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POPSMarin Urban Search & Rescue Team: Ready, willing, and able To paraphrase Firefly , "What's that make them? Big damn heroes! " More: They can't just roll the pipes off because its likely there will be so much debris in a real disaster that rolling will be impossible. Instead they inflate rubber and kevlar bags, sort of ultra-balloons. The bags are attached to an air tank and when inflated, can support a huge amount of weight ranging from two tons with the smaller bag to a mammoth 37 tons using the large bag! It takes about ten minutes to free the 'grateful' dummy. The collaborative training provided by Novato Fire District, Marin USAR and the State of California Office of Emergency Services, mirrors the collaboration in the field. When disaster strikes, multiple agencies respond and they need to work seamlessly together. That's why this type of training is so important.
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POPS The L'Aquila Earthquake At a makeshift camp in L'Aquila, central Italy, Tuesday, April 7, 2009, some of the thousands of people driven from their homes by Italy's deadly earthquake found shelter Tuesday in tent camps, seaside hotels or their own cars, making do with makeshift accommodations as hopes began to fade that any more survivors would be found.
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POPSItaly's quake news My heart just goes out to these poor souls! looks like most of the town was destrpoyed, full story at source.
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POPSPakistan Rushes Aid to Quake Zone; 20,000 Homeless (Update3) The U.S. State Department said it is working with the UN, Pakistani government and other potential donors to assess damage and is ``ready to provide an assistance package.`` Neighboring India also offered help and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wrote to his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani expressing condolences. Pakistani Information Minister Sherry Rehman told reporters in Islamabad today that aid would be welcome from anywhere, including India. Nuclear-armed neighbors Pakistan and India, which have fought two wars since 1947 over Kashmir. India also aided Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake that killed 80,000 people. Twelve army helicopters are being used in the relief effort and thousands of blankets, jackets, plastic mats and other supplies are being flown into the area by plane.
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POPSBeijing Olympics-- Opening Ceremony ...Update: Iraqis Given Rousing Ovation The beautiful woman in the Iraqi delegation is sprinter Dana Abdul-Razzaq. President Bush and Laura Bush joined in the ovation. http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/07/olympic-panel-lifts-ban-on-iraq-allows.html Final thoughts on the Opening Ceremony-- Amazing! China put on a wonderful show. UPDATE: I posted the Iraqi version video after the NBC clip was yanked.
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POPSNatural Disaster In Beichuan: A Vision Of Hell Anger, too, is growing about the poor quality of buildings. In Mianzhu, an apartment block collapsed on itself. The flats had been built using contributions from a local work unit, a group of workers organised by the Communist Party at a factory or office. Residents searching for survivors said it was because corrupt officials had demanded so much in kickbacks that the building fell. The neighbouring buildings had not collapsed, including one which housed cadres from the Communist Party. "Show me the structural steel in that building," said one woman, whose mother is missing in the rubble. "It all went into some official's pocket," she spat. The foreign media have a poor image in China This makes reporting the disaster difficult; before the anti-Chinese riots in Tibet, and the sympathetic view of Tibetans in the Western media, foreign journalists were popular. Now we are seen as a threat.
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POPSChina bloggers cook up quake conspiracies In the city of Mianzhu, 60 miles from the epicentre, bloggers pointed to reports just weeks before the earthquake of a mass migration of more than one million butterflies. Other bloggers seized upon an as yet unsubstantiated rumour that a Chinese geologist had predicted the earthquake in advance but had been stifled by the authorities, and by fear. "On the seventh of May, a geologist predicted this ," wrote one blogger. "But he didn't dare make it public." Another blogger from Beijing wrote: “Everyone is talking about the rescue effort but they are not actually joining it. “So, instead we should turn our thoughts to why didn’t forecast the earthquake and evacuate the people... “Could it be that it was out of a desire for a peaceful Olympics?”
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POPSAfghanistan-- The "Good Good War" Is A Bad War I had suggested to Marina that we meet in the safety of the Intercontinental Hotel, where foreigners stay in Kabul, but she said no. She had been there once and government agents, suspecting she was Rawa, had arrested her. We met instead at a safe house, reached through contours of bombed rubble that was once streets, where people live like earthquake victims awaiting rescue. The reason the United States gave for invading Afghanistan in October 2001 was "to destroy the infrastructure of al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11". The women of Rawa say this is false. In a rare statement on 4 December that went unreported in Britain, they said: "By experience, that the US does not want to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, because then they will have no excuse to stay in Afghanistan and work towards the realisation of their economic, political and strategic interests in the region."
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POPSKiller Storms hit Australia Isaiah 28:2 Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand.
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