Natural Disasters News

HONIARA, Solomon Islands : A sharp, magnitude 6.1 earthquake shook the eastern Solomon Islands on Tuesday morning, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injury, emergency officials said.

Reports have come in this morning of a fatal fire in a seventh-story apartment in Arlington.

A fast-growing wildfire outside California's Yosemite National Park has destroyed a dozen homes and charred more than 26,000 acres of dry timber, the state's forestry department said Monday.

Two people are still missing and a flash flood watch has been posted across much of eastern New Mexico today, as the remnants of Hurricane Dolly continue to drench the Southwest.

A fierce fire has destroyed a historic seaside pier in England, quickly reducing the major tourist attraction to a smouldering wreck.

A powerful typhoon struck Taiwan early Monday, closing schools and businesses and grounding domestic and international air traffic.

Typhoon Fung Wong made landfall on the east central coast just before daybreak, packing winds of 105 miles per hour. It is expected to drop up to 36 inches of rain on the central portion of the island and perhaps half of that much on its southern and northern extremities, including the capital of Taipei.

Fung Wong hit Taiwan just a week after tropical storm Kalmaegi killed 19 people and left six others missing on the island.

President Carter has spent his golden years as a global humanitarian: a Nobel laureate pushing for peace in the Middle East, speaking out against the war in Iraq and battling to eradicate deadly diseases in ...

One adult was killed and eight others wounded -- six of them seriously -- when a man opened fire during a children's play Sunday morning at a Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tennessee, police and church members ...

A fast-spreading fire burning near an entrance to Yosemite National Park forced the evacuations of 170 homes and caused officials to cut power to the park.

The fire grew from about 1 1/2 square miles to 25 square miles on Saturday, and was threatening about 2,000 homes, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

About 900 firefighters battled the blaze that burned on both sides of a steep, rugged canyon along the Merced River.

Most of the evacuated homes are in the town of Midpines, located along Highway 140, the thoroughfare that leads to the west entrance of Yosemite National Park.

Jul 26 - Several hundred holiday-makers have been moved from their hotels on the Greek island of Rhodes after forest fires raged for a fifth day.

Sunday, July 27, 2008 BEIJING: Couples whose only child was killed or seriously injured in the May 12 Sichuan province earthquake may have another, winning an exemption from China's strict family planning ...

A hillside burns in Big Sur, Calif., Sunday, July 6, 2008. Firefighters continue to fight the Basin... A hillside burns in Big Sur, Calif., Sunday, July 6, 2008.

A baby's cries led rescuers to the 3-month-old in the wreckage of a home flattened by a tornado that killed his grandmother and blew his grandfather into the yard, officials said Friday.

California fire officials say the thousands of blazes sparked by a massive lightning storm are 98 percent contained after burning for more than a month.

A state official said Friday that a baby's cries led to his rescue after a possible tornado demolished his grandparents' lakeside home.

The infant's grandmother was killed Thursday on Northwood Lake in neighboring Deerfield. State Fire Marshal William Degnan said Friday that firefighters heard the baby's cries and found him in a void between the flattened home's first and second floors.

The body of the grandmother, Brenda Stevens, 57, also was found between the floors, Degnan said.

He said Stevens' husband, Harley, was blown out of the home.

WASHINGTON - Strolling beside the Reflecting Pool with the Lincoln Memorial in the distance, it's easy to overlook a gentle rise in the landscape a few yards to the north.

The torchbearers included soldiers, firefigh ...

A plane taking off from New Delhi's main airport caught fire forcing all 241 passengers to escape through the emergency exit, according to media reports Friday.

The House voted yesterday to triple money to fight AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis around the world, giving new life and new punch to a program credited with saving or prolonging millions of lives in Africa ...

Violent storms in a 25-mile-long swath of central New Hampshire on Thursday destroyed several homes, damaged dozens of others and left at least one person dead, authorities said as police and firefighters went ...