News..
Just reading the news here about the hurricane in Florida, remember my friend who lives there? I`m hoping that him and his family are all fine. Things are looking grim there though, i posted a news report about it below..
Charley Causes 'Significant Loss of Life'
PUNTA GORDA, Fla. - The death toll from Hurricane Charley rose early Saturday, when a county official said there had a been "significant loss of life" at a mobile home park and deputies were standing guard over stacks of bodies because the area was inaccessible to ambulances.
Wayne Sallade, Charlotte County's director of emergency management, said early Saturday that there were "a number of fatalities" at the mobile home park, and that there were confirmed deaths in at least three other areas in the county.
The eye of the worst hurricane to hit Florida in a dozen years passed directly over Punta Gorda, a town of 15,000 which took a devastating hit Friday.
A slightly weaker Charley bore down on the South Carolina coast early Saturday, and the center was expected to approach the coast by morning.
In Florida, hundreds of people were missing in Charlotte and thousands were left homeless, Sallade said. He compared the devastation with 1992's Hurricane Andrew, which the National Hurricane Center (news - web sites) directly blamed for the deaths of 26 people, most in South Florida.
"It's Andrew all over again," he said. "We believe there's significant loss of life."
Sallade did not have an estimate on a specific number of fatalities. He said it may take days to get a final toll.
Extensive damage was also reported on exclusive Captiva Island, a narrow strip of sand west of Fort Myers.
President Bush declared a major disaster area in Florida, making federal money available to Charlotte, Lee, Manatee and Sarasota counties. One million customers were reported without power statewide, including all of Hardee County and Punta Gorda.
The Category 4 storm was stronger than expected when the eye reached the mainland at Charlotte Harbor, pummeling the coast with winds reaching 145 mph and a surge of sea water of 13 to 15 feet.
Charley was forecast to spread sustained winds of about 40 mph to 60 mph across inland portions of eastern North Carolina and to dump 3 to 6 inches of rain beginning Saturday morning, forecasters said. Gov. Mike Easley declared a state of emergency.
In South Carolina, roads clogged Friday night as tourists and residents of the state's Grand Strand — beaches and high-dollar homes and hotels — heeded a mandatory evacuation order. Gov. Mark Sanford had urged voluntary evacuation earlier Friday.
Three hospitals in Charlotte County sustained significant damage, Sallade said, and officials at Charlotte Regional Medical Center in Punta Gorda said they were evacuating all patients Saturday.
More than 200 ambulances — many from southeast Florida — were organized to transfer patients to other hospitals in Orlando, Sarasota, Tampa and Lee County.
"We really have to get the patients out of here. This place just isn't safe," said Peggy Greene, chief nursing officer. She said windows were blown out, part of the roof was blown off, and there was no power or phone service.
Among those seeking treatment was Marty Rietveld, showered with broken glass when the sliding glass door at his home was smashed by a neighbor's roof that blew off. Rietveld broke his leg, and his future son-in-law suffered a punctured leg artery.
"We are moving," said Rietveld's daughter, Stephanie Rioux. "We are going out of state."
At least 20 patients with storm injuries were reported at a hospital in Fort Myers.
A crash on Interstate 75 in Sarasota County killed one person, and a wind gust caused a truck to collide with a car in Orange County, killing a young girl. A man who stepped outside his house to smoke a cigarette died when a banyan tree fell on him in Fort Myers, authorities said.
At the Charlotte County Airport, wind tore apart small planes, and one flew down the runway as if it were taking off. The storm spun a parked pickup truck 180 degrees, blew the windows out of a sheriff's deputy's car and ripped the roof off an 80-foot-by 100-foot building.
Martin said he saw homes ripped apart at two trailer parks.
"There were four or five overturned semi trucks — 18-wheelers — on the side of the road," he said.
In Desoto County outside Arcadia, several dead cows, wrapped in barbed wire, littered the roadside.
The hurricane rapidly gained strength in the Gulf of Mexico after crossing Cuba and swinging around the Florida Keys as a more moderate Category 2 storm Friday morning. An estimated 1.4 million people evacuated in anticipation of the strongest hurricane to strike Florida since Andrew in 1992.
Charley reached landfall at 3:45 p.m. EDT, when the eye passed over barrier islands off Fort Myers and Punta Gorda, some 110 miles southeast of the Tampa Bay area.
Charley hit the mainland 30 minutes later, with storm surge flooding of 10 to 15 feet, the hurricane center said. Nearly 1 million people live within 30 miles of the landfall.
The state put 5,000 National Guard soldiers and airmen on alert to help deal with the storm, but only 1,300 had been deployed by Friday night, a state emergency management spokeswoman said.
At a nursing center in Port Charlotte, Charley broke windows and ripped off portions of the roof, but none of the more than 100 residents or staff was injured, administrator Joyce Cuffe said.
"The doors were being sucked open," Cuffe said. "A lot of us were holding the doors, trying to keep them shut, using ropes, anything we could to hold the doors shut. There was such a vacuum, our ears and head were hurting."
At 5 a.m. EDT, the center of the storm was in the Atlantic Ocean, about 115 miles south-southwest of Charleston, S.C., and moving north-northeast at 25 mph. Forecasters expected Charley to increase in speed. Maximum sustained winds were near 85 mph with higher gusts.
The center was expected to approach the South Carolina coast later Saturday. A hurricane warning was issued from Altamaha Sound, Ga., north to the North Carolina-Virginia state line. From there, a tropical storm watch extended north to Sandy Hook, including the Chesapeake and Delaware bays. A tropical storm warning was issued from Sandy Hook north to Merrimack River, including the New York Harbor and Long Island Sound.
Spared the worst of the storm was the Tampa Bay area, where about a million people had been told to leave their homes. Some drove east, only to find themselves in the path of the Charley.
"I feel like the biggest fool," said Robert Angel of Tarpon Springs, who sought safety in a motel. "I spent hundreds of dollars to be in the center of a hurricane. Our home is safe, but now I'm in danger."
The fourth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, Danielle, formed Friday but posed no immediate concern to land. The fifth may form as early as Saturday and threaten islands in the southeastern Caribbean Sea.
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Tornados & Hurricanes..
Im talking online now with my friend weasel who lives in Jacksonville, Florida and hes telling me about a hurricane thats moving towards where he lives and also about a tornado that touched down in his city yesterday too. You can see a photo of the tornado above.Yahoo has this to say about Hurricane Charley..
TAMPA, Fla. - With a "scary, scary" Hurricane Charley zeroing in on Florida's west coast Friday, officials urged almost 2 million people to evacuate and avoid the path of a storm that could submerge parts of this city's downtown and neighboring areas.
As it approached the coast at midmorning, Charley had winds of 110 mph, and it was expected to strenghten. Officials worried that a massive storm surge could devastate the heavily populated Gulf Coast region, with waterfront condominium towers and vulnerable mobile homes in danger.
Hi Rubia and Mara!!!
Just saying hi to my friends Rubia and Mara who work in CCAA Taguatinga, see now you girls are famous all over the world hehehe!!
I'm just waiting for Roberta to get here, she has found some new supermarket that she thinks we should go and visit cause they have cheaper prices etc. We have to go there in the day though as only a crazy person would wanna go to Jardin Roriz at night. We can waste the afternoon visiting this place as i dont have class untl 8pm so it'll give me something to do :-)
I just finished making a new game for my students to play, it was in the training i did in the break but i made a set of cards that my students can sort of pick from a hat or box and then play. Its a sort of guess the word game but there are some words they arent allowed to use as they try to define the words. The teachers learned a similar idea but the teacher told the students what to say. This time it'll be more random and they arent going to be able to say that i gave one person an easier word than another. I think they will like this game alot, i'll experiment with my intermediate groups with this and also some of my MEC too as they are groups that dont really take themselves very seriously which leaves time to have alot of fun in the classroom.
I hope Roberta gets here soon as i'm starving hahaha!! We are going to get lunch at her house though as the cupboard are all bare at my place, see why i need to go to the supermarket now? ;-) I'd better go get my tennis shoes on ready for when she arrives..
In the paper this morning..
This mornings paper has a nice big picture of people getting evicted from land that they illegally built houses on that belongs to the government. Of course these people then decide to protest about the destruction of their houses and stuff so they just send in BOPE, they are sort of special police similar to the US swat i was told. We arent just talking about some poor people either as some of these houses are big and had alot of cash spent on them. The poor people i can understand as they have to live somewhere but it shows how crafty and devious the rich people are by thinking that if they bury their huge house among the poorer ones that they will be safe from having it destroyed, WRONG!! They still flattened them. This is typical of rich people in though, lets take Lake Paranoa nr Plano Piloto as an example. There is a border around the lake that no one can build on so that people have access to the whole of the lake but in the paper they show where people have built private docks and fenced off parts with huge signs telling people to keep off. How can they expect people to obey the laws when rich people pull these types of stunts all of the time? Then they wonder why the police use BOPE to deal with the problem. Only people who break the law have anything to fear from the police, after all i have around 18 tattoos all over my arms and stuff and not once have i ever been bothered by the police apart from the odd bus search and i would class myself as a prime candidate to be stopped and stuff by policemen. Still people are alot different here from the UK.
Also the Hantavirus is all over the paper again, they have now a big media campaign but its not going to work. People just think of it as someone else problem to deal with it. On the TV some guy in a beautiful white doctors coat keeps saying that its all under control but the other day three more people died from it. Soon i think it'll get worse and worse and according to some of my friends in the police they have a similar problem in other cities around Brasil too. Maybe they should try talking the the American Center for Desease Control for some ideas before they let the situation become more than they can handle..
British Firemen..
Just to show that the UK has some greedy money-grabbing idiots and that Brasil doesnt have the monopoly on all of them. The firemen in the UK are striking yet again, every year they do this even though they already get paid shitloads of cash and do relatively very little. Last year they did this and let people die and tried to even stop the army from using the fire tending equipment. They had to give in though as this equipment belongs to the goverment but you can see the sort of greedy pricks we are talking about right? The best thing is that they try to promote themselves as the one group of people everyone needs but mainly in a country where it rains alot they are just there to rescue a few cats from trees and stuff. The saddest thing is that real people who work long hours saving lives every day like trainee doctors dont get paid nearly as much as these people yet you never see them complaining or crying like spoiled children because mum wont buy them a lollypop. These people make me sick!!
War in Rio..
Just reading here something about a drug war in rio, apparently there are many groups that are trying to take over places where other dealers and gangs sell drugs etc. I wouldnt put this place on my list of top places for tourists to visit hahaha! Life means nothing here in Brasil, even though its a religious country. They will kill you here just for the cheap pair of sandals on your feet, your life is worth just R$5 (about one English pound). Nice to know how highly they value your lives here ain't it?
Campy Xuxa..
This beautiful looking thing is Xuxa, remember my previous post about this campy queen of the kids who loves showing off her not very beautiful assets in any way possible to make more money? Now you can see what i mean about her dress sense, cant you? hahaha!! I wonder what her daughter will think when she is older and people see her standing right next to this? Sad init??
I spent the yesterday at Robertas farm in the middle of nowhere. I love to go there just to get away from Planaltina for a few hours. Trust me everyone wants to escape from this place ;-) We spent the whole day just laying around sleeping in the hammocks, i managed to get sun-burned on my feet too hahaha!! I fell asleep with my feet out in the sun and cooked them just a little lol. Luckily the day wasnt really hot or it would have been alot worse. Roberta was demonstrating how to cook various types of Brasilian deserts, so that i could make them for her later she told me lol. They have many types of deserts here, some of them are sickly sweet though so i wont get Roberta to show me how to make them as i dont like things that are 90% pure sugar, my dentist doesnt either hahaha!!
I have to get some photocopies dont this week, apparently the school now pays for them but i have heard this many times since i started here and i cant remember there being one time that they have done this for me yet lol. I'll just get them to print it out for me instead as its easier :-) I tried to print some stuff at the other school on saturday but there was something wrong with the network and it tried to print two pages over around 30 pages instead, putting one line on every page. Man it was so funny!!
Oh i can hear the coffee machine has nearly finished, time to go get a caffeine fix..
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