Sept. 17 Photo Brief: Occupy Wall Street anniversary, Mount Sinabung, flooding in Colorado
Activists demonstrate during the second anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Mount Sinabung spews rocks and red-hot ash, flooding in Colorado continues and more in today’s daily brief.
- A protester affiliated with Occupy Wall Street demonstrates at Zuccotti Park near the New York Stock Exchange on the second anniversary of the movement on September 17, 2013 in New York City. Numerous rallies and events across the city were planned for the movement which takes aim at inequality and financial greed and which has influenced activist moments around the world. While police presence was high in New York, with a helicopter flying above the park, no incidents had been reported by the afternoon. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
- A member of the Shohadaa Badr Brigade, which operates under the Free Syrian Army, looks through a hole in the wall in Ashrafieh, Aleppo September 17, 2013. (Muzaffar Salman/Reuters)
- Sergei Filin (C), artistic director of Russia’s Bolshoi Ballet, is surrounded by journalists during a meeting with dancers at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, September 17, 2013. Filin returned to Moscow from Germany following eight months and 22 operations on his eyes and face after an acid attack that nearly blinded him, the theatre’s spokeswoman said. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)
- Shamsul Huq, a driver, sits inside his auto rickshaw after his right arm was burnt by a crude bomb thrown by activists of the Jamaat-e-Islami party protesting against the revised sentencing of Abdul Quader Mollah, in Dhaka September 17, 2013. Bangladesh’s Supreme Court sentenced Mollah, assistant secretary general of the outlawed Jamaat-e-Islami party, to death for war crimes on Tuesday, overturning a life sentence imposed by a tribunal, triggering outrage from his lawyers and protests from his supporters. (Andrew Biraj/Reuters)
- Indonesian farmers rush to harvest crops in the district of Karo as an ash cloud rises during a fresh eruption of the Mount Sinabung volcano on September 17, 2013. Thousands of villagers fled after Mount Sinabung’s series of volcanic eruptions on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, spewing rocks and red-hot ash onto surrounding villages, officials said. (Suntanta Aditya/AFP/Getty Images)
- A mother holds her child as Mount Sinabung spews ash and hot lava during an eruption in Perteguhan village in Karo district, Indonesia’s north Sumatra province, September 17, 2013. Mount Sinabung threw more volcanic ash into air, covering the surrounding areas on Tuesday, as authorities prepared more temporary shelters for evacuees. (Roni Bintang/Reuters)
- A picture taken on September 17, 2013 shows the wreck of Italy’s Costa Concordia cruise ship near the harbor of Giglio Porto. Salvage operators in Italy lifted the Costa Concordia cruise ship upright from its watery grave off the island of Giglio on Tuesday in the biggest ever project of its kind. (Vincenzo Pinto/AFP/Getty Images)
- Portable buildings lie piled together by flooding in a town in Weld County, Colorado September 17, 2013. Search-and-rescue teams bolstered by National Guard troops fanned out across Colorado’s flood-stricken landscape, as a week of torrential rains blamed for eight deaths and the destruction of at least 1,600 homes finally gave way to sunny skies. (Rick Wilking/Reuters)
- A wreath stands at the US Navy Memorial September 17, 2013 in Washington, DC, after a ceremony to honor the victims of the Washington Navy Yard Shootings. US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel laid the wreath with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
- Roma children Andrea-Maria (L) and Valeria sit next to the only street that goes by the abjectly poor Roma settlement of Ponorata on September 10, 2013 in Ponorata, Romania. Between 400 and 500 Roma live in squalor in Ponorata, few have access to electricity and 95% of them are illiterate and unemployed. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
- A young Nepalese girl dressed in the outfit of a Kumari, the living goddess, looks on as she takes part in Kumari Puja rituals at Hanuman Dhoka in Durbar Square of Kathmandu on September 17, 2013. (Prakash Mathema/AFP/Getty Images)
- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) speaks to reporters after the Senate policy luncheons, on Capitol Hill, September 17, 2013 in Washington, DC. When asked about the prospects for another Senate gun control vote, Reid said that he doesn’t have the votes. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
- Museum workers walk in front of a fresco by Italian renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli titled, “The Annunciation of San Martino alla Scala” at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem September 17, 2013. The fresco, on loan from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, is the first Botticelli ever to be exhibited at the Israel Museum. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)
- Synchronized swimmers present creations from the Adidas by Stella McCartney Spring/Summer 2014 collection during London Fashion Week September 17, 2013. (Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters)
- Picture taken during the celebrations of a new anniversary of the Mexico’s independence, at Zocalo Square in Mexico City on September 16, 2013. (Alfredo Estrella/AFP/Getty Images)
- Couples in wedding dresses and suits take a break during a ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of their marriages in Hefei, Anhui province, September 16, 2013. (Stringer/Reuters)
Colorado evacuations continue as flood crest moves downstream
Keith Coffman, Reuters
2:46 PM EDT, September 17, 2013
DENVER (Reuters) – Colorado authorities coping with the aftermath of last week’s deadly downpours stepped up the search for victims left stranded in the foothills of the Rockies and evacuations of prairie towns in danger of being swamped as the flood crest moved downstream.
As of Tuesday, eight people were confirmed dead from flash floods triggered by a week of historically heavy rains that drenched a 130-mile (210-km) stretch of the eastern slopes of the Colorado Rockies, with at least 1,600 homes destroyed.
Clusters of towns in the foothills of Larimer and Boulder counties northwest of Denver bore the brunt of the disaster, as floodwaters roared down rain-saturated mountainsides through canyons that funneled the torrent into populated areas below.
The flooding has since progressed downstream and spread out onto the prairie, submerging large tracts of farmland as well as oil and gas well sites in the region as high water rolled eastward toward Nebraska.
The overall flood zone ultimately grew to encompass 17 Colorado counties, including the state’s biggest urban centers, across a normally semi-arid region about the size of Delaware.
As the skies finally cleared on Monday, search-and-rescue teams fanned out on foot, in National Guard military vehicles and in helicopters to reach thousands of people cut off in communities isolated by washed-out roads and bridges.
At the same time, emergency management officials in counties further to the east grappled with downstream flooding along the newly engorged South Platte River, which has carried much of the runoff from last week’s torrential rains.
Emergency management officials ordered the evacuation early on Tuesday of the tiny riverside town of Crook in northeastern Colorado, where firefighters went door to door asking residents to leave.
High water along the South Platte also forced the closure of every bridge on the river in Logan County, essentially cutting the county in half, officials said. The flood crest was expected to reach the larger riverside town of Julesburg on the Nebraska border on Tuesday afternoon.
LOOKING FOR STRANDED SURVIVORS
Meanwhile, search-and-rescue teams continued to comb through canyon areas hit by flash floods at the height of the disaster, looking for more stranded survivors, said Micki Trost, a spokeswoman for the state Office of Emergency Management.
She said local police and fire personnel as well as search teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were taking part in the ground operations.
Nearly 12,000 people have been evacuated to shelters since last week, but at least 1,000 more had yet to be reached on Monday in Larimer County alone.
Trost said the number of people unaccounted for throughout the flood zone had declined to fewer than 500, many of them believed to be merely cut off in remote areas without telephone or Internet service.
In addition to some 1,500 homes destroyed and 4,500 damaged in Larimer County, 200 businesses have been lost and 500 damaged, officials there said. Boulder County officials said more than 100 homes were destroyed in the hard-hit town of Lyons but had no countywide property loss figures.
President Barack Obama declared the area a major disaster over the weekend, freeing up federal funds and resources to aid state and local governments.
Meanwhile, standing water left by the floods was expected to cause significant damage to crops in the predominantly agricultural communities of Morgan County, northeast of Denver.
Oil and natural gas production also was disrupted in the fossil-fuel-rich region of eastern Colorado known as the Denver-Julesburg Basin, with roughly 1,000 wells shut down by flooding, several energy companies reported on Monday.
Local environmental activists have raised concerns about potential leaks of gas, oil and hazardous materials from well sites and other energy facilities compromised by flooding. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission said it was working with health authorities to assess environmental impacts.
Last week’s downpour, the heaviest to hit the region in four decades, experts said, dumped up to 21 inches of rain in parts of Boulder city, northwest of Denver, nearly double the area’s average annual rainfall.
The last multi-day rainfall to spawn widespread flooding in Colorado’s Front Range occurred in 1969. But a single-night downpour from a 1976 thunderstorm triggered a flash flood that killed more than 140 people in Big Thompson Canyon.
(Reporting by Keith Coffman; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by James Dalgleish)