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Apartment block crumbles like a
PoK village wiped out
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Pak officials warn of more tremors
Quake rocks Indonesia
Quake intensity 7.6 or 7.8?
Huge mudslide kills 1,400 in Guatemalan village
Mesothelioma kills 953 in Japan
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Apartment block crumbles like a pack of cards
Islamabad, October 8 “We all rushed out of our houses, people were in their pyjamas and many women were without slippers and without their dupatta (muslim scarf),” said Ms Sajida Burki, who lives in one of the towers left standing. “We saw people rushing to a balcony on the other building but while it was still rocking it crashed down and the occupants came down with the mass of the concrete,” she said. Afterwards, dust-covered survivors could be seen pinned under huge concrete slabs and cries for help floated from the wreckage, as mechanical diggers lifted chunks of the destroyed building. “There were screams of women and children, many are still trapped inside and we can hear cries. Its a tragic scene,” Ms Burki said. The privately-built complex is in the upmarket F-10 sector of Islamabad and many foreigners including Japanese, Italians and Arabs rented apartments there because they were considered safe and secure. The complex has about 250 apartments. Emergency services rushed to the scene and people living nearby set up voluntary relief centres in a public park facing the towers, to help people with minor injuries. — AFP
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PoK village wiped out
Islamabad, October 8 The village hit by the quake measuring at least 7.6 on the Richter scale was in the Bagh district of the mountainous Himalayan area, Major General Shaukat Sultan told AFP. “We have reports that an entire village has been wiped out in Bagh district,” he said. “In Kashmir and the northern areas we are receiving reports of severe damage.” “The damage is widespread and we have activated troops and relief work is under way. Helicopters with medical teams have been sent from Rawalpindi and Islamabad.”
— (AFP) |
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Pak officials warn of more tremors
Islamabad, October 8 The magnitude of the earthquake expected in the next couple of days could be around 5 to 6 on the Richter scale, Director General Meteorological Department Qamar-ul-Zaman Chaudhry was quoted by state-run APP news agency as saying. He advised people to stay away from unsafe, tall and stone made buildings in next couple of days. He said the earthquake’s magnitude, according to preliminary estimate, was 7.5 on the Richter scale. The earthquake is being considered as the biggest in the past 100 years. — PTI |
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Quake rocks Indonesia
Jakarta, October 8 The magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck near southern Aceh’s Singkil town and its surrounding areas at 11:30 am (1000
IST), said Muslih, an official at the Meteorology and Geophysics
Agency. Muslih, who uses one name like many Indonesians, said the quake strongly jolted
Singkil, but so far there were no reports of its effects. Andayani, an official at the local district office, said many panicked city-dwellers ran out of their houses when the quake struck. “Thank God, we have not heard of any damage or casualties so far,” Andayani said. The private El Shinta radio reported that the quake also jolted Nias island in North Sumatra province, also causing panic among villagers. Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific ‘Ring of Fire,’ an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific
Basin. Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra Island, was the hardest hit by the December 26 magnitude 9 quake and subsequent tsunami that killed more than 176,000 people in 11 countries, 131,000 of them in Aceh alone.
— (AP) |
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Quake intensity 7.6 or 7.8?
Strasbourg (France), TOKYO: “The earthquake near India measured 7.8 on the Richter scale,” the Japanese meteorological agency official said, adding that there was no fear of tsunami tidal waves. The Japanese meteorological agency monitors jolts in large areas of the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, which endures 20 per cent of the world’s major earthquakes.
— AFP |
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Huge mudslide kills 1,400 in Guatemalan village
Panabaj, Guatemala, October 8 “There are no survivors here. It happened more than 48 hours ago. They are dead,” brigade spokesman Mario Cruz told Reuters. The landslide engulfed the Maya Indian village on Wednesday in a fatal quagmire of mud, rock and trees, in places 12 m thick. “According to the figures they gave me yesterday, approximately 1,400 people have disappeared,” Cruz said. The deaths nearly tripled earlier estimates of the toll of storm-related fatalities in the poor Central American nation. Large swathes of land in Central America and Mexico were flooded and dozens of mountain villages were hit by mudslides after days of downpours.
— Reuters
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Mesothelioma kills 953 in Japan
Tokyo, October 8 The death toll for 2004 rose by 75 from 2003, according to the revised statistics compiled by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. The statistics showed 729 men and 224 women died from mesothelioma last year, up by 74 and by 1, respectively, from the preceding year. In 24 of Japan’s 47 prefectures, the number of deaths from the disease rose to almost double in 2004 from 1995, when the statistics were first tallied. The largest death toll for 2004 was 99 recorded in Osaka, followed by 75 in Hyogo, 69 in Kanagawa, 68 in Tokyo and 55 in Hokkaido. A total of 7,013 deaths from mesothelioma — 5,244 men and 1,769 women — have been recorded since 1995. People are believed to contract mesothelioma 30 to 40 years after inhaling asbestos. Until the early 1990s, around 300,000 tons of asbestos were imported annually for use in construction materials and other applications. As the government has only banned the use of highly toxic blue and brown asbestos in 1995, the number of deaths from mesothelioma is expected to grow in the coming years. — KYODO
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