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Weekly UpdatesAug 16, 2009
Airlines PNG
Airlines PNG DHC-6-300 Twin Otter that is believed to have crashed in Papua New Guinea yesterday, killing all 13 passengers and crew onboard, may have been located by search parties near the remote Kokoda airstrip. Flight CF4684, a charter flight that was en route from Port Moresby to Kokoda, is believed to have gone down near its intended destination. According to press reports, villagers told search parties that the wreckage was located nearby. The passengers were mostly Australians going to trek the Kokoda track, site of a famous land campaign between Australian and Japanese forces during World War II that attracts several thousand visitors each year. The aircraft left Port Moresby at 10:53 a.m. and the last communication was at 11:26 a.m., 6 min. after it was due to arrive at Kokoda. Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith said yesterday that seven Australian passengers were missing along with three from PNG and one from Japan plus the two-person crew. He added that the search and rescue operation had been hampered by bad weather, low visibility and rough terrain. The loss, if confirmed, will be the airline's seventh accident since it was formed in 1987 as Milne Bay Air and is the 40th in PNG in the past 20 years. It is also the second loss of a DHC-6 in the region in just one week. On Aug. 2 a Merpati Nusantara Twin Otter with 15 aboard crashed into a mountainside at an elevation of 9,300 ft. near Oksibil in Indonesia. Aug 12, 2009
Airlines PNG
Airlines PNG DH6-300 Twin Otter wreckage from Tuesday's crash was located yesterday at an altitude of 5,500 ft. in the Kokoda area of Papua New Guinea, according to a statement on the carrier's website. All 13 passengers and crewmembers were killed in the accident. Aug 13, 2009
Airlines PNG
A small passenger plane carrying 13 people including nine Australians went missing over Papua New Guinea Tuesday and was feared to have crashed, the airline and Australian officials said. The 20-seater Twin Otter craft disappeared at 10:53 am (0053 GMT) en route to popular tourist destination Kokoda after taking off from the South Pacific nation's capital Port Moresby. Aug 12, 2009
Ban Nam Khem
About 400 residents of the Ban Nam Khem village here were evacuated early Tuesday morning following warnings that a tsunami could hit their shore. Maitree Jongkraijak, a coordinator of the village, told Thai newspaper The Nation that a text message warning from the National Disaster Monitoring Centre was received at about two minutes after midnight about a possible tsunami because of a quake in the Indian Ocean. Jongkraijak then alerted 60 volunteers to be on standby. When another text message warning arrived at 5:00 am, he and the volunteers woke up other residents of the community and led about 400 of them to Ban Nam Khem School, which is a 3-storey building. The residents returned home at 7:00 am when the center sent another text message canceling the tsunami warning. Aug 10, 2009
Galapagos
The unique wildlife of the Galapagos Islandsis under threat from disease-carrying mosquitoes arriving on board growing numbers of aircraft and tourist boats, researchers said on Wednesday. Experts fear the spread of the southern house mosquito, or Culex quinquefasciatus, could have the same devastating effect in the Galapagos as in Hawaii during the late 19th century, when disease wiped out many indigenous birds. The mosquito was first spotted in the Galapagos in the mid-1980s, but its presence then was considered a one-off. Now research by British and Ecuadorean scientists has found the insects are, in fact, transported regularly by plane and are island-hopping on boats, spreading throughout the archipelago. Genetic tests also confirm they are able to survive and breed once they arrive at their new home. Aug 12, 2009
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is developing key technologies for disaster monitoring unmanned air vehicles that would operate in tandem over an area providing rapid response and persistent surveillance. JAXA envisages a fixed wing UAV that would dash to the site of a disaster to provide information on the situation for first responders, and then be followed up by an airship to deliver the persistent surveillance for disaster relief workers. Aug 11, 2009
Merpati Nusantara Airlines, Bombardier
All 15 passengers and crew on board a Merpati Nusantara de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter (PK-NVC) died when the turboprop crashed in west Papua on 2 August. The aircraft came down 43km (23nm) north of the town of Oksibil. Aug 11, 2009
Taiwan
Typhoon Morakot has slammed into eastern China, killing a child, destroying hundreds of homes and submerging farmland. China's official Xinhua news agency says a four-year old boy died Sunday when his home collapsed in the city of Wenzhou in Zhejiang province. It says the city has recorded 70 centimeters of rain since Morakot made landfall earlier Sunday in Fujian province to the south. Chinese authorities evacuated one million people to safety in the two provinces before the storm hit with winds of up to 120 kilometers an hour. Forecasters predicted Morakot would weaken as it moved north over land. Earlier, the typhoon caused the heaviest flooding in 50 years in southern Taiwan. The island's Central News Agency says seven people have been killed and another 46 people are missing. The storm has dumped more than 250 centimeters of rain on southern Taiwan since Friday, submerging villages and stranding thousands of people. Aug 10, 2009
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