USA TODAY TUESDAY, JULY 12, 2011

NATION

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Web keeps Anthony case alive

Social media offer places to vent, rant
By Natalie DiBlasio and Luke Kerr-Dineen USA TODAY Casey Anthony was acquitted of murdering her daughter, but scores of Facebook pages still hound her. Thousands of members of the social networking site have set up Casey Anthony pages to criticize her, curse at her and even follow her when she is released Sunday. Some pages are memorials to Caylee Anthony, 2, who disappeared in June 2008. A month later, the childs grandmother reported her missing; her body was found in December. On July 5, a jury found Casey Anthony not guilty of killing her. By late Monday afternoon, 16,265 people had pledged to Wear Purple for Caylee Anthonys Birthday on Aug. 9. At change.org, more than 1.1 million people have signed a petition calling for passage of Caylees Law, which would make it a felony to fail to report a childs disappearance within 24 hours. The Anthony story has taken off online because the Internet gives people an immediate outlet for their emotions, says Alicia Cardenas, a
By Seth Perlman AP

Special care: Mike Cox tries to cool off his horse Monday at the fairgrounds in Springfield, Ill.

Sweltering heat grips Midwest, South, East

A swath of the Midwest, South and East dealt with sweltering conditions Monday, with Dallas and Oklahoma City among cities suffering 100degree heat for 10 or more days in a row. Forecasters warned that the extreme heat could continue most of the week and beyond. National Weather Service spokesman Chris Vaccaro said heat advisories and warnings were issued for 17 states in the Midwest and South. For today, the weather service issued heat advisories for much of the East Coast, where temperatures are expected in the upper 90s but will feel as hot as 105 because of the humidity. uHighs hit the 100s in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, northern Louisiana and far western parts of Tennessee and Mississippi, Weather Channel meteorologist Mark Avery said. uIn Oklahoma City, temperatures have hit 100 or higher every day since June 29, Vaccaro said. uIn Illinois, a 51-year-old man found dead Sunday suffered heat stroke in a mobile home without a working air conditioner. uIn Cincinnati, excessive heat warnings accompanied a possible heat index of 104 degrees.

By Phelan M. Ebenhack, AP

Sign of dissent: Lori Richards of Daytona Beach, Fla., protests at the Orange County Courthouse in Orlando during the sentencing of Casey Anthony. court-appointed advocate for children in Brownsville, Texas. The level of emotions with this case is so high because it dealt with a child, she says. People need to take action now. Most of the Facebook pages target Casey Anthony: uWhere is Casey Anthony Today? Dont let her slip into hiding!!! one says. More than 500 people agreed, by clicking like, that people should report the date, time and place of any Casey Anthony sighting. She can run but she cannot hide, the page says. uMore than 1,000 people liked the page Black Ribbons For Caylee, which urges tying black ribbons around trees, especially near the Orlando courthouse, where jurors and defense lawyers would see them, and anywhere Casey might go. uI hate Casey Anthony had almost 37,000 likes. A poster identified as Gayle Rose wrote on the page, What goes around ALWAYS COMES AROUND To you Casey Anthony.

uCasey Anthony deserves to die had more than 1,100 likes. Anthonys lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Other pages target the jurors: uTwo pages have more than 12,000 likes: Casey Anthony is a murderer no matter what 12 idiots say and The 12 jurors in the Casey Anthony Trial are an Embarrassment to America. uThe JURY Failed Caylee had nearly 10,000 likes. At least five Facebook pages support Anthony. Support Casey Anthony has more than 5,000 likes. Florida state Rep. Scott Plakon, a Republican, says he got more than a couple hundred e-mails demanding action after the Anthony verdict. He responded with legislation that would require parents or caretakers to report a child 12 or younger missing within 48 hours and to report discovery of a corpse within two hours. It would make it a felony to knowingly mislead authorities. Anthony was convicted of four counts of misleading investigators, although the crimes were misdemeanors. The idea behind this law is that if we ever run into another mother like Casey Anthony, she wont just walk out with a slap on the wrist, Plakon says. Shell walk out a felon.

Hurricanes deadliest threat

Storm surge has accounted for about half of all U.S. hurricane deaths since 1970 and is the main reason coastal areas are evacuated as a hurricane approaches. Rather than a wall of water, a storm surge creates a rapid, extreme rise in the tide levels. Suction from eye Low pressure inside the hurricanes eye creates suction like a straw, producing a mound of water near the storm center. High surges Strong winds push the mound toward shore. The highest surge is in the front-right quadrant of the storm. On top of the surge, storm-whipped waves batter the coast. Eye of hurricane Rotates counterclockwise.

Fiery truck, train collision kills driver

An Amtrak train smashed into a tractor-trailer in southern Maine, killing the truck driver, injuring several other people and sending flames more than three stories high, officials said. Police Chief Stephen Peasley said witnesses reported that safety lights were flashing and gates were down when the truck crossed into the path of Amtraks Downeaster. None of the trains 112 passengers or three crewmembers suffered life-threatening injuries, Peasley said. Patricia Quinn of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority said the train was traveling at 70 mph when the truck crossed.

U.S. pressed on dont ask, dont tell

A federal appeals court ordered the U.S. government to state whether it will continue to defend in court the constitutionality of the dont ask, dont tell ban on openly gay troops. Mondays ruling came less than a week after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ordered the Obama administration to immediately cease enforcing dont ask, dont tell. Congress has repealed the ban, but the details havent been completed yet. The government is not going to be allowed to have it both ways anymore, said Dan Woods, lawyer for the gay rights group Log Cabin Republicans, which wants the policy dropped immediately. The court is saying either fish or cut bait.
File photo by Kim Christensen, AP

Surge from Hurricane Ike: Floodwaters cover the Texas City, Texas, dike on Sept. 12, 2008.

Big waves A strong Category 4 or 5 hurricane could produce storm surge of 20 to 30 feet.
Source: National Hurricane Center

Sea level

Mound

By Alejandro Gonzalez, USA TODAY

Top risk in cyclone not wind, but water

To educate public, storm surge warnings weighed
By Doyle Rice USA TODAY Storm surge the massive mound of water that builds up and comes ashore as a hurricane moves over the ocean or Gulf of Mexico is the most dangerous aspect of hurricanes, but many public misconceptions persist about it, according to a recent survey of U.S. coastal residents. The biggest single killer in hurricanes is storm surge, says Jamie Rhome, storm surge specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. He adds that every coastal city along the Gulf or East Coast of the USA is at risk of storm surge. Most U.S. tropical cyclone deaths occur from drowning, says hurricane center deputy director Ed Rappaport. Storm surge accounted for about half of the losses since 1970. Nearly all of those occurred in Katrina (2005), which was the latest example of an infrequent but catastrophic hurricane storm surge event that kills hundreds or even thousands of people. Floods from excessive rainfall rank second in causing loss of life in hurricanes. These floods occur much more often than the storm-surge events, but in general take fewer lives per event, Rappaport says. The heart of the Atlantic hurricane season is rapidly approaching: Most hurricanes tend to form in August and September, and federal scientists are predicting an above-average season, with as many as 10 hurricanes expected. That means 30 million Americans living along the Gulf and Southeast coasts are vulnerable to storm surge, says Jeff Lazo, the director of the societal impacts program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. NCAR designed, implemented and paid for the survey for a project funded by a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, interviewing more than 1,200 people in 155 coastal counties in eight states from Texas to North Carolina last November. The counties selected had some degree of storm-surge risk from hurricanes as strong as Category 5 . A significant number of people dont know their own vulnerability in the event of a major hurricane, says Lazo about the survey findings. A major hurricane is one that is a Category 3, 4 or 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, with wind speeds greater than 110 mph. Specifically, he found that 40% of the respondents said theyre not likely to get storm surge damage from a major hurricane, when in fact they do live in a storm-surge-prone area. Also, 34% believed that wind was more likely to cause loss of life than storm surge, and 31% thought that hurricane-spawned tornadoes were more of a threat to life from hurricanes than storm surge. The survey also found that about 17% of the respondents confuse storm surge with tsunamis, which are large ocean waves generated by offshore earthquakes and are not related to weather. Additionally, 20% thought that storm surge is just floodwater from heavy rain. The ferocity of water is daunting: Storm surge water can be as high as 30 feet in a huge hurricane. But even a foot or two of surge water can knock you right over, says Betty Morrow, an independent consultant and sociologist, retired from Florida International University in Miami. We had a huge storm surge with Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi, with 250 people killed, Morrow says, adding that the deaths there were overlooked because of the disaster in New Orleans. Most people to this day do not know that all those people died in the surge. They just didnt believe it would happen they didnt leave. Most of the 1,200 deaths in Hurricane Katrina were caused by storm surge, according to the hurricane center. The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale categories which measure only wind speed are not a good indicator of storm-surge risk. People perceive a huge difference between a 1 and 2 and 3 or above, Morrow reports. They consider a 1 or 2 minor and stay home . . . but a 3 or higher, theyll leave.

By Daniel Giles, The (Florence, Ala.) Times Daily, via AP

Man missing after swim: Crews search Panther Creek on Monday for a Mississippi man who witnesses said appeared to have drowned while swimming with friends near Waterloo, Ala.

Search continues

With this in mind, the weather service is in the early stages of considering a separate storm surge scale for alerting the public as a hurricane approaches, which would be different from the hurricane watch and warning system it currently employs. Storm-surge values used to be in the SaffirSimpson scale, but they were misleading, Rhome says. A surge can be highly localized, he says, with the same storm producing more than 20 feet of surge in Texas but only 6 or 7 feet in Florida. For example, every Category 3 hurricane will produce a different storm surge, he says. Were still evaluating the merits of this idea, working with social scientists to see if such a warning would help communicate the threat, Rhome says. He says such a scale and separate warning system would still be several years away from implementation. Weve still got a ways to go, simply because its such an important change, Rhome says. If we do go forward, we want to do it correctly.

Planes collide in midair but land safely

Two small planes collided in midair along a narrow mountain corridor in Alaska in a crash that marked a rare event: No one was injured. It is extremely unusual, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Mike Fergus said Monday. It is almost unheard of. The near-tragedy occurred Sunday afternoon as nine people aboard a Piper Navajo and four in a Cessna 206 floatplane had no idea they were about to collide in Lake Clark Pass. Neither made any evasive maneuvers, National Transportation Safety Board investigator Larry Lewis said. The Cessna hit the top of the Pipers tail with its floats, Lewis said. The planes sustained minor damage but landed safely in Anchorage.

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Pharmacist gets life for killing robber

An Oklahoma City pharmacist who killed a teen who tried to rob the pharmacy was sent to prison for life, with the possibility of parole. Jerome Ersland, 59, was convicted of firstdegree murder in the 2009 shooting of Antwun Parker, 16, at the Reliable Discount Pharmacy. Ersland said he shot the unarmed Parker in selfdefense after he demanded money and drugs. Prosecutors said Ersland was justified in firing the first shot but went too far when he grabbed another gun and shot Parker five more times.

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