Weather, Natural Disaster | featured news

Chinese officials say a strong earthquake has struck a remote area of the country's far-western Xinjiang region. The government earthquake monitoring center said the quake registered magnitude 6.2 and hit Sunday evening. It said it was centered 175 miles southeast of the oasis city of Hotan. The area is deep in the thinly populated Kunlun mountains.

Two strong earthquakes leveled villages and damaged homes in northwestern Iran on Saturday, killing at least 180 people and injuring more than 1,350 others, state TV reported. Thousands of people spent the night outdoors as aftershocks rattled the area.

A cluster of earthquakes that began Tuesday night continued Wednesday in northern Orange County, keeping residents on edge but causing little significant damage. Photos emerged of bottles falling off a supermarket shelf in Anaheim Hills, but fire officials said they didn't get reports of anything more serious. At a news conference Wednesday morning, Kate Hutton of the U.S. Geological Survey at Caltech said there had been at least 30 quakes since last night, but only three could be felt by residents.

Christopher Carlson sprang into action when smoke and embers ushered a fire that threatened to envelop his Noble, Oklahoma, home. After taking his 12-year-old stepson to safety, Carlson raced against time to assist neighbors and try to save his trailer from one of more than a dozen wildfires that, as of Saturday, had destroyed more than 120 structures.

The death toll from Typhoon Saola rose on Friday to 44 in the Philippines and Taiwan as storms and Typhoon Damrey made landfall in China, where two died and about 770,000 were evacuated. The Philippines recorded 39 deaths in floods and accidents caused by Saola’s torrential rains and strong winds, the Office of Civil Defence said. At least two people were missing and feared dead.

More heavy rain has pounded North Korea, flooding buildings and farmland and forcing people and their livestock to take shelter on rooftops.

The Chinese capital's heaviest rainstorm in six decades killed at least 37 people, flooded streets and stranded 80,000 people at the main airport, state media and the government said on Sunday.

Activists helping the flood-ravaged city of Krymsk represent a jarring contrast to the secretive approach to disaster response that long prevailed during the Soviet period.

McCann, 19, was fleeing Colorado’s most destructive fire -- the Waldo Canyon fire -- when she lost control of her Subaru while trying to pass another vehicle on Interstate 84 between Boise and Mountain Home, Idaho. Her car went off the road and began burning -- starting another wildfire.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - At least 99 people were killed in floods and landslides in southern Russia after two months' average rainfall fell in a few hours overnight, police and emergency officials said on Saturday.