Helping the Haitians

If any of you are looking for a reputable charity to donate to in order to help the earthquake victims of Haiti I highly recommend Samaritan's Purse.

They have people on the ground who are already helping and every dollar given to them is put to good use.

That doesn't look like fun

SURREY, British Columbia (Aug. 25) - A hot air balloon burst into flames over western Canada, burning two passengers to death while their families looked on, police said Saturday. Other passengers leaped to the ground, some with their clothes in flames, witnesses said.

Eleven people were seriously injured when the balloon crashed Friday evening in a recreational vehicle park in Surrey, British Columbia, a suburb of Vancouver. There were 12 passengers and a pilot on board, police and witnesses said.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sgt. Roger Morrow said relatives of the two passengers killed witnessed the fire. He declined to comment on reports that the dead were a mother and her grown daughter.

"It's just tragic. They watched it unfold before their eyes," Morrow said of the families. "The fatalities suffered from burns."

The balloon caught fire as it prepared to launch, said Bill Yearwood, an investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.

"The crew loaded 12 passengers and was preparing to launch when a fire erupted. The pilot asked the passengers to get out of the basket," he said. "The balloon was tethered at the time, but then broke and came loose," he added.

Can't say I've ever heard of anything like that happening before. It had to be a problem with the balloon's prophane burner.

Global Warming strikes again!

LIMA, Peru (AP) - A powerful earthquake shook Peru's coast near the capital on Wednesday, killing at least 17 people as it toppled homes and caused many residents to flee buildings. Authorities said the quake had generated a tsunami of undetermined size.
Peru's highly respected Cable news station Canal N reported that the 7.9 magnitude quake had caused a church to collapse in the city of Ica south of Lima, killing 17 people and injuring 70.

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center initially issued a tsunami warning for the coasts of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama. A tsunami watch was issued for the rest of Central America and Mexico. It also issued a tsunami advisory for Hawaii.

The center later canceled the warnings and the watches, but it said the quake had caused a tsunami of unknown size.

"Sea level readings indicate a tsunami was generated," the center said on its Web site. It did not report the tsunami's size, but said it could be large enough to "be destructive" on coastal areas near the quake's epicenter.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake hit at 6:40 p.m. (7:40 p.m. EDT) about 90 miles southeast of Lima at a depth of about 25 miles. Four strong aftershocks ranging from magnitudes of 5.4 to 5.9 were felt afterwards, the USGS said.

An Associated Press photographer said that homes had collapsed in the center of Lima and that many people had fled into the streets for safety. The capital shook for more than a minute.

Firefighters quoted in radio reports said that many street lights and windows shattered in Lima but did not specify if there were any injuries. Hundreds of workers were evacuated from Lima office buildings after the quake struck and remained outside, fearing aftershocks

Callers to Radioprogramas, Peru's main news radio station, said parts of several cities in southern Peru had been hit with blackouts. Callers reported homes in poor neighborhoods in Chincha and Cerro Azul had collapsed.


Now will people listen and impeach Bu$hitler before any more have to die!!!!!!!!!

Number of missing lowered in Minn. bridge collapse

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Authorities searching the rubble of an interstate bridge collapse lowered the number of people believed missing Friday to eight, a toll dramatically lower than feared since the bridge crumbled at rush hour.

But the search for victims was slow as crews struggled to navigate waters muddied by debris and filled with swirling currents.

At least five people were killed and 79 injured when the Interstate 35W bridge plummeted more than 60 feet into the Mississippi River on Wednesday afternoon. As many as 30 had been feared missing.

This is good news, even if it does fall under the heading of "not as bad as it could have been".

Update on the Minnesota bridge collapse

From The Politico:

It took less than a day for the disastrous bridge collapse in Minneapolis to turn into a political uproar on Capitol Hill.

As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) opened the Thursday session of the Senate, he warned that the bridge disaster was a “wake-up call” regarding infrastructure investment across the country.

Later, Reid and other Democratic leaders went a step further, bashing Republicans for failing to pass a water resources and development act, known as WRDA on Capitol Hill, for seven years, saying that the bill was essential to investing in American infrastructure.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that funds transportation programs, slammed President Bush for threatening to veto the transportation bill because it exceeds his initial budget request.

“This is what I worry about every day. The lack of investment in infrastructure is frightening,” Murray said. “This is what [Bush] is threatening to veto -- investment in infrastructure for [roads] we go to work on every day.”

Reid even suggested that Bush has been too distracted by the Iraq war and post-Sept. 11 national security needs to focus on the country’s water, sewer and transportation infrastructure.
“Since 9/11, we have taken our eye off the ball,” Reid said.

Yesterday on this blog and in a comment to a post about the bridge collapse on Born Again Redneck I stated a belief that it would only be a matter of time before some low-life leftist piece of filth tried to exploit this disaster by trying to tie it to global warming.

I was wrong.

It seems that the low-life pieces of left-wing filth are trying to exploit this disaster by trying to tie it to president Bush, Iraq and Republican fiscal responsibility.

Six of one - half dozen of the other. As Forest Gump's mother might have said, scum is as scum does.

Interstate bridge collapses in Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - An interstate bridge jammed with rush-hour traffic suddenly broke into huge sections and collapsed into the Mississippi River Wednesday, pitching dozens of cars 60 feet into the water and killing at least seven people.

The eight-lane Interstate 35W bridge, a major Minneapolis artery, was in the midst of being repaired and two lanes in each direction were closed when the bridge buckled. About 20 families gathered at an information center, looking for information on loved ones they couldn't locate.

"There were two lanes of traffic, bumper to bumper, at the point of the collapse. Those cars did go into the river," said Minneapolis Police Lt. Amelia Huffman. "At this point there is nothing to suggest that this was anything other than a structural collapse."

By 1 a.m. Thursday, Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek said all search efforts had been called off for the night and that searchers did not expect to find any survivors.

"It's dark, it's not safe with the currents in the water and the concrete and rebar," he said. "At this point it is a recovery effort."

One of the things I hate most when driving is to get stuck on as bridge by a red light or road work and have to just sit there and feel the thing vibrate whenever a car or truck drives over it, or even when the wind blows.

I know that they are designed to flex this way and that if they weren't they would collapse very quickly, but I also know that if the exact right set of sympathetic vibrations are set up in the structure that the entire bridge will start to writhe like a snake on a hotplate and the bridge will tear itself apart.

Anyone want to start a betting pool on how long it will take someone to blame global warming?