Jan 22nd, 2012 at 8:00AM: Over the past week, the Costa Concordia story has been a prominent one amongst both the mainstream media and travel outlets alike. The sinking of a cruise ship is not a common occurrence and ranks amongst the worst travel nightmares imaginable. While questions about exactly what happened aboard that ship remain, it is clear that the accident will likely have far reaching consequences and bring ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
Disaster posts
Nat Geo presents five cruise ship disasters that changed travel
Jan 22nd, 2012 at 8:00AM: Over the past week, the Costa Concordia story has been a prominent one amongst both the mainstream media and travel outlets alike. The sinking of a cruise ship is not a common occurrence and ranks amongst the worst travel nightmares imaginable. While questions about exactly what happened aboard that ship remain, it is clear that the accident will likely have far reaching consequences and bring ...Haiti: the rocky road to recovery
Jan 18th, 2012 at 1:30PM:
Haiti was hit by a massive earthquake a little over two years ago, flattening homes, school buildings, and businesses; pretty much transforming the entire city of Port Au Prince into rubble. Relief efforts came and continue by non-governmental organizations (NGO's) as nearly $5 billion in aid was promised and is being spent. But while there are ongoing success stories, half a million people are ...SkyMall Monday: Top 5 products for hurricane season
Aug 29th, 2011 at 1:00PM: Here on the East Coast, Hurricane Irene made for quite the weekend. First, we braved the hordes of crazy people in the supermarket (no one needs that much peanut butter), then the torrential rains and, more than anything, the constant barrage of media hype. Thankfully, we're all safe and accounted for here at SkyMall Monday headquarters. However, we're now well aware that hurricane season is ...Exploring Joplin, Missouri, Recovering From Disaster
Aug 25th, 2011 at 11:00AM:
The most terrifying thing about touring the disaster zone caused by the May 22 EF-5 tornado here is the randomness of the devastation, the sight of a vacant lot where a house once stood, literally across the street from a home still whole. The destruction that the storm wrought is already disappearing from view as the Corps of Engineers and contractors raze what's left of damaged ...Earthquake strands thousands at Tokyo Disneyland & DisneySea
Mar 12th, 2011 at 9:00AM:
Thousands of guests were stranded in Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea after the massive earthquake that rocked the island nation on Friday. Park employees have been giving out humanitarian aid including blankets, heaters, plastic raincoats, food, and water. While Disney has reported only a few minor injuries and minimal property damage, other reports state that the earthquake has liquefied the ...
Ten things to know about your destination before you go
Nov 18th, 2010 at 10:00AM: So you've chosen your vacation destination - booked the tickets, agonized over TripAdvisor to find a hotel, and bought the guidebooks or downloaded the apps. Whether you like to plan your itinerary in advance or play it by ear, there are a few things you should research in advance to make your arrival - and your trip - go smoothly.
From airport taxis to local laws to transit passes, what should ...Katrina exhibit opens in New Orleans
Oct 31st, 2010 at 11:00AM: It was the most catastrophic event in New Orleans history. Hurricane Katrina destroyed large swathes of the city and left hundreds of thousands homeless. Now the Louisiana State Museum has opened an exhibit chronicling the natural disasters that have visited New Orleans, culminating in the most recent and worst.
Living with Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond, a 6,700 square-foot multimedia ...Help arrives for Indonesian tsunami victims
Oct 27th, 2010 at 1:00PM: After a 7.7-magnitude earthquake and 10-foot tsunami hit Indonesia Monday, killing at least 272 people, relief efforts have arrived to help the wounded, search for the hundreds still missing, and bury the dead. The first cargo plane loaded down with 16 tons of tents, medicine, food and clothes arrived today after weather relented long enough for search and rescue teams to arrive. Many villages ...Rio's Christ the Redeemer statue closed by mudslides
Apr 14th, 2010 at 3:00PM: Rio de Janeiro's famous Christ the Redeemer statue, one of the city's most iconic tourist attractions, has been closed by a spate of recent mudslides. The city has been affected in recent months by a series of landslide disasters caused by heavy rains, killing some 250 residents and leaving around 4000 Brazilian families homeless.
The Christ the Redeemer statue sits upon Corcovado Mountain in ...New Zealand surfer escapes tsunami
Oct 7th, 2009 at 9:00AM:
tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.gadling.com/2009/10/07/new-zealand-surfer-escapes-tsunami/'; tweetmeme_source = 'Gadling';
Surfers are constantly on the hunt for the "big one" - that epic wave they'll be able to tell their grand kids about. But for New Zealand surfer Chris Nel, that epic wave turned into a nightmare. Nel was out surfing with five friends in the Samoan Islands last week when a ...Crane falls in India: A thought about geography lessons and missed opportunities
Jul 13th, 2009 at 4:00PM: Tucked into the news this morning, in the midst of seemingly endless Michael Jackson news and the confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, was a quick story about cranes falling over in India. The cranes were being used to clean up the debris caused from a flyover that had collapsed.
It wasn't that a flyover had fallen, or that cranes had tipped over that had caught my attention as much ...Life Nomadic: Coping With a Travel Disaster
May 6th, 2009 at 10:30AM: I hold a strong belief that any bad situation can be turned into a good one. The thing about this belief is that it's only true if you believe it. It's easy to think this when everything's going swimmingly, but when plans get derailed and blow up in your face, it gets put to the test. Case in point, here's a situation I found myself in recently:
I got mugged and was robbed of my passport
The ...Deadly Everest Airplane Crash
Oct 9th, 2008 at 1:30PM: A Yeti Airlines Twin-Otter plane carrying sixteen passengers and three crew members crashed at a remote airstrip in Nepal yesterday morning, local time. The plane's wheel became entangled in a security fence as it was landing at the trekking base of Lukla, about 30 miles from Mount Everest. 18 people, including a group of 12 German trekkers, were killed. Only the pilot survived, though he remains ...The world prepares for doomsday
Feb 27th, 2008 at 3:00PM: As we work on trying to save our planet, it is disturbing to realize that we are also preparing for the ultimate global catastrophe. A "doomsday vault" -- which is a bombproof shelter dug into a mountain on a Norwegian island in the Arctic Ocean -- has been built to store 2.25 billion seeds of important agricultural crops in the world, so that in the face of a global calamity, the world will be ...Dubai looking to go greener
Nov 21st, 2007 at 5:00PM: It's hard to remember that Dubai is actually a desert. Even though it has a coastline, the interior has always been an arid desert. Of the sick amount of money that Dubai spends on having the tallest, biggest, best stuff, it also spends quite a bit on making the city green. (NB: I am going to try to write this without delving into the general environmental disaster that Dubai is nurturing). There ...
