KAZAKHSTAN: Authorities move to ward off Lake Alakol flood threat

ALMATY, 25 September 2007 (IRIN) - Measures are being taken in Kazakhstan to ward off a flood threat to villages from a lake on the border with China.

Strong winds at Lake Alakol cause waves to pound its shores and erode the banks, experts say, bringing the waters closer to inhabited areas. If measures are not taken to shore up the disintegrating banks, erosion could cause the lake to flood settlements, and also holiday camps catering to the summer tourist trade.

Local authorities in eastern Kazakhstan have announced a tender to select a company to carry out the work to keep the waters at a safe distance from villages.

"The results will be known in 10 days," Temirbek Kasymzhanov, head of East Kazakhstan Region's Construction Department, told IRIN from the regional capital, Oskemen.

Plans are at an initial stage, Kasymzhanov added. After the winner of the tender is selected, a feasibility study will be conducted, taking into account a range of complex hydrological and ecological factors and determining how many people living on the banks of the lake are at risk.

Work on eroded areas - for which the government has allocated some US$5.5 million - will most likely begin next year.

Pending the feasibility study, action has been taken to deal with some of the worst affected areas around the lake, with boulders put in place to strengthen 229 metres of shore.

Rehabilitation work is also required to shore up banks in settlements bordering the lake in Almaty Region. Some six metres of land is lost to the lake every year in the village of Koktuma, which has a population of 2,500, according to local media reports. A storm swallowed up 20 metres of land in Koktuma in 2006.

Medicinal qualities

The salty waters of the 2,650sqkm Lake Alakol - located some 500km east of the Kazakhstan commercial capital of Almaty near the Zhungarian Gates, marking a passage through the Zhungarian Alatau mountains to China - are said to have medicinal qualities. The lake has in recent years hosted an increasing number of holidaymakers as Kazakhstan seeks to develop its tourist infrastructure.

With the erosion of Alakol's banks highlighting the delicate nature of the eco-system, environmentalists are calling for caution as tourism development proceeds.

"It's a unique place," Mels Eleusizov, head of the Almaty-based Tabigat (Nature) ecological union, a local environmental non-governmental organisation (NGO), told IRIN on 24 September. "Nature is very vulnerable."

As a rush gets under way to buy up lucrative land around Alakol to build resort facilities, Eleusizov is calling for a measured approach to prevent damage to the eco-system. "All this should be well-thought-out… There should be some good studies. It's clear you can't just build everywhere," he said.

Many of Kazakhstan's lake resorts are vulnerable to the effects of tourist development. Earlier this month parliamentarians proposed a special programme to protect the Shuchinsk-Burabay resort area, home to 21 lakes in northern Kazakhstan. Its location some 200km from the capital, Astana, makes it a magnet for tourists. Supporters of the plan to draw up a nature conservation programme for the area are calling for improved sewage facilities, an end to coal-burning boilers and more environmental police to prevent damage to the lakes and wetlands.

Source: Reuters

Iraq: Scores killed and wounded in blasts as Baquba death toll climbs to 28

A suicide driver killed three Iraqi policemen and injured 20 people when he detonated his car at the entrance of police headquarters Tuesday in Basra. Also Tuesday morning, two parked car bombs exploded nearly simultaneously in a shopping street in eastern Baghdad, killing six civilians and injuring 20 people, just yards away from a line of pensioners outside a local bank, the police said.
Meanwhile, at least 28 people died and 34 were injured in an attack by a suicide bomber inside a mosque near Iraq's city of Baquba, police and a medical official said on Tuesday. The attack Monday evening targetted a reconciliation meeting between two militias at Shifta village west of Baquba.

Seven policemen, including three high ranking officers, were killed when the suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest in the crowded mosque. "We have a total of 28 people killed and 34 wounded," police Brigadier General Khaider al-Timimi told AFP.

Source: Al Bawaba

China evacuates 200,000 ahead of typhoon

Soldiers help locals evacuate to a safer area as a powerful typhoon approaches Taizhou, east China's Zhejiang province, September 18, 2007. The typhoon targeted China's booming eastern province of Zhejiang and financial hub Shanghai on Tuesday, prompting the evacuation of tens of thousands of people as ships and boats were called back to port. REUTERS/China Daily (CHINA) CHINA OUT

By ELAINE KURTENBACH, Associated Press Writer

SHANGHAI, China - China evacuated 200,000 people on Tuesday and closed schools in its largest city to prepare for what forecasters say will be the most powerful typhoon to hit Shanghai in a decade.

The fringes of Typhoon Wipha lashed northern Taiwan, where schools, offices and the stock market closed. A construction worker was killed when the storm's winds — projected to reach 180 mph at the storm's height — knocked down scaffolding, Taiwan's Disaster Relief Center said.

City authorities ordered schools closed Wednesday in Shanghai, a city of more than 20 million and China's financial hub. Chinese state-run television showed families being evacuated from their fishing boats and other vessels. Shopkeepers stacked sand bags to prevent flooding as drains clogged amid torrential rains.

The typhoon, whipping up waves up to 36 feet high, was moving northwest toward the Chinese mainland. Weather reports forecast it would make landfall south of Shanghai early Wednesday morning.

Wipha, a woman's name in Thai, was upgraded from a tropical storm Monday.

"The typhoon is very likely to develop into the worst one in recent years," said a man who answered the phone at the city's meteorological bureau. As is common with Chinese officials, the man identified himself only by his surname, Fu.

Shanghai and the coastal provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian to the south issued typhoon warnings requiring all vessels to return to shore or change course to avoid the storm, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Some 200,000 people living in coastal or low-lying rural areas of Shanghai were being evacuated, as were parts of Zhejiang, Xinhua said.

It said nearly 30,000 fishing boats in the province had taken shelter in port by late Monday and ferry service with outlying islands was suspended.

The deadliest storm to hit the China coast in recent years was Typhoon Winnie in 1997, which killed 236 people. Typhoon Rananim, with winds of more than 100 mph, was the strongest typhoon to hit the Chinese mainland since 1956, killing nearly 200 people.

Source: Yahoo News!

Jet crash in Thailand's Phuket kills 87

The wreckage of a One-Two-Go passenger plane sits on the side of the runway after it crashed while attempting to land at Phuket International Airport Sunday, Sept. 16, 2007 in Phuket, southern Thailand. A passenger plane filled with foreign tourists crashed Sunday in heavy rain on Thailand's tourist island of Phuket, leaving at least 66 people dead and 42 hospitalized, officials said. (AP Photo/Daily News)

By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer

PHUKET, Thailand - A passenger plane filled with foreign tourists crashed Sunday as it tried to land in pouring rain on the island of Phuket, splitting in two and bursting into flames, officials said. At least 87 people were killed.

The budget One-Two-Go Airlines domestic flight OG269 was carrying 123 passengers and seven crew members from the capital, Bangkokm to Phuket — popular among tourists for its pristine beaches and one of the areas hardest hit by the 2004 tsunami.

Survivors described their escape from the airplane's windows as fires and smoke consumed the plane.

"I saw passengers engulfed in fire as I stepped over them on way out of the plane," Parinwit Chusaeng, a survivor who suffered minor burns, told the Nation television channel. "I was afraid that the airplane was going to explode so I ran away."

Wallop Thainua, the country's deputy health minister, said he received a report that 87 people were killed in the crash, many of their bodies laid out in an airport building.

Officials at the scene said the McDonnell Douglas MD-82 crashed in a downpour, skidded off the runaway and broke in two.

Officials said it was too early to establish the cause of the crash, but some said weather was likely a factor.

"The visibility was poor as the pilot attempted to land. He decided to make a go-around but the plane lost balance and crashed," said Chaisak Angsuwan, director general of the Air Transport Authority of Thailand. "It was torn into two parts."

Local television reports showed parts of the twisted and smoking wreckage sitting off to the side of the runaway. Masked rescue workers converged on the plane, carrying away bodies wrapped in white sheets.

Lt. Gen. Amporn Charuchinda, chief of the police forensic bureau, said that the authorities might move some of the dead bodies to a mortuary in Phang Nga province where some of the tsunami victims were kept. Some 8,000 people were killed in Phuket in the 2004 disaster.

Sunday's crash is the country's deadliest aviation accident since Dec. 11, 1998, when 101 people were in the crash of Thai Airways plane at Surat Thani, 330 miles south of Bangkok. Forty-five people survived.

Jikarat Wongtawan, a staffer of Bangkok Phuket Hospital, said that 24 of the 32 passengers hospitalized there were foreigners and included Britons, Germans, Iranians, Israelis and at least one Australian, Irish and Canadian passenger. The remaining injured foreigners were at Phuket International Hospital.

An Irish survivor, identified as Sean, told of being badly burned on his arms, legs and back as he escaped the flames. Speaking to TITV from a local hospital, he said he knew something was wrong before the flight landed.

"You could tell when it was landing it was in trouble," he said. "It was making a noise, this bang."

One-Two-Go is one of several budget airlines started up in the past few years after Thailand's airline sector was liberalized. It started operations in December 2003, and is the domestic subsidiary of Orient-Thai Airlines, a low-cost regional carrier based in Thailand.

The crash is the latest to hit the booming budget airline industry in Asia, which has been seen its rapid growth sometimes overshadowed a serious of accidents in the recent years.

An Adam Air flight plunged into off the Indonesian coast on New Year's Day, killing 102 people. In 2004, a MD-82 operated by Indonesian budget carrier Lion Air skidded off the runaway in heavy rain at Solo airport in Central Java and crashed, killing 26 people.

Source: Yahoo News!

Bangkok to be declared an earthquake risk zone

A man points to the intensity of an earthquake on a seismograph. Thailand is drafting regulations to declare Bangkok an earthquake-prone zone after the capital felt the effects of a recent 8.4-magnitude quake in Indonesia, a government official said Saturday.

BANGKOK (AFP) — Thailand is drafting regulations to declare Bangkok an earthquake-prone zone after the capital felt the effects of a recent 8.4-magnitude quake in Indonesia, a government official said Saturday.

The new law would require all new tall buildings in Bangkok and surrounding provinces to be quake-proof. It has been drafted by the interior ministry and is currently being reviewed by Thailand's top legal experts.

"Bangkok's soil is soft and it generates more tremors," said Worawoot Tantiwanit, a senior official with the mineral resources department.

"In the most recent major earthquake in Indonesia on Wednesday, people in high rise buildings in Bangkok clearly felt the effects," he told AFP.

Worawoot said his department was currently studying the risks posed to the capital by three fault lines within a 100-kilometre (62-mile) radius of Bangkok.

Ten of Thailand's 76 provinces are currently listed as earthquake-risk zones, mostly in the northwest. The proposed law would add 12 central and southern provinces to the list.

In May, a 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck western Laos near the border with Thailand, sending people fleeing into the streets after high-rise buildings rocked and swayed in Bangkok.

Source: AFP

Indonesia earthquake toll rises

14:08 MECCA TIME, 11:08 GMT

Hundreds of residents are still afraid to return to their homes [AFP]

The death toll from a series of major earthquakes striking Indonesia has risen to 23, while officials have counted more than 15,000 collapsed or damaged buildings.

Five more bodies were recovered and one injured victim died in hospital on Sunday.

An earthquake measuring 8.4 on the Richter scale had struck off Sumatra's west coast on Wednesday and was followed by a series of aftershocks, jolting the coastal provinces of Bengkulu and West Sumatra.

More than 60 aftershocks have followed the major tremor, including a magnitude 7.8.

Rustam Pakaya, from the Indonesian health ministry's crisis centre, had said that the toll had risen to 23, with 88 people said to have been injured.

Rescue teams have been continuing their search for victims reportedly trapped under thousands of buildings toppled by the earthquakes, and many survivors have been too afraid to return to their homes.

According to Bowo Santoso from the governor's disaster rescue centre, nearly 2,000 houses were destroyed in Bengkulu, and nearly 4,000 others badly damaged.

About 90 local hospitals and clinics were also damaged, he said.

Aid 'not received

In West Sumatra, more than 9,700 houses collapsed or were too badly damaged to be inhabitable.

Aid has been flowing to many of the affected areas, though officials say that some survivors had still not received any of it.

Frans Karel, an official on the island of Pagai Utara, said no aid had yet been received and many villagers were sheltering in the hills.

Karel said: "We haven't yet received aid. All the kiosks have collapsed and their food stocks are wet."

"Almost 75 per cent of houses on the coastline along a 10-kilometre stretch are badly damaged and collapsed."

In the city of Mukomuko, about 260km north of Bengkulu, residents were desperate for help.

Muslimar, a 50-year-old resident, said: "We have no rice, we have clothes, we have no kerosene. We want to buy supplies, but there is no one to sell them to us."

The scale of the damage, considering the initial earthquake's size and subsequent shocks, has been much lower than initially expected.

Meanwhile, the UN has said no international aid effort would be required to help with recovery efforts.

Source: Aljazeera