Earthwatch: A Diary of the Planet

Earthquakes

Two powerful earthquakes that rocked Nicaragua’s Laguna de Apoyo region killed at least seven people and injured scores of others.

At least 64 people in Indonesia were injured when a magnitude 5.2 earthquake rocked the island of Java.

One person in Istanbul was killed and at least 34 others hospitalized with injuries when a magnitude 4.4 earthquake hit the region.

Earth movements were also felt in Sumatra, Taiwan, Japan, Tibet, Austria and Alaska’s Kodiak Island.

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Eruptions

Two of the many volcanoes that dot the Andes mountain range in South America erupted with plumes of ash that soared high over Ecuador and the Chile-Argentina border area. Copahue volcano, on the border of Chile and Argentina, began exploding every several minutes and blanketing an area 30 to 40 miles to the north-northwest with ash. In Ecuador, Pichincha volcano also exploded, sending a plume of ash five miles into the sky near Quito.

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Deadly European Heat

Hundreds of wildfires, ignited by a relentless heat wave in southeastern Europe, have prompted officials in Greece and Bulgaria to declare states of emergency. The declarations came as meteorologists predicted that yet another wave of intense heat was approaching the region. The Greek capital of Athens was smothered by air pollution as smog, worsened by smoke from the ongoing fires, hovered near hazardous levels. More than 50 people have perished in the unprecedented heat, many of them from heatstroke or heart failure, and some from drowning or falling from roofs as they tried to escape the blistering heat.

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Tropical Storms

Typhoon Kirogi brought torrential rains to Japan’s Izu island chain and the eastern coast of Honshu near Tokyo before dissipating over the colder waters of the North Pacific.

Typhoon Kai-Tak skirted the eastern coast of Taiwan and the Chinese mainland near Shanghai before losing force as it moved ashore in North Korea.

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Alaskan Blazes

Wildfires raging out of control in the dried-out spruce forests of interior Alaska have blanketed the city of Fairbanks with heavy smoke and forced authorities to issue advisories for residents to remain indoors. Toivo Luick, with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, said, “At its worst, visibility is down to one mile, where you can’t see the hills nearby or make out the sun.”

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Avian Attack Force

An elite force of more than 700,000 ducks and chickens, trained to locate and eat insects at the sound of a whistle, has been deployed in the locust-plagued fields of China’s Xinjiang province. The birds have been trained for their mission by learning to associate feeding with the whistle command. Officials estimated that the new attack force has gobbled up more than 100 million locusts.

Copyright 2000 Earth Environment Service Distributed by L.A. Times Syndicate