MEC&F Expert Engineers : 07/29/15

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Union Pacific train derails near Galt cemetery in California. 29 cars off the tracks


























UPDATED 7:16 PM PDT Jul 29, 2015 

GALT, Calif. (KCRA) —A Union Pacific train has derailed south of the Galt cemetery, KCRA 3 has confirmed.






A Union Pacific train derailed south of Galt, causing 29 cars to come off the tracks.


Officials said 29 of the train's 75 cars derailed about 3:30 p.m. at Kost Road.


The train was headed north from Lathrop. The train's final destination was Proviso, Illinois. 




Some of the cars tipped over and are on their side.



No injuries have been reported, and officials said the derailment is not considered a hazardous situation.



Union Pacific officials said the train was carrying consumer goods.

The cause of the derailment is under investigation. 


There have been no impacts to the Union Pacific train system, but Amtrak was reporting delays. 


One northbound Amtrak train was experiencing a 20-minute delay and a southbound train was experiencing an hour-and-a-half delay. Stay with KCRA 3 News for more on this developing story.

1 dead, 10 injured as church van crashes through crossing gate into train at Ohio crossing


The Associated Press
In this Tuesday, July 28, 2015 photo, a van rests against a train engine after a Collision in Middletown, Ohio. An adult was killed and 10 others were injured when the van, transporting students to evening vacation Bible school, crashed into the side of the train. The Ohio State Highway Patrol said the gates were down and the warning lights activated at the crossing when the van approached. (Todd Jackson/WHIO-TV) MANDATORY CREDIT.
Associated Press

By DAN SEWELL, Associated Press

CINCINNATI, OHIO (AP) — 

A van carrying vacation Bible school students crashed through a crossing gate and into the side of a freight train at a southwest Ohio rail crossing, killing an adult passenger and injuring nine children and the driver, authorities said Wednesday.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol said the gates were down and the warning lights activated when the van approached the crossing in the city of Middletown on Tuesday evening. Investigators were trying to determine why the driver kept going and crashed the 2002 Ford passenger van into the CSX train.

The van was taking students to evening vacation Bible school at the Church at Mayfield in Middletown, some 30 miles north of Cincinnati.

The patrol said the front-seat passenger, 62-year-old Jan Martin, died at Atrium Medical Center in Middletown nearly two hours after the crash. Police said nine children, ranging in age from 7 to 10 years old, and the female driver, also 62, suffered injuries that aren't considered life-threatening. They were taken to hospitals.

"As far as I understand, everyone is doing as well as can be expected," the Rev. Gary Ashley told The Associated Press on Wednesday. He was at Atrium Medical Center where his wife, the van's driver, remained hospitalized. He said Judith Ashley had multiple injuries and he hadn't been able to talk with her yet.

Jacksonville, Florida-based CSX said in a statement that the company is cooperating with the investigation. Spokeswoman Melanie Cost said the train had come from the Middletown Yard that regularly serves the area.

"Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the accident in Middletown," Cost said in an email, referring other questions to police. The patrol said its investigation was continuing.

A statement on the small nondenominational church's Facebook page announced plans for a prayer vigil Wednesday evening. It said the church lost a member of its family.

"Jan will be sorely missed because she was loved by all," the statement said. "She has gone home to be with her Lord, and left this world doing what she loved, serving Him."

Ashley said vacation Bible school planned for the rest of the week has been canceled.

"We just stopped right there," he said. "There's just too much going on. We can't go on with it."

FAA: Wildfires and Drones Don’t Mix. Anyone who violates a TFR and endangers the safety of manned aircraft could be subject to civil and/or criminal penalties.


For Immediate Release

July 29, 2015
Contact: Les Dorr, Jr. or Alison Duquette
Phone: (202) 267-3883; Email: les.dorr@faa.gov


WASHINGTON, DC

Responding to recent incidents in which unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), also known as “drones,” interfered with manned aircraft involved in wildland firefighting operations, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is supporting the U.S. Department of the Interior and U.S. Forest Service in their simple message to drone operators: If you fly; we can’t.

“Flying a drone near aerial firefighting aircraft doesn’t just pose a hazard to the pilots,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “When aircraft are grounded because an unmanned aircraft is in the vicinity, lives are put at greater risk.”

Often a temporary flight restriction (TFR) is put in place around wildfires to protect firefighting aircraft.  No one other than the agencies involved in the firefighting effort can fly any manned or unmanned aircraft in such a TFR. 

Anyone who violates a TFR and endangers the safety of manned aircraft could be subject to civil and/or criminal penalties. Even if there is no TFR, operating a UAS could still pose a hazard to firefighting aircraft and would violate Federal Aviation Regulations.

“The FAA’s top priority is safety.  If you endanger manned aircraft or people on the ground with an unmanned aircraft, you could be liable for a fine ranging from $1,000 to a maximum of $25,000,” said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta. “Know the rules before you fly.  If you don’t, serious penalties could be coming your way for jeopardizing these important missions.” 

Since so many people operate unmanned aircraft with little or no aviation experience, the FAA is promoting voluntary compliance and working to educate UAS operators about how they can operate safely under current regulations and laws. The agency has partnered with industry and the modeling community in a public outreach campaign called “Know Before You Fly.”

The campaign recently reminded UAS users to respect wildfire operations.  The National Interagency Fire Center also posted a video warning for users to, “Be Smart. Be Safe. Stay Away.”

Additionally, the FAA provided guidance to law enforcement agencies because they are often in the best position to deter, detect, immediately investigate, and, as appropriate, pursue enforcement actions to stop unauthorized or unsafe unmanned aircraft operations.

So remember this simple message around wildfires: If you fly, they can’t. Keep your drone on the ground and let firefighters and aircraft do their jobs. And, if you see someone flying a drone near a wildfire, report it immediately to local law enforcement and the nearest FAA Flight Standards District Office with as much information as possible. You can find the closest FAA office at: 

http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/field_offices/fsdo/.

South Korean Shipyards Are Empty Due to the plummeting oil prices and delayed offshore projects


Hyundai
By MarEx 2015-07-29 16:17:15

The three largest ships yards in the world are in Korean and they are struggling for work and losing lots of money.

Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, Samsung Heavy Industries and Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) say it is due to plummeting oil prices and delayed offshore projects. The giant yards  are reporting significant losses in 2015’s second quarter-- Daewoo leads the way reporting a 3.03 billion KRW ($2.62 billion) operating loss. Samsung reports1.55 trillion KRW loss while Hyundai says it lost 171 billion won. The combined losses is the 4.75 trillion KRW or $4.1 billion.

Daewoo cites delays in the construction of gas oil rigs as well as lower freight rates in the cargo markets. Korean yards invested heavily in oil and gas rigs around 2010 in an effort to circumvent competition with the Chinese yards. Oil prices were sitting at about $100 per barrel at the time and the industry was booming.

The maritime sector on whole has been sluggish due to the global recession and economic slowdown. China has been the world’s workbench for the last decade or so. It shipyards have been some of the busiest in the world, but oil prices have plummeted by 60 percent and demand for drilling rigs and ships has slowed.

The 2nd quarter losses for the three Korean giants were Daewoo’s 2015 Q2 revenue fell 63.1 percent, Samsung’s revenues fell 44.8 percent, and Hyundai posted a 240 KRW loss down from last year’s loss during the same period of 489 KRW.

Clemco Industries Inc., a Missouri manufacturer, exposes workers to amputation hazards. OSHA proposes penalties of more than $46K for 11 safety and health violations

July 29, 2015

Missouri manufacturer exposes workers to amputation hazards.

OSHA proposes penalties of more than $46K for 11 safety and health violations

Employer name: Clemco Industries Inc.

Investigation site: One Cable Car Drive, Washington, Missouri

Investigation findings: The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration's St. Louis Area Office issued 10 serious and one other-than-serious safety and health violations to the Clemco Industries on July 24. The company manufactures abrasive blasting equipment such as hoods, valves and hoppers and employs about 150 workers.

The serious violations include:
  • Failing to comply with machine safety procedures such as the use of locking devices, emergency stop switches and guards
  • Not training employees about machine safety procedures and hazards
  • Failing to inspect ropes and chains monthly.
OSHA issued one other-than-serious violation for failing to label containers of bio-hazardous materials.

Quote: "Thousands of workers suffer lacerations, amputations and fractures each year because they come in contact with operating parts of machinery," said Bill McDonald, OSHA's area director in St. Louis. "The use of manufacturer installed and common-sense safety procedures can prevent these injuries. Clemco Industries needs to review its programs to keep its workers safe."

Proposed Penalties: $46,800
To ask questions; obtain compliance assistance; file a complaint or report amputations, eye loss, workplace hospitalizations, fatalities or situations posing imminent danger to workers, the public should call OSHA's toll-free hotline at 800-321-OSHA (6742) or the agency's St. Louis Area Office at 314-425-4261.

How Aging Infrastructure Is Poisoning the U.S. Drinking Supply with Metals Such Lead and Copper and THMs


Of course drinking water from plastic bottles can be also dangerous due to the leaching of plastics from the bottle

 
The Atlantic


FLINT, MICHIGAN

Melissa Mays looks around the emergency room at a frail, elderly man in a wheelchair and a woman with a hacking cough and can’t quite believe she’s here. Until a few months ago, she was healthy—an active mother of three boys who found time to go to the gym while holding down a job as a media consultant and doing publicity for bands.

But lately, she’s been feeling sluggish. She’s developed a rash on her leg, and clumps of her hair are falling out. She ended up in the emergency room last week after feeling “like [her] brain exploded,” hearing pops, and experiencing severe pain in one side of her head.

Mays blames her sudden spate of health problems on the water in her hometown of Flint. She says it has a blue tint when it comes out of her faucet, and lab results indicate it has high amounts of copper and lead. Her family hasn’t been drinking the water for some months, but they have been bathing in it, since they have no alternative.

“It set off a train wreck in my system,” Mays told me, sitting in the emergency room. Later, doctors would put her on beta blockers after finding problems in the arteries around her brain.

In the past 16 months, abnormally high levels of e. coli, trihamlomethanes, lead, and copper have been found in the city’s water, which comes from the local river (a dead body and an abandoned car were also found in the same river). Mays and other residents say that the city government endangered their health when it stopped buying water from Detroit last year and instead started selling residents treated water from the Flint River. “I’ve never seen a first-world city have such disregard for human safety,” she told me.

While Flint’s government and its financial struggles certainly have a role to play in the city’s water woes, the city may actually be a canary in the coal mine, signaling more problems to come across the country. “Flint is an extreme case, but nationally, there’s been a lack of investment in water infrastructure,” said Eric Scorsone, an economist at Michigan State University who has followed the case of Flint. “This is a common problem nationally— infrastructure maintenance has not kept up.”

Indeed, water scarcity in the parched West might be getting the most news coverage, but infrastructure delays and climate change are causing big problems for cities in the North and Midwest, too. Last summer, hundreds of thousands of people in Toledo were told not to drink tap water because tests showed abnormally high levels of microcystins, perhaps related to algae blooms in Lake Erie. 

Microcystins can cause fever, headaches, vomiting, and—in rare cases—seizures. Heavy rainfall has caused backups in the filtering process at overloaded water-treatment plants in Pennsylvania, and so residents are frequently finding themselves under advisories to boil water. And Chicago, which installed lead service lines in many areas in the 1980s, is now facing a spike in lead-contaminated tap water.

In 2013, America received a “D” in the drinking-water category of the American Society for Civil Engineers’ Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. The report found that most of the nation’s drinking-water infrastructure is “nearing the end of its useful life.” Replacing the nation’s pipes would cost more than $1 trillion. The country’s wastewater infrastructure also got a “D” grade.

.
Hydrant flushing in Flint (Alana Semuels)
Like many cities in America, Flint has lost residents but still has to provide services like water and sewer and road maintenance within the same boundaries. All while bringing in less tax revenue to pay for it. Flint has not had the money to spend on crucial infrastructure upgrades, and has left old pipes in place for longer than most engineers would recommend. Water prices are rising in Flint, like they are in lots of other cities, but the quality of water is getting worse, not better.

Flint has financially struggled for longer than most American cities. The birthplace of General Motors, the city began having problems in the 1980s and 1990s when GM started closing plants. By 2001, its unemployment rate was 11.2 percent, which grew every year until it reached 25 percent in 2009. 


Families began to seek opportunity elsewhere, leaving behind empty homes. As the city’s population declined, it struggled to come up with the revenue to provide basic services such as police and fire coverage for residents. The water system, though, was still a “cash cow,” said Scorsone, the professor, so Flint borrowed from the water authority to pay its city bills.

Flint has been buying water from Detroit since 1967. The Detroit Water and Sewer Department, in the booming post-war years, expanded its services, adding 1,000 square miles of territory. But as the population began to shrink in both Detroit and Flint, fewer customers were left to pay for infrastructure and services. Detroit began raising rates, but Flint didn’t pass those rate increases on to customers because residents were struggling economically and politicians worried they’d get voted out of office, said Scorsone. That meant that little to no money was spent on infrastructure upgrades.

In 2004, Detroit charged Flint $11.06 per million cubic foot of water. By 2013, it was charging $19.12 per million cubic foot, a 73 percent increase.
“It’s a combination of bad management and bad economics,” Scorsone said.
.
Downtown Flint (Carlos Osorio/AP)
By 2011, Flint had a $15 million deficit and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed an emergency manager to take control over the city. It was a move that upset many, since emergency managers are used to replace elected officials such as city councils and mayors and have widespread authority, but less connection to residents. 

In 2012, Michigan voters repealed an emergency-manager law that had allowed emergency managers to take over troubled cities and school districts. But the state legislature then passed a different, and more far-reaching, emergency-manager law later that year. A group of citizens, including some from Flint, filed a lawsuit arguing that the law violated their constitutional right to equal protection. In November, a judge allowed the suit to go forward. 

Unwilling to pay rising Detroit water costs, Genesee County, where Flint is located, decided to work with other Michigan counties to build a pipeline from Lake Huron to mid-Michigan. But the pipeline, called the Karegnondi Water Authority, won’t be completed until late 2016. So in 2013, Flint decided that until the pipeline was finished, it would pump water from the Flint River, treat it, and sell it to residents. The plan would save the city much-needed money: The annual cost to treat water from the Flint River is $2.8 million, said Howard Croft, the city’s public-works director. Buying water from Detroit, on the other hand, costs $12 million a year.

But making river water safe for public use is a much more difficult task than treating reservoir or lake water. Rivers are subject to runoff and the water quality can change quickly with air temperature or heavy storms. Flint found this out as soon as it turned off the pumps from Detroit and started pumping its own water in April 2014.

Residents said they noticed the difference almost immediately. Melissa Mays says her water started smelling like rotten eggs, and had a strange tint when coming out of the faucet, sometimes blue, sometimes yellowish.

Claire McClinton, a GM retiree, said her house began to smell like garbage. Another resident, Bethany Hazard, says her water started coming out of the faucet brown and smelling like a sewer, and when she called the city to complain, she was told the water was fine. 

The water was not fine. First, tests showed there was fecal coliform bacteria in the water, and the city had to issue numerous boil advisories to citizens. In response, engineers upped the amount of chlorine in its water, leading to dangerously high levels of trihalomethanes, or TTHMs, which put Flint in violation of the Clean Water Act. TTHMs are especially dangerous when inhaled, making showering in hot water toxic.

By October, GM, which still has a plant in Flint, had started noticing that the water was corroding parts of its engines. The plant switched off the Flint water, and started trucking in water from elsewhere. It asked the city for permission to use water from Flint Township, rather than the city of Flint (Flint Township was still buying water from Detroit), and switched back to Detroit water, said spokesman Tom Wickham.

LeeAnne Walters didn’t notice any changes right away. But a few months after the switch, she noticed that her children were getting rashes between their fingers, on their shins, on the back of their knees. Her four-year-old son, who has a compromised immune system, started breaking out into scaly rashes whenever he swam in their salt-water pool, which he’d used since birth. Then Walters’ 14-year-old son got extremely sick and missed a month of school.
So she sent her water off to Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech environmental engineering professor who had forced the CDC to admit it had misled the public about the amount of lead in D.C.’s water.

Edwards was shocked when he found that Walters’ lead content was 13,000 parts per billion. The EPA recommends keeping lead content below 15 parts per billion.
“At first I didn’t believe the results because they were the worst I’d ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot,” Edwards told me.
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LeeAnne Walters shows a water filter from her home. (Alana Semuels)
None of the samples Walters sent were safe to drink. Some had lead content of 200 parts per billion. Over 30 samples, the average lead content was 2,000 parts per billion, which meant that no matter how long Walters let her taps run, it still would have been toxic. This could easily have been causing the health problems that Walters and her children were experiencing.

“Lead is the best known neurotoxin, it adversely impacts every system in the human body,” Edwards told me. “Certainly it could have caused children’s lead poisoning.”

The city says it does not know why so much lead was found in Walters’ pipes, but Edwards has a theory: Many cities have lead pipes, and when water sits in those pipes, the lead can leech into the water. So cities usually add corrosion-control chemicals, such as phosphates, to keep the lead out of the water. But because Flint didn’t take such precautions when they began pumping their own water, “the public health protection was gone,” Edwards says.

The water situation has made people furious with the city, and with the emergency-manager system of government. Residents say Flint first learned about the high levels of TTHMs in May 2014, but didn’t inform residents until January. City meetings have devolved into a mob of angry residents yelling at the emergency manager.

“We still don’t have a true democracy,” said Claire McClinton, the retiree. “As soon as [the emergency manager] sets foot in your city, your local government is gone.” In March, Flint’s city council voted to “do all things necessary” to once again purchase water from Detroit, but the city’s emergency manager nixed the vote, calling it “incomprehensible.” The emergency manager stepped down in April, announcing that the city was on firmer financial footing, but one of his last orders was that the city council could not change any of his orders for a year, including the order to switch to Flint water.

Flint last week sent out yet another notice that tap water had higher than acceptable levels of TTHMs. There are currently two lawsuits pending about the water issues, one of which questions the city’s financial accounting, another demands that the city go back to Detroit water because Flint’s water quality is so poor.
Drainage into the Flint River (Alana Semuels)
Many Flint residents have a visceral reaction to the water problem, and have focused their attention on the emergency manager, on their city’s finances, and on the unfairness of their situation.

“How many times can they kick the people who live here?” Melissa Mays asked me in frustration.

But it’s not one emergency manager, or one bad decision about pumping water from the Flint River that has led these problems—and that might be the scariest part of all. Neglected infrastructure is really to blame, but it’s not quite as satisfying to blame old pipes as it is to blame the people in charge. And the city’s financial woes have a lot to do with its shrinking population, but it’s hard to blame the people who left in hopes of finding employment or a better life elsewhere.

Eroding infrastructure isn’t unique to Flint. Things just broke down there first.
In a report released to its members last month, the American Water Works Association warned that many utilities across the country won’t have the money to perform much-needed infrastructure upgrades over the upcoming decades. Utilities are seeing water sales declining as households and commercial clients become more efficient, but, like Flint, still have to provide the same infrastructure as before with less revenue.

“There is a gap between the financial needs of water and wastewater systems and the means to pay for these services through rates and fees,” the report read.

“They don’t have money to even do the best practices according to our currently lousy best practices,” says Edwards, of Virginia Tech. “They have even less money than normal to address these very, very expensive problems.”

And if utilities can’t pay for much-needed upgrades, other cities might soon find themselves in the same situation as Flint.

At least 1 dead, after a Socata TBM 700 small plane fiery crash at Milwaukee’s Timmerman Airport in Wisconsin







 



 




JULY 29, 2015 







MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN

Milwaukee firefighters and the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office are at Timmerman Airport on the city’s northwest side — where a small passenger plane crashed and was engulfed in flames on Wednesday evening, July 29th. 


The initial call for first responders came in at 6:11 p.m. 

The pilot of the plane had radioed in for a "go around" — which signals that an approach or landing is not working out — just before the fire, according to a report from WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee.

The crash was reported shortly after 6 p.m. when the aircraft crashed and became engulfed in flames, said Fran McLaughlin, spokeswoman for the Milwaukee County sheriff's office.

Flight manifests do not indicate Timmerman as the planned landing field for the aircraft, and no information was immediately available on its occupants, McLaughlin said.


The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office confirms at least one person is dead from this incident. 


FOX6 News spoke with a family who’s home butts up right to the edge of the airport and saw everything. For folks living just feet away from the wreckage, this is a sight they will never forget. 


Kenneth Gipp heard a noise just after 6 p.m. and looked out his brother’s window to discover a shocking sight. 


“Like a loud engine noise. I saw the aircraft leaning real hard to the right, it looked like the wing hit the ground first,” said Gipp. 


Gipp saw the nose of the plane crashing into the ground. 


“There were just a line of flames going from where it hit up to the plane,” said Gipp. 


For other witnesses, there are prayers for whoever was on board. 


“I don’t think anyone survived,” said Gipp. 


A spokeswoman for the FAA says the FAA and the NTSB are gathering information about this crash and continue to investigate.

Date:29-JUL-2015
Time:18:00+
Type:Socata TBM 700
Owner/operator:Trustey Management Corp
Registration: N425KJ
C/n / msn: 518
Fatalities:Fatalities: 1 / Occupants: 1
Other fatalities:0
Airplane damage: Written off (damaged beyond repair)
Location:Lawrence J Timmerman Airport (KMWC), Milwaukee, Wi -   United States of America
Phase: Landing
Nature:Unknown
Departure airport:
Destination airport:Timmerman (KMWC)
Narrative:
The aircraft impacted airport terrain during an attempted go-around at Lawrence J Timmerman Airport (KMWC), Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The airplane was destroyed by the impact and post-impact fire. The pilot onboard the aircraft received fatal injuries.
Sources

http://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=178135
http://m.wisn.com/news/small-plane-catches-fire-at-timmerman-airport/34429230
http://www.channel3000.com/news/1-person-killed-in-plane-crash-at-milwaukees-timmerman-airport/34430460
https://www.rt.com/usa/311116-plane-catches-fire-milwaukee-airport/
http://time.com/3978085/milwaukee-plane-crash-one-dead/
http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/N425KJ.html


Source:
http://fox6now.com/2015/07/29/breaking-plane-catches-fire-at-milwaukees-timmerman-airport/

Sheriff’s deputy is facing a charge of reckless operation of a vessel after 2 were injured in a boat accident in Lake Cayuga in New York

 

(Photo: OVID FIRE DEPARTMENT)

Broome deputy charged in boating accident

Following a boating accident on Cayuga Lake that sent two to the hospital, the operator, a Broome County sheriff’s deputy, is facing a charge of reckless operation of a vessel.

The Seneca County Sheriff’s Office announced the completion of its investigation Tuesday.

On the night of July 10, Dan Balmer, 45, of Johnson City, was heading south in a 19-foot Larson boat on Cayuga Lake, near Sheldrake Point, when he failed to see a lighted navigation marker and collided with it, the sheriff’s office reported.

Balmer and his passenger, Marguerite A. Malone, 35, of Johnson City, sustained non-life threatening injuries and were transported by South Seneca Ambulance to Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse.

The boat was damaged extensively in the crash, the sheriff’s office said.
“There was no evidence from our deputies at the scene that alcohol was involved in the accident,” Seneca County Undersheriff Gary Sullivan said Wednesday. “Mr. Balmer just told us he did not see this object in the water and collided with it.”

Accidents like this are not uncommon on the lake, he said, and the sheriff’s office typically handles those investigations. Boaters sometimes inadvertently crash into objects on the water, such as docks, buoys or other boats, he said.

Balmer was charged with reckless operation of a vessel, a navigation law misdemeanor. He was ordered to appear Aug. 25 in the Ovid Town Court.

He has been a Broome County road patrol deputy since 2000 and previously served with Endicott police, according to Broome County Sheriff David Harder.

Balmer resumed his patrol duties on Saturday, and it is the sheriff’s office policy not to take any action regarding employment status for an infraction such as reckless operation of a vessel, Harder said Wednesday.

“It’s no different than getting a speeding ticket,” Harder said. “He’s taking care of the matter, he told me he was issued a summons, and he will inform me of the outcome.”

Seneca County Sheriff’s deputies were assisted at the scene of the boating accident by the New York State Police, Interlaken and Ovid fire departments, and South Seneca Ambulance.

Staff writer Anthony Borrelli contributed to this report.

Propane gas leak suspected cause in Addison, Michigan home explosion



Addison Fire Chief Jerry Morawski and Assistant Chief John Beach survey the damage. Photo by C.J. Carnacchio.









July 29, 2015 - 

Propane gas is the suspected cause of a July 22 explosion inside an Addison Township home.


Firefighters were called to the 2600 block of Lakeville Rd., between Hosner and Lake George roads, for a reported structure fire.














According to Addison Fire Chief Jerry Morawski, the homeowner's parents entered the house and immediately smelled a very strong, foul odor which they described as "rotten eggs."


They opened a couple windows and the front door to air out the house while they were adding salt to the water softener.


At some point, there was an explosion that originated from the crawl space beneath the house. A neighbor heard it and called 9-1-1.


The blast was strong enough that it knocked the couple off their feet, caused the house to shift off its foundation and blew out some porch windows, according to Morawski.













"The whole sun porch was dislodged from the house a good 4 to 6 inches," he said.


Neither of the parents was injured and the amount of fire damage was limited to a few areas in the walls and some insulation, the chief noted.


"There wasn't much of a fire," he said.


The Oakland County Sheriff's Fire Investigations Unit was called to the scene and is investigating to determine the cause.
Source: http://www.clarkstonnews.com

Coast Guard Investigates Oil Slick off California Coast




Wednesday, July 29, 2015



The U.S. Coast Guard was investigating a large oil sheen off the California coast west of Santa Barbara on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the agency said.
The slick, which was about 60 feet (18 meters) wide, was spotted about 1,000 yards (meters) offshore from Goleta State Beach west of Santa Barbara, said Coast Guard spokeswoman Petty Officer Andrea Anderson.
Anderson could not give the approximate length of the sheen.
In May, as much as 2,400 barrels of crude oil were spilled onto a pristine beach about 15 miles (24 km) west of Goleta when a pipeline ruptured along the coast. But there were no immediate reports of any link between the two incidents.
"We don't have a definite source yet," Anderson said of the oil sheen discovered on Wednesday.
David Zaniboni, a spokesman for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, told Los Angeles television station KABC that his agency also has not identified the source of the sheen and as a result was not calling the incident an oil spill.
A Coast Guard helicopter was surveying the area of the oil sheen, and other members of the agency went out by vessel to take a closer look, Anderson said.

The Coast Guard urged individuals not to make contact with the sheen and to report any oil sightings to its National Response Center.
Zaniboni told KABC that the area regularly experiences natural oil seepage but that firefighters were called when two kayakers came into shore after crossing into black oil in the water.
"All I can go by is what we were told by the kayakers, and they were saying this was more than they've ever seen," Zaniboni told KABC.
Goleta State Beach County Park and pier remained open, Santa Barbara County officials said.
Plains All American, which operated the coastal pipeline that ruptured and caused the spill in May, said the latest oil sheen could not have come from one of their pipelines since they do not operate any underwater pipes in the area, company spokeswoman Meredith Mathews said.



///////////////-----------------//////////


Authorities are trying to determine the cause of a large sheen of oil spotted off the coast of Santa Barbara County in Thursday.

A survey from the air and sea Wednesday afternoon should help authorities determine if an oil sheen is part of a growing spill, natural seepage or part of a pipeline rupture earlier this year, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
The sheen was spotted by a couple of kayakers about 1,000 feet off Goleta beach about 10:45 a.m., the Santa Barbara County Fire Department said. The department notified the Coast Guard, which sent out a safety team on a boat and dispatched a helicopter to survey the sheen, said USCG Petty Officer Andrea Anderson.

The team in the helicopter will estimate the sheen’s size and try to determine where it’s going and where it came from, Anderson said. The team in the water will pull samples of the oil and analyze its composition, which could help determine if oil is from natural seepage, part of an off-shore drilling operation or from the Plains Pipeline spill that closed Refugio State Beach in May.

That spill May 19 released an estimated 101,000 gallons of crude along the Gaviota coast, with tens of thousands of gallons estimated to have made it into the ocean.

The slick was reported to be about 50 feet wide, said Capt. Dave Zaniboni of the Santa Barbara County fire.

The waters off Santa Barbara County occasionally get oil from natural seepage, but the kayakers said the slick they encountered Wednesday was larger than a typical natural spill, Zaniboni said.

Five vessels sink, one runs aground in South China due to the Southwest Monsoon


29 July 2015
 
Five Vietnam-flagged coal carriers sank and another ran aground on 27 July at the anchorage near South China's Qisha port.

The vessels were caught in the southwest monsoon, which brought heavy winds and waves as high as 5 m.

Chinese maritime officials have rescued all 48 crewmembers from the six vessels.

Qisha port is the main entrance of coal, ore, and marine products from Vietnam to Guangxi, receiving dozens of Vietnamese ships every day.

Vessels visiting the port have to wait for high tide at the anchorage before they can enter.