MANITOBA FIRES EARLY

The Bible says 1 / 3 of the trees will be burned.

REVELATION 8:7
7 The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

Wildfires already burning in ManitobaLast Updated
Fri, 28 Apr 2006 06:10:29 EDT CBC News

With the threat of spring flooding barely past in Manitoba, officials are expressing concern about the threat of wildfires. Provincial fire officials say 20 wildfires have started across the province already this year and eight are currently burning, mostly grass fires. Two of the eight fires are considered out of control. Water bombers have been put on standby earlier this year in Manitoba. (Ruth Bonneville/Canadian Press) Water bombers are on standby and some firefighting crews have been called in to duty, three weeks earlier than normal.

Conservation department spokesman Tom Mirus told CBC News the warm, dry weather is creating perfect conditions for fire. Today's temperatures of 22 C and a breezy wind is exactly what we don't want," he said. Mirus expects it will be a bad year for grass and forest fires because so much vegetation drowned in the wet weather over the last couple of years. Dead grass ignites very easily and burns like gasoline. A person cannot outrun a grass fire," he said. "The grass fires are so bad this year, they are running into the forests and starting the forests on fire immediately. About half of the fires in the province each year are caused by humans, Conservation officials say. Open fires are prohibited in Manitoba every year from April 1 to Nov. 15, except with a permit or in approved fire areas such as campsites.

And of course for this story we go to luke once again.

LUKE 21:11,25-26
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

Tsunami Network on Lookout for Giant Waves By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Fri Apr 28, 6:17 AM ET

WASHINGTON - More than 200,000 people perished when a monstrous wave swept the Indian Ocean in 2004. In hopes of avoiding a similar disaster here, a tsunami warning system has now been expanded to both coasts of the United States. We take building this warning system very seriously," Conrad C. Lautenbacher, head of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, said in an interview. DART Deep-ocean sensors in the Pacific, Atlantic and Caribbean now listen for earthquakes on the seafloor, sense the pressure of waves passing over them, and radio their findings to scientists at warning centers in Alaska and Hawaii. Unlike wind-driven surface waves, tsunamis are caused by seismic activity such as undersea earthquakes, landslides or volcanoes.

That means tsunamis are deep, reaching all the way to the seafloor, so that when they reach land they are forced upward into often towering walls of water that can inundate coastal communities.Occurring relatively rarely, they drew little public attention until the tsunami that originated on the Indonesian coast in December of 2004. Shaken by that devastation, governments and scientists redoubled their efforts to prepare coastal populations for this hazard and to find ways to issue warnings. Deadly tsunamis have struck Hawaii and the waves have caused serious damage on the West Coast also, so government scientists have been wary of the waves in the Pacific for years. A 1946, a Pacific-wide tsunami destroyed the U.S. Coast Guard's
Scotch Cap lighthouse at Unimak, Alaska, killing all five of its occupants. That wave reached the Hawaiian Islands about five hours later, obliterating Hilo's waterfront and killing 159 people.

And a 1964 quake in Alaska generated waves that caused damage in southeastern Alaska, in Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and in the states of Washington, California and Hawaii. More than 120 died. Hardest hit was Crescent City, Calif., where waves reaching as much as 20 feet destroyed half of the waterfront business district. Eleven people lost their lives there. There was extensive damage in San Francisco Bay. On the Atlantic side, people have been killed in the last 150 years by these waves striking the Virgin Islands, Panama, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and even Canada. Lautenbacher's agency has now expanded itsobservations in the Pacific and added coverage of the Atlantic Coast, Gulf of Mexico, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands and eastern Canada, he said. The administration, which helps communities develop plans to deal with hurricanes, tornadoes and other emergencies, expanded its tsunami planning and now has certified 29 coastal communities as TsunamiReady. That means they have conducted public education programs, established evacuation routes, and set up means to issue warnings. There had been six deep-ocean tsunami sensors in the Pacific previously.

Now there are 10 in that ocean and five in the Atlantic and Caribbean, with plans to have a total of 39 in service within two years. The DART sensors combine a unit on the seafloor that detects seismic activity and measures water pressure with a floating buoy overhead. When the submerged unit feels seafloor shaking or senses changes in pressure overhead that indicate a significant wave it tells the floating unit to radio the information via satellite to the warning centers. Those centers are now staffed full time and have new computer models that
use the information to estimate the danger to a variety of coastal areas. The center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii issues warnings for Hawaii and foreign countries, while the one in Palmer, Alaska, sends warnings to the continental United States.

Lautenbacher explained that the warnings go to National Weather Service offices and are disseminated through its warning systems including NOAA Weather Radio, weather and other emergency communications systems and direct connections to state and local emergency response officials. In addition to expanding its network of DART deep-ocean sensors the agency
has installed nine of a planned 16 new sea-level stations that track sea level and has upgraded 20 of the 33 stations in use. And researchers have improved their database of nearly 2,000 tsunamis that have occurred worldwide in the past, extending as far back as 2000 B.C. This information helps identify areas particularly at risk.

On the Net:


TsunamiReady http://www.tsunamiready.noaa.gov/ NOAA tsunami activities http://www.tsunami.noaa.gov/ Location of DART buoys http://seaboard.ndbc.noaa.gov/dart.shtml DART II buoy system: http://seaboard.ndbc.noaa.gov/Dart/dart.shtml