Landslides

A landslide rained boulders on visitors to one of Hawaii's most spectacular hiking spots, killing seven people--three of them from California--and injuring dozens, officials said Monday. Heat-seeking devices and military search dogs did not find any more bodies Monday beneath tons of rubble at Sacred Falls State Park on the island of Oahu. Rescuers had to dodge falling debris as they searched. "We're pretty much certain there are no more dead bodies under the landslide," said Honolulu Fire Capt.

Mitt Romney rode one of the most negative primary campaigns in modern presidential politics to a landslide victory in delegate-rich Florida, but the Republican contest is likely to rumble on for weeks. The prolonged fight is a marked shift from the GOP's last nomination battle, when John McCain effectively won the race in early February. New party rules and campaign financing schemes are making it harder for Romney to prevail as swiftly as front-runners of the past. Romney buried Newt Gingrich under a merciless fusillade of attack ads. By various estimates, Romney and his allies outspent the Gingrich forces by a lopsided margin — about 5 to 1 — and virtually every Romney ad in the last week of the campaign was harshly negative.

El Nino has brought about many landslide problems in California, and I was wondering why the state can't do what I saw done in Hawaii to help prevent landslides: Drape chain link fencing across and down hillsides. That would keep topsoil landslides from getting far and would give hillside plants something stable to grow around. MIKE MACDONALD North Hills

Mitt Romney may have won a blowout victory in Florida's presidential primary, but Newt Gingrich is not about to concede defeat. Sounding as though he had already wrapped up the nomination, Romney commended Gingrich and other rivals Tuesday night for a hard-fought effort and minimized any lasting damage to the party or his candidacy. "A competitive primary does not divide us, it prepares us, and we will win," Romney told a flag-waving crowd at his Florida headquarters. "And when we gather back in Tampa seven months from now for our convention ... ours will be a united party with a winning ticket for America.

Landslides that followed heavy rain killed 17 people in the central Java district of Purworejo, it was reported Monday.

After months of punishing drought, China's rainy season has returned with a vengeance, causing floods and landslides that as of Saturday were linked to 90 deaths. An estimated 1.4 million people have been evacuated. On Saturday, China's Ministry of Civil Affairs raised alert levels because of forecasts by the National Meteorological Center of torrential rains in southern and central China in the coming week. The rains have inundated the provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Hunan, Sichuan, Jiangxi and Guizhou and the autonomous region of Guangxi.

Landslides killed at least 15 people and injured several in western Romania, and flooding damaged hundreds of houses, local media reported. Authorities blamed the slides on a water release from an unfinished dam by workers who feared the buildup of rain would destroy the construction site. Over the weekend, flooding damaged thousands of houses in western and central Romania. Ten people died in weather-related incidents, including six who drowned and two killed by lightning.

The recent Laguna Beach landslide has prompted some Southland homeowners to consider landslide insurance. Like earthquake insurance, landslide policies must be purchased separately from the typical homeowners insurance. Landslide policies primarily are underwritten by Lloyd's of London and are available through insurance brokers. Large insurers, such as State Farm, Farmers and Allstate do not offer them.

To prepare for potential landslides in the Capistrano Estates development, the city will require the custom-home residents to establish an emergency repair fund. "If you want to live on the hillside, there are certain risks associated with that," Planning Director Tom Tomlinson said. The City Council tentatively plans to have a public hearing at 7 p.m. Jan. 6. More than a dozen homes have been built, and as many as 63 eventually will occupy the 46-acre site.

Villagers and police searched for survivors from a series of devastating landslides and floods in eastern Indonesia that left at least eight people dead and 27 others missing. Bernadus Guru, a senior official in Ende, capital of Flores island, said all those missing were feared dead. Floods rushed down Meja Mountain on Monday as most residents slept. The water swept away houses, damaged bridges and cut off phone lines on the island, 1,030 miles east of the capital, Jakarta.

Mitt Romney readied for the next phase of the GOP campaign Wednesday after the narrowest of victories in Tuesday's Iowa caucuses, boarding his campaign charter flight to New Hampshire to hugs and cheers from his staff. Romney, running on just two hours sleep after a longer-than-expected vote count, acknowledged the slim margin of victory as he spoke with reporters before taking off. "I think landslides are terrific. I just didn't see that in last night's figures," he said. The former Massachusetts governor said he and his family learned of his eight-vote win in the first nomination fight of the 2012 race from their hotel suite.

A slow-moving landslide on a coastal bluff in San Pedro is worsening, exposing huge, deepening crevices along a seafront roadway and dropping chunks of earth and concrete into the ocean below. The slide is serious enough now that city crews have begun building a fence around the crumbling 100-foot bluff in an effort to keep onlookers from getting dangerously close to the mass of land sliding toward the sea. City workers, who have been scrambling to clear the slide area of vulnerable infrastructure, broke ground Friday on the 8-foot chain-link fence.

Rain, landslides and severed communications hampered rescue efforts Monday hours after a magnitude 6.8 earthquake hit northeastern India, Nepal and Tibet, killing at least 40 people and injuring hundreds. With many roads to the epicenter area in India's northeastern Sikkim state cut off, experts said they expected the death toll to rise once emergency workers reach isolated communities in coming hours and days. Working in the Himalayan state's favor is its relatively few residents, about 500,000, making it India's least populated.

Rain, landslides and severed communications continued to hamper rescue efforts early Tuesday and the death toll climbed past 50 following a large earthquake that struck northeastern India, Nepal and Tibet. The epicenter of Sunday's magnitude 6.8 earthquake was in India's northeastern Sikkim state near the Nepal border. With most of Sikkim connected to the rest of India by a single, badly damaged national highway, a higher death toll is expected once emergency workers reach isolated communities.

South Korea struggled to recover Thursday from the nation's heaviest rainfall in decades, a torrential two-day downpour that triggered landslides and flooding, killed at least 57 people and left countless others missing or stranded. Military officials scrambled to retrieve explosives swept away by the storm. In one incident, a military ammunitions depot collapsed under a landslide, and officials said only half of the explosives, including 93 land mines, had been found. They also worked to retrieve numerous Korean War-era land mines that were dislodged by the storm from grounds near an air-defense unit outside Seoul.

Many Seoul residents, some with their faces colored the blue and red of the South Korean national flag, thrust their fists in the air and hugged strangers when word came that Pyeongchang, South Korea would host the 2018 Winter Olympics. In a landslide victory, Pyeongchang beat bids by Munich, Germany and Annecy, France. The South Korean town finished with 63 of a possible 95 votes. Munich garnered 25 and Annecy got seven. "It gave me goose bumps when I heard that we got it," said Jeong Shin-don, a white-collar worker in his 40s. "I'm beyond being excited.

Flood control experts fear that wildfires have created potentially catastrophic landslide hazards in charred areas throughout Southern California -- especially in San Bernardino County, where as many as 50 catch basins built to block falling boulders, mud and trees may not be adequate. Debris flows, as the deadliest form of the slides are known, can be ferocious, crashing down mountain slopes, overwhelming barricades and dropping tons of rubble on unsuspecting communities during heavy rains.

In an 11th-hour effort to stave off a geological disaster, a judge on Wednesday conferred with lawyers representing an Orange developer and residents whose homes are threatened by an unstable hillside. "If something is not done very soon," Assistant City Atty. Wayne Winthers said, "I think it may be too late." At issue is the price to be paid by 396 Investment Co. to the owners of 15 homes built by the company.

California Highway 1 lovers, take note: A section of the coastal route that has been shut for nearly two months reopened Thursday afternoon, but that's hardly the end of repairs and slowdowns in other stretches. Caltrans spokeswoman Susana Cruz said repairs to the scenic road at a point roughly 40 miles south of Big Sur have been completed and that lanes in both directions have opened to traffic. This spot was closed by a landslide April 14, forcing motorists to make a long inland detour using U.S. Highway 101. The news is less cheery for other parts of Highway 1: -- The southbound lane near Rocky Creek Bridge south of Carmel, which was washed away by winter storms, likely will not be rebuilt for a year or two, Cruz said.

Reporting from Las Vegas Manny Pacquiao wasn't pleased with his third consecutive unanimous decision, but in extending his victory streak to 14 he may have retired another Hall of Famer. In a dominant destruction of an aged Shane Mosley, Pacquiao rode a third-round knockdown and a steady barrage of left hands to a unanimous decision in his WBO welterweight title defense before 16,412 at MGM Grand Garden Arena. Judge Glenn Trowbridge scored the bout 119-108, Dave Moretti had it 120-108, and Duane Ford scored it 120-107.