Evacuation, Natural Disaster | featured news

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.

As the Passaic River in New Jersey threatened to crest to dangerously high levels Tuesday, residents continued to battle the floodwaters that have forced thousands of people to relocate, authorities said.

Slow-moving Typhoon Nanmadol remained dangerous Sunday despite weakening as it struck the tip of the mountainous northern Philippines, leaving at least eight people dead and scuttling a visit by a U.S. Navy battleship group, officials said. Taiwan issued sea and land warnings and planned to evacuate about 6,000 people in its eastern and southern regions as it braced for the typhoon. Troops and rescue equipment were deployed for any contingency, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said.

With Hurricane Irene approaching, evacuations began on a tiny barrier island off North Carolina early Wednesday in a test of whether people in the crosshairs of the first serious hurricane along the East Coast in years would heed orders to get out of the way....

Nearly 1,000 residents have fled two villages near an Indonesian volcano that has been erupting this week.

A fast-moving wildfire forced officials at the nuclear laboratory in Los Alamos to close the site Monday as more than 100 residents evacuated their homes....

Thousands more were ordered to leave as the authorities grew worried about the out-of-control nature of the fire.

Stiff winds whipped up a gigantic blaze in the mountains of eastern Arizona on Monday, forcing the evacuation of a third resort town and casting a smoky haze over states as far away as Iowa....

The Puyehue volcano in southern Chile erupted Saturday, sending a huge plume of smoke and ash into the sky and prompting officials to evacuate about 600 people living nearby. There were no reports of injuries. Authorities had put the area around the volcano on alert Saturday morning after a flurry of earthquakes, and the eruption began in the afternoon. The National Emergency Office said it recorded an average of 230 tremors an hour.

Two Arizona wildfires have consumed more than 200,000 acres and prompted evacuations, officials said.