Disaster Victims

Bill and Virginia Russell woke up Friday morning at his brother's place. It was messy and cramped. But it was also high in the hills above the ungovernable Mississippi River, which, at present, was coursing through the couple's split-level ranch house on the flood plain below. Their four dogs were in a small pen in the brother's backyard, safe and dry. The cat was around somewhere. So far so good.

After deliberating less than an hour, an Orange County jury Thursday ordered the death penalty for a registered sex offender who fatally stabbed a woman inside a trailer near a Fullerton church. Steven Carl Evans, 61, who has spent his life in and out of custody, was convicted earlier this month in the August 2003 murder and sexual assault of Jeanette Elias, 24, of Sylmar. He is scheduled to be formally sentenced Oct. 24. Evans met Elias when she got off a train in Fullerton. He took her to a trailer parked near a church, where authorities say he tried to rape her and stabbed her more than 20 times.

Downtown looks as if a wrecking ball smashed through it. Bricks and glass shards are strewn along Front Street, the city's historical district. A fence barricades what's left of the Bulls Head Saloon. A neon cowboy presides over the "El Rancho Hote-" -- the L has toppled over -- and a breeze rustles yellow caution tape. A 6.0 temblor rocked this city in February, leveling four homes, severely damaging 35 buildings, and cracking and denting dozens more, city officials say.

Dozens of Hindu pilgrims fell through a broken guardrail and scores more were trampled when thousands of devotees panicked Sunday at a remote mountaintop temple, leaving 145 dead, police said Rumors of a landslide apparently started the stampede at the shrine in the Himalayan foothills, said C.P. Verma, a senior government official in the Bilaspur district. Pilgrims gathered for celebrations at the Naina Devi Temple began running down the narrow path leading from the peak.

DUJIANGYAN, China -- In a narrow alleyway, family and friends enjoyed a special dinner of fish, duck and pork as they watched Friday night's Olympic opening ceremony on television. They'd been waiting years for this night, but cast against a brutally trying few months, the celebration also serves as a welcome distraction. Ke Hong, clutching a bottle of wine, had been enjoying the night enough for all of China. His Olympic spirit, in fact, might have resulted in a headache the next morning.

Hind Hussein returned from the hospital after going into false labor and was nodding off early Saturday morning when the cliff above her shantytown rumbled and boulders the size of tugboats rained down, crushing scores of apartments and houses in a storm of grit and dust. Hussein and a few neighbors ran for cover in a mosque, but for many the rock slide that roared through a quiet Ramadan morning erupted too quickly. At least 24 people have been reported dead and dozens injured.

Hurricane Ike swallowed Dawn Demers' four-bedroom home so completely that she couldn't even see her rooftop as she stood marooned on a bridge, staring at brown floodwaters and trying not to weep. Just down the highway, Ike somehow spared Gary Jenkins' ramshackle trailer, chewing up a few tree limbs but leaving Jenkins unharmed as he sat listening to radio bulletins in his pajama bottoms Saturday morning.

Weary residents of the Texas coast foraged Sunday for water, ice, generators and gasoline as rescuers continued to save people trapped by widespread floodwaters a day after Hurricane Ike flooded roads, destroyed homes and businesses, and knocked out power to nearly 4 million people. Under drenching morning rain that submerged more roads and underscored a mood of misery and frustration, emergency officials tried to unsnarl a last-minute snag that delayed deliveries of U.S.

The road leading onto this barrier island was a jumble of crushed homes, splintered boat docks and mounds of sand. City officials who had ordered residents to leave ahead of Hurricane Ike were telling them Monday to stay away -- maybe for weeks. But for Vernon Baines, pastor of the tiny Live Oak Baptist Church, the need to come back was too strong.

Her suitor had the ring, but she lost her dowry. It was buried beneath the fallen limestone cliffs that smashed her home and smothered her neighborhood two months ago, killing at least 200 people. That morning seems long past, but there are still funerals and newly made orphans when the digging men pull another body from the rock and grit. It goes on like this, names whispered in alleys, hearts broken.