Disaster Victims

When the third major quake in 24 hours hit this pastoral town Sunday, Danielle Gyurik heard a loud, sickening snap--and prepared herself for the worst. She ran outside in the pre-dawn darkness, and, sure enough, there it was: Her century-old bed and breakfast, the Ferndale Inn, had lurched off its foundation and was perilously perched over the waters of Francis Creek. But like other inhabitants of this rugged, quake-prone region, Gyurik, 29, did not mope.

Halifax, Canada - A cold wind ripped through Fairview Lawn Cemetery. Then came the frigid rain. In a minute, I was thinking, the headstones will be shivering. "Now," said Blair Beed, my guide, "imagine how it would have been in those lifeboats. Surrounded by ice. " He was talking about the Titanic, of course. Although this Halifax cemetery lies about 750 miles northwest of the waters where that celebrated ship went down April 15, 1912, it was the seamen of Halifax who retrieved more than 300 of the dead, along with a grim harvest of flotsam.

Piles of old eyeglasses that would otherwise wind up in the local landfill are being recycled for use by others in an emergency. A partnership between the city and Direct Relief International saves landfill space and helps aid the sight of disaster victims. "There really isn't a thrift store or service club that does this type of service," said Jay Duncan, recycling specialist for the city.

At one point, the only sound is the tap of sneakers hitting pavement as 131 Japanese students march across the parking lot at Angel Stadium. The trombones, trumpets and saxophones are raised and then the jingle of the Super Mario theme song fills the air. Performers multi-task by dancing: Those with free hands gesture like robots, mimicking the famed Mario, and others jump to the sound of a bell, much like the video game's chime when characters collect...

There's power in numbers. That's the idea behind a new store that caters to disaster victims. The Malibu Buyers Group was founded this summer to negotiate bargain basement prices for the hundreds of people who lost their homes in last year's wildfires and the subsequent earthquake and mudslides. The eastern Malibu business has proved particularly useful for people who were underinsured and have had to dip into their savings to rebuild.

Arthur Francis "Frank" Carven III, an attorney who became an activist for aviation safety and fair compensation to families of aviation disaster victims after two relatives were killed in the explosion of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, N.Y., has died. He was 54. Carven died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Forest Hill, Md., on July 27.

Saying that many Korean American merchants have suffered more than their share of economic damage and personal anguish during the last two years, a Korean American advocacy group Thursday called on the federal government to forgive payment on federal riot disaster loans to merchants who were "double victims" of the 1992 Los Angeles riots and 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Dick Harley mentally checks off the critical details of Thursday morning's landslide in Laguna Niguel. South-facing slope. Rain-soaked ground. A hillside slowly succumbing to gravity with a crescendoing rumble. Familiar description. In fact, it sounds like a morning nearly 20 years ago, when Harley's house was one of 24 destroyed by a massive slide in the Bluebird Canyon area of Laguna Beach. The Harleys found themselves suddenly homeless, owners of land too unsafe even to walk on.

Perhaps an investigator in the consumer protection unit of the San Francisco district attorney's office said it best. Months after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake had devastated the Bay region, a small army of people intent on committing frauds had surfaced to prey upon an oddly unsuspecting populace. As Laurel Pallock put it then, "we're trying to warn people that the con artists are coming out of whatever woodwork you have left."

The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday established a partnership with Operation Hope Inc., a Los Angeles nonprofit organization, to provide economic counseling and loans for victims of natural disasters and national emergencies. Under the partnership, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will refer cases from as many as 12 natural disasters annually to the nonprofit's Hope Coalition, which provides free economic counseling to catastrophe victims.

When the weight of strangers' grief overwhelms him, Kenneth Feinberg takes a walk. Sometimes he buys an ice cream and sits on a park bench, letting the sun replenish his depleted well of compassion. Other times, after listening to the pain, anger and recriminations of the bereaved, Feinberg takes refuge in opera — not for its cathartic pathos, but because it's the one place where he can count on falling asleep. A balding, bespectacled lawyer with skin nearly as thick as his Boston accent, Feinberg must daily sort the emotional rubble of disaster.

The federal disaster fund could run dry as early as Tuesday, but lawmakers showed no sign of compromise as another partisan showdown on the budget set the stage for a possible government shutdown later this week. Democratic and Republican leaders were not scheduled to talk Sunday about a measure to replenish the fund, which is used to aid victims and reimburse states hit by floods and other natural disasters, and to keep the government running past Friday, the end of the fiscal year.

The threat of a government shutdown intensified as the House surprised its Republican leadership and rejected a bill to fund the government that required cuts in programs to pay for aid for victims of Hurricane Irene and other disasters. The legislation was narrowly defeated Wednesday after a tense afternoon of vote counting. Conservatives voted against the bill because they thought its spending level was too high, and Democrats rejected it because of the requirement for cuts. The spending bill is needed to keep the government running through Nov. 18; current spending authority stops at the end of September.

Breaking a logjam that threatened to furlough 80,000 aviation and construction workers, Congress sent President Obama legislation to extend federal air and transportation bills, narrowly averting a Friday deadline. But legislation to replenish depleted Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster-aid funds remained mired in partisan gridlock, opposed by House Republican leaders who insist that supplemental funds to pay for Hurricane Irene and other disasters be paid with spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.

As the first powerful storm of the Atlantic hurricane season tore across the Yucatan Peninsula on Sunday, the massive flotilla striving to contain and clean the Gulf of Mexico oil spill hoped the weather wouldn't force it to get out of the way. Meteorologists predicted that the tropical storm named Alex was more likely to blow into the eastern coast of Mexico rather than due north to the spill site. But a major storm could require the evacuation of ships taking up some of the oil through a pipe system — leaving as many as 60,000 barrels a day gushing unabated.

Chinese President Hu Jintao flew Sunday to the site of last week's earthquake on the Tibetan plateau, the latest effort to portray a government that is both compassionate and competent to a people who have made it clear at times that they don't want to be under Chinese rule. With the death toll rising sharply -- at latest count, 1,706 -- China's handling of the disaster relief is under close scrutiny. The pressure on China has been heightened by a request over the weekend by the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, to visit the area where the earthquake struck and pray for victims.

In what has become a post-disaster ritual for California businesses, numerous lenders and retailers have offered assistance to the victims of this month's storms, with low-interest loans and deferrals on home mortgage and credit card payments. "Knowing that these things are lurking, we have (disaster assistance programs) pretty much ready to go," said Wells Fargo spokeswoman Kathleen Shilkret. "Unfortunately, we have had too much call for this."

The nightmares continued for weeks after Judith Tuohey returned home to Lake Forest from Oklahoma City. During the day, the smallest things can bring on a rush of emotion: when someone walks by her who's just eaten a Lifesaver, it triggers her memory of the rescue workers and the masks they had to wear--soaked in wintergreen to conceal odors at the site.

First Lady Michelle Obama arrived in Mexico City on Tuesday night after making a surprise detour to Haiti during her much-touted first official solo trip abroad. Obama stopped off at the impoverished Caribbean island nation to view the devastation left by a catastrophic earthquake Jan. 12. She was accompanied in Haiti by Jill Biden, the vice president's wife, before flying on her own to Mexico's capital for scheduled events Wednesday and Thursday. The trip to Haiti was not made public until the two women landed there because of concerns about security and crowd control, a White House official said.

An earthquake that Chinese officials measured at magnitude 7.1 rocked a remote, mostly Tibetan-populated county in western China early Wednesday, killing at least 300 people and injuring 8,000, according to state television reports. The quake struck in Qinghai province about 20 miles from the county seat of Yushu, where it toppled houses, an elementary school and part of a Buddhist tower in a public park and seriously damaged the main hospital in town, officials told Chinese media.