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Tag: Building collapses

  • Why Thailand’s deadly construction accidents are sparking outrage and scrutiny

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    BANGKOK — Thailand’s construction industry is under intense scrutiny following a series of high-profile deadly accidents. These include a crane falling onto a moving passenger train this past week and the collapse of an office tower a year ago that killed nearly 100 workers.

    Public concern is particularly high in Bangkok due to the frequent and sometimes fatal construction accidents on major road projects. In the latest case, a construction crane collapsed on Thursday, killing two people, just a day after the train tragedy in which 32 people died.

    Public outrage has centered on Italian-Thai Development, the contractor responsible for both sites where the past week’s accidents occurred. The company, also known as Italthai, was also the joint lead contractor for the 33-story State Audit Office building, which toppled while under construction in March, killing about 100 people.

    It was the only major structure in Thailand to collapse from an earthquake whose epicenter was in Myanmar, more than 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) away.

    Twenty-three individuals and companies were indicted in that case, including Italthai’s President Premchai Karnasuta, on charges including professional negligence causing death and document forgery. Italthai, a major developer in Thailand which has won many government projects, has denied wrongdoing in that case as well as the more recent crane crashes.

    Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has responded to the latest incidents by ordering the Transport Ministry to terminate contracts with, blacklist and prosecute the companies involved. Unfinished projects will be funded by seizing performance bonds and bank guarantees, with the government reserving the right to sue for extra costs. Additionally, a “scorecard” system to keep track of contractors’ performance records should be enforced by early February.

    Investigators can often find the technical cause of accidents, such as human error or equipment failure.

    But critics say construction safety faces broader systemic problems, pointing to lax regulation, poor enforcement, and corruption. A lengthy investigation determined that the building collapse in March, though triggered by an earthquake, was fundamentally caused by flawed structural design and effort to evade regulations.

    “I don’t think Thailand fails in terms of the body of knowledge in engineering or even in the technical aspects,” said Panudech Chumyen, a civil engineering lecturer at Bangkok’s Thammasat University. “I think there’s a failure in our system; there are so many gaps that I don’t know where we should begin to close them.”

    He said the safety challenges range from laxity in law enforcement to red tape and the lack of integration in safety policies among different stakeholders in projects. He also pointed to a shortage of independent assessors without conflicts of interest, which often results in performance reports that do not reflect reality.

    The involvement of Chinese companies in the building collapse, as well as troubled rail and road projects, has also drawn attention.

    Wednesday’s train accident took place on a line that is part of a Thai-Chinese high-speed railway project linking the capital to northeastern Thailand. It is associated with an ambitious plan to connect China with Southeast Asia under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, which has caused controversy in many of its activities around the world, including corruption scandals.

    Concern over Chinese construction practices increased after the collapse last year of the State Audit Office project, in which the Chinese company China Railway No. 10 was co-lead contractor with Italthai. Its Bangkok representative, Zhang Chuanling, was charged with violating Thailand’s Foreign Business Act by using Thai nationals as nominee shareholders to hide Chinese control of its local affiliate.

    Thais were outraged by the collapse. Many took to social media to post criticism and images of the so- called “tofu-dreg projects” or “tofu buildings,” a term used to describe shoddy buildings or infrastructure built too hurriedly or with payoffs to allow them to evade regulatory standards. The phrase was popularized to describe such a damage after the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, China.

    China’s ambassador to Thailand, Zhang Jianwei, said Thursday that China requires its companies to follow the rules when participating in overseas projects, and that Beijing is willing to “guide Chinese companies to actively cooperate with the Thai authorities’ investigation.”

    —

    AP researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed to this report.

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  • What to know about the blast that blew a 20-story chunk out of a Bronx building

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    NEW YORK — An explosion at a New York City apartment building blew off a massive chimney that ran up the side of the high-rise, leaving residents to wait for clearance to return to their apartments as officials investigate what caused the blast.

    A plume of dust covered the block in the aftermath of the explosion, which left a huge pile or bricks around the building’s base and on a nearby playground. The building stood with a 20-story gash in its side.

    As residents and officials wait for more answers, here is what to know about the collapse.

    No injuries or deaths were reported in the collapse of the chimney, which vents exhaust from the boiler room that provides heat to the Bronx building.

    Residents reported hearing a blast just after 8 a.m. Investigators were trying to determine if there was a gas leak or whether something else triggered the explosion, Mayor Eric Adams said.

    Apartments in the building weren’t seriously damaged, though some had their air conditioners ripped from windows by the falling bricks. Firefighters sifted through the rubble and sent rescue dogs bounding over the pile to look for any victims, but found none.

    “We avoided a major disaster here,” Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson said at a news conference.

    Still, some apartments were evacuated as a precaution while inspectors assessed the damage.

    The building was part of New York City’s huge and aging public housing system. Buildings in the system average roughly 60 years old, according to the New York Housing Authority. The complex of buildings where the collapse occurred was built in 1966.

    A 2023 Physical Needs Assessment conducted by the city’s housing authority estimated that the Mitchel Housing complex would need nearly $726 million in repairs over the next 20-years. The highest infrastructure need was listed as “Heating.”

    Around half a million New Yorkers live in the aging buildings run by housing authority, which is the country’s largest public housing system. Tenants have complained for decades about dangerous or unsanitary conditions, including rodents, mold, and heat and hot water outages.

    In 2019, a federal monitor was appointed to address chronic problems like lead paint, mold and lack of heat. When he wrapped his five-year term in 2024, the monitor, Bart Schwartz, noted that the overarching issue for residents remained the “poor physical state of NYCHA’s buildings.”

    City officials are investigating what went wrong.

    The city’s Emergency Management Commissioner, Zach Iscol, said building inspectors are checking the building’s foundations and the apartments to make sure they are sound.

    “Right now we’re kicking into the next phase of this, which is recovery,” Iscol said, adding that the city was working to restore heat and hot water services to the building. The mayor said the building will be repaired.

    Iscol said that the city opened up a reception center for impacted residents to receive resources like food and other necessities.

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  • Residents of NYC public housing tower escape unharmed after massive chimney collapses

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    NEW YORK — A massive brick chimney running 20 stories up the side of a New York City apartment building collapsed after an explosion Wednesday, sending tons of debris plummeting to the ground.

    The falling bricks buried a sidewalk, landed on the playground of the public housing building and sent a cloud of dust billowing over the block in the Bronx, but amazingly did not injure anyone.

    “We avoided a major disaster here,” said Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson at a news conference.

    Mayor Eric Adams confirmed no injuries or deaths were reported in the collapse of the chimney, which rose up the side of the building from the boiler room. Authorities learned of an explosion just after 8 a.m. and were trying to determine if there had been a gas leak.

    The mayor noted that Oct. 1 is typically the first day that heating systems are turned on for the season.

    One resident, Merlyn Olivo, said she was in her apartment when she heard a large noise like a bomb.

    “And the building was shaking a lot. I was so scared,” she said, feeling like it was “the end of the world.”

    Olivo heard another loud noise and then her sister-in-law, who lives across the street, told her to get out of the building because of the collapse outside. Luckily, her daughters had left for school.

    The mound of debris was littered with air conditioners, which appeared to have been ripped out of apartment windows by the falling bricks. News helicopter footage showed a rescue dog bounding over the huge pile of bricks at the bottom of the building, sniffing for anyone who might be buried under the rubble.

    Olivo didn’t know when she might get back into the building, or whether she wanted to.

    “I don’t feel safe to go in there,” she said. “I’m scared, super scared.”

    City officials in charge of public buildings said they were investigating to see what went wrong, and Department of Buildings Commissioner James Oddo said he believed work was being done on the boiler.

    Some apartments were being evacuated as a precaution and services for residents were being made available at a nearby community center, officials said.

    The city’s Emergency Management Commissioner, Zach Iscol, said building inspectors are checking the building’s foundations and the apartments in the impacted area to make sure they are sound. The mayor said the building will be repaired.

    Around half a million New Yorkers live in aging buildings run by the city’s housing authority, known as NYCHA, which is the largest in the nation.

    Many of the properties date back to the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. In 2019, a federal monitor was appointed to address chronic problems like lead paint, mold and lack of heat. When he wrapped his five-year term in 2024, the monitor, Bart Schwartz, noted that the overarching issue for residents remained the “poor physical state of NYCHA’s buildings.”

    ___

    Associated Press writers Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, Michael Hill in Albany, New York, and Bruce Shipkowski in Toms River, New Jersey, contributed.

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  • 5 homes collapse into the surf of the Outer Banks as hurricanes rumble in Atlantic

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    Five unoccupied houses along North Carolina’s Outer Banks collapsed into the ocean Tuesday as Hurricanes Humberto and Imelda rumbled in the Atlantic, the National Park Service said, marking the latest private beachfront structures to fall into the surf there in recent years.

    The homes, once propped on high stilts, collapsed in the afternoon in Buxton, a community on the string of islands that make up the Outer Banks, said Mike Barber, a spokesperson for the park service.

    No injures were reported, the Cape Hatteras National Seashore said in a post on social media.

    In videos shown by the local station 13News Now, homes teetered on stilts battered by the waves before plunging into the surf. The shoreline was clogged with debris, two-by-fours, cushions and an entire home as wave after wave rolled in from the Atlantic.

    The post said that more collapses were possible given the ocean conditions, and urged visitors to avoid Tuesday’s sites, including areas several miles south to stay clear of debris.

    North Carolina’s coast is almost entirely made up of narrow, low-lying barrier islands that have been eroding for years as the sea level rises. Seventeen privately owned houses have collapsed on Seashore beaches since 2020, the park service said.

    The first 15 were north of Buxton in Rodanthe, but a Buxton home fell into the surf two weeks ago.

    The threat to these structures often builds when storms affect the region, as is the case with the two latest hurricanes, even as they headed further out in the Atlantic.

    Portions of eastern North Carolina were subject to coastal flood advisories and warnings, the National Weather Service said, while dangerous surf conditions were expected in the area through the rest of the week.

    Ocean overwash on Tuesday also prompted the state Transportation Department to close a portion of North Carolina Highway 12 on Ocracoke Island. The ferry connecting Ocracoke and Hatteras islands also was suspended Tuesday, the department said.

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  • Strong earthquake kills 31 people in a central Philippine region hit by deadly storm just days ago

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    MANILA, Philippines — An offshore earthquake of magnitude 6.9 collapsed walls of houses and buildings late Tuesday in a central Philippine province, killing at least 31 people, injuring many others and sending residents scrambling out of homes into darkness as the intense shaking cut off power, officials said.

    The epicenter of the earthquake, which was set off by movement in a local fault at a depth of 5 kilometers (3 miles), was about 19 kilometers (12 miles) northeast of Bogo, a coastal city of about 90,000 people in Cebu province where at least 14 residents died, disaster-mitigation officer Rex Ygot told The Associated Press by telephone.

    The death toll in Bogo was expected to rise. Workers were trying to transport a backhoe to hasten search and rescue efforts in a cluster of shanties in a mountain village hit by a landslide and boulders, he said.

    “It’s hard to move in the area because there are hazards,” Glenn Ursal, another disaster-mitigation officer told the AP, adding some survivors were brought to a hospital.

    At least 12 people died when they were hit by falling ceilings and walls of their houses, some while sleeping, in Medellin town near Bogo, Gemma Villamor, who heads the town’s disaster-mitigation office, told the AP.

    In San Remigio town, also near Bogo, five people, consisting of three coast guard personnel, a firefighter and a child, were killed separately by collapsing walls while trying to flee to safety from a basketball game that was disrupted by the quake, the town’s vice mayor, Alfie Reynes, told the DZMM radio network.

    Reynes appealed for food and water, saying San Remigio’s water system was damaged by the earthquake.

    Aside from houses in Bogo, the quake damaged a fire station and concrete and asphalt roads, firefighter Rey Cañete said.

    “We were in our barracks to retire for the day when the ground started to shake and we rushed out but stumbled to the ground because of the intense shaking,” Cañete told The AP, adding that he and three other firemen sustained cuts and bruises.

    A concrete wall in their fire station collapsed, Cañete said. He and fellow firefighters provided first aid to at least three residents, who were injured by falling debris and collapsed walls.

    Hundreds of terrified residents gathered in the darkness in a grassy field near the fire station and refused to return home hours after the earthquake struck in Bogo. Several business establishments visibly sustained damages and the asphalt and concrete roads where they passed had deep cracks, Cañete said, adding that an old Catholic church in Daanbantayan town near Bogo was also damaged.

    Cebu Gov. Pamela Baricuatro said the extent of the damage and injuries in Bogo and outlying towns in the northern section of the province would not be known until daytime. “It could be worse than we think,” he said in a video message posted on Facebook.

    The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology briefly issued a tsunami warning and advised people to stay away from the coastlines in Cebu and in the nearby provinces of Leyte and Biliran due to possible waves of up to 1 meter (3 feet).

    Teresito Bacolcol, director of the institute, said the tsunami warning was later lifted with no unusual waves being monitored.

    Cebu and other provinces were still recovering from a tropical storm that battered the central region on Friday, leaving at least 27 people dead mostly due to drownings and falling trees, knocking out power in entire cities and towns and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.

    The Philippines, one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, is often hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of seismic faults around the ocean. The archipelago is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms each year.

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  • Another beachfront stilt house collapses into the surf on the Outer Banks

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    BUXTON, N.C. — A beachfront stilt home along the Outer Banks in North Carolina has collapsed into the surf, bringing the total number of houses claimed by the Atlantic Ocean to 12 in the past five years.

    The two-story, wood-shingled home at the north end of Hatteras Island collapsed Tuesday afternoon, littering the sand with nail-studded debris. The house was unoccupied, said Mike Barber, a spokesman for the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

    “Seashore staff are out today, cleaning up the beach to the south of the collapse site,” Barber said in an email Wednesday. He said the homeowner has also hired a contractor to “work primarily near the house collapse site to remove the bulk of the remaining house structure and nearby debris associated with the collapse.”

    The previous 11 home collapses since May 2020 were all in the tiny village of Rodanthe, the eastern-most point in North Carolina, and made famous by novelist Nicholas Sparks. During the state’s recent brush with Hurricane Erin, many locals were watching two beachfront houses there, but they survived the surf.

    The latest house to succumb was less than a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the famed Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which was moved 2,900 feet (884 meters) inland in 1999 to save it from erosion.

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  • Volcanic eruption burns houses in Indonesia, killing at least 6 people

    Volcanic eruption burns houses in Indonesia, killing at least 6 people

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    MAUMERE, Indonesia — Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency said Monday that at least six people have died as a series of volcanic eruptions widens on the remote island of Flores.

    The eruption at Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki just after midnight on Monday spewed thick brownish ash as high as 2,000 meters (6,500 feet) into the air and hot ashes hit a nearby village, burning down several houses including a convent of Catholic nuns, said Firman Yosef, an official at the Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki monitoring post.

    The Disaster Management Agency lowered the known death toll from an earlier report of nine, saying it had received updated information from local authorities. It said that information was still being collected about the extent of casualties and damage, as local media reports said more people were buried in collapsed houses.

    Authorities also raised the danger level and widened the danger zone for Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki on Monday, following a series of eruptions that began last week.

    The country’s volcano monitoring agency increased the volcano’s alert status to the highest level and more than doubled the exclusion zone to a 7-kilometer (4.3-mile) radius after midnight on Monday as eruptions became more frequent.

    The agency said at least 10,000 people have been affected by the eruption in Wulanggitang District, in the six nearby villages of Pululera, Nawokote, Hokeng Jaya, Klatanlo, Boru and Boru Kedang.

    In Ile Bura District, 4 villages were affected, namely Dulipali Village, Nobo, Nurabelen and Riang Rita, while in Titehena District it affected four villages, namely Konga Village, Kobasoma, Bokang Wolomatang and Watowara.

    He said volcanic material was thrown up to 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) from its crater, blanketeing nearby villages and towns with tons of volcanic debris and forcing residents to flee.

    A nun in Hokeng village died and another was missing, said Agusta Palma, the head of the Saint Gabriel Foundation that oversees convents on the majority-Catholic island.

    “Our nuns ran out in panic under a rain of volcanic ash in the darkness,” Palma said.

    Photos and videos circulated on social media showed tons of volcanic debris covering houses up to their rooftops in villages like Hokeng, where hot volcanic material set fire to houses.

    It’s Indonesia’s second volcanic eruption in as many weeks. West Sumatra province’s Mount Marapi, one of the country’s most active volcanos, erupted on Oct. 27, spewing thick columns of ash at least three times and blanketing nearby villages with debris, but no casualties were reported. ___ Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini and Edna Tarigan contributed to this report.

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  • Harris calls out Trump for hurricane misinformation

    Harris calls out Trump for hurricane misinformation

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    GREENVILLE, N.C. — Kamala Harris used an appearance Sunday before a largely Black church audience in battleground North Carolina to call out Donald Trump for spreading misinformation about the government’s hurricane response. President Joe Biden visited Florida for the second time this month to survey storm damage.

    Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, did not speak Trump’s name, but he is most prominent among those promoting false claims about the Biden administration’s response to Hurricanes Milton and Helene. Florida was in the path of both storms, with Helene also hitting North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, while Milton headed for the open Atlantic.

    The vice president spoke at the Koinonia Christian Center about the “heroes” all around who are helping residents without regard to political affiliation.

    “Yet, church, there are some who are not acting in the spirit of community, and I am speaking of these who have been literally not telling the truth, lying about people who are working hard to help the folks in need, spreading disinformation when the truth and facts are required,” Harris said.

    “The problem with this, beyond the obvious, is it’s making it harder, then, to get people life-saving information if they’re led to believe they cannot trust,” she said. “And that’s the pain of it all, which is the idea that those who are in need have somehow been convinced that the forces are working against them in a way that they would not seek aid.”

    Harris said they are trying “to gain some advantage for themselves, to play politics with other people’s heart break, and it is unconscionable,” she said. “Now is not a time to incite fear. It is not right to make people feel alone.”

    “That is not what leaders, as we know, do in crisis,” she said.

    Trump made a series of false claims after Helene struck in late September, including saying that Washington was intentionally withholding aid from Republicans in need across the Southeast. The former president falsely claimed the Federal Emergency Management Agency had run out of money to help them because it was spent on programs to help immigrants who are in the United States illegally.

    He pressed that argument on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” saying the White House response was “absolutely terrible” and repeating the claim about FEMA’s dollars. “It came out from there and everybody knew it,” Trump said in an interview that was taped Thursday and broadcast Sunday.

    Before Harris spoke in church, Biden was surveying hurricane damage on a helicopter flight between Tampa and St. Pete Beach on the Gulf Coast. From the air, he saw the torn-up roof of Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team. On the ground, the president saw waterlogged household furnishings piled up outside flooded homes. Some houses had collapsed.

    The president said he was thankful that Milton was not as bad as officials had anticipated, but that it still was a “cataclysmic” event for many people, including those who lost irreplaceable personal items. He also praised the first responders, some of whom had come from Canada.

    “It’s in moments like this we come together to take care of each other, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans,” Biden said after he was briefed by federal, state and local officials, and met some residents and responders. “We are one United States, one United States.”

    Harris opened her second day in North Carolina by speaking at the Christian center in Greenville, part of her campaign’s “Souls to the Polls” effort to help turn out Black churchgoers before the Nov. 5 election.

    The vice president later spoke to roughly 7,000 supporters at a Sunday afternoon rally at East Carolina University’s arena, suggesting that Trump’s team has stopped him from releasing medical records or debating her again because they might be “afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable.”

    The North Carolina appearances mark the start of a week that will find Harris working to shore up support among Black voters, a key constituency for the Democratic Party. She is counting on Black turnout in competitive states such as North Carolina to help her defeat Trump, who has focused on energizing men of all races and has tried to make inroads with Black men in particular.

    On Tuesday, she will appear in Detroit for a live conversation with Charlamagne tha God, a prominent Black media personality.

    Black registered voters have overwhelmingly favorable views of Harris and negative views of Trump despite his attempts to appeal to nonwhite voters, according to a recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. But the poll also shows that many Black voters aren’t sure whether Harris would improve the country overall or better their own lives.

    In Florida, which Biden had visited the Big Bend region on Oct. 3 after Helene struck, the president announced $612 million for six Department of Energy projects in hurricane-affected areas to bolster the region’s electric grid. The money includes $47 million for Gainesville Regional Utilities and $47 million for Switched Source to partner with Florida Power and Light.

    With a little more than three weeks before the election, the hurricanes have added another dimension to the closely contested presidential race.

    Trump has said the Biden administration’s storm response was lacking, particularly in western North Carolina after Helene. Biden and Harris have hammered Trump for promoting falsehoods about the federal response.

    Biden said Trump was “not singularly” to blame for the spread of misinformation but that he has the “biggest mouth.”

    “They blame me for everything. It’s OK,” Trump told Fox.

    Biden has pressed for Congress to act quickly to make sure the Small Business Administration and FEMA have the money they need to get through hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30 in the Atlantic. He said Friday that Milton alone had caused an estimated $50 billion in damages.

    Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whose department oversees FEMA, said the hurricane season is far from over and there are other natural disasters for which the agency must ready.

    “We don’t know what’s coming tomorrow, whether it’s another hurricane, a tornado, a fire, an earthquake. We have to be ready. and it is not good government to be dependent on a day-to-day existence as opposed to appropriate planning,” Mayorkas said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

    House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said there was plenty of time and that lawmakers would address the funding issue when Congress comes back into session after the Nov. 5 election.

    “We’ll provide the additional resources,” Johnson told CBS.

    Milton made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday evening. At least 10 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of residents remain without power. Officials say the toll could have been worse if not for widespread evacuations. ee.

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    By JOSH BOAK, AAMER MADHANI and DARLENE SUPERVILLE – Associated Press

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  • A Tennessee nurse and his dog died trying to save a man from floods driven by Hurricane Helene

    A Tennessee nurse and his dog died trying to save a man from floods driven by Hurricane Helene

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    As the Hurricane Helene-driven waters rose around the Nolichucky River in Tennessee, Boone McCrary, his girlfriend and his chocolate lab headed out on his fishing boat to search for a man who was stranded by floodwaters that had leveled his home. But the thick debris in the water jammed the boat’s motor, and without power, it slammed into a bridge support and capsized.

    McCrary and his dog Moss never made it out of the water alive.

    Search teams found McCrary’s boat and his dog’s body two days later, but it took four days to find McCrary, an emergency room nurse whose passion was being on his boat in that river. His girlfriend, Santana Ray, held onto a branch for hours before rescuers reached her.

    David Boutin, the man McCrary had set out to rescue, was distraught when he later learned McCrary had died trying to save him.

    “I’ve never had anyone risk their life for me,” Boutin told The Associated Press. “From what I hear that was the way he always been. He’s my guardian angel, that’s for sure.”

    The 46-year-old recalled how the force of the water swept him out his front door and ripped his dog Buddy — “My best friend, all I have” — from his arms. Boutin was rescued by another team after clinging to tree branches in the raging river for six hours. Buddy is still missing, and Boutin knows he couldn’t have survived.

    McCrary was one of 215 people killed by Hurricane Helene’s raging waters and falling trees across six states — Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia — and was among a group of first responders who perished while trying to save others. The hurricane caused significant damage in nearby Unicoi County, where flooding swept away 11 workers at an plastics factory and forced a rescue mission at an Erwin, Tennessee, hospital.

    McCrary, an avid hunter and fisherman, spent his time cruising the waterways that snake around Greeneville, Tennessee. When the hurricane hit, the 32-year-old asked friends on Facebook if anyone needed help, said his sister, Laura Harville. That was how he learned about Boutin.

    McCrary, his girlfriend and Moss the dog launched into a flooded neighborhood at about 7 p.m. on Sept. 27 and approached Boutin’s location, but the debris-littered floodwaters clogged the boat’s jet motor. Despite pushing and pulling the throttle, McCrary couldn’t clear the junk and slammed into the bridge about two hours into the rescue attempt.

    “I got the first phone call at 8:56 p.m. and I was a nervous wreck,” Harville said. She headed to the bridge and started walking the banks.

    Harville organized hundreds of volunteers who used drones, thermal cameras, binoculars and hunting dogs to scour the muddy banks, fending off copperhead snakes, trudging through knee-high muck and fighting through tangled branches. Harville collected items that carried McCrary’s scent — a pillowcase, sock and insoles from his nursing shoes — and stuffed them into mason jars for the canines to sniff.

    On Sunday, a drone operator spotted the boat. They found Moss dead nearby, but there was no sign of McCrary.

    Searchers had no luck on Monday, “but on Tuesday they noticed vultures flying,” Harville said. That was how they found McCrary’s body, about 21 river miles (33 kilometers) from the bridge where the boat capsized, she said.

    The force of the floodwaters carried McCrary under two other bridges, under the highway and over the Nolichucky Dam, she said. The Tennessee Valley Authority said about 1.3 million gallons (4.9 million liters) of water per second was flowing over the dam on the night McCrary was swept away, more than double the flow rate of the dam’s last regulated release nearly a half-century ago.

    Boutin, 46, isn’t sure where he will go next. He is staying with his son for a few days and then hopes to get a hotel voucher.

    He didn’t learn about McCrary’s fate until the day after he was rescued.

    “When the news hit, I didn’t know how to take it,” Boutin told the AP. “I wish I could thank him for giving his life for me.”

    Dozens of McCrary’s coworkers at Greenville Community Hospital have posted tributes to him, recalling his kindness and compassion and desire to help others. He “was adamant about living life to the fullest and making sure along the way that you didn’t forget your fellow man or woman and that you helped each other,” Harville said.

    McCrary’s last TikTok video posted before the hurricane shows him speeding along the surface of rushing muddy water to the tune, “Wanted Dead or Alive.” He wrote a message along the bottom that read:

    “Some people have asked if I had a ‘death wish.’ The truth is that I have a ‘life wish.’ I have a need for feeling the life running through my veins. One thing about me, I may be ‘crazy,’ Perhaps a little reckless at times, but when the time comes to put me in the ground, you can say I lived it all the way.”

    ___

    Bellisle reported from Seattle.

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  • For families of Key Bridge collapse victims, a search for justice begins

    For families of Key Bridge collapse victims, a search for justice begins

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    BALTIMORE — Years after immigrating to the U.S. and settling in the Baltimore area, Maria del Carmen Castellón was working toward a new chapter of her family’s American dream, hoping to expand her successful food truck business into a Salvadoran restaurant.

    Her husband, Miguel Luna, was right there beside her. Years of welding and construction jobs had begun taking a toll on his health, but he kept working hard because he couldn’t afford to retire yet. He was filling potholes on an overnight shift when disaster struck. A massive container ship lost power and slammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, sending Luna and five other men plunging to their deaths as the steel span collapsed into the water below.

    Several months later, Luna’s family is still struggling to construct a future without him.

    “That day, a wound was opened in my heart that will never heal, something I would not wish on anyone,” Castellón said in Spanish, speaking through a translator at a news conference Tuesday.

    She appeared alongside other victims’ relatives and attorneys to announce their plans to take legal action against the owner and manager of the Dali, arguing the companies acted with negligence and ignored problems on the ship before the March 26 collapse.

    A last-minute mayday call from the ship’s pilot allowed police officers to stop traffic to the bridge, but they didn’t have time to alert the road work crew. Most of the men were sitting in their construction vehicles during a break and had no warning. One survived falling from the bridge by manually opening the window of his truck and climbing out into the frigid waters of the Patapsco River.

    Following the disaster, salvage divers worked around the clock to recover the victims’ bodies. The underwater wreckage blocked the main channel into the Port of Baltimore for months, disrupting East Coast shipping routes and putting many longshoremen temporarily out of work.

    All six of the victims were Latino immigrants who came to the U.S. seeking better-paying jobs and opportunities for their families. Most had lived in the country for many years, including Luna, who grew up in El Salvador. He left behind five children.

    Luna would often go straight from a construction shift to helping at the food truck, where his wife served up pupusas and other Salvadoran dishes. The business attracted a diverse clientele and had a loyal following in their close-knit Latino community south of Baltimore.

    Castellón said the business symbolized their shared vision for the future. Just days before his death, Luna surprised her with a visit to the storefront they hoped to rent.

    “Every mile driven in that food truck, every vegetable chopped took us a step closer to our dreams,” she said.

    She recalled how he stopped by the food truck before heading to work the last time. She gave him dinner and he gave her a kiss.

    In seeking justice for her family, Castellón said, she hopes to prevent future tragedies by advocating for safer working conditions. She wants more robust protections for immigrant workers who too often find themselves taking dangerous jobs no one else is willing to do. She displayed a pair of her husband’s old welding uniforms, noting holes in the fabric caused by flying sparks.

    Gustavo Torres, executive director of the Maryland-based advocacy group CASA, said it should come as no surprise that the victims of the collapse were immigrant workers. He said their suffering must not be brushed under the rug by corporate interests.

    “No financial loss can compare to the loss of human life,” Torres said at the news conference, calling the victims “six irreplaceable souls” whose loved ones are trying to pick up the pieces after their worlds were destroyed in an instant.

    The Dali is owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and managed by Synergy Marine Group, both of Singapore. The companies filed a court petition days after the collapse seeking to limit their legal liability, a routine procedure for cases litigated under U.S. maritime law. The joint filing seeks to cap their liability at roughly $43.6 million in what could become the most expensive marine casualty case in history.

    Darrell Wilson, a spokesperson for the ship’s owner, said the victims’ upcoming challenge was anticipated and noted there is a Sept. 24 deadline for such filings in the case. He declined to comment further on the pending litigation.

    Several other interested parties, including city officials and local businesses, have already filed opposing claims accusing the companies of negligence. Filings on behalf of the victims and their families are expected in coming days.

    Preliminary findings from a National Transportation Safety Board investigation show that the Dali experienced a series of electrical issues before and after leaving the Port of Baltimore. The ship was destined for Sri Lanka when it experienced a power blackout and lost steering at the worst possible moment. The FBI launched an investigation into the circumstances leading up to the crash.

    A plan is underway to rebuild the bridge, but it could take years.

    Meanwhile, Castellón said she plans to continue pursuing her dream of opening a restaurant — now in her husband’s honor.

    “I know he is up there watching down on me, celebrating all of the victories with me,” she said. “I will continue to make him proud.”

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  • Part of a hotel on Germany’s Mosel River collapses, killing 2 and trapping others for hours

    Part of a hotel on Germany’s Mosel River collapses, killing 2 and trapping others for hours

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    BERLIN (AP) — Part of a hotel in a winemaking town on the Mosel River in western Germany collapsed, authorities said, leaving two people dead and trapping seven others in the wreckage overnight. The last person was rescued some 24 hours later, on Wednesday night.

    Fourteen people were in the hotel in Kroev when one story of the building collapsed at about 11 p.m. on Tuesday. Police said five were able to get out of the building unhurt because they were not in the part that collapsed, but others were trapped.

    Rescuers were able to contact some of them by cellphone. But getting to them proved difficult because the collapse of one story left two ceilings lying on top of each other, according to Joerg Teusch, fire and disaster protection inspector for the Bernkastel-Wittlich district.

    “We have to proceed with caution because the entire building structure is like a house of cards. If we pull on the wrong card, this building is sure to collapse,” he said as rescuers worked through the wreckage on Wednesday morning.

    A woman who was among the seven trapped was the last to be rescued Wednesday night, police said.

    Michael Ebling, the top security official in Rhineland-Palatinate state, where Kroev is located, said the fact that so many people could be rescued “stands out in view of this event, the damage and the dimensions one can see with the naked eye.”

    Among the first to be saved was a 2-year-old child, who was pulled out unharmed, and the child’s mother, who was rescued with minor injuries. The child’s father was rescued later.

    “We all had tears in our eyes and I still feel the same now. The whole story has a very emotional component, because when we arrived, when we looked at the building, it looked like we weren’t taking anyone out,” Teusch said at a news conference.

    Teusch said the cause of the structural collapse is yet to be determined.

    The original hotel building is believed to date back to the 17th century, but additional stories were added around 1980, he said. He added that work was being done on the building on Tuesday, but it wasn’t clear whether there was any link between that and the collapse.

    Regional public broadcaster SWR said that witnesses reported hearing a bang and seeing a large cloud of dust at the time of the collapse.

    The rescue operation involved 250 emergency workers, including drone specialists, as well as rescue dogs.

    “There was no option (to use) stairs, house entrances, doors or windows, because they were simply no longer there,” Teusch said.

    Authorities also evacuated 21 people from three buildings immediately around the damaged hotel. The hotel guests at the time of the collapse were largely German, apart from a Dutch family.

    Two Germans, a man and a woman, died. Rescuers were able to recover one of the bodies but police said they would have to remove a section of the building on Thursday to recover the other.

    Kroev is located along a picturesque section of the Mosel near the larger resort town of Traben-Trarbach. It has about 2,200 inhabitants.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, Poland, contributed to this report.

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  • Part of a hotel on Germany’s Mosel River collapses. 2 people are dead and others are trapped

    Part of a hotel on Germany’s Mosel River collapses. 2 people are dead and others are trapped

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    BERLIN — Part of a hotel in a winemaking town on the Mosel River in western Germany collapsed, leaving two people dead and several others trapped in the wreckage, authorities said Wednesday.

    Fourteen people were in the hotel in Kroev when one story of the building collapsed at about 11 p.m. Tuesday. Police said five were able to get out of the building unhurt because they weren’t in the part that collapsed. But others were trapped.

    An operation is ongoing to try to save them. But reaching them is proving to be difficult, because the collapse of one story left two ceilings lying on top of each other, according to Joerg Teusch, fire and disaster protection inspector for the Bernkastel-Wittlich district.

    He said at a news conference that two people had died.. He said the cause of the structural collapse hasn’t yet been determined.

    Regional public broadcaster SWR said that witnesses reported hearing a bang and seeing a large cloud of dust at the time of the collapse.

    “There was no option (to use) stairs, house entrances, doors or windows, because they were simply no longer there,” Teusch said at a news conference.

    “We have to proceed with caution because the entire building structure is like a house of cards. If we pull on the wrong card, this building is sure to collapse.”

    Authorities evacuated 31 people from the area immediately around the damaged building.

    Police said that about 250 emergency workers, including drone specialists, were at the scene, as well as rescue dogs.

    Kroev is on a picturesque section of the Mosel near the larger resort town of Traben-Trarbach. It has about 2,200 inhabitants.

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  • Body found in Phoenix warehouse 3 days after a storm partially collapsed the roof

    Body found in Phoenix warehouse 3 days after a storm partially collapsed the roof

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    PHOENIX (AP) — Authorities believe they have found the body of a Phoenix warehouse worker missing for three days after a micro cloud burst caused the roof of a commercial building to partially collapse.

    Phoenix police said they’re waiting for the Maricopa County medical examiner’s office to confirm the victim’s identity before his name is released.

    The search for the 22-year-old man began around 10 p.m. Wednesday after a brief, violent storm hit the Freeport warehouse.

    City fire rescue crews worked 12-hour shifts until the body was located around 1 p.m. Saturday.

    “This is not the outcome we wanted,” Phoenix Fire Department Captain Todd Keller said.

    Keller said the missing man had been working in the warehouse for about a year.

    Authorities said he was the only one who didn’t make it out of the building when the severe storm hit the Phoenix area.

    The storm packed gusts up to 70 mph, knocking down trees and power lines and leaving thousands of Phoenix residents without electricity for hours.

    “National Weather Service did say that a microburst did come in, lifted this roof off and we do have a partial roof collapse,” Keller said.

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  • Kyiv hit with heaviest bombardment in months

    Kyiv hit with heaviest bombardment in months

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    KYIV, Ukraine — The sky was crystal clear as Oksana Femeniuk took her daughter to Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital for routine dialysis.

    Around 10 a.m, air-raid sirens blared. Sixteen-year old Solomiia was undergoing the treatment that required her to sit still for up to five hours and could not be interrupted. Her mother had to flee to the hospital’s basement shelter without her.

    Hurtling toward them at 435 to 497 miles per hour was a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile, according to Ukraine’s security service, the United Nations and open-source investigators. Using painstaking trial and error, Russia has modified the weapon over the last year to defeat Ukraine’s air defense systems by flying at low altitude and hugging terrain, according to military analysts.

    Minutes later the world turned black. Neither the patient nor her mother would remember the moment the missile struck. But they remember the chaos that ensued after regaining consciousness: Femeniuk thought she would choke from the fumes. Solomiia woke to find the ceiling crumpled over her small body.

    In an operating room in the next building, pediatric surgeon Oleh Holubchenko had been preparing to operate on an infant with a congenital facial defect. Covered in shrapnel wounds, he realized that the blast wave had catapulted him to the other side of the operating room.

    The toll of Russia’s heaviest bombardment of Kyiv in almost four months — one of the deadliest of the war — shows the devastating human cost of Russia’s improved targeting tactics.

    The hospital’s director general, Volodymyr Zhovnir, stood at the scene of the explosion, eclipsed by the towering building with shattered windows. No children died, thank God, he said, but they lost a dear colleague, Dr. Svitlana Lukianchuk.

    Lukianchuk was hurrying along the children and parents from the toxicology building, which would later be destroyed, to the shelter. She returned to empty out more rooms. and then, the explosion, Femeniuk remembers.

    Solomiia was born with chronic renal failure, making hemodialysis part of her life.

    After the full-scale invasion, Femeniuk left her three children and husband behind in the small village near Rivne, in western Ukraine, to live in the capital so the girl could access the treatment she needs.

    Leaving her daughter during the air raid was a difficult decision. But the 34-year old mother had to project strength, she said. Her daughter was being brave by staying, knowing she could not interrupt her treatment. Femeniuk could not reveal to her daughter that she was actually terrified.

    As the air-raid siren blared, the girl was on her phone watching videos. Given how long dialysis can take, she tends to get bored.

    She awoke to find the ceiling in front of her eyes and the head doctor tending to her covered in blood and on her knees.

    The girl’s first impulse was to put her hands up to the ceiling to keep tons of concrete and debris from crushing her small body. She was trapped with a few other patients and hospital staff, and they were safely pulled out of the rubble.

    “The first thing I thought about was my mom, if she is alive or not. Then I thought: ‘Am I alive or not?’” she said, her fingers painted with small flowers, fidgeting as she spoke. Mother and daughter recounted their experience from the Kyiv City Children’s Clinical Hospital, where Solomiia was transferred.

    In the shelter, the exit was blocked and the fire blazing outside soon invaded the small space. Femeniuk called her husband, telling him she didn’t know if she would survive and she didn’t know if Solomiia was still alive.

    Eventually, those taking shelter managed to push their way out and to their horror they realized that the very building they had been in, that some of their children had been in, was hit. Femeniuk began picking up pieces of rubble in panic, calling out her daughter’s name. Then she saw the nurse who had been assisting them, covered in blood.

    Solomiia had been evacuated after the blast, the nurse said. She was safe.

    Meanwhile, in the operating room, it took Holubchenko fifteen minutes to realize that he was covered in shrapnel wounds. The doctor was too busy evacuating patients, starting with the 5-month old whose surgery was eventually completed elsewhere.

    “My colleagues and I who were in the operating room received shrapnel wounds to the body, the face, back, arms and legs,” he said. “There are glass windows in the operating room, the doors. All of it was just blown off, all destroyed.”

    In the hospital ward, he looked out to the street from a shattered window.

    “There used to be a wall here,” he said.

    When he went outside and realized the toxicology building had collapsed, his mind reverted to the times he would have consultations with patients there and check-ups. Now half the building was caved in.

    But he didn’t dwell on the thought for long and joined a line of volunteers, health workers and emergency crews removing debris, piece by piece.

    “Everyone wanted to do something,” he said.

    The assault hit seven of the city’s 10 districts. The strike on the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital, where 627 children were being cared for at the time, drew ire from Ukrainian officials and the international community. Two adults were killed, including a female doctor, and 50 were injured.

    Russia denied responsibility for the hospital strike, insisting it doesn’t attack civilian targets in Ukraine despite abundant evidence to the contrary, including AP reporting. Moscow insisted it was a Ukrainian air defense missile that struck the hospital.

    Artem Starosiek, the founder of the Ukainian group Molfar, which analyzes events based on open-source evidence, said there were overwhelming signs of Russia’s culpability. The missile used in the attack bears the characteristics of the Kh-101, he said, pointing to the shape of the body, tail and location of the wings, he said.

    That it was a clear blue day also played an important role, he said. Launching the modified missile during a sunny day is optimal for the weapon’s optoelectronic system to recognize the target correctly, he said.

    “The force of the warhead’s explosion is important; an air-defense missile could not have caused such consequences,” he said.

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    By SAMYA KULLAB – Associated Press

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  • Earthquakes in north-central Japan collapse 5 homes that were damaged in deadly January quake

    Earthquakes in north-central Japan collapse 5 homes that were damaged in deadly January quake

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    TOKYO — Earthquakes early Monday again struck Japan’s north-central region of Ishikawa, still recovering from the destruction left by a powerful quake on Jan. 1, but the latest shaking caused no major damage.

    A magnitude 5.9 temblor on the northern top of the Noto Peninsula was followed minutes later by a 4.8 and then several smaller quakes within the next two hours, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. There was no tsunami.

    Five houses that had been damaged in the Jan. 1 quake collapsed in Wajiima city, but no major damage or life-threatening injuries were reported, according to Ishikawa prefecture. A quake alarm in the town of Tsubata, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of the epicenter, surprised a resident in her 60s who fell from her bed but the injury was not life-threatening, prefectural officials said.

    JMA seismology and tsunami official Satoshi Harada said Monday’s quakes were believed to be aftershocks of the magnitude 7.6 earthquake on Jan. 1. Seismic activity has since slightly subsided, but Harada urged people to be cautious, especially near buildings that were damaged earlier.

    Shinkansen super-express trains and other train services were temporarily suspended for safety checks but most of them resumed, according to West Japan Railway Co.

    The Nuclear Regulation Authority said no abnormalities were found at two nearby nuclear power plants. One of them, the Shika plant on the Noto Peninsula, had minor damage, though officials said that did not affect cooling functions of the two reactors.

    Hokuriku Electric Power Co. said there were no power outages.

    Monday’s rattlings rekindled fear among residents who are still struggling to recover from damages from the New Year’s quake. NHK public television showed a number of people who came out of their homes and temporary shelters to see if there were additional damage.

    “Many people who have been living at evacuation centers must have been been frightened,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said, urging caution against potential falling rocks and landslides in areas that were shaken strongly.

    Reconstruction comes slowly in mountainous areas on the peninsula, and many damaged houses remain untouched.

    In Wajima, which was one of the hardest-hit areas, an inn operator told NHK that he immediately ducked under the desk at the reception when the first quake struck Monday. Nothing fell to the floor or broke, but it reminded him of the January shakings and made him worry that a big quake like that had occurred even five months later.

    The Jan. 1 quake killed 260 people, including those who later died due to stress, illnesses and other causes linked to the quake, with three others still missing, according to the FDMA. Damages still remain, and more than 3,300 residents remain evacuated.

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  • Heavy winter rains in Pakistan kill at least 29 as buildings collapse and landslides block roads

    Heavy winter rains in Pakistan kill at least 29 as buildings collapse and landslides block roads

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    PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistani authorities said Sunday at least 29 people died and 50 others injured due to heavy rains that swept across the country in the past 48 hours, causing several houses to collapse and landslides to block roads, particularly in the northwest.

    This comes as Pakistan is also witnessing severe snowfall.

    About 23 rain-related deaths were reported in various areas in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan since Thursday night, the provincial disaster management authority said in a statement.

    Five people died in the southwestern Baluchistan province after the coastal town of Gwadar got flooded, forcing authorities to use boats to evacuate people.

    Casualties and damages were also reported in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, the National Disaster Management Authority said in a separate statement.

    Emergency relief was being provided to people in affected areas and heavy machinery used to remove debris blocking highways, the agency added.

    The country’s Karakoram Highway which links Pakistan with China is still blocked in some places due to landslides, according to the spokesman for the northern Gilgit Baltistan region, Faizullah Faraq.

    Authorities advised tourists against traveling to the scenic north due to weather conditions. Last week, several visitors were stranded there because of the heavy rains.

    This year, Pakistan is witnessing an unusual delay in winter rains, starting in February instead of November.

    Monsoon and winter rains cause damage in Pakistan every year.

    In 2022, climate-induced unusual monsoon rains and flooding devastated most of the areas in impoverished Pakistan, killing more than 1,739 people, affecting around 33 million people and displacing nearly 8 million. The rains and floods in 2022 also caused billions of dollars of damages to the country’s economy and some of the areas people who lost their homes are still living in makeshift homes.

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  • Steeple of historic Connecticut church collapses, no injuries reported

    Steeple of historic Connecticut church collapses, no injuries reported

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    NEW LONDON, Conn. — An historic Connecticut church’s soaring steeple and roof collapsed on Thursday, leaving a gaping hole in the top of the building and the front reduced to a heap of rubble.

    No deaths or injuries were reported in the collapse at the First Congregational Church in downtown New London, which happened around 1:30 p.m., though a search was ongoing afterward, authorities said.

    The fire department found one woman at the building when it initially responded, but she was escorted out and is safe, Mayor Michael Passero said at a news briefing. Nobody else is believed to have been inside, he said.

    Assuming the city confirms no lives were lost, the circumstances of the collapse were “extremely fortunate,” Passero said. There was no service taking place at the time and the building fell in on itself, rather than onto the street or nearby properties, which include City Hall and dormitories for Connecticut College students.

    “It could have been a much bigger disaster for us. However we did lose a cherished historic structure,” he said.

    The cause of the collapse was not immediately known. Passero said there was no prior indication that there was anything wrong with the building, and the city was not aware of any work being done on the property. It wasn’t immediately clear if it had been recently inspected, he said.

    Two smaller steeples that remained on the building would have to be taken down immediately, Passero said. It remained to be seen whether the rest of the building would need to be demolished, he said, but it was expected to be a “total loss.”

    The stone building dates to around 1850, according to state building records, though the congregation dates back to the mid-1600s, its website says.

    The Engaging Heaven Church, which also worships in the space, said on Facebook that it wasn’t aware of anyone inside at the time of the collapse.

    Phone calls left for the congregation and Engaging Heaven were not immediately returned.

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  • 7.1 magnitude earthquake rattles part of western China, injuring 6 people and collapsing 47 homes

    7.1 magnitude earthquake rattles part of western China, injuring 6 people and collapsing 47 homes

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    BEIJING — A magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck a sparsely populated part of China’s western Xinjiang region early Tuesday, injuring six people and damaging or collapsing more than 120 homes in freezing cold weather, authorities said. The quake was the latest in a series of seismic events and natural disasters to hit the vast country’s western regions.

    The quake rocked Uchturpan county in Aksu prefecture shortly after 2 a.m., the China Earthquake Networks Center said. Around 200 rescuers were dispatched to the epicenter. The county is called Wushi in the Mandarin language spoken by most Chinese.

    Of the six people hurt, two had serious injuries and four were minor. In addition, 47 houses collapsed, 78 houses were damaged and some agricultural structures collapsed, the government of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region posted on its official Weibo social media account.

    The quake downed power lines but electricity was quickly restored, Aksu authorities reported. Mountainous Uchturpan county had around 233,000 people in 2022, according to Xinjiang authorities.

    Urumqi Railroad Bureau resumed services after 7 a.m. following safety checks that confirmed no problems on the train lines. The suspension had affected 23 trains, the bureau serving the Xinjiang capital said on its official Weibo account.

    The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake measured 7.0 magnitude and occurred in the seismically active Tian Shan mountain range. It said the area’s largest quake in the past century was 7.1 magnitude and occurred in 1978 about 200 kilometers (124 miles) to the north of one early Tuesday.

    Multiple aftershocks were recorded, the strongest of them at 5.3 magnitude.

    The rural area is populated mostly by Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnicity that is predominantly Muslim and has been the target of a state campaign of forced assimilation and mass detention. The region is heavily militarized and state broadcaster CCTV showed paramilitary troops moving in before dawn to clear rubble and set up tents for those displaced.

    Uchturpan county is recording temperatures well below freezing, with lows down to negative 18 degrees C (just below zero F) forecast by the China Meteorological Administration this week.

    In Yunnan province in China’s southwest, rescue workers were still searching for victims buried by a landslide Monday in the village of Liangshui. Eleven bodies have been recovered, and two survivors were rescued from among the 47 people buried in 18 homes in freezing cold and falling snow.

    The tremors from Tuesday’s earthquake were felt hundreds of kilometers (miles) away. Ma Shengyi, a 30-year-old pet shop owner living in Tacheng, 600 kilometers (373 miles) from the epicenter, said her dogs started barking before she felt her apartment building shudder. The quake was so strong her neighbors ran downstairs. Ma rushed to her bathroom and started to cry.

    “There’s no point in running away if it’s a big earthquake,” Ma said. “I was scared to death.”

    Chandeliers swung, buildings were evacuated and a media office building near the epicenter shook for a full minute, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. A video posted by a Chinese internet user on Weibo showed residents standing outside on the streets bundled in winter jackets, and a photo posted by CCTV showed a cracked wall with chunks fallen off.

    Tremors were felt across the Xinjiang region and in the neighboring countries Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. In the Kazakh capital of Almaty, people left their homes, the Russian news agency Tass reported. In both Xinjiang and Kazakhstan, classes were suspended to allow children to recover from the shock.

    Videos posted on the Telegram messaging platform showed people in Almaty running down the stairs of apartment blocks and standing outside in the street after they felt strong tremors. Some people appeared to have left their homes quickly and were pictured standing outside in freezing temperatures in shorts.

    Earthquakes are common in western China, including in Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, as well as the Xinjiang region and Tibet.

    A 6.2 magnitude earthquake that struck Gansu in December killed 151 people and was China’s deadliest quake in nine years. An earthquake that hit Sichuan in 2008 killed nearly 90,000 people. The collapse of schools and other buildings led to a yearslong effort to rebuild using more quake-resistant materials.

    ___

    Follow AP’s Asia-Pacific coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific

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  • 7.1 magnitude earthquake rattles part of western China, injuring 6 people and collapsing 47 homes

    7.1 magnitude earthquake rattles part of western China, injuring 6 people and collapsing 47 homes

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    BEIJING — A magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck a sparsely populated part of China’s western Xinjiang region early Tuesday, injuring six people and damaging or collapsing more than 120 homes in freezing cold weather, authorities said. The quake was the latest in a series of seismic events and natural disasters to hit the vast country’s western regions.

    The quake rocked Uchturpan county in Aksu prefecture shortly after 2 a.m., the China Earthquake Networks Center said. Around 200 rescuers were dispatched to the epicenter. The county is called Wushi in the Mandarin language spoken by most Chinese.

    Of the six people hurt, two had serious injuries and four were minor. In addition, 47 houses collapsed, 78 houses were damaged and some agricultural structures collapsed, the government of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region posted on its official Weibo social media account.

    The quake downed power lines but electricity was quickly restored, Aksu authorities reported. Mountainous Uchturpan county had around 233,000 people in 2022, according to Xinjiang authorities.

    Urumqi Railroad Bureau resumed services after 7 a.m. following safety checks that confirmed no problems on the train lines. The suspension had affected 23 trains, the bureau serving the Xinjiang capital said on its official Weibo account.

    The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake measured 7.0 magnitude and occurred in the seismically active Tian Shan mountain range. It said the area’s largest quake in the past century was 7.1 magnitude and occurred in 1978 about 200 kilometers (124 miles) to the north of one early Tuesday.

    Multiple aftershocks were recorded, the strongest of them at 5.3 magnitude.

    The rural area is populated mostly by Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnicity that is predominantly Muslim and has been the target of a state campaign of forced assimilation and mass detention. The region is heavily militarized and state broadcaster CCTV showed paramilitary troops moving in before dawn to clear rubble and set up tents for those displaced.

    Uchturpan county is recording temperatures well below freezing, with lows down to negative 18 degrees C (just below zero F) forecast by the China Meteorological Administration this week.

    In Yunnan province in China’s southwest, rescue workers were still searching for victims buried by a landslide Monday in the village of Liangshui. Eleven bodies have been recovered, and two survivors were rescued from among the 47 people buried in 18 homes in freezing cold and falling snow.

    The tremors from Tuesday’s earthquake were felt hundreds of kilometers (miles) away. Ma Shengyi, a 30-year-old pet shop owner living in Tacheng, 600 kilometers (373 miles) from the epicenter, said her dogs started barking before she felt her apartment building shudder. The quake was so strong her neighbors ran downstairs. Ma rushed to her bathroom and started to cry.

    “There’s no point in running away if it’s a big earthquake,” Ma said. “I was scared to death.”

    Chandeliers swung, buildings were evacuated and a media office building near the epicenter shook for a full minute, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. A video posted by a Chinese internet user on Weibo showed residents standing outside on the streets bundled in winter jackets, and a photo posted by CCTV showed a cracked wall with chunks fallen off.

    Tremors were felt across the Xinjiang region and in the neighboring countries Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. In the Kazakh capital of Almaty, people left their homes, the Russian news agency Tass reported. In both Xinjiang and Kazakhstan, classes were suspended to allow children to recover from the shock.

    Videos posted on the Telegram messaging platform showed people in Almaty running down the stairs of apartment blocks and standing outside in the street after they felt strong tremors. Some people appeared to have left their homes quickly and were pictured standing outside in freezing temperatures in shorts.

    Earthquakes are common in western China, including in Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, as well as the Xinjiang region and Tibet.

    A 6.2 magnitude earthquake that struck Gansu in December killed 151 people and was China’s deadliest quake in nine years. An earthquake that hit Sichuan in 2008 killed nearly 90,000 people. The collapse of schools and other buildings led to a yearslong effort to rebuild using more quake-resistant materials.

    ___

    Follow AP’s Asia-Pacific coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific

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  • Japan's nuclear safety agency orders power plant operator to study the impact of Jan. 1 quake

    Japan's nuclear safety agency orders power plant operator to study the impact of Jan. 1 quake

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    TOKYO — Japan’s nuclear safety regulators have told the operator of a nuclear power plant in the area hit by a powerful New Year’s Day quake to study its potential impact.

    The Nuclear Regulation Authority, or NRA, asked for further investigation even though initial assessments showed the Shika nuclear power plant’s cooling systems and ability to contain radiation remained intact.

    The order reflects Japan‘s greater vigilance about safety risks after meltdowns in 2011 at a plant in Fukushima, on the northeastern Pacific coast, following a magnitude 9 quake and a massive tsunami.

    The Jan. 1 magnitude 7.6 quake and dozens of strong aftershocks have left 206 people dead and dozens more unaccounted for. It also caused small tsunami. But Hokuriku Electric Power Co., the plant’s operator, reported it had successfully dealt with damage to transformers, temporary outages and sloshing of spent fuel cooling pools that followed the quakes.

    Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi emphasized that the plant was safe. Eighteen of 116 radiation monitoring posts installed in Ishikawa prefecture, where Shika is located, and in neighboring Toyama briefly failed after the quake. All but two have since been repaired and none showed any abnormality, he said.

    Shika is a town on the western coast of the Noto peninsula, where the quake did the most damage, leaving roads gaping, toppling and collapsing buildings and triggering landslides.

    Hokuriku Electric Power Co., reported that water had spilled from the spent fuel pools in both reactors. Transformers in both reactors were damaged and leaked oil, causing a temporary loss of power in one of the cooling pools. Company officials reported no further safety problems at the Nuclear Regulatory Administration’s weekly meeting Wednesday.

    But NRA officials said the utility should consider a possibility of fresh damage to transformers and other key equipment as aftershocks continue.

    NRA chairperson Shinsuke Yamanaka urged the utility to thoroughly investigate the cause of the transformer damage and promptly report its findings. They also were instructed to study if earthquake responses at the plant should be a reevaluated.

    The Shika reactors were inaugurated in 1993 and 2006. They have been offline since the 2011 disaster. Hokuriku Electric applied to restart the newer No. 2 reactor in 2014, but safety checks by the nuclear safety agency were delayed due to the need to determine if there were active faults near the plant. The nuclear officials concluded active faults in the area were not underneath the reactors.

    Hokuriku still hopes to restart the No. 2 reactor by 2026.

    Both the government and business leaders generally support restarting the many reactors that were idled for safety checks and upgrades after the Fukushima disaster.

    The head of Japan’s powerful business organization Keidanren, Masakazu Tokura, visited the Shika plant last year. But on Tuesday he urged the utility to be fully transparent and ensure it was safe.

    “Many people are concerned, and I hope (the utility) provides adequate information at an appropriate time,” Tokura said.

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