Rubble

Megumi Sasaki was looking for the white bicycle helmet. Working patiently, a flock of seabirds nagging incessantly overhead, the 36-year-old mother of two sifted through the rubble of the only home she had ever known, taken from her by the devastating wave that swallowed this seaside community on March 11. She had bought the helmet for her daughter Sara's seventh birthday. But she had hidden it in a family car swept away by the tsunami that rolled across northeast Japan on the heels of a killer magnitude 9 quake.

Emergency workers struggled Monday to prevent fires from reaching a second munitions depot in the Republic of Congo's capital the day after devastating blasts at another ammunition storage site killed more than 200 people. The Mines Advisory Group, an international nongovernmental organization, warned that more people in Brazzaville were at risk of being killed in the coming days as munitions scattered by Sunday's blasts explode. The disaster underscored anew the dangerous practice in many developing countries of storing ordnance in heavily populated areas.

About 9 a.m. Friday, Virginia Task Force One, out of Fairfax County, pulled Haitian bellhop Mondesir Luckson from a crumbled elevator shaft in the upscale Montana Hotel in Port-au-Prince. Luckson drank some water, ate some food and talked about how he could hear other people trapped in the rubble. At first there were eight voices, he said, then there were only six. An hour later, the search team hauled out American Daniel Woolley, an Internet program manager with the Christian charity group Compassion International, from another elevator shaft.

Reporting from Henryville, Ind., and Durham, N.C. -- "See, they told us yesterday morning to get out," Beverly Evans said Saturday, stifling sobs as she gazed at the crumpled modular home she had lived in before Friday afternoon. Evans did leave. But her husband, Lloyd, did not, she said, because you can't tell him anything. He regretted it. "I told my wife, if another one comes, I'll beat her to the truck," he said. The retired forklift driver, 69, rode out the tornado that blasted through Henryville, a town of about 1,900 people north of Louisville, Ky. It was one of more than 90 that tore through the Midwest and South on Friday, well before the expected peak of tornado season.

Hundreds of people remained trapped in collapsed buildings today after two powerful earthquakes struck near Padang on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, killing at least 529 people. The toll was expected to rise, with Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari saying it could soar into the thousands. "Let's be prepared for the worst," Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said in the capital, Jakarta, before boarding a flight for Padang. Thursday's magnitude 6.8 earthquake came a few hours after a magnitude 7.6 one Wednesday, leaving the city of 900,000 reeling.

An 80-year-old woman and her 16-year-old grandson were rescued Sunday after being buried under rubble for nine days after the worst recorded earthquake in Japanese history and a massive tsunami toppled their home. The two were trapped in their kitchen after the magnitude 9 temblor struck March 11 and survived by wrapping themselves in towels and eating yogurt and drinking, water, milk and Coke, Japanese news reports said. Sumi Abe had been unable to free herself after her legs were wedged under the refrigerator.

Gary Elize was gloomily looking for one last body Wednesday in the flattened apartment where his brother and sister-in-law had died: that of their 5-year-old child. He said he spotted the boy's leg in the rubble and put on a pair of surgical gloves, preparing to extract it. Then, the leg moved. Elize told of how he and several friends dug furiously in the steamy heat and unearthed Monley Elize -- dirt-caked, dehydrated, emaciated and scuffed up, but otherwise unhurt. Monley's first words were whispered.

An 80-year-old woman and her 16-year-old grandson were rescued Sunday after being buried under rubble for nine days after the worst earthquake in Japanese history and a massive tsunami toppled their home. The two were trapped in their kitchen after the magnitude 9.0 temblor struck March 11 and survived by wrapping themselves in towels and eating yogurt and drinking, water, milk and Coke, Japanese news reports said. Teenager Jin Abe eventually dug his way out of the debris onto the roof of the home, where he was able to alert rescuers.

Workers continued to sift through the rubble for survivors of Tuesday's 6.3-magnitude earthquake here, but officials said hopes had dimmed that those buried would be found alive. Despite that gloomy assessment, volunteers pulled two people from the ruins of one building Wednesday after hearing the cries of a woman in the wreckage. The official death toll remained at 75, with scores missing. As Christchurch settled in for another uneasy night, family members of the missing waited for word under a steady drizzle and cold temperatures.

After spending two shuttered years living up to its name, the Castaways hotel and casino in Las Vegas went out with a bang. A series of planned explosions reduced the 19-story tower to a 20,000-ton heap of rubble and raised a huge cloud of dust about three miles from the Strip. The Castaways had been closed since changing hands in a bankruptcy proceeding in 2004. The 447-room building opened in 1955 as the Showboat, which hosted professional bowling tour events. It changed hands several times in the 1990s.

Liz Glynn's studio, on the second floor of a mildly shabby Chinatown office complex, is modest in size and extremely cluttered. Shelves are crammed with boxes and bins; tables are loaded with books, piles of snapshots, and odds and ends from various projects. It would be difficult, at a glance, to get a very clear sense of the work Glynn makes, or the scale on which she makes it: sculptures, installations and participatory performances involving crowds of volunteers, feats of DIY engineering and a thematic range spanning centuries of history.

The death toll from the tornado that crushed Joplin has risen to 117, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said on Tuesday, making it the deadliest such event in the U.S. since 1953. Speaking on the morning television shows, Nixon said the toll had risen overnight, but he stressed that rescue efforts will continue throughout the day. He was optimistic, especially since the stormy weather had cleared. "We have suffered a devastating loss," Joplin City Manager Mark Rohr told reporters at a televised news conference.

The line of cars into Pleasant Grove stretched nearly a mile Saturday afternoon as residents made their way into the neighborhood to dig through the debris. A message scrawled on a building near the entrance read: "Mourn for the dead. Fight like hell for the living. " The once-serene slopes shaded by thick oak groves were unrecognizable. Street after street was strewn with mangled wires, wooden planks and metal sheeting. Photo gallery: Tornadoes cut path of devastation The trees that used to make the place so special now posed a new menace to those digging, forcing them to maneuver around fallen tree trunks and massive roots.

As officials across the South continued the grim business of counting the dead and caring for the survivors, President Obama on Friday toured some of the areas in Alabama hardest hit by tornadoes. Obama and his family arrived in the morning from Washington in a flight that took them over a long wound of destruction. After landing in Tuscaloosa, Obama traveled by motorcade through the city where trees were toppled, neighborhoods flattened and debris and rubble were constant companions.

Rescue workers combing through flattened neighborhoods in tornado-stricken Birmingham, Ala., are finding miracles amid the devastation. Birmingham Police Chief A.C. Roper told PBS' "NewsHour" on Thursday that officers are searching wrecked homes by hand, pulling people out of the rubble. "We even rescued two babies, one that was trapped in a crib when the house fell down on top," he said. The twister's caprice carried the power to astonish. "We're seeing five houses destroyed, but there is one that was right in the center that is still standing," Roper said.

Megumi Sasaki was looking for the white bicycle helmet. Working patiently, a flock of seabirds nagging incessantly overhead, the 36-year-old mother of two sifted through the rubble of the only home she had ever known, taken from her by the devastating wave that swallowed this seaside community on March 11. She had bought the helmet for her daughter Sara's seventh birthday. But she had hidden it in a family car swept away by the tsunami that rolled across northeast Japan on the heels of a killer magnitude 9 quake.

Trapped deep beneath the rubble of 1 World Trade Center, his legs crushed from hip to foot on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Lt. John McLoughlin accepted what seemed inevitable. "I assumed I was going to die where I was buried," McLoughlin said at an emotional ceremony celebrating his retirement from the Port Authority Police.

In what may be the first confirmed American casualty from the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, a Virginia couple said the body of their 24-year-old daughter has been found amid the rubble. The family of Taylor Anderson, who was teaching English in Japan, released a statement saying they had been notified by officials from the U.S. Embassy in Japan that their daughter was found in the city of Ishinomaki in northeast Japan, the Associated Press reported. Officials at the embassy were not immediately able to confirm Anderson's death Tuesday.