Two days after a 6.7-magnitude quake flattened homes, destroyed bridges and crumbled mountainsides on the central island of Negros, rescue workers battled without heavy equipment to dig through rubble in the search for the missing.

"Please do not give up, please continue searching," 47-year-old housewife Virginsita Magalso sobbed, her face streaked with dirt, as rescuers picked through mounds of dirt that covered the homes of family and friends.

"We can still save them, miracles happen all the time."

Magalso said her 68-year-old mother, an older brother, his wife, and their two young children were among those buried when part of a hill collapsed on homes in the farming community of La Libertad on Negros.

Magalso's house was further down the slope, sparing her direct family certain death, she said.

The official death toll from Monday's quake was 26, with 71 others missing from farming communities that had been engulfed by landslides in La Libertad and the nearby city of Guihulngan.

"Rescue teams have so far not seen or heard any signs of life underneath," Guihulngan mayor Ernesto Reyes told AFP, adding 29 people were believed buried in one disaster-hit village.

"None of our missing have so far been retrieved."

Reyes said the mountain village in Guihulngan was buried under about 10 metres (30 feet) of debris, with rescue efforts painfully slow because people had only picks, shovels and their bare hands to claw through the dirt.

Roads and bridges to Guihulngan, a coastal city of about 100,000 flanked by mountains, were badly damaged in the quake, meaning rescuers had difficulties bringing in earth movers and supplies for survivors.

"Our immediate concern now is how to serve the living. We don't have enough food, there is no electricity and water," Reyes said.

"We are appealing for help from everyone."

Civil defence chief Benito Ramos said in Manila that five military battalions, or about 2,000 troops, had been deployed to the devastated zones and were helping local rescue units.

"We are racing against time, and hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe some of them might still be alive," he said.

At least two mechanical diggers (backhoes) and several chainsaws and drills had reached La Libertad by noon Wednesday, but other areas remained cut off, according to Ramos.

Roel Degamo, the governor of Negros Oriental province where the worst of the damage occurred, said the likelihood of finding anyone alive was very low.

"We are in a state of shock, and all we can do now for those still missing is to pray," Degamo told AFP.

He said soldiers and rescuers in La Libertad raced on Tuesday to find a young woman who had sent a mobile phone text message to her relatives that she was pinned down, but alive.

The search, however, ended in tears hours later.

"She was found dead and still clutching her cell phone," Degamo said.

The regional military commander with responsibility for the disaster zone, Colonel Francisco Patrimonio, reported on Tuesday that 48 people had died, and another 92 were missing.

But the army said in a statement on Wednesday that the confirmed number of deaths was just 26, blaming initial confusion in the quake-hit areas for the change in numbers.

The revised tally matches figures from the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, the overall emergency response agency.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:47 AEST Guihulngan, Philippines (AFP) Feb 8, 2012 - Thousands of soldiers in the quake-hit Philippines Tuesday scoured villages buried under landslides, but authorities said hopes of finding dozens of missing people alive were dim.

Two days after a 6.7 magnitude quake flattened homes, destroyed bridges and triggered deadly landslides in the central island of Negros, rescuers had yet to find anyone alive among at least 92 people reported missing.

"Rescue teams have so far not seen or heard any signs of life underneath," Ernesto Reyes, mayor of the city of Guihulngan on Negros island where 29 people from a small mountain community were believed buried by a landslide, told AFP.

"None of our missing have so far been retrieved."

At least 48 people were confirmed to have died in Negros, with another 92 missing, regional military commander Colonel Francisco Patrimonio said on Tuesday.

In Manila, the national government's disaster office said on Wednesday its death toll was 22, with 71 missing, but acknowledged it had not yet been able to verify reports from authorities in Negros.

Reyes said the mountain community in Guihulngan was buried under about 10 metres (30 feet) of debris, with rescue efforts painfully slow because people had only picks, shovels and their bare hands to claw through the dirt.

Roads and bridges to Guihulngan, a coastal city of about 100,000 flanked by mountains, were badly damaged in the quake, meaning earth movers and supplies for survivors could not be quickly deployed to the area, he said.

"Our immediate concern now is how to serve the living -- we don't have enough food, there is no electricity and water," Reyes said.

"We are appealing for help from everyone."

The other missing people were reported in the nearby farming town of La Libertad, where a cluster of hillside homes were also crushed by a landslide, according to Negros Oriental province governor Roel Degamo.

"We are in a state of shock, and all we can do now for those still missing is to pray," Degamo said.

He said soldiers and rescuers raced against time Tuesday to find a young woman who had sent a mobile phone text message to her relatives that she was pinned down, but alive.

The dramatic search, however, ended in tears hours later.

"She was found dead and still clutching her cell phone," Degamo told AFP, declining to give further details about the victim in deference to her grieving family.

Civil Defense Office chief Benito Ramos said five military battalions, or about 2,000 troops, had been deployed to the devastated zones and were helping local rescue units.

"We are racing against time, and hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe some of them might still be alive," he said.

However, he said the military had not yet been able to get heavy equipment into the landslide-devastated communities because of the damaged roads.

President Benigno Aquino was expected to fly into the disaster zone Wednesday to personally check on the search and rescue operations.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:47 AEST Guihulngan, Philippines (AFP) Feb 7, 2012 - Rescuers in the Philippines dug through rubble with their bare hands on Tuesday in a frantic search for survivors, a day after a powerful earthquake killed dozens of people.

The 6.7-magnitude quake hit a narrow strait between the heavily populated islands of Negros and Cebu around lunchtime Monday, triggering devastating landslides, tearing down homes and destroying roads vital to relief efforts.

At least 48 people died and another 92 were missing, regional military commander Colonel Francisco Patrimonio said on Tuesday afternoon, and local government leaders warned the death toll was likely to rise.

"We are praying and hoping that we will get some survivors, but it's likely that many of those missing in the landslides have died already," Roel Degamo, the governor of Negros Oriental, the worst-hit province, told AFP.

Dozens of people were confirmed dead in Guihulngan, a coastal city flanked by mountains with a population of 100,000, where the public market, court house and many private homes were destroyed or badly damaged.

After the tremor brought down bridges and left deep fissures on asphalt roads, the area was only accessible by motorbike, foot or helicopter, and overwhelmed local police had few resources to search for survivors.

"We are using our hands and shovels to search in the rubble," Guihulngan police chief Senior Inspector Alvin Futalan told AFP.

An AFP photographer saw about 50 rescuers dig up the body of a young woman after the mountainside collapsed on a mountain hamlet.

The rescuers later said they heard cries for help underneath the rubble, triggering frenzied digging by men using only shovels. However, they stopped later when they failed to find anyone else.

President Benigno Aquino ordered air force helicopters to Guihulngan, as well as the navy and coast guard to transport relief supplies by sea, according to his spokeswoman Abigail Valte.

An AFP correspondent who reached Guihulngan by motorcycle said survivors were huddled in makeshift tents and refused to go indoors due to a series of terrifying aftershocks.

State seismologists said more than 700 aftershocks, some nearly as strong as the initial quake, had battered Negros, and warned residents to expect many more over the next few weeks.

Guihulngan mayor Ernesto Reyes said patients at the city's main hospital were rushed out of the building after a strong aftershock rattled the walls and split open a tennis court on Tuesday.

He described a sense of despair and fear throughout the city.

"Our water system is broken, there is not enough food, people are in panic and there is no electricity," he told AFP.

Aside from the carnage in Guihulngan, regional commander Patrimonio said rescue efforts were focused on the nearby town of La Libertad where up to 40 people were feared buried in rubble.

In Manila, the national government's disaster office said its death toll was 15, with 71 missing, but acknowledged it had not yet been able to verify reports from local authorities as to the extent of the damage.

Cebu, the Philippines' second biggest city with 2.3 million residents and a popular tourist destination, was 50 kilometres from the epicentre and shook violently during the initial tremor but no deaths were reported there.

The Philippines sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" -- a belt around the Pacific Ocean where friction between shifting tectonic plates causes frequent earthquakes and volcanic activity.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:47 AEST Brisbane, Australia (AFP) Feb 7, 2012 - Fears eased Tuesday that a swollen river would breach its banks in the Australian state of Queensland as residents in other areas began a huge clean-up after floods wrecked havoc.

Thousands of Australians have been forced to abandon their homes as a record deluge sweeps through areas still reeling from devastating flooding last year that left 35 people dead.

So far, only one fatality has been reported this year although hundreds of homes and businesses have been damaged.

In the cotton-growing centre of St George, in Queensland's south, more than 2,500 residents have fled in the largest evacuation in the state's history amid concern that a levee on the Balonne River would be breached, submerging the town.

The water level had reached around 13.86 metres (45 feet 6 inches) by early morning and was creeping towards a predicted peak of around 14 metres, close to the levee height of 14.5 metres.

"It's slowed up a little bit but it's still rising and should get up to 14 metres sometime today," a Bureau of Meteorology spokesman said.

"It will take quite a few days before it really starts to drop away."

Reports said between 50 and 60 homes had been inundated in the town.

Flooding has been hitting parts of Queensland over the past week, damaging more than 500 properties in Mitchell and Roma, with residents Tuesday slowing starting to return.

Neighbouring New South Wales state has also been hit, with mass evacuations last week in Moree when flood waters inundated the town, cutting it in half.

Moree Mayor Katrina Humphries said most people had now returned to face a "vile, soul-destroying" mopping up operation with some residents losing everything.

"The long, hard recovery process has started," NSW emergency services commissioner Murray Kear told reporters.

Many rural properties across NSW remain isolated with the worst-affected area south of Moree in Wee Waa where 2,300 people are stranded, Kear said.

"Isolation is expected to continue for a further four or five days," he said.

Meanwhile, flood warnings were issued for the Namoi River at Wee Waa, as well as downstream for Boggabri and Narrabri.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:47 AEST Sofia (AFP) Feb 6, 2012 - The toll from Europe's winter weather pushed past 360 Monday when snow- and rain-swollen rivers burst a Bulgarian dam and killed at least eight, while more homeless people perished on frigid city streets.

Four elderly people drowned in their homes in the southeastern Bulgarian village of Biser after a nearby dam wall broke, submerging the whole village under 2.5 metres (eight feet) of icy water, the interior ministry said.

Another four people died when their cars were swept from bridges into raging rivers in the same region.

"People are in panic," regional mayor Mihail Liskov said on national radio as a massive rescue effort was under way. "Ninety percent of the village is under water."

Two other dams were brimming with water and heavy rains triggered a landslide that derailed a train near the Turkish border. No injuries were reported.

Temperatures touched new lows in parts of Europe, including Switzerland which reported the mercury dipping to minus 35.1 Celsius (minus 31 Fahrenheit) overnight in the eastern Graubuenden canton and the Czech Republic, where the town of Kvilda recorded a winter low of minus 39.4 Celsius (minus 38.92 Fahrenheit).

As has been the case throughout the 10-day-old cold snap, transients have borne the brunt of the suffering, with frozen victims found in abandoned and unheated homes, fire escapes or makeshift shelters on Europe's streets.

In a bid to save lives, Poland's homeless shelters have dropped a ban on drunken individuals.

Monika Golebiewska, a Warsaw police officer whose beat is a daily patrol bringing food and clothing to the homeless, said she had been unrelentingly busy.

"New (fatal) cases are reported to us daily. Just today we got calls telling us about two new ones, one of someone who was living in a tent and another of someone in an abandoned train station," Golebiewska said. "I've got more and more people to feed, but just 40 portions of soup a day."

Across the continent, authorities have reported at least 368 weather-related deaths.

In Lithuania, where the temperature has dipped to minus 31 Celsius (minus 24 Fahrenheit), the deaths of 12 more people over the weekend brought the toll to 23.

Schools were closed until Tuesday in Rome, as authorities battled to clean up the city after a rare snow storm. Other Italian regions including Tuscany and Umbria were bracing for fresh snow in coming days.

Crews were also struggling to restore power to about 60,000 homes across the country, especially in the Tuscan cities of Siena and Arezzo.

Energy giant ENI began reducing gas supplies to industrial clients and switching from gas-fired to oil-fired power stations following a plunge in gas imports from Russia.

ENI's chief executive Paolo Scaroni said: "We are in an emergency and we have reacted to this emergency by increasing gas imports from Algeria and from northern Europe via Switzerland.

"We won't have problems until Wednesday," he said on new channel Radio 24.

In France, electricity consumption hit a record amid the cold.

In Bosnia, residents of dozens of hamlets were trapped by continued heavy snowfall, mostly in the eastern region around Srebrenica and Sokolac.

"The snow has reached over 1.5 metres (4.9 feet), it is still snowing and we have already been blocked for over a month," said Dzevad Muminovic, who lives in the tiny village of Krusev Do.

He added food was running out and about 40 people were trapped.

The bitter cold has even crossed the Mediterranean into north Africa, where as many as 19 people were killed on Algeria's snow-slicked roads or in other weather-related accidents.

Rare snow also fell in southern Tunisia for the first time in some 40 years, media reported.

People in the Netherlands, however, were sharpening their skates in the hope that a legendary long-distance race on frozen canals may be held for the first time in 15 years, though organisers cautioned the ice was still too thin.

burs/hmn/ach

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:47 AEST Dalby, Australia (AFP) Feb 6, 2012 - Flood waters rose Monday in parts of Queensland but residents of a threatened town in the Australian state were thrown a lifeline with news that the levee on a swollen river might hold.

Thousands of Australians have been forced to abandon their homes as a record deluge sweeps through areas still reeling from last year's devastating flooding, with St George, in Queensland's south, under most threat Monday.

Many of its residents fled Sunday evening to evacuation centres in nearby Dalby or the state capital Brisbane, although some 400 stayed to help limit the damage despite a mandatory evacuation order.

Local mayor Donna Stewart said the Balonne River in St George, flooding for the third time in less than two years, had reached 13.48 metres (44 feet) and was expected to keep rising until at least Tuesday night.

Forecasters earlier estimated it could top 15 metres, breaching the town's 14.5-metre levee, but they have now revised down the predicted peak to just over 14 metres, making it touch and go whether the levee will hold.

"It's not out of the question it'll go above the 14.5 level but it's more likely not to," said Bureau of Meteorology hydrologist Chris Leahy as authorities dumped mountains of dirt around town to shore up its defences.

Stewart said she was optimistic the town could survive the worst-case scenario.

"The picture is not as grim as what it was looking this time yesterday," she said.

State Premier Anna Bligh, who launched a flood relief appeal, said the St George disaster had been the largest ever evacuation of a town in Queensland.

"The heartbreaking job of calculating the loss is still in its early stages," she said.

Reports said about 30 houses and businesses had been inundated so far, and it was expected to rise.

While most residents have fled, Queensland Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson said officers would stay to prevent looting.

"We are going to do everything we can to make sure people's homes are safe," he told reporters.

Federal politician Barnaby Joyce, who lives in the town, said watching the flood crisis unfold was "a little bit scary" with the river raging near his home.

"There is something that sounds a little bit like the sea but it is not actually the sea, it's a river and it is just outside the back door," he told ABC radio.

St George has seen major flooding twice in the past two years, once in March 2010 and again last year during Queensland's flooding disaster, which claimed 35 lives and swamped vast tracts of farmland and tens of thousands of homes.

Flooding has been hitting parts of Queensland and New South Wales over the past week but has claimed just one life: a woman whose car was swept from a roadway in Roma, further north of St George.

In that town and nearby Mitchell, a mopping up operation has begun with state Police Minister Neil Roberts saying the scale of the damage was slowly emerging.

"Preliminary assessments show that in Mitchell 280 homes or more have been damaged with water above the floor boards," he told reporters.

"In Roma, it's at least over 400. That's very significant damage and a very significant dislocation for those individuals."

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:47 AEST New Haven CT (SPX) Feb 06, 2012 - Tropical cyclones will cause $109 billion in damages by 2100, according to Yale and MIT researchers in a paper published in Nature Climate Change. That figure represents an increased vulnerability from population and especially economic growth, as well as the effects of climate change.

Greater vulnerability to cyclones is expected to increase global tropical damage to $56 billion by 2100-double the current damage-from the current rate of $26 billion per year if the present climate remains stable.

Climate change is predicted to add another $53 billion of damages. The damage caused by climate change is equal to 0.01 percent of GDP in 2100.

The United States and China will be hardest hit, incurring $25 billion and $15 billion of the additional damages from climate change, respectively, amounting to 75 percent of the global damages caused by climate change. Small islands, especially in the Caribbean, will also be hit hard, suffering the highest damages per unit of GDP.

The research reveals that more intense storms will become more frequent with climate change. "The biggest storms cause most of the damage," said Robert Mendelsohn, the lead economist on the project.

"With the present climate, almost 93 percent of tropical cyclone damage is caused by only 10 percent of the storms. Warming will increase the frequency of these high-intensity storms at least in the North Pacific and North Atlantic Ocean basins, causing most of the increase in damage."

The authors based their estimates on a future global population of 9 billion and an annual increase of approximately 3 percent in gross world product until 2100. "More people making a lot more income will put more capital in harm's way," he said.

Tropical cyclones today cause $26 billion in global damages, which is 4 percent of gross world product. North America and East Asia account for 88 percent of these damages, because these regions have powerful storms and well-developed coastlines.

The future economic damage from tropical cyclones will be less than $1 billion a year in Europe and South America because there are few storms there, and the damage in Africa will be low because, Mendelsohn said, there is "relatively little in harm's way."

Damages in Asia and Central America are expected to grow rapidly in concert with high economic growth. The Caribbean-Central America region will have the highest damage per unit of gross domestic product-37 percent.

"When you calculate damages as a fraction of GDP, island nations are hit disproportionately hard," he said.

The paper, "The Impact of Climate Change on Global Tropical Cyclone Damage," is available at www.nature.com. It used a tropical cyclone integrated assessment model that was developed with Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at MIT. "The paper demonstrates how to integrate the atmospheric science of tropical cyclones and economics," said Emanuel.

The tropical cyclone model is used in conjunction with climate models to predict how the frequency, intensity and location of tropical cyclones change in the seven ocean basins of the world. The paths of 17,000 synthetic storms are followed until they strike land.

The authors used historical data to estimate the damages caused by the intensity of each cyclone and what was in harm's way. The paper revealed that minimum barometric pressure predicts damages more accurately than maximum wind speed.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:47 AEST Athens (AFP) Feb 5, 2012 - An elderly woman died on Sunday and nearly two dozen people had to be rescued by fire crews in the western Greece city of Pyrgos after flooding caused by heavy rainfalls, authorities said.

"An 82-year-old woman was found dead in an orange grove, 22 people have been taken to safety and we have received 300 calls to drain water from buildings," a fire department spokeswoman told AFP.

She added that an operation was underway to evacuate the local hospital where around 90 people were receiving treatment according to reports.

The citizen's protection ministry said the occupants of a monastery had also been removed owing to a rockslide and that nearly all villages in the area had been declared in a state of emergency.

Over 30 fire engines were mobilised to help in addition to a search-and-rescue airforce helicopter, two boats and a crawler bulldozer, the ministry said, adding that roads were being kept open.

Greek media reported that rain in the area was the heaviest in five years, with the streets of Pyrgos submerged under one metre (3.2 feet) of water.

Local prefect Apostolos Katsifaras said efforts were being made to divert waters into the tributaries of the local Alfeios River.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:47 AEST Hong Kong (AFP) Feb 6, 2012 - A 6.5-magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of the South Pacific island of Vanuatu on Sunday, the Hong Kong Observatory said, but there were no reports of a tsunami warning.

The quake struck at 1640 GMT around 81 kilometres southwest of the capital Port Vila.

The shallow quake, which had a depth of four kilometres, was measured by the US Geological Survey as having a magnitude of 6.0 on the Richter scale.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage and the Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center had yet to issue any information bulletin or alert.

Vanuatu lies on the so-called "Pacific Ring of Fire", a zone of frequent seismic activity caused by friction between shifting tectonic plates.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:47 AEST Manila (AFP) Feb 6, 2012 - At least 43 people were killed when a powerful earthquake triggered landslides, collapsed homes and smashed bridges across the central Philippines on Monday, authorities said.

The 6.8-magntiude quake hit a narrow strait between the heavily populated island provinces of Negros and Cebu around lunchtime, with aftershocks nearly as strong causing further panic throughout the day.

The worst-hit area appeared to be Guihulngan, a coastal city in Negros close to the quake's epicentre, with 39 people confirmed killed there, according to local military commander Colonel Francisco Patrimonio.

He and local police said most of the victims had died as landslides buried homes, while others in the city of 100,000 people died as houses collapsed under the pressure of the quake itself.

"Some private homes collapsed along with our court house and parts of the public market. We got people out of the buildings but we could not evacuate the homes," police chief Senior Inspector Alvin Futalan told AFP.

Four other people were confirmed killed in other parts of Negros, where power outages were widespread and bridges as well as other vital infrastructure had been damaged, according to Patrimonio.

He and other government officials warned the death toll may rise, with reports of dozens of other people injured or missing in Guihulngan and nearby areas.

However, they said it was impossible to determine the exact number of missing, as power and many phone lines in the region were down and roads to the mountainous areas were impassable because of the landslides.

Patrimonio said that authorities were having to deal with looting, as well as the immediate rescue efforts, as some people took advantage of the chaos.

"Looting is now rampant in Guihulngan which forced us to commit (more troops) with the Philippine national police," he said.

In Cebu, a popular tourist destination and the country's second biggest city with 2.3 million residents, hotel guests scrambled to higher floors as unfounded rumours that a huge tsunami was bearing down spread by text message.

"There is news going around of tsunami waves, so we are doing our best to keep everybody calm," Barbi Patino, a spokesman for the 17-story Parklane International Hotel, told AFP shortly after the quake struck.

Civil defence chief Benito Ramos said the violent shaking of buildings in Cebu -- 50 kilometres (31 miles) from the epicentre -- led to broken windows and cracks on some walls.

But no high-rises sustained major damage and no deaths were reported in in the city.

Pedro Baldomino, a student in Cebu, said he saw many office workers leaving their buildings after a public announcement on radio warned people to brace for expected aftershocks.

"I was having lunch when the ground shook. Water spilled from glasses and plates clanked. Some of the diners rushed outside, some of us stayed underneath the tables," he said.

Almost four hours after the quake struck, a strong 6.2-magnitude aftershock hit the central Philippines, and then another struck measuring 6.0, causing further panic.

Over 200 less-powerful aftershocks were detected throughout the day, said provincial disaster monitoring executive director Angelo Tiongson.

Philippine government seismologists initially raised a precautionary tsunami alert over the quake, but lowered it two hours later.

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said there was no danger of a widespread destructive tsunami.

The Philippines sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" -- a belt around the Pacific Ocean where friction between shifting tectonic plates causes frequent earthquakes and volcanic activity.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:47 AEST Subscribe to our daily selection of space, military, environment and energy newsletters responseText http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=0016gbbKsaiGSpQFojVO8ZoHw%3D%3D