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Kamis, 23 Januari 2020

Three Americans dead after firefighting water bomber crashes in rural Australia - CNN

The water-bombing tanker had been chartered by the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (NSW RFS), state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said in a news conference on Thursday. It was called in to fight a bushfire near the town of Cooma, in the state's southeast.

The Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council told CNN the casualties were American. The crew members belonged to Coulson Aviation, an aerial firefighting company that owned the aircraft contracted to the NSW RFS.

Coulson Aviation said in a statement that the crew had been on a firebombing mission when the accident occurred.

"Today is a stark and horrible reminder of the dangerous conditions that our volunteers, our emergency services personnel across the number of agencies take on a daily basis," Berejiklian said. "It demonstrates the dangerous work currently being undertaken. It also demonstrates the conditions that our firefighters are working under."

According to the NSW RFS commissioner, Shane Fitzsimmons, contact was lost with the C-130 water-bombing plane shortly before 1:30 p.m. local time on Thursday.

"Tragically, there appears to be no survivors as a result of the crash down in the Snowy Monaro area," Fitzsimmons said in the news conference. "It's impacted heavily with the ground. And initial reports are there was a large fireball associated with the impact of the plane as it hit the ground."

The cause of the crash is not yet clear.

Traci Weaver, a United States public information officer with firefighting teams on the ground, called the crash a "heartbreaking" incident.

"We're just here taking care of our folks," she told CNN. "And it hits close to home when it's Americans too -- as tight a family as we are in the firefighting community -- it's just hard."

Fires have been burning in the state for months, and several countries have sent personnel and firefighting assistance, including the US and New Zealand.

The US announced Wednesday it was sending two more 20-person crews to Australia, only days after sending air support personnel and other emergency management teams. So far, the US has deployed more than 200 staff to Australia, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Fires are still raging in several states, particularly in New South Wales, Victoria, and the Australian Capital Territory, home to the national capital Canberra.

Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, is blanketed by bushfire smoke on January 23, 2020.

The Canberra airport closed on Thursday, with arrivals and departures grounded as bushfires burned nearby. One of the fires, only a few miles away, is "out of control" and has reached an emergency alert level, according to the territory's emergency agency.

The airport has not been evacuated, but closed "due to aviation firefighting operations," it said in a tweet. Photos from the airport show planes grounded on smoky runways, and the entire city shrouded in a thick, reddish haze.

Authorities have advised residents in the area to seek shelter, warning that roads are closed and that "it is too late to leave."

"The fire may pose a threat to all lives directly in its path," the ACT Emergency Services Agency said. "People in these suburbs are in danger and need to seek immediate shelter as the fire approaches."

The emergency-level fire began on Wednesday, but worsened on Thursday due to strong winds and high temperatures, according to CNN affiliate Seven News.

It rained mud in Melbourne

Much of southeastern Australia -- where Canberra is located -- has been battered by severe weather for the past week. Canberra was hit by a hailstorm on Monday, with hailstones the size of golf balls shattering car windows and injuring scores of birds.

There have also been heavy winds all week -- apart from exacerbating the persistent and widespread fires, the wind created apocalyptic scenes of massive dust storms engulfing towns last Sunday.

A bushfire burns on January 23, 2020 in Canberra, Australia.

Australia has been gripped by a devastating drought since 2017 -- which has not only destroyed livelihoods, but has left the land parched and dry, full of loose soil and dust that are easily whipped up into the air by wind.

In normal conditions, dust storms are not common occurrences. But because of the drought and wind, they are happening more and more frequently in Australia. The major city of Melbourne, south of Canberra in the state of Victoria, was hit with a dust storm on Wednesday night and then rain on Thursday, creating a whole new kind of weather disaster.

The dust had been spread in the air by the wind -- so when the rain came, it combined into a rust-colored sludge of mud that coated the city. Photographs from Melbourne show the Yarra River turned completely brown with the dust-mud, and cars covered with dirt. People woke up to see their household pools and bird baths filled with brown dusty water.

Staff cleaning dirt off the outside courts at Melbourne Park on January 23, 2020 in Melbourne, Australia.

The Australian Open, now in its fourth day, even had to delay matches for several hours because the outdoor courts were covered with mud. Staff at the tennis tournament rushed to clean the court with towels, hoses, and "high pressure cleaning," finally opening it back up to matches in the late afternoon.

There are "damaging winds" across much of the state on Thursday, with the strongest wind gust reaching 85 miles per hour in a national park northeast of Melbourne, according to the Victoria Bureau of Meteorology. Milder winds are forecast for Friday and across the weekend.

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2020-01-23 08:27:00Z
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Rabu, 22 Januari 2020

CNN goes to ground zero of Wuhan coronavirus outbreak in China - CNN

A deadly outbreak of the new Wuhan coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China, a city of 11 million people in December 2019. Within weeks, the virus has killed nine people, sickened hundreds and spread as far as the United States. CNN's David Culver reports.

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2020-01-22 16:13:25Z
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Trump downplays service members' concussion injuries from Iranian attack: 'I heard they had headaches' - CNN

During the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump was asked to explain the discrepancy between his previous comments that no US service member was harmed in the January 8 Iranian missile attack on Al-Asad airbase in Iraq, and the latest reports of US troops being treated for injuries sustained in that attack.

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"No, I heard that they had headaches, and a couple of other things, but I would say, and I can report, it's not very serious," Trump replied during the news conference.

The reporter pressed, "So you don't consider potential traumatic brain injury serious?"

"They told me about it numerous days later, you'd have to ask Department of Defense," Trump replied.

The commander in chief continued, "I don't consider them very serious injuries relative to other injuries that I've seen."

"I've seen what Iran has done with their roadside bombs to our troops. I've seen people with no legs and with no arms. I've seen people that were horribly, horribly injured in that area, that war," Trump said.

"No, I do not consider that to be bad injuries, no," he added.

According to the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, a majority of TBI injuries are considered mild, and are also known as concussions, but they can leave long-term effects on cognitive functions.

A mild TBI is more difficult to identify than severe TBI injuries because there might not be a visible head injury and some symptoms are similar to those of PTSD, according to the DVBIC. Individuals who sustain multiple concussions are at greater risk for further or permanent neurologic damage.

The Defense Department and Veterans Affairs announced last year it would fund up to $50 million in new research on concussions.

"VA and DOD share an urgent, ongoing commitment to better understand the long-term impact of TBI," Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie said at the time.

The Pentagon and the President had initially said no service members were injured or killed in the January 8 Iranian missile attack, which was retaliation for the January 2 US drone strike that killed a top Iranian general.

"No Americans were harmed in last night's attack by the Iranian regime. We suffered no casualties. All of our soldiers are safe and only minimal damage was sustained at our military bases," Trump said an address to the nation after the attack.

But last week, US Central Command said that 11 service members were treated for concussion symptoms from the attack.

CENTCOM said that service members who had been in the impact zone were being monitored for potential injuries and that the injuries became apparent in the days after the attack. Concussions are not always apparent immediately after they've been suffered.

CENTCOM announced Tuesday that additional US troops have been transported to an American medical facility in Germany.

CNN's Barbara Starr, Ryan Browne and Nikki Carvajal contributed to this report.

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2020-01-22 15:14:00Z
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Coronavirus outbreak kills 9 in China; US has 1 confirmed case, health officials say - KABC-TV

SEATTLE -- Chinese health authorities urged people in the city of Wuhan to avoid crowds and public gatherings, after warning that a new viral illness that has infected more than 400 people and killed at least nine could spread further.

The appeal came as World Health Organization experts were meeting to determine whether the outbreak should be declared a global emergency.

The number of new cases has risen sharply in China, the center of the outbreak. There were 440 confirmed cases as of midnight Tuesday in 13 jurisdictions, said Li Bin, deputy director of the National Health Commission. Nine people have died, all in Hubei province, since the outbreak emerged in its provincial capital of Wuhan late last month.

"There has already been human-to-human transmission and infection of medical workers," Li said at a news conference with health experts. "Evidence has shown that the disease has been transmitted through the respiratory tract and there is the possibility of viral mutation."

The illness comes from a newly identified type of coronavirus, a family of viruses that can cause the common cold as well as more serious illnesses such as the SARS outbreak that spread from China to more than a dozen countries in 2002-2003 and killed about 800 people. Some experts have drawn parallels between the new coronavirus and Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, another coronavirus that does not spread very easily among humans and is thought to be carried by camels.

But WHO's Asia office tweeted this week that "there may now be sustained human-to-human transmission," which raises the possibility that the epidemic is spreading more easily and may no longer require an animal source to spark infections, as officials initially reported.

A man in Washington state has been diagnosed with the deadly coronavirus that has sickened hundreds and killed six in China, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Washington state health officials said the man, who is in his 30s, recently traveled to Wuhan in central China, where health officials believe the outbreak started in a fresh food market. However, Washington state officials said the patient did not go to any of the markets in question or interact with any infected individuals. He came back to Snohomish County, which is north of Seattle, Jan. 15, two days before the CDC began screenings at three US airports.

Officials affirmed that there is low risk to the public.

Authorities in Thailand on Wednesday confirmed four cases, a Thai national and three Chinese visitors. Along with the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have also reported one case each. All of the illnesses were of people from Wuhan or who recently traveled there.

"The situation is under control here," Thai Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters, saying there are no reports of the infection spreading to others. "We checked all of them: taxi drivers, people who wheeled the wheelchairs for the patients, doctors and nurses who worked around them."

Macao, a former Portuguese colony that is a semi-autonomous Chinese city, reported one case Wednesday.

Some experts said they believe the threshold for the outbreak to be declared an international emergency had been reached.

Dr. Peter Horby, a professor of emerging infectious diseases at Oxford University, said there were three criteria for such a determination: the outbreak must be an extraordinary event, there must be a risk of international spread and a globally coordinated response is required.

"In my opinion, those three criteria have been met," he said.

In response to the U.S. case, President Donald Trump said: "We do have a plan, and we think it's going to be handled very well. We've already handled it very well. ... we're in very good shape, and I think China's in very good shape also."

In Wuhan, pharmacies limited sales of face masks to one package per customer as people lined up to buy them. Residents said they were not overly concerned as long as they took preventive measures.

"As an adult, I am not too worried about the disease," Yang Bin, the father of a 7-year-old, said after buying a mask. "I think we are more worried about our kids. ... It would be unacceptable to the parents if they got sick."

Medical workers in protective suits could be seen carrying supplies and stretchers into Wuhan Medical Treatment Center, where some of the patients are being treated.

Travel agencies that organize trips to North Korea said the country has banned foreign tourists because of the outbreak. Most tourists to North Korea are either Chinese or travel to the country through neighboring China. North Korea also closed its borders in 2003 during the SARS scare.

Other countries have stepped up screening measures for travelers from China, especially those arriving from Wuhan. Worries have been heightened by the Lunar New Year holiday rush, when millions of Chinese travel at home and abroad.

Officials said it was too early to compare the new virus with SARS or MERS, or Middle East respiratory syndrome, in terms of how lethal it might be. They attributed the spike in new cases to improvements in detection and monitoring.

"We are still in the process of learning more about this disease," Gao Fu, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control, said at the news conference.

Gao said officials are working on the assumption that the outbreak resulted from human exposure to wild animals being sold illegally at a food market in Wuhan and that the virus is mutating. Mutations can make it spread faster or make people sicker.

Jiao Yahui, a health commission official, said the disease "will continue to develop. It has developed different features compared with the early stage, and the prevention and precautionary measures need to change accordingly."

One veteran of the SARS outbreak said that while there are some similarities in the new virus - namely its origins in China and the link to animals - the current outbreak appears much milder.

Dr. David Heymann, who headed WHO's global response to SARS in 2003, said the new virus appears dangerous for older people with other health conditions, but doesn't seem nearly as infectious as SARS.

"It looks like it doesn't transmit through the air very easily and probably transmits through close contact," he said. "That was not the case with SARS."

Health officials confirmed earlier this week that the disease can be spread between humans after finding two infected people in Guangdong province in southern China who had not been to Wuhan.

Fifteen medical workers also tested positive for the virus, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission has said. Fourteen of them - one doctor and 13 nurses - were infected by a patient who had been hospitalized for neurosurgery but also had the coronavirus.

"This is a very profound lesson, which is that there must not be any cracks in our prevention and control," Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang said about the infections of the medical workers in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV.

Experts worry in particular when health workers are sickened in outbreaks by new viruses, because it can suggest the disease is becoming more transmissible and because spread in hospitals can often amplify the epidemic.

The Lunar New Year is a time when many Chinese return to their hometowns to visit family. Li, the health commission official, said measures were being taken to monitor and detect infected people from Wuhan, and that people should avoid going to the city, and people from the city should stay put for now.

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2020-01-22 13:41:15Z
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