Wildfires

Huge brush fires erupted across southeastern Austrlia as an early summer heat wave scorched the state of New South Wales. Lightning strikes and high winds in the suburbs of Sydney sparked several fires that engulfed nearly 40 homes. A huge cloud of smoke generated by the blazes sent air pollution levels off the scale thoughtout the metropolitan area.

A coal-field fire burning for more than 400 years in China’s Sinjiang regionw as finally extinguished, according to the Weekly Digest of the Sichuan Daily newspaper. The report said the fire in the Baiyanghe coal field spontaneously ignited in 1560, and its toxic emissions have caused desertification and ecological deterioration in the area. No details were given of how the fire was put out.

Natural Gas Disaster

Technicians drilling for oil in far nothern Sumatra unleashed an eruption of natural gas that produced thousands of explosions, forcing 1,600 people from their homes. Mud, smoke and fireballs blasted out of the 15 fissures around the original drill site at a rate of one every two seconds. Four homes sank into the muddy craters caused by the blasts, and nearly 200 others were damaged by falling debris. There were no reports of injuries from the explosions, and workers gained control of the gas jets in the week.

Melting Glacier

Peru’s highest snowcap has been slowly melting during the past 100 years, according to the country’s leading glacier expert. Benjamin Morales Arnao of the Andean Institute of Glaciology and the Broggi Glacier in the north-central Peru has receded 2,527 feet since the turn of the century, and he warned that the melting could bring natual disasters that would disrupt agriculture, industry and water supplies. Global warming has been blamed for the retreat of glacier caps in several other areas of the world during recent years.

Tropical Storms

A rare mid-Pacific tropical storm formed over the El Nino-warmed waters of the Pacific about 1,100 miles south of Hawaii. Tropical Storm Paka was a threat only to shipping lanes. The World Meteorological Organization announced that typhoons, which are now assigned Western names by the U.S. military, will be given Asian names beginning in the year 2000.

Earthquakes

Swarms of tremors continued to rumble beneath the California mountain resort of Mammoth Lakes--the strongest registering a magnitude of 3.8 Seismologists believe the ongoing activity is associated with the movement of magma under the Sierra Nevada. Earth movements were also felt in Japan, New Zealand’s South Island, Tibet, eastern Nepal, Algeria, central Italy, El Salvador, Guatemala and Alaska’s Prince William Sound.

Additional Sources: U.S. Climate Analysis Center, U.S. Earthquake Information Center and the World Meteorological Organization