Researchers revise storm forecasts
Hurricane researchers at Colorado State University said Thursday that this year’s hurricane season won’t be as bad as earlier predicted and said a monster storm like Katrina is unlikely.
“The probability of another Katrina-like event is very small,” said Phillip Klotzbach, lead forecaster for the hurricane research team.
The researchers reduced the number of likely hurricanes to seven from nine and intense hurricanes to three from five.
There is, however, a considerably higher-than-average probability, 73 percent, of at least one intense hurricane making landfall in the United States this year. The average is 52 percent.
Researcher William Gray said Atlantic Ocean surface temperatures are not quite as warm and surface pressure is not quite as low, both factors in the decision to revise the forecast.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.
Two charged in starving case
A woman and her roommate were charged with starving the woman’s 9-year-old daughter, who weighed just 42 pounds when she was found, was locked up all day and was forced to wear a filthy diaper, authorities said.
Melissa Samoraj, 27, and Raymond LaFountain, 31, were arrested Wednesday and charged with aggravated child abuse. The girl was so emaciated that her spine and rib cage were showing when state child welfare officials took her June 30, police said.
The girl also had her hands bound behind her, was locked in a bedroom all day and wore a diaper that went unchanged for hours, officials said. She told police it was punishment for bad behavior.
“It’s a very disturbing case,” police Detective Joe DeLuca said. “You see very few like this.”
The girl now lives with her grandparents and has gained about 25 pounds in a month.
LaFountain was originally described by police as Samoraj’s live-in boyfriend, but the gender classification at the jail was changed from male to female following a routine strip search, Pinellas sheriff’s spokesman Mac McMullen said.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska
School fire spreads in Eskimo village
A school in a remote Eskimo village caught fire Thursday and the blaze quickly grew out of control, engulfing several homes and buildings and forcing 250 people to flee.
No injuries were reported among the 1,100 residents of Hooper Bay.
“There are no roads or a formal fire department with big shiny red fire engines here,” said Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Bill Tandeske. “The water supply is also a challenge. All the things we take for granted in urban areas are not there, which makes everything so much more difficult.”
The fire’s cause was not immediately known.
The school and nearby buildings burned to the ground, Tandeske said. At least 12 homes, a teacher housing complex and one of two village grocery stores also burned, sending up clouds of thick smoke.
Alaska state troopers and firefighters were en route to the village and the state Division of Forestry was sending a firefighting aircraft. Firefighters from the nearby village of Chevak arrived earlier and were battling the blaze.