The flooding tragedy nobody has ever heard of: 150th anniversary of Sheffield disaster where at least 240 died when a new dam burst

As a gale swept through Sheffield on the night of Friday, March 11, 1864, water engineer William Horsfield was sheltering under the town's new dam when he noticed a crack.

It was only wide enough to take a penknife, but it stretched along the earthen bank for 50 yards, following a jagged line 12 yards from the top.

Just before midnight the dam burst, sending 650 million gallons of water cascading into central Sheffield in a disaster which killed more than 240 people in their beds.

Half of those who died instantly were children, and around 60 more were killed as diseases swept through the stagnant water in the aftermath.

Historians will mark the 150th anniversary of the tragedy on Tuesday - but they say one of Britain's worst disasters has been largely forgotten because the dead were northern and working-class.

For years there was not a full-scale memorial to those who died in Sheffield, with only a small memorial stone near the village of Bradfield where the reservoir stood.

Amateur historian Karen Lightowler, who devotes her spare time to tracing victims' descendants, said: 'I am passionate about the flood. It is this country's worst ever man-made disaster but virtually nobody knows about it.

'It's such a tragedy that so many people died through no fault of their own.

'If it had happened in London there would be an annual memorial for it. Everyone would know about it. But, because it was in the north and because it involved working class people nobody remembers it.'

The dam was built by the Sheffield Waterworks Company near the village of Bradfield from 1859 to provide drinking water for the people of the fast-growing industrial town.

It was also designed to provide a supply of running water for the mills in surrounding villages.



But as it was being completed and filled the structure collapsed, sending water cascading down the Loxley Valley which devastated farms and hamlets devoted to metalworking.

The floodwater then moved down to meet the River Don and laid waste to large areas of the centre of Sheffield.

One body was found at Conisbrough - 18 miles downstream.

Harrowing stories emerged of how many of the victims died. One person who drowned was a new-born baby washed from his mother's arms in Bradfield.

Three children died in a cellar in Sheffield while their parents were away.

Then a village and now a suburb, Malin Bridge was worst hit by the flood with 102 deaths.

A photograph of the shattered remains of the Cleakum Inn, rebuilt later as the Malin Bridge Inn, is one of the many striking images of the disaster.

Sheffield historian Ron Clayton, who lives in Malin Bridge, said it was 'ground-zero. It was devastated, whole families wiped out, buildings just washed away.

'The death toll of the flood was massive. There's nothing else to compare with it in peacetime in terms of man-made disasters.

'We remember pit disasters and other tragedies and I think it's only right this is remembered too.'

Mr Horsfield raised the alarm after he spotted the crack at 5.30pm that day, but he thought it posed no major risk.

It was examined later that evening but by 9pm the contractors had gone home, saying it would not be a danger to the public.

That did not stop the water firm's resident engineer, a Mr Gunson, travelling with a colleague that night to examine the state of the dam.

According to Samuel Harrison, a journalist who was writing at the time, they crossed the dangerously unstable bank before his colleague cried: 'If we don't relieve the dam of water there'll be a blow up in half an hour.'



They tried to blow up a weir to relieve the pressure, but for one reason or another the gunpowder would not ignite. By then it was too late.

As one inspector put it, according to Mr Harrison: 'Not even a Derby horse could have carried the warning in time to have saved the people down the valley.'

Mr Horsfield's great-great-great-grandson, Malcolm Nunn, still lives in Bradfield and is the parish archivist.

This weekend, locals gathered at an exhibition in the village to mark the anniversary, one of a number of events over the next few days to remember the disaster.

The ceremonies will include a wreath-laying ceremony at a memorial to the tragedy in Sheffield city centre on Tuesday.

Guided walks and church services are also talking place and primary school children will sing songs commissioned especially to remember the disaster.

Mick Drewry, whose book on the disaster is due out later this year, said: 'It's not even very well known about in Sheffield, never mind nationally.

'It was a major historical event and it needs to be remembered properly.'

Sarah Hung has travelled from Hong Kong to attend the memorial as she is descended from some of the victims. She said: 'It's such a massive disaster and it's right it's remembered like this even though it was 150 years ago.'

Monday 10 March 2014

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576850/Sheffield-floods-Memorial-events-begin-marking-150th-anniversary-disaster-saw-240-people-die-new-dam-burst.html

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Search crews from nine countries looking for flight MH370

Search crews involving nine countries are working “every hour, every minute, every second” across a huge swathe of the South China Sea but have yet to find any evidence of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, the country’s civil aviation chief said on Monday.

Almost 60 hours after flight MH370 vanished from radar screens in the early hours of Saturday officials remain “puzzled” by its sudden disappearance and are considering all possible angles, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said.

“Unfortunately, we have not found anything that appears to be an object from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft,” he said.

The Beijing-bound flight was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew when it went missing around 40 minutes after its 12.41am take-off from Kuala Lumpur, over the seas between Malaysia and Vietnam. The Boeing-777 was cruising at 35,000 feet when it disappeared in apparently good weather, gave no indication of any problems and did not issue a distress call.

Rahman added: “There are many theories that have been said in the media; many experts around the world have contributed their expertise and knowledge about what could happen, what happened....We are puzzled as well.

“To confirm what happened on that particular day on this ill-fated aircraft...we need concrete evidence, parts of the aircraft for us to analyse, for us to do forensic study.”

He said that the government had not discounted speculation about a hijack, but was looking at every possible explanation, noting that it took two years to determine the cause of the 2009 Air France crash.

He confirmed that five passengers had checked in for the flight but not boarded, adding that their baggage was removed from the aircraft as necessary in such cases.

Concerns that terrorist might be responsible have been fuelled by the fact two passengers were travelling on stolen European passports - although experts have said that fraudulent documents are reasonably common on regional flights for a variety of reasons.

The men who used them were of Asian appearance, Malaysia’s home minister said late on Sunday.

Ahmad Zahid Hamidi told state news agency Bernama: “I am still perturbed. Can’t these immigration officials think? Italian and Austrian [passports] but with Asian faces.”

The Malaysian prime minister has said the country will review its security procedures.

The passports were stolen from Luigi Maraldi and Christian Kozel in the last two years, and were listed as stolen on Interpol’s database. The international police agency said the documents had not been checked with its system and that it had long urged all countries to check passports systematically.

The suggestion that the plane may have turned back just before disappearing from radar screens - mooted by officials yesterday – remains unconfirmed, Rahman added.

Nine countries are now taking part in the search, which Rahman said covered the area within a 50 nautical mile radius of the aircraft’s last known position and the northern Straits of Malacca in case the plane had turned back.

“We are every hour, every minute, every second looking at every inch of the sea,” he said.

Forty ships are working round the clock, while 34 aircraft are working during daylight hours. Potential sightings of aircraft debris by Vietnamese searchers have not been verified, Rahman said.

A potential sighting of part of a door had not been confirmed and an item thought to be part of an aircraft tail turned out to be several logs tied together, he said.

Authorities have taken oil samples from a slick in the area and say they should know this afternoon whether it is connected to the aircraft or came from a ship.

Malaysia Airlines said in a statement it posted today that its primary focus was caring for the families of passengers, some of whom it has already flown to Kuala Lumpur. It has also sent counsellors to Beijing as two-thirds of the travellers were Chinese.

“We appreciate the help we are receiving from all parties and agencies during this critical and difficult time...Malaysia Airlines is similarly anxious and we appreciate the patience, support and prayers from everyone,” it said.

But many of the Chinese passengers’ relatives have complained that the airline has so far given them little information or support and have chosen to stay in Beijing.

An editorial in the state-run Global Times newspaper attacked the airline and authorities on Monday, warning: “The Malaysian side cannot shirk its responsibilities. The initial response from Malaysia was not swift enough.”

It added: “There are loopholes in the work of Malaysia Airlines and security authorities. If it is due to a deadly mechanical breakdown or pilot error, then Malaysia Airlines should take the blame. If this is a terrorist attack, then the security check at the Kuala Lumpur airport and on the flight is questionable.”

Why Malaysian submarines are not being sent

Malaysian defence minister Hishamuddin said on Sunday that Malaysian submarines are not being sent to search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 because they are not "equipped for search and rescue".

This comes after people took to Twitter to ask why Malaysia was not deploying its own submarines to locate the jet.

Given the length of time since authorities last made contact with MH370, as well as the absence of floating wreckage, it is believed an underwater search should now be conducted to scour the seabed instead.

Singapore has sent a Submarine Support & Rescue Vessel to aid in search-and-rescue efforts for the Boeing 777 with 239 people aboard, believed to have crashed in the ocean off south Vietnam.

Monday 10 March 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/10/flight-mh370-malaysians-puzzled-airline-mystery-search-widens

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/search-for-mh370--why-no-malaysian-submarines-035815465.html

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42 African refugees drown off Yemeni coast

About 42 African refugees drowned Sunday evening off the Yemeni coast when their boat capsized in the Gulf of Aden, the Yemeni government said, adding while about 30 people were rescued, search was on for more survivors.

The accident took place a few kilometres off the Bir Ali coast of Yemen's southern province of Shabwa, Xinhua quoted Yemen defence ministry as saying in a statement, adding Yemeni coastal guards found 42 bodies of the African refugees and managed to rescue another 30 people.

The ministry did not mention the nationality of the refugees, but local authorities said they were Somalis and Ethiopians.

A security official confirmed the incident to AFP but no more details were immediately available.

African migrants, especially Ethiopians and Somalis fleeing poverty and unrest at home, generally slip into southern Yemen by boat before heading north towards the Saudi frontier.

Some 84,000 people from Horn of Africa countries flooded into Yemen in 2012 hoping to find jobs in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

Monday 10 March 2014

http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/42-african-refugees-drown-off-yemeni-coast-114031000057_1.html

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Train fire: Victims’ identity confirmed

Almost two months after a fire broke out in the Dehradun Express on January 8, killing nine passengers near Dahanu station, the DNA test performed for the second time has confirmed that the unidentified remains of two bodies found in one of the bogies are of Sakina Shabbir R.C. Wala (57) and Zamir Ahmed (60) who were travelling in the bogie and had been missing since then.

Murtuza R.C. Wala, nephew of Ms R.C. Wala, who was travelling on birth number 65 in the S-2 compartment, confirmed the development and said, “We were informed that the DNA has matched and the remains were of my aunt only.” He added, “Her son Ali Asgar is working in Bangkok and is completing the process to come to India to perform her last rites so we would claim her remains after he reaches here.”

Shamshad, son-in-law of the other victim, Zamir Ahmed, said, “It was confirmed with DNA test that the body was his so we claimed the remains and buried it two days ago on Friday.” Though the deceased was a resident of Bijnor, his remains were buried in Mumbai. Shamshad also said that they have received a message asking them to meet some railway officer to complete the procedure for compensation.

The Palghar Government Railway Police (GRP), which was investigating the matter, had last month sent some parts of the remains for a second DNA test as the first test was inconclusive.

The Bandra-Dehradun Express had caught fire minutes after leaving the Dahanu Road station in the early hours of January 8. Nine passengers of the second-class sleeper coaches S-2, S-3 and S-4 died and many others were injured. While most of the passengers were asleep and unaware about the blaze, gateman Jawahar Singh noticed smoke billowing from the bogies and swung into action.

He made sure that the train was stopped minutes after it left the station.

Monday 10 March 2014

http://www.asianage.com/mumbai/train-fire-victims-identity-confirmed-734

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‘Strange object’ is not debris from missing Malaysia jet: source

The mysteries surrounding the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and the true identities of some of its passengers, are as deep as the southeast Asian waters where multinational search teams are searching for the jet.

Navies from two of Malaysia’s neighbors were pursuing new leads as Sunday turned into Monday in southeast Asia.

Vietnam’s navy has spotted a floating object about 50 miles southwest of Vietnam’s Tho Chu Island, which is located off the country’s southwest coast in the Gulf of Thailand, Vietnam National Search and Rescue Committee Spokesman Hung Nguyen told CNN. The object was spotted by a Vietnamese navy rescue aircraft at about 7:30 a.m. ET Sunday (6:30 p.m. local time). Due to the dark, the navy aircraft could not get close enough to identify the floating object, and was recalled to base. Three search and rescue boats have since been deployed to that location.

Meanwhile, Thailand’s navy is shifting its focus in the search away from the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, Thai Navy Rear Adm. Karn Dee-ubon told CNN on Sunday. The shift came at the request of the Malaysians, who are looking into possibilities the plane turned around and could have gone down in the Andaman Sea, near Thailand’s border, Karn said.

The Andaman Sea lies to the west of a narrow strip of Thailand that ends in the Malaysian peninsula, while the Gulf of Thailand lies to the east of that Thai isthmus.

One promising lead has turned out to be a dead end. A “strange object” spotted by a Singaporean search plane late Sunday afternoon is not debris from the missing jetliner, a U.S. official familiar with the issue told CNN on Sunday.

A U.S. reconnaissance plane “thought it saw something like debris but it was a false alarm,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

By the end of the day Sunday, more than 40 planes and more than two dozen ships from several countries were involved in the search. Two reconnaissance aircraft from Australia, and one plane and five sea vessels from Indonesia were the latest additions, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the director general of civil aviation in Malaysia, told reporters Sunday. In addition, the Chinese navy dispatched a frigate and an amphibious landing ship, according to a online post by China’s navy. Those ships are expected to arrive on site Monday morning (Sunday night ET).

Those reinforcements join the rescue teams already scouring the South China Sea, near the Gulf of Thailand, on Sunday for any sign of where the flight, operated by Malaysia’s flagship airline, might have gone down, Malaysian authorities said.

The area in focus, about 90 miles south of Vietnam’s Tho Chu Island, is where a Vietnamese search plane reportedly spotted oil slicks that stretched between 6 and 9 miles.

Malaysian authorities have not yet confirmed the report of the oil slicks, which came from Vietnam’s official news agency.

Big questions far outweigh the few fragments of information that have emerged about the plane’s disappearance.

What happened to the plane? Why was no distress signal issued? Who exactly was aboard?

The flight may have changed course and turned back toward Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian military officials said at a news conference Sunday.

But the pilot appears to have given no signal to authorities that he was turning around, the officials said, attributing the change of course to indications from radar data.

As the search continues, the agonizing wait goes on for relatives of the 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board the plane.

Among the passengers, there were 154 people from China or Taiwan; 38 Malaysians, and three U.S. citizens. Five of the passengers were younger than 5 years old.

Stolen passports

Interpol said Sunday that at least two passports — one Austrian and one Italian — recorded in its Stolen and Lost Travel Documents database were used by passengers on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The passports were added to the database after being stolen in separate incidents over the past two years, Interpol said.

Italy and Austria have said that none of their citizens were on board the plane.

The Italian man whose passport was allegedly used, Luigi Maraldi, contacted the Italian consulate in Phuket, Thailand, on Saturday, after receiving a call from his parents, Italian Consul Franco Cavaliere told CNN on Sunday.

Maraldi is staying on Phuket Island as a tourist, and his passport disappeared in July 2013, Cavaliere said.

“Whilst it is too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plane, it is clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in INTERPOL’s databases,” said Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble in a statement.

The two passengers who used the passports in question appear to have bought their tickets together.

The tickets were bought from China Southern Airlines at identical prices, paid in Thailand’s baht currency, according to China’s official e-ticket verification system Travelsky. The ticket numbers are contiguous, which indicates the tickets were issued together.

The two tickets booked with China Southern Airlines both start in Kuala Lumpur, flying to Beijing, and then onward to Amsterdam. The Italian passport’s ticket continues to Copenhagen, the Austrian’s to Frankfurt.

Authorities say they are investigating the identities of some of those on board who appear to have issues with their passports.

“I’ve seen these reports about the passports. We’re looking into that, but we don’t have anything to confirm at this point,” U.S. deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “The reports certainly raise questions and concerns, and that’s exactly why we’re looking into them. But right now, it would be premature to speculate,” he said.

Monday 10 March 2014

Read more: http://pix11.com/2014/03/09/strange-object-is-not-debris-from-missing-malaysia-jet-source/

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Thousands of tsunami victims still missing in Japan three years after disaster

More than 2,600 people remain missing in Japan three years after the nation was hit by a major earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, according to the latest police figures.

Search operations continue across swathes of the northeast coastline, where the majority of lives lost in the March 11, 2011, disaster were those swept away by the tsunami.

The figures came to light as Japan prepared to commemorate on Tuesday the third anniversary of the disaster - the nation's worst peacetime loss of life, claiming 15,884 lives.

In addition, 2,636 remain officially missing, mostly in the three worst hit prefectures Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima.

The remains of 98 people are also unidentified, according to the latest figures from the National Police Agency.

Three years after the disaster, life in many disaster-hit communities appears, on the surface at least, to have tentatively returned to normal, with much of the rubble cleared away and businesses reopened.

However, the challenges facing bereaved relatives of those whose bodies have never been found remain complex, with many determined to find their loved ones in order to finally lay them to rest.

Monthly searches are conducted on the 11th of each month by police officers, Maritime Safety Agency personnel and local volunteers, at the request of relatives of the missing.

Among those determined not to give up is Yasuo Takamatsu, 57, from the small fishing town of Onagawa, Miyagi prefecture, whose wife Yuko disappeared in the tsunami.

The bus driver recently took the unusual step of learning how to scuba dive in order to take to the chilly waters of the Pacific Ocean and search the seabed for signs of his still-missing wife himself.

Mrs Takamatsu, then 47, a bank worker, was one of 250 people who are still missing from the town, which was hit badly by the disaster, with more than 800 people swept to their deaths by the 65-foot tsunami.

Mr Takamatsu described how the last text message he received from his wife shortly after the earthquake said simply "I want to go home", while another unsent message later found on her discovered mobile phone, was found to read "Tsunami huge".

He added: "That was the last message from her. I feel terrible thinking she is still out there. I want to bring her home as soon as possible."

Monday 10 March 2014

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10687110/Thousands-of-tsunami-victims-still-missing-in-Japan-three-years-after-disaster.html

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6 Plane Mysteries of the Last 60 Years

It has been nearly two days since Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 and all 239 passengers, including three Americans, on board mysteriously disappeared off the radar above the South China Sea.

No distress signals were sent, and no signs have been found of the Boeing 777 airplane, which boasted a near perfect safety record, according to baffled aircraft experts.

Throughout history, numerous incidences of planes vanishing into thin air have captured the attention of the public, aviation experts, and filmmakers alike. Many of the mysteries were solved only after the recovery of the plane's black box, which records flight data and cockpit voices.

As search and rescue teams race against time to search for the Malaysian Airlines plane and its passengers, we look at five notorious airplane mysteries that were equally perplexing to investigators early on, some remaining unresolved to this day.

Air France flight 447 (2009)

After Air France Flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in 2009, the cause of the crash remained shrouded in mystery for many months. In the two weeks following the incident on June 1, some wreckage and bodies of the 228 people aboard were recovered, but it would be two years before the main wreckage of the Airbus 330 and its black box was found.

BEA, the French government's official accident investigators, released a final report in July 2012, after a three-year investigation. The report determined that the crash resulted from a combination of technical failures and oversight by untrained pilots, and detailed a chaotic scenario that unfolded as the plane was flying through a thunderstorm. One of the plane's speed sensors had malfunctioned, sending inaccurate readings to the cockpit. Crew failed to realize the severity of the situation, and put the plane into a devastating stall. The plane fell rapidly from the sky, before pancake-ing into the ocean, according to the report.

TWA Flight 800 (1996)

Conspiracy theories continue to swirl around TWA Flight 800, which exploded in midair off the coast of Long Island, N.Y., in 1996.

A theory that the Paris-bound flight was taken down by a missile amid a federal government cover-up, was one of several that emerged in the months after the crash that killed 230 people on board. Other theories included the belief that a bomb had exploded or a meteor strike downed the Boeing 747-100.

Those claims were all vehemently denied by the FBI and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators who spent four years looking into the cause of the crash. In their final report, investigators determined that defective wiring caused a spark that lit up the plane's fuel tank, just 12 minutes after it departed from John F. Kennedy International Airport.

USAir Flight 427 (1994)

What would have been a short domestic flight from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport to Pittsburgh turned into a scene of carnage as USAir Flight 427 and all 132 people on board plummeted to the ground at speeds approaching 300 mph.

The horrific crash occurred 10 minutes before the plane's scheduled arrival in Pittsburgh on Sept. 8, 1994, but it took officials another four years to finally determine the cause. The results of the investigation finally revealed that a defect in the rudder of the Boeing 737-3B7 caused the experienced pilots to lose control of the plane.

Flying Tiger Flight 739 (1962)

More than 50 years after U.S. military chartered Flying Tiger Flight 793 vanished without a trace, the Super Constellation L-1049 plane is still missing.

It was reportedly a fine and clear day across the Philippine Sea on March 15, 1962, when the plane, transporting soldiers and supplies from California to Saigon, Vietnam, went missing after stopping to refuel in Guam. No distress calls were made and all 107 people aboard were presumed dead, authorities said at the time. Numerous searches by the military failed to turn up any evidence of the airliner, nor the cause of its disappearance.

Pan Am Flight 7 (1957)

On Nov. 8, 1957, Pan Am Flight 7 was en route from San Francisco to Hawaii, when it vanished in the Pacific Ocean. The Boeing 337 plane wreckage was found a week later by the Navy aircraft carrier Philippine Sea, which spotted bodies and plane debris floating off course in the ocean northeast of Honolulu.

The crash, which killed 44 people, has never been definitively determined. The mystery was exacerbated by the fact that no distress signals were sent and toxicology reports revealed higher than normal carbon monoxide levels in the bodies of recovered passengers.

Monday 10 March 2014

http://abcnews.go.com/International/plane-mysteries-60-years/story?id=22834731

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