California firefighters voiced hope on Friday that the death toll from a horrific inferno would not rise above four, as attention turned to what had ignited the devastating explosion.
Emergency workers said they had searched more than 75 percent of the smoldering ruins left by a huge gas pipeline blast late on Thursday, which injured 52 people, including three with critical burns.
?here are holes in the ground and some spots are still smoldering ... we are going as fast as we can,?said police chief Neil Telford, while fire chief Dennis Haag said he was ?airly positive?the death toll would stay at four.
California Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado ?standing in for California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is on a trade trip to Asia ?was more cautious, stressing that a quarter of the inferno site had yet to be checked.
? think it is still premature to say the death toll won? rise,?he said, speaking near a Red Cross emergency center set up in a nearby shopping plaza.
A street-by-street check revealed 38 buildings were destroyed and seven others significantly damaged by the explosion and the ensuing inferno.
Local utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) said a natural gas main ruptured, but they have not been able to get close enough to the heart of the huge smoldering crater left behind to determine the reason.
??e never seen anything like this,?said Maldonado, who declared a state of emergency for the city just 3km west of the San Francisco International Airport. ?ou have a 30-inch [76cm] diameter gas pipe in the middle of the road that just exploded; debris everywhere.?br />
Federal investigators were joining local authorities to figure out the cause.
?e will get to the bottom of this,?Maldonado said. ?e need to make sure this doesn? happen again.?br />
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents northern 耶alifornia, called for a thorough probe.
? full investigation must take place in the coming days to determine the cause of this horrible accident,?Pelosi said.
Some area residents said they had smelled natural gas in the air during the three weeks prior to the tragedy and alerted PG&E.
Records were being checked to determine if complaints of leaking gas were made and how they were handled, utility spokesman Jim Smith said.
The neighborhood was being treated like a crime scene, with police restricting access. One man was arrested for alleged looting, a spokesman said.
The massive explosion and inferno ripped through the neighborhood, with huge flames blasting from the ground like a blowtorch where the pipe was ruptured and fire spread relentlessly to houses in several directions. Up to 200 firefighters were dispatched to battle the blaze, but they were no match for the flames as the intense heat reportedly melted fire truck windows and car tail lights several dozen meters from the flames.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS