, with shoppers facing a vegetable price hike expected to last another month.
In some instances, shoppers have been forced to pay up to double price for some vegetables, merchants at the Sydney Produce Market in Flemington said.
Kids cheat death
Monday, March 12, 2001
TEN children escaped death at Yaroi Village in Matuku, Lau, on the morning of March 3 when they were saved from being swept away by tidal waves by the brave deeds of a fellow villager, Sakiusa Nailoloku. No one on this peaceful village had dreamt of what would happen while preparing for Cyclone Paula.
They had done all their usual cyclone preparations but had not anticipated tidal waves to strike. On that morning, the children were out catching crabs about 50 metres away from the seashore when Mr Nailoloku decided to check what they were doing. "There were so many crabs and the children were so engrossed in catching them when I saw the first wave coming towards the village at about 8.30am," Mr Nailoloku said.
According to him, he shouted warnings to them but when they did not respond, he ran to them grabbed those that he could lay his hands on and instructed the others to follow them to a near-by shop for shelter. They were all safely on the shop verandah when the wave crashed on to back of the building.
"It was a frightening sight especially when the wave was well above the shop." Mr Nailoloku said the force of the water was not very strong where the children were but it was different when they looked at the damage it caused in the village. "We could feel the shop moving and I had given strong instructions to the children not to panic." Some of them were crying for help but Mr Nailoloku managed to calm them down as well as winning their confidence.
When the water receded Mr Nailoloku instructed the children to run to the top of the village and as soon as they were on top, the second tidal wave crashed into the village ground just in front of the church. It was so forceful that some houses were uprooted while water broke down the doors and windows and did excessive damage inside.
The next and the last tidal wave was at about 10.30am and by this time all the villagers were on high places looking at the ferocious force of the water and the damage done to their properties. A village elder Viliame Naiorosui said they had last seen tidal waves in 1959 but the damage was not as bad as the recent one. A total of 10 dwelling houses, two copra driers and toilets were damaged apart from other minor damages.
At nearby Makadru Village, 10 houses, two copra driers and some punts were also damaged. Village spokesman Jeremaia Coriakula said they were lucky the tidal waves attacked during the day or else lives could have been lost. Crops were not severely damaged and according to a survey by the Agriculture Officer Lau, Sakiusa Karavaki, immediate food supplies were not needed in Matuku.
The two villages are literally filled with debris and rocks from the deep ocean. At Yaroi, the village green is covered with sand and rocks and there is no green grass to be seen.
Fiji's Daily Post
Wednesday March 7, 2:30 AM
Pulling out snowblowers, residents in the northeastern United States on Tuesday continued to battle the mounting piles of snow that left schools closed for a second day and stranded thousands of commuters.
Snow in major metropolitan areas like New York and Boston accumulated far less than originally predicted and flake-o-philes in Washington, DC, missed the precipitation altogether.
But the National Weather Service reported heavy snowfall in central New England and eastern New York, with 63.5 centimeters (25 inches) dumping on Paxton, Massachusetts and as much as 46 centimeters (18 inches) in Burlington, Vermont by Tuesday morning.
"Some are winning the cause, and some aren't," snowplow dispatcher Al Rule told the National Weather Service from his office in New Hampshire, where more than 51 centimeters (20 inches) fell on Keene in the southeastern part of the state.
"You go through with a plow, and 10 minutes later, it's all covered again."
Possible flooding due to strong winds of more than 64 kilometers (40 miles) per hour forced the evacuation of several communities on the eastern seaboard.
A state of emergency in Massachusetts was extended indefinitely by Governor Paul Cellucci, and his counterpart in New York, George Pataki also issued an alert for his state, to tap into federal funds for cities and communities impacted by the snowfall and its repercussions.
"Shelters have been opened throughout the state and the region for people who might need to be evacuated," the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency said. "This is still a very, very serious storm; there could be blackouts in parts of the state."
Flights in and out of Boston's Logan International Airport have been cancelled; so too have flights from Connecticut's Hartford Airport. Metropolitan New York's three airports, LaGuardia, Newark and John F. Kennedy, remained open.
Fortunately there have been no reports of power outages, which plagued snowbound residents during the blizzard of 1996.
The storm sideswiped the big cities, however, with just 7-15 centimeters (3-6 inches) blanketing New York City and 20-40 centimeters (8-16 inches) coating Boston. Washington was completely spared.
New York City schools, closed Monday for the first time in five years, reopened Tuesday.
"New York is open for business," said Mayor Rudolph Giuliani at a press conference in Manhattan's Emergency Center. "We were ready for the worst, but it's good it didn't happen."
Meteorologists, had predicted the storm would be the worst since 1978, when some 100 people died in the northeast of the country and froze the Big Apple, but it did not pack such a punch.
Tuesday March 6 4:41 PM ET
Blizzard Hammers New England And Hits Canada
By Leslie Gevirtz
BOSTON (Reuters) - A late-winter storm hammered New England on Tuesday, flooding shore communities and burying the region in heavy, wet snow that toppled transmission towers.
The blizzard battered parts of Canada and dumped more than nine inches of snow on Halifax by midafternoon, according to Environment Canada. Heavy snow created whiteout conditions along parts of the U.S.-Canadian border.
Falling at rate of one to two inches an hour, the snow downed trees and power lines in Massachusetts. It crippled one giant transmission tower and bent a couple of others, Massachusetts Gov. Paul Cellucci told reporters.
The number of Massachusetts customers without power dropped to 27,000 by midafternoon from a high of 80,000, state officials said.
Waves break over a seawall and threaten houses in Hull, Massachusetts during a winter storm that brought up to 18 inches of snow, high winds and dangerous tides to the region, March 6, 2001. States of emergency were declared in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the governors urged workers to stay home. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Churning waves easily elbowed concrete sea walls out of their way and flooded roads and homes in shoreline communities from Portland, Maine, to Hull, Massachusetts. Some coastal residents abandoned their homes for Red Cross shelters as the nor'easter blew in.
Insurance companies geared up for claims. Allstate has underwritten 101,286 homeowner's policies in New England. It said its natural-catastrophe team, in Seattle to help agents cope with claims from an earthquake on Feb. 28, would be heading east shortly.
Airlines canceled hundreds of flights at airports from Philadelphia and New York north through Boston and Manchester, New Hampshire, as winter storm warnings and coastal flooding advisories were posted to last through the night in southern New England. The National Weather Service (news - web sites) issued blizzard warnings for Maine.
Gotham Gets Off Lightly
New York escaped with almost no accumulation of snow in Manhattan and only a few inches in the outer boroughs, but upper New York state and eastern Long Island were walloped with a foot of snow.
The storm was expected to blanket parts of New England beneath more than two feet of snow before ending on Wednesday morning, when the threat to the shore will be renewed by unusually high tides combined with an expected storm surge.
``We're worried about flooding and structural damage,'' Peter Judge, spokesman for Massachusetts Emergency Management, said. The state National Guard was on alert.
Just over the Massachusetts border in Rye, New Hampshire, 20-foot waves tossed sea-wall boulders across roadways.
Both Massachusetts and Connecticut were under a state of emergency, and Maine Gov. Angus King was preparing to issue a similar order.
``We have the (order) ready to go if we need it,'' King's spokesman John Ripley told Reuters.
The Seabrook, New Hampshire, nuclear power plant, the biggest generating plant in New England, shut down on Monday night because of the storm. It will reopen after the storm moves out of the area, a spokesman said.
Seabrook, located on the Atlantic coast, is operated by North Atlantic, a unit of Northeast Utilities.
Schools across New England were closed for a second day.
Much of Boston's large financial community struggled in to work, but many other employees were forced to stay home and dig out.
New England-based consumer giant Gillette and missile maker Raytheon ordered nonessential workers to take Tuesday off.
(Additional reporting by Tim McLaughlin and Christopher Noble)
Monday March 5 10:40 AM ET
Europe, Asia on Alert Over Foot-And-Mouth
By Tom Heneghan
PARIS (Reuters) - Britain's foot-and-mouth crisis spread at home and abroad Monday, with France banning exports of animals at risk, other continental countries testing their livestock and Asian states cutting European meat imports.
France, which at the weekend found traces of the disease in slaughtered British sheep and two French cattle in contact with them, also suspended the transport of all cloven-hoofed animals -- except to slaughterhouses -- for the next two weeks.
A French farmer Near Maubeuge cries after 800 of her lambs were killed to prevent the spread of foot and mouth disease March 5, 2001. France is destroying livestock that came into contact with imported British animals. (Pascal Rossignol/Reuters)
``There is a considerable potential risk,'' said Farm Minister Jean Glavany. ``It could be a new tragedy for French farmers.''
In Britain, the National Farmers' Union spoke of a possible ''nightmare scenario'' as news broke that the disease had been found on a farm in southwest England owned by Prince Charles.
The number of confirmed infected sites in Britain, where 67,000 animals have been slaughtered in a desperate bid to stamp out the disease, rose from 52 to 69 Sunday.
British supermarkets reported soaring meat sales, with shoppers stockpiling supplies in anticipation of shortages.
Much of the British countryside is now a no-go area, with footpaths, forests and national parks off limits.
France began to follow that example by placing nine farms under quarantine inside six-mile exclusion zones.
Officials said horse-racing events were also likely to be called off in France, echoing bans in Britain and Ireland where several sports including rugby union have been hit.
Sheep graze near the entrance to the Curragh race course in County Kildare March 5, 2001. The Irish government is expected to introduce even tighter controls on the movement of animals as efforts intensify to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease into the republic. (Ferran Paredes/Reuters)
The effects of the crisis were felt as far away as Japan and South Korea, which restricted meat imports from Europe, and New Zealand, where air cargo rates for meat shipments to Europe were climbing in anticipation of increased demand.
Safety First
Foot-and-mouth disease, which does not harm humans, causes blisters on the hooves and mouths of sheep, pigs, cattle and goats followed by severe weight loss.
No cases have been confirmed in live animals in continental Europe. Belgium's Farm Ministry said a suspected case among pigs in the west of the country had proved negative.
Hardly had Brussels given the all-clear, however, when officials in the German state of Brandenburg said they had sealed off a pig farm there after noting suspicious symptoms in one of the animals.
Authorities throughout Europe have adopted a raft of measures to try to keep the financially crippling disease at bay, effectively putting Britain in quarantine.
France's Agriculture Ministry said blood tests on British sheep slaughtered at nine farms in five French departments indicated they had been in contact with the virus.
The ministry said two cattle in contact with some of the sheep at a farm in the Cher department of central France had revealed ``symptoms similar to foot-and-mouth disease.'' Both had been put down and the rest of the herd would be slaughtered.
Glavany last week ordered the preventive slaughter of 50,000 sheep -- 20,000 from Britain and 30,000 that had come into contact with British livestock.
In Denmark, officials said they would know Monday whether the disease had crossed the North Sea to infect an animal there.
A farmer pours disinfectant (L) onto the entrance of a farm while another farmer arranges the thatch, near Glendalough, county Wicklow on March 3, 2001. The government is expected to introduce even tighter controls on the movement of animals today as efforts intensify to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth into the Republic. REUTERS/Ferran Paredes
Results of a second test on a cow suspected of contracting foot-and-mouth were due after an initial test proved negative, the Danish Food and Agriculture Ministry said.
Irish soldiers manned checkpoints on the border with the British province of Northern Ireland to try to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth into the Irish Republic.
Meat Exports Hit
The spreading crisis quickly hit export markets. Bulgaria announced it had banned all imports of cloven-hoofed animals, related products and fodder from France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland as a precaution.
Japan said it had imposed a temporary ban on imports of cloven-hoofed animals and related products from Belgium, France and Denmark.
``It's a precautionary measure until we confirm the food safety there,'' an Agriculture Ministry official said.
In South Korea, officials added possibly suspect meat from France, Germany and Denmark to a quarantine list already set up for imports of cloven-hoofed animal products from Belgium.
That effectively suspended imports of cloven-hoofed animal products, including pork, from those three countries until they are confirmed free of the disease.
In Pakistan, veterinarians and cattle traders said thousands of animals brought to Karachi to be sacrificed for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha Monday had shown signs of a disease similar to foot-and-mouth.
Neighboring Iran -- where the virus is endemic -- discovered the disease in sheep in three centers east of the capital Tehran, state television reported.
The Mediterranean island of Cyprus began disinfecting the cease-fire zone that has separated the Greek and Turkish populations since 1974.
Officials said it was a precaution against possible infection from Turkey, where cases of foot-and-mouth were found in two regions of the southwest of the country. There was no indication that these were linked to the outbreak in Britain.
Monday March 5 3:20 PM ET
Currents Hamper Hunt for Portugal Bus Victims
By Martin Roberts
CASTELO DE PAIVA, Portugal (Reuters) - Emergency crews made slow progress Monday in the search for the bodies of some 70 people believed killed when an old road bridge collapsed in northern Portugal, plunging a bus and two cars into a river.
View of the collapsed bridge of Castelo de Paiva over the Douro river March 5, 2001. Some 70 people were feared dead after a bus and two cars plunged into the river when the bridge collapsed late March 4. (Jose Manuel Ribeiro/Reuters)
Strong winds and currents in the River Douro, the scene late Sunday of Europe's worst road accident in over a decade, hampered recovery work and by late afternoon only three bodies had been pulled from the murky waters.
The body of a 50-year-old woman was found about 2 miles downstream -- a sign of the strength of the Douro's current. Earlier, officials said a second body was also discovered far from the bridge, but later retracted that.
Senior government minister Jorge Coelho said early Monday that 70 people were thought to have been aboard the three vehicles that plummeted into the river after a 240-foot span of bridge gave way.
Local Mayor Paulo Teixeira said he believed a total of 77 people had died. ``Whole families have been lost,'' he said.
As darkness fell, national fire service divers suspended operations for the night because of the risks posed by the fast-flowing water.
National Mourning
A team of navy divers, equipped with a sonar device for identifying objects on the riverbed, was due to join the effort Tuesday. Most of the bodies were expected to be still inside the vehicles.
Teixeira said he had repeatedly warned the government of the perilous state of the 116-year-old bridge that was built for horse-drawn carts rather than cars.
Coelho, whose Public Works Ministry is responsible for rail and road transport, announced his ``irrevocable'' resignation from the government.
Prime Minister Antonio Guterres was jeered when he arrived in Castelo de Paiva to witness the recovery operation.
``What if it had been your son?'' one man shouted at the premier who has promised a thorough probe into the accident.
The government declared two days of national mourning starting Tuesday, with flags on public buildings to fly at half-staff.
Officials said there was little chance that anybody had survived the accident on the bridge that links Castelo de Paiva with Entre-os-Rios, 20 miles east of Oporto.
About 300 firefighters, including divers and other workers, were taking part in the search as grieving relatives huddled in groups on the Douro's banks.
Little Hope
Some relatives wore black in a sign that they held out little hope any loved ones would be found alive after the double-decker bus and the cars fell into 60 feet of fast-flowing water shortly after 9 p.m. local time Sunday.
Maria Aurora Sousa, 43, said she had lost three cousins aboard the bus and feared that a nephew could have been in one of the cars.
``As soon as we saw the destruction, we knew there could be no hope. All we can do now is wait for the bodies,'' she said.
For some the tension was too great. One woman fell to the ground shouting, ``My son, my son,'' before being rushed away in an ambulance.
The bus, which was carrying 67 passengers, had been on an excursion to the northwestern Tras-os-Montes region to see flowering almond trees. It was on its way back to Castelo de Paiva when disaster struck.
It was unclear how many people were in the cars, but some residents suggested there could have been as many as nine.
According to media reports, part of the bridge collapsed after one of its support pillars gave way under the pressure of waters swollen by heavy rain.
Divers and firefighters start their rescue work in front of the collapsed bridge of Castelo de Paiva over the River Douro in Portugal March 5, 2001. A bus with up to 67 people on board, and two cars plunged a into the river in northern Portugal on March 4 when the bridge collapsed. No survivors have been found yet. (Jose Manuel Ribeiro/Reuters)
An eyewitness told SIC television that he had been about to drive onto the bridge and saw two cars and a bus ahead of him.
``They suddenly disappeared. I could not believe it,'' Eduardo Moreira told the television station.
Bridge Declared Unsound
Teixeira said the bridge had already been declared unsound and in need of replacement, but that the necessary central government funding to replace it had not been made available.
``I warned a long time ago about the state of the bridge and I fought as much as I could for its replacement,'' he said.
Coelho said he had already approved plans for a new bridge but had to accept ``political'' responsibility for the disaster.
``I assume the political responsibility. I believe that it is no longer possible for me to remain,'' said Coelho, one of the Socialist premier's closest colleagues.
Tidal waves leave families
homeless
Tuesday, March 06, 2001
Thirteen families at Votua village, Baravi, Nadroga are completely homeless while another 23 are left with almost nothing except for their damaged houses.
Turaga ni koro (village headman) Epeli Bairanage could only shake his head as Red Cross volunteers arrived to deliver food supplies and clothing.
"They along with deposed minister Lekh Ram Vayeshnoi have bothered to come and see us and give us something," he said.
Mr Bairanage said some government officials including some from the Commissioner Western's office had visited but nothing had materialised out of that visit.
Yesterday families were still drying their belongings and converging on the village halls for meals.
"We are sharing whatever we have amongst ourselves," he said.
Mr Bairanage said he had gone early morning to plant cassava up in the hills and returned to see the village swamped with one and half meters of water.
"We did not expect anything like this so soon though we had tied up our houses and planned to move to higher ground once the water level rose," he said.
The villagers are still waiting for clean water supply and restoration of electricity to houses though all electrical items have been destroyed.
Red Cross's Dalip Chand along with volunteers who were visiting the villages said nine house were either washed away or badly damaged in Komave village.
In Navola village only one bure was destroyed whereas in Namatakula seven houses were washed away which was home to 19 children.
In Colova settlement two families are homeless and have 4 children.
Three houses were destroyed in the Qalita settlement.
Waisake Kuriwara, headman of Malevu village said a proper seawall would have gone a longway to reduce the damage by the tidal wave.
"Government after government had promised us one but I guess we have to live with it as nothing has been done," he said.
The village was almost deserted when the Daily Post visited it yesterday.
Mr Kuriwara said most of them are scared after what has happened and stay away during the high tide as the seas are still rough.
Meanwhile agriculture officials who carried out a survey in the eight villages say only five per cent of root crops were damaged.
They have reportedly established that this does not affect food security.
Fiji's Daily Post
Sunday March 4 6:49 PM ET
Military Recovers Plane Crash Data Recorders
UNADILLA, Ga. (Reuters) - Military investigators said on Sunday they had recovered the flight data recorders from a U.S. National Guard plane that crashed in central Georgia, but efforts to recover the bodies of 21 soldiers were hindered by knee-deep mud at the rain-soaked crash site.
The C-23 twin-engine Sherpa turboprop had been ferrying soldiers from Florida back to a naval base in Virginia when it crashed on Saturday in heavy rain in a field outside Unadilla, a farm town about 100 miles south of Atlanta. Everyone aboard the plane died. ''We have recovered data recorders,'' said Air Force Col. Dan Woodward, who has been overseeing recovery work at the crash site 45 miles south of Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Georgia.
Military officials said they were unsure whether the recorders, which preserve information such as cockpit conversations and flight speed and altitude data, were working at the time of the crash or contained any information that would help determine the cause of the tragedy.
Flight data recorders were recovered March 4, 2001 from the wreckage of a U.S. National Guard C-23 Sherpa aircraft that crashed in central Georgia, but knee-deep mud at the site hampered recovery of the bodies of the 21 victims. Military personnel are seen preparing to assist in recovery efforts. (Tami Chappell/Reuters)
Three Army crewmen and 18 Virginia Air National Guard personnel died in the crash.
Rumsfeld Makes Statement
``Military service involves great danger, in times of peace as well as war, and this accident provides stark proof of that,'' Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in a statement released on Sunday.
``All 21 of these fine Americans served their country honorably and well and we will remember their service and sacrifice,'' Rumsfeld said.
President George W. Bush (news - web sites) on Saturday said he was deeply saddened by the crash.
More than 100 rescue workers, using all-terrain vehicles and other heavy equipment, slogged through mud and soggy ground to reach the remains of the dead soldiers.
Woodward said the farm where the plane's charred wreckage was found had been pelted with about three to four inches of rain in the 24 hours after the crash.
``It's a plowed field, so it is extremely difficult to move in and out of that field, and we have problems getting equipment in and out of there right now,'' he said. ``We have some four-wheel drive vehicles, but they are not operating that well once you get off the actual roadway.''
There was no immediate finding on the cause of the crash, but bad weather may have been a contributing factor. A storm system sweeping through the South brought heavy rains and winds to the area at the time of the crash.
A Sputtering Sound
One eyewitness told Reuters that the plane made a sputtering sound just before it hit the ground and exploded into flames. Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board (news - web sites) were at the crash site on Sunday.
The Sherpa, a bulky cargo plane known for its ability to land in rugged terrain, lacks a pressurized cabin and consequently cannot usually fly much above 10,000 feet (3,000 meters). This feature may have forced the doomed plane to fly through the storm on Saturday.
Military officials said the plane had an excellent safety record.
When it crashed on Saturday morning, the Sherpa was en route to Oceana Naval Air Station near Virginia Beach, Virginia, following the completion of what was described as a routine training mission for the soldiers.
News of the tragedy hit Virginia hard. The state was home to most of the men killed in the crash. Chaplains and grief counselors were dispatched to the victims' families, and military officials said they had received support from local residents.
Virginia Gov. James Gilmore ordered state flags to be lowered to half-staff.
``We are all distraught and in shock,'' said a visibly shaken Lt. Col. Thomas Trulip, commander of the 203rd Red Horse Unit, during a news conference on Sunday at Camp Pendleton in Virginia Beach.
Flight data recorders have been recovered from the wreckage of a U.S. National Guard C-23 Sherpa aircraft that crashed March 3, 2001 near Unadilla, Georgia. Authorities said March 4 it was not known if the recorders were working at the time. An undated file photo shows a C-23 Sherpa aircraft similar to the plane that crashed. (Copyright Mike Neely via Reuters )
All 18 Virginia Guardsmen killed in the crash were members of the Red Horse Unit, a corps of engineers and crew specializing in rapid deployment of tent cities and other facilities for soldiers in the field.
The dead were: Master Sgt. James Beninati, Staff Sgt. Paul Blancato, Tech. Sgt. Ernest Blawas, Staff Sgt. Andrew Bridges, Master Sgt. Eric Bulman, Staff Sgt. Paul Cramer, Tech. Sgt. Michael East, Staff Sgt. Ronald Elkin, Staff Sgt. James Ferguson, Staff Sgt. Randy Johnson, Senior Airman Mathrew Kidd, Master Sgt. Michael Lane, Tech. Sgt. Edwin Richardson, Tech. Sgt. Dean Shelby, Staff Sgt. John Sincavage, Staff Sgt. Gregory Skurupey, Staff Sgt. Richard Summerell, and Maj. Frederick Watkins.
The three Florida-based crew killed were identified as Chief Warrant Officer John Duce, Staff. Sgt. Robert Ward and Chief Warrant Officer Eric Larson.
Sunday March 4 4:14 PM ET
Northeast Gears Up for Snowstorm
By ROGER PETTERSON, Associated Press Writer
Worried shoppers grabbed groceries off store shelves and airlines started canceling flights Sunday as the Northeast prepared for a major storm that threatened to strike with coastal flooding and more than a foot of snow.
A mixture of rain, sleet and snow started moving into the region Sunday, but warm air from the ocean was expected to delay the changeover to all snow along the coast, complicating forecasts. Winter storm watches remained in effect from West Virginia to Maine, the National Weather Service (news - web sites) said.
``I wouldn't have travel plans,'' said weather service forecaster Mike Evans. ``If this thing pans out, it may be practically impossible to go anywhere.''
Alex Bain of Highland Park, N.J., loads
groceries into |
Delta, Continental and other airlines canceled dozens
of flights into the New York metropolitan area's
LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark airports, said Ernesto
Butcher, chief operating officer of the Port Authority,
which runs the region's airports. ``What the airlines are trying to do is prepare for the worst because it's always problematic to keep passengers stranded,'' Butcher said. ``Rather than having people sitting in airports around the country, they can cancel flights in advance to control the situation.'' Even though the heaviest snow wasn't expected until Monday and Tuesday, people heeded warnings and cleaned out hardware store supplies of snow shovels and stocked up on bread and milk. ``We just ran out of ice melt and rock salt,'' Jerry's Hardware owner Jerry LaComfora said Sunday morning in Worcester, Mass. ``One lady bought eight snow shovels - I didn't ask why.'' Parts of Massachusetts were warned of a possible 2 feet of snow by the time flakes stop falling on Wednesday. ``I've had numerous customers take two carts of stuff, like they're going to get snowed in for the weekend, like we're back in 'Little House on the Prairie' times,'' said manager Joe Jancsarics at Redner's Warehouse Market in Trexlertown, Pa. The slow-moving storm system gathered strength Sunday off the mid-Atlantic coast after spreading rain and thunderstorms across the Gulf Coast states. Up to 10 inches of rain had fallen over the week in Louisiana and flooding chased hundreds from rural homes. Lightning in Alabama started a fire that killed five people Saturday. |
Up to 2 feet of snow was possible from Pennsylvania into New England, but meteorologists moved their forecasts of heaviest anticipated snowfall inland. The expected delay in the change from rain to snow cut New York City's forecast accumulation to 6 to 12 inches of snow over 48 hours instead of the expected one to two feet, the weather service said.
``We're playing it by ear; the weather forecast keeps changing on us,'' said Bob Hawkins, a manager for Virginia's Department of Transportation in Winchester.
Onshore wind of 20 to 25 mph was expected to cause flooding along the Jersey shore, and communities on Long Beach Island had started making emergency plans.
Harvey Cedars' police were placed on standby, and Long Beach Township authorities rounded up as many four-wheel-drive vehicles and trucks as they could in case they were needed for evacuations.
NJ Transit was prepared to use a jet-powered snow blower to clear commuter train rails, said spokeswoman Kelly Stewart Mayor
A Fairway supermarket in Manhattan called in Suzanne Levy from a store on Long Island to help with traffic control as checkout lines stretched to the back of the store.
``My theory is that New York City is a place where a lot of people eat out, so when something like a storm comes, they're faced with a situation where they have no food,'' Levy said.
Foot-and-mouth
cases reported in mainland Europe
04 MARCH 2001
- Reuters and Stuff newsroom
LONDON: France and Belgium have reported their first suspected cases of foot-and-mouth disease, raising fears that it appears to have spread from Britain to continental Europe.
As Britain notched up its 48th case of the disease and it spread to Cornwall, ministers in Europe said they were not taking any chances.
The suspected case in France concerned several sheep among a flock of 80 at a farm southwest of Lyon in the Loire region.
Belgium's farm ministry also announced that it was investigating a suspected case at a pig farm in western Flanders, not far from the border with France.
Pigs at the farm were reported to have blisters around the mouth, one of the classic signs of foot-and-mouth.
Results of tests for the disease are not expected until after the weekend.
Foot-and-mouth is not harmful to humans, but it causes blisters on the hooves and mouths of animals, followed by severe weight loss.
Belgium's agriculture ministry has responded to the suspected case in Flanders by imposing a total ban on the movement of farm animals throughout the country.
Agriculture Minister Jaak Gabriels also ordered a 20km exclusion zone to be put in place around the farm at Diksmuide, where more than 300 pigs have been slaughtered.
Over the border in northern France, the authorities are tightening precautionary measures in response, and have also banned all farm animal movements.
Both France and Belgium have already announced a cull of animals which have either been imported from the UK or have come into contact with British animals.
In Britain, the disease has spread from England to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland after the first cases were found among pigs at an English farm 10 days ago.
Foot-and-mouth spread further in Britain on Saturday despite attempts to contain the devastating livestock disease by cancelling major sporting events and traditional leisure activities.
As the number of confirmed outbreaks rose to 48, the British Government said that while it was taking steps to contain the highly contagious virus, there could be more cases.
Horse racing was called off and a rugby match between Wales and Ireland at Cardiff was postponed.
Much of the countryside was inaccessible, with footpaths banned to hikers, riverbanks closed to anglers and zoos, forests and national parks also declared off limits. Military training areas have been isolated.
The restrictions affected bird-watchers, cyclists, horse riders and canoeists. Irish soldiers manned checkpoints in Northern Ireland to help prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth into the Irish Republic.
Soaring meat prices were threatening a mainstay of British life – the traditional Sunday roast of beef, pork or lamb.
"Sorry, Britain is closed for the weekend," said The Daily Mail. "It is being called the lost weekend."
Agriculture Minister Nick Brown insisted that banning animal movements around the country was the correct response to the crisis. But he acknowledged that more cases of the disease could still develop despite the containment policy.
'THE RIGHT POLICIES'
"We know we have the right policies to get it under control," he told reporters. "Because, having stopped the movement across the country, we have stopped the spread of disease. What we don't know is how much is still incubating."
Brown said the government was determined not to repeat the mistake made during the last big foot-and-mouth outbreak in 1967, when controls were relaxed too soon.
"That is a mistake we cannot afford to make this time."
He said compensation payments would begin this month for farmers who have already seen 37,000 animals destroyed to stop the spread of the disease.
Government steps to allow farms not affected by the disease to ship their animals to slaughter would not come into effect until early next week, and strict conditions would allow only a partial return to normality.
Slaughtering under the scheme, a measure to start putting meat back into the food chain, was not expected to start until Tuesday at the earliest.
Officials and farmers' representatives were expected to meet on Monday to discuss how the new measures would work, a ministry of agriculture spokeswoman said.
The disease is spread from animal to animal as well as through the air, on people's clothes or by vehicles. It causes blisters on the hooves and in the mouths of cows, sheep, pigs and goats, leading to severe weight loss.
Despite the steps taken to contain the disease in Britain, there were fears it might have spread across the Channel.
France shut its borders to Belgian livestock after Belgium said it was investigating a suspect case. If confirmed, the Belgian case would be the first in continental Europe.
More
foot-and-mouth cases as Britain's crisis deepens
03 MARCH 2001
- Reuters and Stuff newsroom
LONDON: Seven new cases of foot-and-mouth have been reported in Britain bringing the number of affected farms in Britain to 39 as the disease crisis deepens.
This is despite stringent measures which have turned the countryside into a vast no-go area, with controls reminiscent of wartime.
 NOT
WANTED: A French customs officials searches though the
contents of a private vehicle for banned British dairy
products as it arrives in Calais on Friday. Stringent
checks for British dairy products have been put into
effect since the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in
the UK. |
After the first case was confirmed in Northern Ireland yesterday, the Irish Republic found itself in the frontline of the battle to stave off the disease.
Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern announced he was sending in more troops to prevent British livestock crossing the border illegally.
In Dublin, the massive St Patrick's Day parade is to be cancelled and many sports events are being postponed as the foot-and-mouth crisis worsens.
The first cases emerged in Scotland, and more worryingly, in Northern Ireland on a farm in Meigh, County Armagh, near the border with the Irish Republic.
It has also been reported that 250 sheep from the farm at Meigh in Northern Ireland had been taken south of the border to a slaughterhouse at Roscommon in central Ireland, where they could have come into contact with Irish livestock.
Ahern chaired a two-hour cabinet meeting on Friday night to co-ordinate his country's response but admitted he could do little more than wait and hope the worst did not happen.
"We are bringing in more and more regulations all the time, and we just have to hope that foot-and-mouth was not here before the incubation period," he said.
Other European countries tightened up their emergency measures, slaughtering thousands of animals imported from Britain and ordering the disinfection of people and vehicles arriving from the country.
In Spain, the government banned all livestock fairs and incinerated hundreds of British pigs.
France slaughtered more than 400 sheep in the Val d'Oise, northwest of Paris because they were thought to have come into contact with infected British animals, while the Netherlands shut down all livestock markets.
Eurotunnel workers will disinfect all cars and lorries arriving in France from Britain, a company spokesman said on Friday.
In Germany, the government ordered the slaughter of any sheep, goats or deer imported from Britain in the past four weeks while border police were confiscating food products from air passengers arriving from Britain.
Belgium ordered the destruction of all sheep and goats currently in abattoirs, while in Cyprus and Portugal air passengers arriving from Britain were required to walk through disinfectant baths.
The restrictions across Europe cast a shadow over the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha, which falls on March 5 and 6, during which it is customary to slaughter sheep.
In Belgium the authorities had banned all slaughter, while elsewhere it was feared anti-disease measures would make it impossible for Muslims to get hold of live sheep for the ritual.
Britain has announced tighter restrictions on food imports and travellers from Britain.
The first cracks appeared in the united front Britain has so far presented in the 10-day-old crisis as Prime Minister Tony Blair blasted supermarkets for strong-arming farmers into producing cheap meat, jeopardising quality standards.
Sheep, cattle and pig meat began to run out, as British butchers and supermarkets because of bans on movement of animals to abattoirs. Efforts were under way to import stocks.
The disease, which is not a threat to humans, is spread from animal to animal as well as through the air, on people's clothes or by vehicles. It causes blisters on the hooves and in the mouth of animals leading to severe weight loss.
Tens of thousands of animals in Britain and Europe have been destroyed or earmarked for slaughter by government health officials in line with policy to halt the spread of the disease.
Britain's agriculture ministry said cases of foot-and-mouth had been found at four new locations in England and Scotland, bringing the total number of affected premises to 39.
The disease has spread from England to Wales, to Scotland and Northern Ireland, after the first cases were found among pigs at an English farm 10 days ago.
In a sign of how difficult it is to track the disease, the ministry said that so far up to 70,000 animals alone had been identified as having contact with the contaminated locations.
Irish authorities sealed off 12 farms in counties Louth and Monaghan close to the border with the British province of Northern Ireland as part of their precautionary measures.
Police shut down a sheep farm near Drogheda in County Louth because of fears that animals there might have come in contact with infected livestock in Northern Ireland.
A police spokesman said it was suspected that sheep recently transported to the farm from Northern Ireland may have come into contact with animals in south Armagh that were confirmed earlier this week as having the virus.
The Irish agriculture ministry emphasised there was no sign of the disease so far in the Irish Republic.
However, with its economy so dependent on farm exports, the Irish government was taking no chances – it called off its national St Patrick's Day celebrations on March 17.
The annual holiday, marking the death of Ireland's patron saint, traditionally attracts around 1.3 million people to the streets of the Irish capital Dublin for a four-day festival of music, street theatre, and parades.
Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said the crisis was the biggest threat to Ireland in a generation.
Many soccer matches, rugby games and race meetings throughout Britain and Ireland have been cancelled and walks in the country virtually banned as part of measures to halt the spread of a disease, which last struck in Britain in 1967.
Staff at airports around the world were questioning travellers from Britain on their arrival about whether they were carrying any meat products. Some were even insisting that travellers walk through disinfectant foot baths.
Temperatures rose in Britain about how the crisis erupted.
Supermarket chains criticised Prime Minister Tony Blair for indirectly pointing the finger at them.
In a speech on Thursday night, Blair attacked the supermarkets, saying they had farmers in an "armlock".
"If he (Blair) wants to play politics and scrabble around looking for scapegoats, that's down to him. This is a very serious crisis for farming and we're all focused on working night and day to keep meat available in our stores for customers," a statement from supermarket chain Asda said.
Families homeles
Sunday, March 04, 2001
Numerous families in areas which were the worst hit by tropical cyclone Paula on Friday are homeless. The Coral Coast on southern Viti Levu, parts of Kadavu and the southern Lau group bore the brunt of Paula.
The National Disaster Management Council (DISMAC) in Suva in its reports indicate that damages were the result of storm surges and gusty gale force winds which damaged houses, food crops, coastal roads and sea-walls.
DISMAC said damage is estimated to be $8000 per house and does not include the value of properties which were lost in villages on the Coral Coast. Major damage was caused by tidal waves on Friday between 7am and 1pm. In the villages of Namatakula, Navola, Komave, Votua, Votualalai, Yadua, Tagaqe, Korotogo and Qalito settlement more than 80 houses were flooded.
Of this number at least 20 were completely destroyed. People are staying with their relatives or sheltering in village community halls. The Korolevu Police Post was also pounded by strong winds and high waves.
Deposed co-deputy prime minister Adi Kuini Speed is asking the Interim Government to come to the aid of the villagers with practical help.
She said she was disappointed at government officials not visiting the area and hopes this is not any form of victimisation.
Deposed information assistant minister Lekh Ram Vayeshnoi who was in Korotogo yesterday berated Government for its alleged inactivity. "There were no emergency supplies, and as in these trying times these families will find it difficult to depend on their other relatives,"
Mr Vayeshnoi said.
Fiji's Daily Post
Saturday March 3 4:26 PM ET
Two Major Storms Converging on U.S. East Coast
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two major storm systems -- a wet one moving through the South and a frigid one coming down from Canada -- were on a collision course on Saturday, threatening to spawn a massive snowstorm in Northeastern and mid-Atlantic U.S. states the likes of which have not been seen since 1966.
The National Weather Service (news - web sites) said heavy snowfall could begin on Sunday afternoon and evening, blanketing an area from Washington to southern Maine with at least a foot of snow, with some areas getting even more.
Major cities including Washington, Baltimore, New York and Boston, were ``under the gun for the potential for heavy snow,'' said Michael Eckert, a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
From the Mid-Atlantic to the Northeast corridor, meteorologists were watching on March 2, 2001, for the formation of what could be the biggest snowstorm to hit the East Coast in decades, the National Weather Service said. This enhanced color infrared satellite image shows a low pressure system moving up from the Gulf of Mexico and 'a cold area' coming down from Canada that could combine in the Carolinas and create a severe snowstorm. The black bar is missing data from the satellite. (NASA via Reuters)
Eckert called the late-winter storm highly unusual in that it represented the combination of two mighty weather systems.
``It's very rare. We just don't see things like this happen very often,'' he said.
Local officials from Virginia to New England faced the task of preparing for the approaching storm, while people flocked to stores to buy food and supplies. The storm had the potential to wreak havoc for air travelers and motorists, with the possibility of businesses, schools and government offices being closed on Monday.
``Infancy Stage''
Eckert said the storm remained in its ``infancy stage'' on Saturday. He said an extremely wet system coming out of Mexico had been dumping torrential rains across Texas and the Gulf Coast region. Some areas have received up to 5 inches of rain in the past day.
Authorities posted tornado watches from southeastern Mississippi all the way into the panhandle of Florida and southern parts of Alabama, as well as flash flood warnings across Louisiana, southern Mississippi and southern Alabama.
Georgia was also under a severe thunderstorm warning. A National Guard C-23 Sherpa aircraft crashed in bad weather on Saturday in a field near Unadilla, Georgia, killing all 21 people on board, although it was not confirmed that weather conditions were a cause of the crash.
Eckert said ``a very, very deep cold-air dome'' had moved down through eastern Canada and the northeastern part of the United States and toward the Great Lakes and the Ohio Valley.
``What's going to happen is they'll eventually merge into one main system,'' he said. ``You combine the extreme wetness of the system coming up from the South with the really deep, cold air of the North, and you've got the ingredients there for a major storm.''
The rain could begin to turn into snow toward evening on Sunday near Washington -- and perhaps as far south as Richmond, Virginia, Eckert said. The storm is then expected to track slowly northeastward up into southern New England through Monday and into Tuesday, dumping heavy snow all the way to Portland, Maine, he added.
Cold Blast From Past
Experts said the brewing storm might not be the biggest blizzard in decades but could very well become the biggest of its kind -- a merger of two storms into a single massive one -- in 35 years.
``This one has similarities to the storm in late January of 1966,'' Eckert said. ``That one produced blizzard conditions over New England and New York, and there also was quite a bit of heavy snow down into the Washington area.''
That storm blanketed a large area with 2 to 3 feet (60-90 cm) of snow, with some locations east of Lake Ontario getting 6 feet (1.8 meters) of snow.
Eckert said the key to the magnitude of the storm would be where the rain began to turn into snow.
He noted that one of the computer-forecasting models foresaw mostly rain in the mid-Atlantic region, with snow falling farther west in the Appalachian Mountains and the upper Ohio Valley.
Eckert said communities had fair notice that a major storm could be on the way.
``Just be ready,'' he said. ``All you can do is be prepared for how this thing will evolve. Fortunately, we've got a lot of time. It's not like it's something that's jumping up at us from the middle of nowhere.''
Tremor in Ba - Tavua
Friday, March 02, 2001
A moderate earthquake shook the Ba-Tavua area yesterday afternoon.
The Mineral Resources Department said the earthquake was located 25km east of Ba Town and 10km south of Tavua (Latitude 17.5 degrees south and 177.8 degrees east).
The earthquake originated at a depth of 10km below the surface and it measured 4.2 on the Richter scale.
The department said the tremor was widely felt in the Ba and Tavua areas, however, there was no damage done.
Fiji's Daily Post
Tidal wave hits Kadavu
Friday, March 02, 2001
A tidal wave drenched the people of Dravuni village on Ono near Kadavu as Cyclone Paula’s gusty winds passed through the Fiji group this morning.
While no casualties were reported at Kadavu, a fisherman drowned in Tavua whilst fishing despite warnings not to.
And while Cyclone Paula poses no real threat over Fiji, strong wind warnings are still in force.
An update from the national weather office at 11 o’clock this morning located tropical cyclone Paula 220 kilometres South of Kadavu.
The report stated that Paula is currently moving Southeast at about 35 km per hour.
The centre of the cyclone is expected to be located about 590 km to the southeast of Nadi or about 410 km to the southeast of Kadavu by 6pm tonight.
Southern Viti Levu, Vatulele, Beqa, Kadavu and nearby smaller islands, southern Lomaiviti and southern Lau expect damaging gale force winds with average speeds up to 75km/hr and momentary gusts to 100km per hour.
The remainder of Fiji should expect strong and gusty northwest winds with heavy periods of rain at times and squally thunderstorms.
There is a possibility of flooding, including sea flooding of low-lying coastal areas which should be expected especially during periods of high tides.
Mariners are still being warned of winds of hurricane force within 30 nautical miles (50 kilometres) of the cyclone centre.
Thursday March 1 1:09 AM ET
Fortress Europe Fights to Keep Out
Foot-And-Mouth
By Ralph Gowling
LONDON (Reuters) - Europe was turning itself into a fortress against Britain's rapidly spreading foot-and-mouth outbreak on Thursday as France prepared to slaughter 30,000 more sheep and Portugal demanded British tourists douse their feet in disinfectant.
A suspected case of the highly contagious livestock disease at a farm in the British province of Northern Ireland just two miles from the border with the Irish Republic sent new shock waves through an already alarmed Europe.
``It is now my belief that we are looking at an outbreak of this disease in Northern Ireland,'' Brid Rodgers, the province's Agriculture Minister, told reporters on Wednesday.
Stalls at a cattle market lie empty in Krefeld, Germany, February 28, 2001. The market was closed after sheep on two North Rhine-Westphalian farms were found to have foot-and-mouth disease antibodies. About 2000 sheep had been slaughtered in Germany as a protective measure. (Juergen Schwarz/Reuters)
The Irish Republic's Prime Minister Bertie Ahern expressed ''huge concern'' at the possibility of foot-and-mouth so close to the border of his country, where the livestock industry is a key part of the economy.
Britain's foot-and-mouth crisis, now into its second week, showed no signs of abating as officials confirmed eight more cases, taking the total number of affected locations to 26.
Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) tried to soothe fears and pledged to support the country's beleaguered farmers caught up in yet another crisis after a long-running battle against ``mad cow'' disease.
Europe Nations Get Tough
But fears over the widening British outbreak prompted European nations to tighten measures, including checks on travelers, to keep the disease away.
Portugal, a popular holiday destination for Britons, acted to protect its shores by saying travelers arriving by sea or air from Britain should surrender all food and wipe their feet on a chemically impregnated sponge.
In Paris, France said it would destroy 30,000 French sheep that had contact with animals from Britain since February 1 as a precaution against the disease, which makes animals lose weight and reduces milk yields in dairy cattle.
Farm Minister Jean Glavany said France had yet to record any suspected cases of foot-and-mouth but it was wary because a large number of sheep had been imported from Britain ahead of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice) on March 5.
Earlier this week, Glavany ordered the destruction of 20,000 British sheep because some had come from one of the sites in Britain where the authorities had detected the virus.
British media reported that France had begun disinfecting cars arriving from Britain at Channel ports, making arrivals drive across straw soaked with disinfectant.
Travelers from Britain were also being told at some European airports and ports to surrender any food from home or bought in transit in case it carried the virus.
Crisis Of Confidence
The foot-and-mouth crisis has further undermined confidence in Britain's farming industry, still reeling from mad cow disease that devastated cattle herds in the 1980s and early 1990s and is linked to the deaths of more than 80 people.
Britain has been charged with exporting mad cow disease to continental Europe, and the latest outbreak of foot-and-mouth, which can spread like wildfire through the air, on clothing or on vehicle tyres, has further panicked the region.
Britain has ordered draconian measures to try to contain the outbreak. Blair introduced fines of up to $7,200 to ensure people observed the no-go status imposed on large tracts of rural Britain. But the number of cases has continued to grow.
The eight new cases in England and Wales, as well as the possible case in Northern Ireland, show the disease has spread across wide stretches of the country and that the crisis may go on for weeks, possibly months.
Blair, facing scrutiny over his handling of the crisis and a possible delay to a widely expected election in April or May, said he would work to give Britain's 400,000 farmers and farm hands a better future after a string of disasters.
``It is an appalling situation,'' he told parliament. ``We will carry on working with the farming industry and their representatives to give them every possibility of a secure future and certainly a better future than they have enjoyed over the past few years.''
In Germany, Consumer and Farm Minister Renate Kuenast said five sheep imported from Britain that had foot-and-mouth antibodies had tested negative.
Her spokeswoman said it looked as if Germany had avoided the first case of foot-and-mouth in a European Union (news - web sites) country since the outbreak began.
``We have no real grounds for suspicion now,'' Sigrun Neuwerth told reporters.
But in Britain everyday life was under threat.
Stocks were running low at London's central Smithfield meat market, and in some rural areas children were kept away from school for fear of spreading the virus, which has little or no affect human beings. Parks and nature reserves remained closed.
A worldwide ban on British livestock and animal products remained in force, losing the country $12 million in lost sales per week.
Thursday March 1 2:12 PM ET
Foot-and-Mouth Disease Spreads in UK
By LAURA KING, Associated Press Writer
LONDON (AP) - It's an animal ailment, but these days, hardly a person living in the British Isles is unaffected by the nationwide outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.
In the latest round of cancellations and curtailments meant to stem the spread of the highly contagious livestock virus, organizers on Thursday called off Britain's biggest dog show, beloved by canine fanciers all over the country.
With word that the disease has jumped the Irish Sea, authorities were even thinking about the unthinkable - cancellation of St. Patrick's Day festivities in Dublin.
Such is the sense of crisis that Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, spiritual leader of the Church of England, is asking for prayers at services this Sunday for the nation's farmers, who are being battered economically by the outbreak. Special prayers are being written for the occasion.
Since foot-and-mouth disease was discovered at a slaughterhouse in southern England on Feb. 19 - Britain's first outbreak in two decades - the list of banned activities has lengthened daily. No fishing in angling streams, no strolls on country paths, no fox-hunting, no unnecessary farm visits, no horse racing.
Government statisticians said Thursday they were making contingency plans in case they have to delay next month's national census. There is even speculation - so far denied by the government - that national elections expected in May will be moved back.
Britain's public forests and bird reserves were closed to the public Thursday, as were all countryside sites run by the National Trust, the privately run conservation and heritage group that oversees some of the country's most scenic and historic properties.
View from the deserted and sealed off Hatherleigh livestock market, located in southwestern England, is seen Thursday March 1, 2001. The cattle market, like many abattoirs, and farms throughout Britain has been sealed off in an attempt to avoid the spread of foot-and-mouth disease. Foot-and-mouth affects cloven-hoofed animals, but can be spread by other animals and humans. The virus, which causes weight loss and reduced dairy production, can also be airborne or contracted through contaminated feed. (AP Photo /Max Nash)
Authorities pleaded for continuing public cooperation with the increasingly restrictive rules - which, this being Britain, hardly anyone is heard to grumble about.
``The measures we have in place are the right ones to control the disease,'' said Agriculture Minister Nick Brown. ``I know they are very harsh.''
There were fears the disease would spread to continental Europe - thousands of British-exported animals have been destroyed in France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, although no cases have yet been found - and human visitors from Britain were beginning to feel a bit unwelcome as well.
On Thursday, Portugal announced anyone arriving from the United Kingdom would have to dip their shoes in disinfectant. In French ports, authorities sprayed the tires of arriving trucks with disinfectant.
The British government reminded people leaving the country on ferries, planes and trains to toss out uneaten sandwiches and cartons of milk - the blanket ban on exporting meat or milk applies to personal travelers as well.
The inexorable march of the disease - which sickens only cloven-hoofed creatures like pigs, cattle and sheep but can be spread by just about anything that moves - continued across Britain, where cases are now reported in more than 30 separate locales. And the first cases have been confirmed in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Foot-and-mouth hasn't made its way across the border into the Republic of Ireland, but cases turned up at a farm along the frontier, prompting fears that it would soon spread south.
Officials were already wringing their hands over the effect on Ireland's farm-heavy economy. The Irish parliament was holding a special debate on the foot-and-mouth crisis.
All weekend sports events were off in Ireland, and a cherished national institution was under threat - the annual St. Patrick's Day parade in Dublin.
The committee that organizes it was reluctantly considering calling it off, although ``a cancellation would leave an enormous gap,'' said spokeswoman Maria Moynihan.
At the border between Northern Ireland and the republic, traffic backed up for miles Thursday as officials stopped cars to ask drivers whether they were carrying meat or milk.
More than 25,000 livestock have been destroyed so far in Britain, where killing herds in infected zones is considered the only means of eradicating the disease.
The country's main agriculture group, the National Farmers' Union, estimated Thursday that if the outbreak is not brought under control within three months, it would cost the industry $1.2 billion. A meatpackers' union said more than 1,000 people have been laid off at processing plants so far, and thousands more could face the same fate.
Consumers were just beginning to feel the effects. One major supermarket chain, Asda, confirmed that one of its large stores, in the north of England, had run out of pork and lamb.
The outbreak may even have inspired thieves to make a daring heist - of meat.
Police said Thursday a haul of beef, pork and lamb worth about $15,000 was stolen from a warehouse in Cambridgeshire, north of London, earlier this week - probably by thieves anticipating they could then sell it at premium prices.
Thursday March 1 12:11 AM ET
Quake Shakes Seattle, Inflicts Damage, One
Death
By Chris Stetkiewicz and Scott Hillis
SEATTLE (Reuters) - A powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 shook Seattle and western Washington state for 45 seconds on Wednesday -- enough time to cause at least $1 billion in damage and send thousands of people fleeing homes, schools and offices.
But miraculously, hours after the 10:54 a.m. (1:54 p.m. EST) quake -- considered strong enough to cause major damage and injuries -- there was only one report of a fatality, although scores of people were injured.
A 66-year-old woman from Burien, a Seattle suburb near the airport, died of a heart attack following the quake, marking the first confirmed fatality after the temblor, local officials said. Earlier reports identified the victim as a man. No other details were immediately available.
Seattle officials said about 25 people were being treated in local hospitals for injuries and that four were in serious condition after being crushed by debris. In addition, hospitals in Olympia were treating 35 people.
It was the region's first big quake since a 6.5 tremor rocked the area on April 29, 1965. A 7.1-magnitude quake in 1949 killed eight people.
A car lay crushed following an earthquake that struck the Puget Sound region during the late morning on February 28, 2001. The powerful quake, measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale, shook Seattle and western Washington state for 45 seconds -- enough time to cause billions of dollars in damage and send thousands fleeing homes, schools and offices. (Robert Sorbo/Reuters)
The quake struck the famous and the unknown alike. It halted a speech by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates (news - web sites), cracked the dome of the state Capitol in Olympia, sent bricks tumbling from historic buildings in Pioneer Square, the nation's first skid row, trapped people at the top of Seattle's landmark World's Fair Space Needle, triggered landslides that plugged the river that delivers the city's water and led to the temporary closure of the Seattle-Tacoma airport.
The quake also cracked the famous Boeing field where the aerospace giant tests its planes, cut power to 200,000 in the western part of the state, damaged windows at the corporate campus of software giant Microsoft Corp. and jolted the headquarters of coffee giant Starbucks.
Geophysicists at the U.S. Geological Survey (news - web sites) in Golden, Colorado, put the quake's epicenter some 30 miles southwest of Seattle, and 10 miles northeast of Olympia along the coast of Puget Sound.
Felt Over Wide Span
The temblor was also felt in nearby cities such as Vancouver, British Columbia, and Portland, Oregon, and as far away as Salt Lake City, 700 miles away.
Washington state Gov. Gary Locke declared a state of emergency, estimating the damage to roads and buildings in the billions of dollars. President George W. Bush (news - web sites) vowed to provide as much help as he could.
Locke said damage was primarily structural. ``A lot of overpasses and roads ... have sunk,'' he added, noting the governor's mansion and Capitol building in Olympia sustained heavy damage.
Returning from a helicopter tour of the Puget Sound area, Locke said the damage could top $1 billion.
``There definitely would have been a lot, lot more damage,'' if the quake had been centered closer to the surface, Locke said. ``We're just very, very lucky.''
The quake sent masonry from Seattle skyscrapers falling to the ground and knocked out power lines serving about 200,000 people, mainly in the Olympia area and nearby towns of Lacey, Tumwater and DuPont.
The Geological Survey first reported the earthquake measured 7.0, then reduced that figure to 6.8 -- a size that still carries potential for major damage. The quake's substantial depth, estimated at about 30 miles, helped limit the damage. Earthquakes (news - web sites) in California cause more damage because they usually take place closer to the surface.
Seattle sits on a fault caused by the Juan de Fuca plate sliding under the continental United States.
Microsoft Windows Broken
Microsoft, which employs 20,000 people in the Seattle area, said three buildings at a local branch campus experienced broken windows and tiles. But a Microsoft spokesman said the company's network and Web sites were unaffected and that Gates, the Microsoft chairman, resumed his speech after the quake.
``It looked a little more crazy than it was. After things calmed down, people actually filed back in and Bill went back onstage and finished his Q and A,'' the spokesman said.
Seattle Mayor Paul Schell told reporters: ``I think we have weathered it. It looks so far as if everything is working.''
Ron Sims, executive of King County where Seattle is located, declared a state of emergency to allow inspectors to enter buildings to assess any damage.
``Our primary purpose is to get seismic inspectors into buildings that we think are frail without going through standard red tape,'' Sims said.
A section of Highway 99, a major north-south freeway that carries traffic through downtown, was also closed.
The quake struck moments before Schell was to give a news conference to explain how Mardi Gras celebrations on Tuesday night got out of control, injuring 70 people and prompting police to fire tear gas and rubber pellets to disperse crowds.
Elevator Stories
Everyone seemed to have a story to tell.
``We started bouncing off the walls and we could feel ourselves falling a little bit after we threw the stop switch.'' said Todd Baren, a worker with Internet name registry eNic Corp., who was in an elevator in a downtown office building.
``After we finally stopped, we were just swaying. We could feel the elevator banging against the walls, and after 15 minutes the technicians pulled us out and they said we'd fallen a couple floors,'' Baren said.
One local television station that had been taping a downtown news conference caught the quake on tape. It showed pictures swaying on an office wall and people clutching at desks to steady themselves.
Maria Ackley, 62, a resident of Mercer Island, a residential community east of Seattle, was in the kitchen of her home with her husband when the quake struck.
``When it first happened, there was a thundering sound. The doors in the house were rattling and the windows in the kitchen were rippling, literally. It looked like they were waves of water. Everything was shaking. You felt like you were at sea,'' she said.
``All the drawers opened up, and any container that had something in it emptied out. And we ran out of the house and our car was in motion,'' she said.
When the temblor was over, her husband found a ``major fracture'' in the home's foundation.
Rape Suspect Escapes
A man charged with three counts of child rape escaped from Pierce County Courthouse in Tacoma, using the chaos of the quake as cover, local television reported.
Robert Kleest, 44, was not handcuffed, allowing him to remove his prison-issue shirt and bolt out a courthouse door as officials scrambled to shepherd a dozen accused criminals to safety, according to the report.
As of Wednesday night, he was still at large and considered dangerous, the report said.
Wednesday February 28 3:11 PM ET
Thirteen Dead in Freak British Railway Crash
By Ed Cropley
GREAT HECK, England (Reuters) - At least 13 people were killed and 75 injured in a freak British train crash on Wednesday involving a car and two speeding trains, the latest disaster to hit the country's jinxed railway system.
Investigations zeroed in on how a car towing a trailer slid on to a railway track from a motorway and into the path of a passenger express speeding from Newcastle to London and a heavily laden coal train.
Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who is also transport minister, said 13 people, including the drivers of the two trains, died and 75 people were injured.
The driver of the car was questioned by police, including homicide officers, throughout the day.
The tangled wreck of twisted metal and carriages on their side beside tracks in a northern England field marked the fourth fatal British rail smash in as many years.
Emergency workers struggled to free trapped passengers for hours after the early morning accident, near the Yorkshire village of Great Heck, about 160 miles (250 km) north of London.
Emergency rescue workers work at the scene of a train collision near Great Heck in the north of England February 28, 2001. At least thirteen people died and dozens were injured in a freak accident where a British passenger train slammed into a crashed car before being hit by a freight train speeding in the opposite direction. (Dan Chung/Reuters)
Transport police said they believed they had rescued all of the survivors.
But Prescott told parliament after visiting the crash site that the death toll could rise once the stricken trains were moved.
``I am not sure what the final totals are,'' he said. ``When they begin to lift up the vehicles themselves...clearly no-one is quite sure what they are going to find.''
In a cruel twist of fate, the engine powering the passenger train was the same one involved in Britain's last fatal rail crash five months ago at Hatfield, near London, in which four people died.
The new accident shattered already low passenger confidence in the wake of Hatfield. That crash was blamed on faulty track and forced network operator Railtrack to enforce speed restrictions still in operation across some parts of Britain.
Driver Escapes, Warns Police
The tragedy started early on Wednesday morning in darkness and blizzard-like weather.
After overnight sleet made driving hazardous, a Land Rover car and a trailer with an empty second car on it, veered off a motorway and careered down a bank onto the rail track.
The driver escaped from his car and was alerting police of the danger on a mobile telephone when the passenger train, traveling at 125 miles per hour (200 km per hour), struck his crashed vehicle straddling the line.
Seconds later a freight train loaded with hundreds of tonnes of coal slammed into the scene.
Emergency rescue workers inspect wreckage at the scene of a train collision near Great Heck in the north of England February 28, 2001. At least thirteen people died and dozens were injured in a freak accident when a British passenger train slammed into a crashed car before being hit by a freight train speeding in the opposite direction. (Dan Chung/Reuters)
``At 0612 the driver reports he has been involved in a road accident,'' said Tony Lidgate of North Yorkshire police, quoting log notes taken during the conversation.
``His vehicle has left the M62 (motorway) and is now resting on the railway line. Whilst operator speaking to driver, heard him shout 'A train's coming' then loud smash heard and driver states train has just smashed through his Land Rover.''
The train then hit a set of points, deflecting it on to a separate adjacent line and into the path of the freight train.
Prescott told parliament just 40 seconds elapsed between the time the emergency phone call was received from the car driver and the first collision.
The freight train was traveling at around 60 miles an hour (100 km) in the opposite direction and plowed into the passenger train, causing most of the carnage.
The freight train was pulling 17 wagons of coal, each weighing about 100 tonnes.
Death Toll Could Climb
Reuters correspondents at the scene said that corpses of the victims were still lying where they died by mid-afternoon.
They saw railway coaches relatively unscathed and others buckled, with windows smashed and sides torn open like cans.
Eyewitness Charles Watkinson described the scene as ''absolutely horrific.'' ``I cannot believe the state of the train. It was mangled pieces of metal everywhere,'' he said.
A transport police spokesman said 13 fatalities had been confirmed, along with 40 ``walking wounded'' and 30 injured requiring hospital treatment.
Eyewitnesses described their terror.
``It was utter chaos,'' said one. ``There were a lot of people shouting, they were worried in case it was going to catch fire. The coach filled up with diesel fumes.
``It's going to again put a lot of people off traveling on the trains.''
It was Britain's worst train crash since 31 people died 18 months ago when two trains collided near London's Paddington station.
In parliament, implacable political opponents united to express their horror at the accident. Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) said the country was shocked by the ``horrendous'' crash.
Wednesday February 28 2:47 PM ET
Irish Confirm Foot-and-Mouth Case
By SUE LEEMAN, Associated Press Writer
LONDON (AP) - Nervous authorities at ports in the Irish Republic disinfected visitors from Britain on Wednesday as officials confirmed that highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease had crossed the Irish Sea.
Officials in Northern Ireland said Wednesday they have found the disease in sheep imported from England on a farm that that straddles the border with the Irish Republic.
The cases were found among 200 English sheep tested after they were slaughtered in the first Irish cull. At the same time, London confirmed another eight cases of the disease in England and Wales.
Livestock carcasses are incinerated at Home Farm in Ponteland, northern England, Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2001, after foot-and-mouth disease was found on the farm earlier in the week. The British government confirmed 4 more cases of foot-and-mouth disease Wednesday, bringing the number of affected farms and slaughterhouses to 22. (AP Photo/Tom Buist)
``It is now our belief we are looking at an outbreak of this disease in Northern Ireland,'' said Agriculture Minister Brid Rodgers. Officials have declared the area around the farm a no-go zone and are questioning a livestock importer and a dealer allegedly involved with bringing in the animals, she said.
The British Army said it had ``modified'' its patrols along the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic to reduce the risk of spreading the disease, but gave no other details.
At ports and airports in the republic, travelers from Britain are required to wade through baths of disinfectant before entering the country, a spokeswoman for the agriculture ministry said.
At 30 checkpoints along the borders, police and soldiers enforced an earlier ban on all meat, livestock and dairy products from Britain.
Although humans almost never catch the disease - which affects cloven-hooted animals - they can carry it on boots and clothing. The virus can also be airborne, transmitted from one animal to another, or contracted through contaminated feed.
Britain said new cases of foot-and-mouth disease had been confirmed at two farms in Wales as well as farms in Hereford in western England, the central counties of Leicestershire and Warwickshire, Devon county in the south and Essex county north of London. A case was also confirmed at a slaughterhouse in the northern England county of Lancashire - bringing the number of affected farms and slaughterhouses to 26.
A total of 102 farms in the contagion areas are under some kind of restriction, either sealed off completely or forced to take various precautions against the disease, which spreads rapidly through the air.
Agriculture Minister Nick Brown told Parliament that some 15,000 animals - 3,000 cattle, 11,000 sheep and nearly 2,000 pigs - have been slaughtered or are awaiting slaughter as authorities try to avoid a repeat of a 1967 foot-and-mouth epidemic, when half a million animals were culled.
Britain on Tuesday extended a ban on livestock movements for two more weeks, and the European Union (news - web sites) lengthened its ban on British exports of live animals, meat and dairy products.
Authorities have also closed public footpaths and canceled horse races and various sporting events, in an attempt to minimize the possibility of humans spreading the virus. Some roads were closed due to smoke billowing from pyres of slaughtered animals.
Hoping to avoid major meat shortages, the government is working on a plan that will allow farmers to move healthy animals to slaughterhouses and markets only with strictly enforced precautions to prevent them from spreading the infection.
The plan, expected to take effect on Friday, calls for issuing permits to unaffected farmers allowing them to move their livestock to disease-free slaughterhouses or strictly controlled holding areas.
The government also plans to draw $228 million from an EU agriculture fund to compensate beef, dairy and sheep farmers who may be unable export their products for up to six months after Britain is declared free of the disease.
Wednesday February 28 1:12 PM ET
River Jam Causes Ill. Evacuations
By JAY HUGHES, Associated Press Writer
CLEVELAND, Ill. (AP) - Three small towns sat partially under water Wednesday as the Rock River backed up behind a 7-mile-long ice jam that plugged the stream.
A city limits sign for Cleveland,
Ill., is surrounded by flood waters |
About 200 people had left their homes in Cleveland,
Barstow and Osborn or been evacuated, and only a few were
left Wednesday, said John Swan, fire chief in nearby
Colona. Crews were in the three towns Wednesday to make
sure the remaining residents were not injured and to try
to persuade them to leave, he said. Among those who stayed put were Greg and Charlotte Beard, who were keeping pumps running to make sure the basement didn't flood in the house where they have lived for 26 years in Cleveland. ``Both of our sons are pastors. I called them and said, 'Boys you better start praying because we need some help here,''' Beard, 52, said by telephone Wednesday. Emergency officials ordered the evacuation of Cleveland, where the water blocked the only road out of town, after some people refused to leave. ``They had one man who said he wanted to get his dog out, but he wanted to stay. And we have two people somewhere there in an attic,'' said Vicky LeCleir, a spokeswoman for the volunteer fire department in nearby Hillsdale. Beard said federal officials had offered three years ago to buy out the whole town because it is prone to flooding. But he said that so far only 13 of 85 homes had been purchased. |
A seven-mile-long ice jam on the
Rock River has forced |
Asked if he would take a buyout, he said: ``Oh,
absolutely, I think everybody out here would. I think
everybody's convinced how bad it is.'' The three towns are about 140 miles west of Chicago. He said the river had flooded the road in front of their house once before, during an ice jam in 1997, ``but we've never seen it like this.'' With more cold weather forecast, the mass of ice is not likely to start melting or breaking up anytime soon. Temperatures fell to 7 above zero early Wednesday in northwestern Illinois, and highs were forecast only in the 20s. Gov. George Ryan flew over the area Wednesday to survey the damage. Water rose more than 3 feet in less than a day Tuesday. Officials said most people left on their own, but volunteers rescued almost 80 people by boat and at least seven were airlifted out by the Coast Guard. Among the evacuees were more than a dozen from a nursing home in Osborn. ``We made several trips through Osborn saying we recommended that (residents) get out,'' said Hillsdale fire chief Rick Mitton. ``There are still a lot of people there. We strongly recommended it, but to a lot of these people, that is their whole life.'' |
Wednesday February 28 4:33 PM ET
Big Quake Rattles Seattle, Injuries Reported
By Chris Stetkiewicz and Scott Hillis
SEATTLE (Reuters) - A strong earthquake measuring 6.8 in magnitude and lasting about 45 seconds rocked Seattle on Wednesday, knocking chunks of masonry from skyscrapers and forcing thousands to flee their homes, schools and offices.
There were reports of about a dozen people hurt, including three with serious injuries from being crushed by debris.
The quake at 10:54 a.m. local time (1:55 p.m. EST), which was also felt in Vancouver, British Columbia, to the north and Portland, Ore., to the south, damaged many buildings in the earthquake-prone city of about 500,000 -- including the corporate headquarters of coffee house chain Starbucks.
Kristi Heim, standing outside the Starbucks corporate headquarters, reacts after an earthquake hit the Seattle area, February 28, 2001. The earthquake, measuring 6.8 in magnitude and lasting about 45 seconds, knocked chunks from skyscrapers and forced thousands to flee their homes, schools and offices. (Anthony Bolante/Reuters)
The U.S. Geological Survey (news - web sites) in Golden, Colorado first reported the earthquake measured 7.0, but then reduced that figure to 6.8 -- a size that still carries potential for major damage. This did not result because of the quake's substantial depth, estimated at about 30 miles.
Geophysicists at the USGI's earthquake information center in Golden said measurements put the quake at a magnitude 7.0, with an epicenter some 30 miles southwest of Seattle, and 10 miles northeast of the state capital Olympia along the coast of Puget Sound.
Gates Speech Halted
A speech by Bill Gates (news - web sites), the head of software giant Microsoft, was interrupted, 30 people were stranded at the top of the city's Space Needle tower before being rescued and the offices of coffee shop chain operator Starbucks were damaged. CNN reported that the dome of the state capitol building in Olympia, Wash., was cracked.
Seattle Mayor Paul Schell told reporters: ``I think we have weathered it. It looks so far as if everything is working but it is too soon to tell. It's the biggest quake I remember.''
Schell, speaking from the city's emergency operations center, said there no reports of fires or major injuries.
It was the largest quake for Seattle in 36 years, when a 6.5 tremor rocked the region on April 29, 1965. Seattle sits on a fault caused by the Juan de Fuca plate sliding under the continental United States. A 7.1-magnitude temblor in 1949 killed eight people.
Harborview Medical Center was treating 12 people for injuries but there were no reports of fatalities.
One driver apparently panicked during the quake and swerved off the road, hitting a pedestrian, who was being treated for injuries, local television said.
``We started bouncing off the walls and we could feel ourselves falling a little bit after we threw the stop switch.'' said Todd Baren, a worker with Internet name registry eNic Corp., who was in an elevator in a downtown office building.
``After we finally stopped we were just swaying, we could feel the elevator banging against the walls, and after 15 minutes the technicians pulled us out and they said we'd fallen a couple floors,'' Baren said.
One local television station which had been taping a downtown news conference caught the moment the quake struck on tape. It showed pictures swaying on an office wall, and people clutching at desks to steady themselves.
Maria Ackley, 62, a resident of Mercer Island, a quiet residential community east of Seattle, was in the kitchen of her home with her husband when the quake struck.
``When it first happened, there was a thundering sound. The doors in the house were rattling and the windows in the kitchen were rippling, literally. It looked like they were waves of water. Everything was shaking. You felt like you were at sea,'' she said.
Walls Fracture
``All the drawers opened up, and any container that had something in it emptied out. And we ran out of the house and our car was in motion,'' she said. When the temblor was over, her husband found a ``major fracture'' in the home's foundation.
Her son, Andrew, 17, said his high school was immediately evacuated and everyone was sent home. There were no apparent injuries, he said.
A Car sits crushed under tons of brick after walls collapsed at a building in the historic district of downtown Seattle after an earthquake rocked the region, February 28, 2001. An earthquake measuring 6.8 in magnitude and lasting about 45 seconds rocked the Seattle area, knocking chunks of masonry from skyscrapers and forcing thousands to flee their homes, schools and offices. (Anthony Bolante/Reuters)
Seattle's Sea-Tac airport was closed ``until further notice'' and its control tower had been evacuated, officials said. Flights to Seattle were being canceled or diverted to other airports.
Helicopter pictures showed traffic flowing normally on most major roads shortly after the quake and no signs of fires or major damage.
Television pictures showed some collapsed exterior walls, shattered windows and damaged cars but Seattle's major downtown tower blocks appeared to be intact.
The quake rocked skyscrapers, knocking books off shelves, sending doors flying open and driving frightened residents and workers out into the streets.
``We're on the third floor and pictures were falling off the walls, and water was splashing on the floor,'' said one worker at a public relations firm. ``I was on the phone with a friend and she started screaming.''
The wail of police and fire sirens filled Seattle's gray winter skies, but no major casualties or damage were immediately reported. Local television showed crowds of people gathered in the downtown area's historic Pioneer Square after the quake.
``There are pockets of damage but nothing catastrophic that we can see,'' a local television reporter said from a helicopter surveying parts of the city.
Officials in King County where Seattle is located said a county-wide state of emergency had been declared, allowing inspectors to enter buildings to check for structural damage.
The Harborview Medical Center, one of Seattle's biggest hospitals, quickly evacuated staff and visitors as the quake hit, with one witness telling local television that a concrete wall in the building had splintered apart.
``The whole concrete wall started to split and shattered into pieces and started to come down,'' the unidentified woman told the television. The facility was still open.
Hospital Handles Problems
``Harborview is prepared and equipped to handle serious and critical patients coming in so they will be able to care for those patients,'' a hospital spokeswoman said.
The earthquake sent a strong jolt as far south as Portland, Oregon.
``I thought I was having a vertigo attack. It was shaking us pretty good ... we're not used to anything like that up here,'' said Mike Hansen, a spokesman at the Portland-based Bonneville Power Administration.
David Horsey, 49, a Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, said he was looking out his office window watching a freight train roll by as he felt a strong rumbling.
``I had a momentary thought that, 'Man, that guy is shaking the ground here.' That turned quickly to the realization that it was something a lot bigger than that.
``I went over and stood in the doorway. It felt like being in a boxcar bouncing around. The building was rattling, the doors were slowly opening by themselves,'' he said.
As the shaking continued, Horsey recalled being told that the building was on landfill that could liquefy in the event of a major earthquake and his initial feeling of excitement turned to thoughts of ``'What if the roof caves in? What if this is the Big One? How screwed am I?'''
Michael Hosterman, 58, a financial planner who works downtown, said he was on the telephone ``talking to someone, and he suddenly said, 'Earthquake! Bye!' And our building just started rolling like somebody was pushing on it, swaying back and forth.''
``A wall unit was starting to fall over, and my secretary was screaming, 'Stand in the doorway! Stand in the doorway!' and it went on for a long time.''
Asked if anyone were hurt, Hosterman said, ``Physically everybody is okay, but everybody is not okay mentally.''
Wednesday February 28 3:27 PM ET
Earthquake Shakes Pacific Northwest
By LUIS CABRERA, Associated Press Writer
SEATTLE (AP) - A powerful earthquake jolted the Northwest on Wednesday, sending people fleeing into the streets of Seattle and Portland, Ore., cutting power to thousands and dropping bricks onto sidewalks.
Twelve people were treated at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center, three for serious injuries, spokeswoman Marsha Rule said. There were no other immediate reports of injuries.
The magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit at 10:55 a.m., according to the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo. Centered 35 miles southwest of Seattle, it was felt across the region and into Canada. The dome of the Washington Capitol had a visible crack.
 A strong earthquake
measuring 7.0 in magnitude rattled Seattle |
``Everyone was panicked,'' said Paulette DeRooy, who
was in an elevator descending from the 15th floor of a
Seattle building when the earthquake struck. She and
several others scrambled out and onto a fire escape. Screams erupted at a nearby hotel, where Microsoft founder Bill Gates (news - web sites) was addressing an education and technology conference. He was whisked away as his audience bolted for the exits. Some were knocked down by others trying to get out and overhead lights fell to the floor. The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport was closed and the tower and other offices were evacuated, Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites) spokesman William Shumann said . The FAA ordered a national ground stop for Seattle, which means no flights to the Northwest's largest city were being allowed to take off anywhere in the country. The center handling air traffic in Washington and Oregon, near Auburn, Wash., was operating on backup power. Utility officials estimated that 17,000 customers in the Seattle area were without power. |
In Olympia, about 10 miles from the epicenter, a crack was visible in the Capitol dome. Legislators, government workers and visiting school children flooded out of the Capitol and other buildings. The state Senate was in session.
``The chandelier started going and the floor started shaking. Someone yelled get under the table and so we did,'' Sen. Bob Morton said. ``The sudden violence let us know that this was a bad one.''
Cracked plaster, gilt and even paintings fell from the walls, but Morton said he saw no sign of major structural damage.
Officials were particularly afraid the Capitol dome would collapse and people linked hands as they walked down the marble stairs under the heavy dome.
``If that rascal had tumbled down, it would have been all over,'' Morton said.
Seattle's popular Pioneer Square neighborhood, site of recent Mardi Gras riots, was damaged. Bricks from buildings were piled up on sidewalks. Structural damage also was reported at Bellevue Community College, which was shut down for the day.
``I thought a car had hit my building,'' said Sam Song, who owns a restaurant in Everett, 30 miles north of Seattle. ``Then the ground started moving around.''
In downtown Portland, 300 miles from the epicenter, office buildings swayed for 20 to 30 seconds. The Multnomah County Courthouse was evacuated and employees were gathered in a park across the street while officials inspected for damage. Michelle Noonan of suburban Lake Oswego said the quake was strong enough to move things around in her house.
``Everything was shaking,'' Noonan said. ``It knocked over a wood pile outside house. Books fell off the shelf.''
Earthquake magnitudes are measures of earthquake size calculated from ground motion recorded on seismographs. With each scale, an increase in one full number - from 6.5 to 7.5, for example - means the quake's magnitude is 10 times as great.
A quake with a magnitude of 6 can cause severe damage, while one with a magnitude of 7 can cause widespread, heavy damage.
A 5.0 quake that struck the Puget Sound area on Jan. 28, 1995, was described as the strongest to hit the area in 30 years, since a 6.5 earthquake struck April 29, 1965, injuring at least 31 people. In 1949, a 7.1 quake near Olympia killed eight people.
The Northridge quake that struck the Los Angeles area in January 1994 caused an estimated $40 billion in damage and killed 72 people. It was a magnitude 6.7.
The making of
an epidemic
Special report: Foot and
mouth disease
John Vidal,
Paul Brown, Peter Hetherington, and Kate Connolly in Berlin
Tuesday February 27, 2001
The Guardian
The impossibly tangled web which Ministry of Agriculture staff
began to unravel last week now extends across three animal
species, five countries and many British counties as foot and
mouth disease carried by British sheep threatens to spread though
Europe and even further afield. But as mainland Europe continued
yesterday to try to identify and quarantine or kill those
animals which they suspect may have come into contact with
infected British sheep, it was becoming clear that the
continental meat trade is so complex that a sheep born in
Aberdeenshire could be trucked 1,600 miles before being
slaughtered as far away as Beirut.
The detective story starts, for the moment, when 40 sheep were sent from Ian Williamson's Prestwick Hall farm at Ponteland near Newcastle airport to Hexham market on February 13. It is known that more than 3,500 animals were sold that day and all the buyers and sellers have to be traced and their animals monitored. The ministry hopes to complete tracing them in the next 24 hours. More than a week later, foot and mouth disease was confirmed among cattle at Prestwick Hall farm shortly after Burnside farm at Heddon-on-the-Wall - barely four miles away - was pinpointed by the Ministry of Agriculture as the likely source of the national outbreak. Vets believe the virus was carried from infected pigs by wind to Prestwick Hall farm, and then to a neighbouring farm at Westerhope, near Newcastle - confirmed yesterday as the 10th outbreak.
They believe that
the 40 sheep from Prestwick were sold to Willy Cleave, a Devon
dealer who has 11 farms in the west country where he keeps sheep
before sending them on to British abattoirs or for export. The 40
were then shipped on February 15 to Longtown market, Carlisle,
which is one of the largest sheep markets in Europe and also acts
as a holding centre. However the ministry still does not know for
certain whether these sheep were the infected ones. What is known
is that the Longtown 40 were collected shortly afterwards and
taken to Mr Cleave's Highampton farm in Devon. Cattle there
developed foot and mouth but it was
not known at the time they had caught it from sheep. On February
21, some sheep from Highampton were trucked to Bromham
slaughterhouse in Wiltshire, where they developed foot and mouth.
The next day sheep from the same farm were sent to Northampton and sold at the local auction. Normally, about 85% of the 1,500 sheep sold that day would go for export but because the export route had been closed on February 17, these sheep would have been held by dealers. All are now being traced. Separately Mr Cleave had, on February 12, trucked 348 sheep from Devon to Germany via Dover on the Cap Afrique, Britain's only dedicated livestock export ferry. Since then according to the ministry, he had sold other batches of sheep to British dealers intended for export. All these are also being searched for. The last sheep exports from Britain to the continent were at 2am on February 17. The Cap Afrique left Dover loaded with hundreds of animals bound for Dunkirk. Farmer's Ferry, the company which owns it, said it had exported about 30,000 sheepin the two weeks before the ban. The ministry is having to trace all sheep exported on the Cap Afrique in the past three weeks.
Yesterday, the German authorities traced the 348 sheep sent directly by Mr Cleave to Germany on February 12 and killed them as a precautionary measure. The Cap Afrique suspended all operations within hours of the first confirmed outbreak, but the European authorities say it may have been too late to prevent the disease spreading through Europe. After long journeys from as far away as Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and the west country, animals are known to be highly susceptible to disease. If any of those exported in the past few weeks had already been infected, they could easily have passed it on. Most live sheep exported from Britain are taken first to any one of more than 60 EU registered "holding stations" where they are kept, often with many thousands of other animals, for up to several days. British exporters favour a handful of large stations in Belgium and Holland. However, according to Gilles Frojet of the major French holding station La Gatevinière at Argenton L'Eglise, there are many unofficial holding stations in mainland Europe which could also have received infected animals and could possibly duck the authorities' investigations. Tracing livestock movements in Europe is difficult, said Mike Gooding of Farmers First, a British sheep exporter. British animals have full documentation, but many animals in continental holding centres are resold in job lots to buyers who quite legally alter their papers of origin.
"They are all mixed up which adds to the potential for disease and many are bought and sold," said Mr Gooding. From these staging posts and markets, sheep go all over the continent and many are re-exported with Dutch, French or Belgian papers 1,000 miles or more to abattoirs in Italy, Greece and Spain. Hundreds of thousands of animals are then re-exported outside Europe, especially to the Middle East and North Africa via Italian ports. Yesterday, the Dutch slaughtered 4,300 animals on 11 farms. The French farm ministry said that up to 47,000 sheep recently imported from Britain had been identified but it had not decided whether to kill them. German officials announced a programme of slaughter for thousands of livestock. It began on two farms in the state of North Rhein Westphalia which, according to the state's agriculture minister, Bärbel Höhn, has received thousands of sheep and pigs from farms in Britain in the past few weeks, including from some of those which have been struck by the disease. "If the virus spread to the continent, the entire European Union would risk losing its status as free of foot and mouth disease," said Bernard Vallat, director-general of the Paris-based International Epizootic Office. "The re-emergence of the disease in Britain presents a potential major threat to European exports."
Tuesday February 27 10:25 AM ET
Brits Trace Path of Foot-and-Mouth
By CHRIS FONTAINE, Associated Press Writer
LONDON (AP) - Hopes for a quick end to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease faded Tuesday as agriculture officials scrambled to trace the increasingly intricate path of the livestock virus.
The highly infectious disease was identified at four new sites Tuesday, bringing the number of confirmed outbreaks to 16.
Farmers believe as many as 25,000 sheep, cattle and pigs passed through three markets at the center of the outbreak during the week before a Friday ban on moving livestock within Britain.
``These figures show the sheer volume of movement,'' said Peter Kingwill, chairman of the Livestock Auctioneers' Association. ``In terms of an outbreak, they are worrying.''
Agricultural workers burn the corpses of slaughtered cattle on a pyre at a farm at Great Warley England Tuesday Feb. 27, 2001. The cattle are being destroyed to control the spread of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant
Foot-and-mouth disease almost never infects humans, but it is highly contagious among cloven-footed animals like sheep, cows and pigs. It is not usually fatal in itself, but causes blisters on the mouth and feet, fever and loss of appetite.
Vaccines exist, but are quickly rendered ineffective by the development of new strains of the virus, so wholesale slaughter is used to contain the disease.
Officials elsewhere in Europe were growing increasingly worried that the disease could spread. The European Union (news - web sites) extended until at least March 9 a ban on British exports of livestock, meat and dairy products.
``We are especially afraid the virus can cross the Channel by wind, or by birds, seagulls,'' said Veronique Bellemain, chief veterinary expert at the French agriculture ministry. ``We can put controls on the Channel tunnel, but we can't control the winds.''
Thousands of livestock have been killed in continental Europe, where no cases have been found. Germany said it had slaughtered another 1,600 sheep Tuesday, following the earlier killing of 360 animals imported from England.
The Netherlands slaughtered more than 3,200 animals brought from Britain before the outbreak was discovered. Spain ordered the destruction of 540 pigs imported from Britain, and France has decided to destroy 20,000 sheep brought from Britain since the beginning of the month.
Officials from Britain's Ministry of Agriculture survey the burning of livestock carcasses February 26, 2001 at Heddon On The Wall farm in Northumberland following an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Germany and the Netherlands have started slaughtering thousands of animals imported from Britain, fearing a disease outbreak may have been shipped across the Channel. (Jeff J Mitchell/Reuters
The new cases identified in Britain on Tuesday spanned the country, from Anglesey in north Wales to Northamptonshire, north of London. They followed five new cases that cropped up Monday.
The sudden escalation after a weekend in which only one new case was reported set off fresh fears the country could experience a repeat of a 1967 foot-and-mouth epidemic, when nearly half a million livestock were slaughtered.
Two British newspapers published maps Tuesday showing the spiderweb-like spread of the disease through England. Bonfires lit up affected areas for a second night as authorities disposed of about 7,000 slaughtered animals.
As the impact of the disease spread, the government said it was considering closing some parts of the countryside to walkers. There were even calls to postpone a national election, which many had expected to be called in May or earlier.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) on Monday called the outbreak ``a dreadful blow'' to a farming industry already struggling with mad cow disease, a fatal brain-wasting illness first identified in Britain.
Even if the foot-and-mouth outbreak is quickly contained, Chief Veterinary Officer Jim Scudamore has warned that an export ban - imposed two days after the first case was discovered at a slaughterhouse on Feb. 19 - could remain in place for up to six months after eradication.
Efforts to trace the disease's progress have led investigators to three livestock markets - one in central England and two further north near Scotland - believed to have handled diseased animals.
The ripple effect of the outbreak has seen emergency measures move from farms to their surrounding communities.
Horse racing tracks, schools and a military training exercise have been disrupted. Hiking groups have scrapped country walks and fishing streams have been closed to anglers. Safari parks, zoos and nature reserves have closed or isolated animals susceptible to the disease.
A horse racing meeting in Chepstow and an auto rally in Wales were called off Tuesday due to the outbreak.
Agriculture Minister Nick Brown said he was considering closing some rural routes used by hikers.
