The Morningwood News

International Herald Tribune
By Michael Lewis

It was Aug. 24, 2005, and New Orleans was still charming. Tropical Depression 12 was spinning from the Bahamas toward Florida, but the chances of an American city’s being destroyed by nature were remote. An entire industry of scientists who calculate the likelihood of various natural disasters had set the odds: A storm that destroys $70 billion worth of insured property should strike the United States only once every 100 years. From Miami to San Francisco, the nation’s priciest real estate faced beaches and straddled fault lines; its most vibrant cities occupied its most hazardous land. And virtually no one fully understood the true odds.

Bookmark to:

From Pensacola News Journal
Melanie Payne
The News-Press

Agency to release hurricane aid data

FORT MYERS — More than 650,000 Florida households began receiving recorded calls from the government Tuesday telling them their addresses are being turned over to newspapers.

The calls are part of a $1.1 million initiative to inform people who applied for disaster aid that their information would be released.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency lost a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to Florida’s Gannett newspapers and another paper that sought more details about how the agency distributed hurricane disaster aid.

Bookmark to:

By Theodore Decker
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Others at warehouse heard his cries

A man was fatally crushed this afternoon in a trash compactor at a South Side warehouse yesterday, but how he ended up inside it remains a mystery.

Medics were called about 12:25 p.m. to the Sears Logistics Services warehouse at 3685 Alum Creek Dr. after a co-worker found the man entangled in the compactor.

The man, identified by the Franklin County Coroner’s Office as Gilberto Graza, 37, was pronounced dead at 12:34 p.m.

Bookmark to:

Yahoo 7 News
AAP

A four-year-old boy was stuck in a vending machine for almost an hour in a sportsman’s club south-east of Melbourne.

The boy was trying to retrieve some candy when his arm and shoulder became struck in the vending machine about 5pm (AEST) at Tooradin and District Sportsmans Club, Melbourne Metropolitan Ambulance spokesman Ray Rowe said.

“The boy was trying to fetch some lollies when his arm and shoulder were stuck,” Mr Rowe said.

Bookmark to:

BY MEGGEN LINDSAY
Pioneer Press

Man was on way to hospital to visit fiancee’s daughter, 2; he’s accused of child abuse

Michael Stoner last week found himself at the bottom of the Mississippi River, struggling to swim out of his submerged car, which had plummeted when the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed.

On Monday, the 26-year-old from western Wisconsin was in a county jail cell, accused of gravely injuring his fiancee’s 2-year-old daughter.

Media reports had depicted a heartbreaking saga Wednesday for Stoner and Crystal Manning, who drove 110 miles to meet Manning’s toddler at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota in Minneapolis from their Spooner, Wis., home.

Bookmark to:

MSNBC

As of 2005, 155,144 of the nation’s 592,473 bridges — or 26.2 percent — were rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

Bookmark to:

The Observer
Barbara McMahon in Sydney

Australia’s worst storm in 30 years has lashed the country’s east coast, killing at least seven people and leaving a trail of destruction.

The bodies of a couple and their three young children were recovered yesterday. They died after a section of road collapsed under their car near Somersby in New South Wales, sending the vehicle plunging down an embankment into a swollen river.

An elderly couple died after their car was swept off a bridge by flash floods in the Hunter Valley. A man seen being swept into a storm drain in the town of Newcastle is still missing.

Bookmark to: