Evacuation | featured news

Residents evacuated their homes and animals escaped from pens at a zoo as floods fed by a steady torrential downpour struck northeastern Minnesota, inundating the city of Duluth, officials said Wednesday.

Firefighters on Sunday were fighting wildfires that have spread quickly in parched forests in Colorado and New Mexico, forcing hundreds of people from their homes and the evacuation of wolves from a sanctuary.

Minneapolis-St. Paul airport terminal has reopened after a suspicious bag prompted an early-morning evacuation.

A plane at Philadelphia International Airport was evacuated early Saturday after someone called in a bomb threat. Airport officials received a call at approximately 2:00am local time from someone who claimed there was a bomb on a plane, WCAU-TV reported.

Officials in Germany’s western city of Koblenz say some 45,000 residents have to be evacuated as officials try to defuse a World War II era bomb discovered in the Rhine river. City officials said Saturday the massive British 1.8 ton bomb will be defused early Sunday, requiring all residents within a radius of about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the bomb site to leave their homes for the day.

Thailand announced a five-day holiday on Tuesday to give people the chance to escape floods closing in on Bangkok as authorities ordered the evacuation of a housing estate on the outskirts of the city after a protective wall gave way.

A freight train loaded with ethanol crashed and exploded Friday, sending up bright orange flames and plumes of smoke that could be seen miles away and forcing the evacuation of a small town in northern Illinois.

An Alaska Airlines flight landed safely on Monday at Oakland International Airport and has been cleared, after a bomb threat aboard the aircraft was called in, an airport spokeswoman said. Alaska Airlines flight 342 was isolated on a taxiway after landing just before 8 a.m. local time and passengers were bused to the terminal, said airport spokeswoman Joanne Holloway. The flight was bound from Seattle to Oakland.

Swedish police arrested four people on suspicion of preparing a terror attack and evacuated an arts center in Sweden's second largest city on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary, officials said Sunday.

Nearly 100,000 people were ordered to flee the rising Susquehanna River on Thursday as the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee dumped more rain across the Northeast, socking areas still recovering from Hurricane Irene and closing major highways at the morning rush. At Binghamton, N.Y., the wide river broke a flood record and flowed over retaining walls downtown. Interstate 88 was closed and emergency responders scrambled to evacuate holdouts who didn’t heed warnings to leave neighborhoods.