Disasters

Hurricanes hit the Eastern Seaboard, Florida, the Caribbean and Mexico. Earthquakes rattle Mexico and Japan. Riots flare in Tahiti. Bombings shake Paris. A plague of natural and human-made disasters have hit many popular tourist destinations lately. Meanwhile, Southern California is surprisingly disaster-free. The Southland has not suffered a catastrophe in nearly two years, and that fact is translating into a better year for the local tourism industry than many had expected.

The natural disasters that pummeled prime vacation getaways this fall have halted or slowed tourism in many regions that rely on seasonal visitors for their livelihood. A look at several recent disasters' impacts on tourism: Florida * The disaster: Hurricane Opal wreaks havoc on the Panhandle the first week of October.

The yachts that used to be in the marina are on the highway. The red roofs of houses are strewn on the ground. The duty-free shops where tourists used to look for bargains are filled with looters. Hurricane Marilyn has moved on from St. Thomas, but the Caribbean island that it left behind was a changed place Sunday. Electricity, water and phones were out. A quarter of the houses on the island were destroyed, and nearly all the others damaged.

National Guard and reserve forces remain inadequately equipped and unprepared to deal with a wide range of domestic disasters, particularly an attack with unconventional weapons, a congressional commission has concluded. In its final report, the panel said Thursday that congressional and Pentagon policymakers had been reluctant to acknowledge that the military remains the only institution that can respond quickly to natural and man-made disasters.

The image of a catastrophic natural disaster that humbled a powerful leader may have stalked Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao as he made rapid-fire visits last week to areas devastated by snowstorms, but it probably wasn't Hurricane Katrina. Try going back a few centuries. In a country where history is never far from the surface, the events back in 1351 and 1644 may weigh on leaders' minds.

They knew they couldn't set this little country community right in a day -- the storms had been too brutal for that. But at least, they figured, they could clean it up. All along the two-lane road through town, men in hunting jackets moved around quickly in heavy machinery, plowing and piling debris. Farmers in ball caps amputated horizontal cedars, poplars and pines with buzzing chain saws. Church ladies in fresh makeup and work gloves tidied the yards in front of roofless homes.

Newspapers have always written about the nation's disasters -- but so have balladeers, enshrining death and heroism and crime in songs about virtually every newsworthy event: the 1889 Johnstown flood, the last train ride of engineer Casey Jones, the sinking of the Titanic. These songs were popularized in sheet music and phonograph records, and some of the mournful tunes later wound up on the radio.

It's been 80 years since the catastrophic collapse of St. Francis Dam. On March 12, 1928, just moments before midnight, 12 billion gallons of water -- a year's supply for Los Angeles in those days -- crashed down San Francisquito Canyon. A thundering wall of water carried mud, boulders, trees and debris through the canyon, destroyed more than 1,000 homes, killed up to 600 people, took out five bridges and flowed overland until it reached the sea.

The death toll continued to climb in Myanmar as state media reported Tuesday that more than 22,000 people had died due to a weekend cyclone and more than 41,000 were missing. Efforts to reach the victims and help the estimated 1 million people left homeless by Tropical Cyclone Nargis remained mired amid bureaucracy, logistical problems and the isolation of many affected areas.

Frustration mounted Wednesday as humanitarian groups waited for Myanmar's government to grant visas and allow more relief flights into the country, steps deemed essential to easing the plight of as many as 1 million left homeless by a cyclone last weekend. By day's end, as gasoline lines grew and darkness enveloped a battered Yangon, Myanmar's most populous city, a trickle of aid was starting to flow.