647,000 SURVIVORS HOMELESS

Story 1-647,000 people homeless due to Indonesia quake. 2-Expert downplays underwater volcano risk. 3-Tomorrow hurricane season starts (LOOKOUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?????)

647,000 Indonesians displaced by quake By CHRIS BRUMMITT, Associated Press Writer 18

minutes ago BANTUL, Indonesia - U.S. Marines joined an international effort to deliver aid and medical care to nearly 650,000 Indonesians displaced by a devastating earthquake, as hopes faded of finding more survivors. Two U.S. Marine cargo planes carrying a mobile field hospital landed Tuesday in Yogyakarta, closest to the quake area in central Java, after cracks in the airport runway were patched. A disaster assistance response team from the U.S. Agency for International Development is being readied and the amphibious assault ship USS Essex, which has extensive medical facilities, is en route to the area, White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said. The United States also increased its aid contribution to $5 million.

The United Nations said at least 21 other countries have joined the effort to help those left homeless by Saturday's magnitude-6.3 quake, which killed more than 5,800 people. An estimated 647,000 people were displaced by the quake, nearly a third of them homeless and the rest staying with relatives, said Bambang Priyohadi, a senior provincial government official. The government said Wednesday the temblor destroyed more than 135,000 homes, reducing them to piles of bricks, tiles and wood in less than a minute.

Priyohadi based the displaced figure on the number of homes destroyed and a family index of 4.8 people per house. The main hospital in hardest-hit Bantul district was still overwhelmed, with 400 patients for just over 100 beds, and doctors complained of a lack of supplies.We are short of splints, gauze, even beds,said Dr. Hidayat, the hospital's earthquake emergency coordinator, adding that 90 percent of the victims had bone fractures.The minute we get fresh splits, they are gone.But conditions improved at several other hospitals, where parking lots and hallways that had been filled with hundreds of victims in the days after the quake were clear, with most patients now being treated in beds.Workers removed a tent outside Yogyakarta's largest hospital, Sardjito, that had been used to shelter the injured.The U.N.'s top humanitarian official said the aid effort was going well, and there had been major improvements in coordination among aid organizations and nations since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 131,000 people in Indonesia's Aceh province alone.

We are now reaching more and more victims,Jan Egeland told The Associated Press in Brussels, Belgium. "I am getting reports that we are making enormous progress.The government's Social Affairs Ministry said the official death toll rose Wednesday to 5,846.Most survivors were still living in improvised shacks or group shelters erected in rice fields. Groups of families cooked together, each contributing scavenged food.Despite government promises of aid, shortages of food and fresh water remained a pressing concern, and thousands of people used cardboard boxes to beg for cash and supplies from passing drivers.The head of a Malaysia search and rescue team said hope had faded of finding more survivors or bodies, and his group had turned to clearing rubble from streets instead.

The collapsed homes were all so small that anyone who was trapped would have been extracted by their family members, Abdul Aziz Ahmad said, adding his team found only one body Monday.A 44-member team of Chinese doctors, search and rescue workers and seismologists also arrived with five tons of supplies, including a field hospital, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported. Thailand said it would send 48 military medical personnel, medicine and equipment. Teams from Malaysia, Singapore, Norway and other nations already are working in the area. The Asian Development Bank announced a total of $60 million in grants and low-interest loans to rebuild the earthquake zone.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has temporarily moved his office to Yogyakarta and spent a night sleeping in a tent with survivors, vowed to fight corruption in delivering aid money. I am ordering that not even one dollar will be misused,he said. The quake was the fourth destructive temblor to hit Indonesia in the past 17 months, including the one that triggered the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami.

Expert downplays underwater volcano risk Tue May 30, 7:36 PM ET SAIPAN, Northern

Mariana Islands - A visiting scientist is downplaying the risks of underwater volcanoes, which surround the Northern Marianas Islands. Frank Trusdell, a Hawaii-based geologist from the U.S. Geological Survey, said although so-called submarine volcanoes can cause tsunamis if they erupt, the ones around the waters of the islands are not a major threat due to their small size.Land volcanoes in this U.S. commonwealth's chain of 14 islands are the ones that people should be wary of because they are powerful enough to destroy habitats, property and lives, he said.As far as volcanic eruptions and being concerned about volcanoes, the ones that are above sea level are the ones that should be monitored and what people should focus their energy on,he said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that it successfully videotaped a volcanic eruption underneath the calm waters at Brimstone Pit, about 37 miles northwest of Rota Island.The agency said Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory oceanographer Bob Embley, who led a team of 21 international scientists on three expeditions, successfully recorded the underwater explosion using robots.Trusdell said there are several active submarine volcanoes among the Northern Marianas and there are many inactive ones which are buried deep under the ocean that have yet to be discovered.You can imagine that each of the volcanic islands is the top of a large mountain range. So only the tops of the mountain range are above sea level, he said.

In between the islands, there is a possibility of what we call sea mountains which are submarine volcanoes. There are many of them in the Northern Marianas.A detailed map of the locations of the submarine volcanoes was done between 2003 and 2004.

Based on the map, scientists have identified several active submarine volcanoes.Trusdell said the volcanoes are shallow enough so that people saw discolored water or gases during an eruption.But there are many other volcanoes that are below the ocean floor, which are too deep to be recognized at the surface, he said.

Powerful hurricane season looms in Atlantic by Patrick Moser 1 hour, 10 minutes ago MIAMI

(AFP) - Storm-weary residents along the US Atlantic coast this week begin six months of hurricane watching and forecasters say there is every chance they will see new devastation. The season officially starts Thursday and US experts say as many as 10 hurricanes could form in the Atlantic and four could slam ashore in the southern United States.That could easily spell disaster for residents of coastal areas, thousands of whom have not yet finished repairing homes damaged by last year's Katrina, Rita and other massive storms.In addition, some 100,000 people whose homes were destroyed or severely damaged are still living in mobile homes
or trailers, which offer little protection from a hurricane's destructive fury.

And authorities admit they have not finished strengthening the levees that broke after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the US Gulf coast on August 29, 2005, flooding large parts of New Orleans.We now have a much larger vulnerable population going into this hurricane season and it will not take a category three or four hurricane to devastate that citizenship," said Robert Latham, who heads the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. A hurricane ranks at category three on the five-category Saffir-Simpson intensity scale if its packs winds of 178-209 kilometers (111-130 miles) per hour and rises to category four when its winds increase to 249 kph (155 mph).Katrina ranked as category three when it slammed ashore near New Orleans, causing the deaths of more than 1,500 people.

In all, 2005 saw a record 15 hurricanes, among an unprecedented 28 named storms that formed in the Atlantic. For the first time on record, seven of the hurricanes were considered major, meaning they hit category three or higher.It was also the costliest hurricane season, with damage estimated at more than 100 billion dollars.While experts do not expect those records to be beaten this year, there is no saying whether a major hurricane might slam into a major city along the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico.As bad as Katrina was, it can be worse, said Latham.He admitted areas hit by Katrina were ill-prepared to face another hurricane, despite efforts to
rebuild shattered infrastructure.

Another storm would be really devastating, he said this month, when government forecasters presented a report saying the 2006 season could see between eight to 10 hurricanes develop in the Atlantic, with four to six becoming major storms.In Florida, concern rose as engineers recently suggested a major storm could smash an aging levee that rings the 1,800-square-kilometer (700-square-mile) Lake Okeechobee, in the center of the state.Officials said they were readying for a worst-case scenario, in which residents from areas around the lake would have to be evacuated at the same time as people living along Florida's Gulf and Atlantic
coast flee from a looming hurricane. The specter of highways paralysed as a powerful storm bears down was raised last year when 2.5 million people evacuated Houston as Hurricane Rita approached, causing massive jams as cars broke down or ran out of gas.

The storm eventually moved farther north and spared the Texan city. In New Orleans, where thousands of people were trapped in the flooded city after failing to follow evacuation orders, authorities plan to use planes, trains and buses to get residents out should a hurricane threaten.
But a recent poll indicated that 13 percent of the 34.6 million people in harm's way would not evacuate if ordered to do so and 56 percent do not feel vulnerable to a hurricane. That, says National Hurricane Center chief Max Mayfield, could spell disaster. "It takes just one hurricane over your house to make it a bad year.