http://bubble-cast.com

I love this song.

It’s by Too Hip for the Room

http://action.sierraclub.org/site/PageServer?pagename=adv_cleancar

Fourteen other states have adopted California’s standards and are also waiting for the green light. These states cover 40 percent of the U.S. auto market. Implementing clean-car standards would make a huge dent in our global-warming emissions

Can you attend via photo? Just take a picture of yourself, your family and friends, holding car keys and email it to us. At the hearing we’ll present thousands of photos with this message: EPA Holds the Key to Clean Cars!

1. Send an email to:

2. Take a moment to customize the subject line and body of the message:

Subject Line: EPA Holds the Key to Clean Cars

Message: First name, last initial, your state. Feel free to add a comment in your message!

3. Attach the image of yourself holding up your keys — and send!

4. Notify The Sierra Club that you sent the picture on the above web page and they will add you to their flickr photostream.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7891770.stm

Fatal US plane ‘was on autopilot’

A plane that crashed onto a house in New York state, killing 50 people, was on autopilot when it went down in icy weather, investigators have said.

The Continental Airlines pilot may have breached federal safety recommendations by flying in such conditions, investigator Steve Chealander said.

Pilots are recommended to fly manually in icy weather, he said.

Analysis of the plane’s data recorders shows the crew noticed significant ice build-up on its wings before the crash.

“You may be able in a manual mode to sense something sooner than the autopilot can sense it,” said Mr Chealander, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

He told the Associated Press news agency that the NTSB recommended pilots disengage their craft’s autopilot facility in icy conditions.

Pitches and rolls

The Bombardier Dash 8 was approaching Buffalo’s airport when it crashed flat on the house in Clarence Center, a suburb of Buffalo, last Thursday.

The pilots did not tell air traffic controllers of any problems during the flight, and a recording of communications appears normal until shortly before the crash.

At that point, the crew are heard discussing snowy and misty conditions and asking for permission to descend.

The crew then discussed “significant ice build-up” on the windshield and leading edge of the aircraft’s wings, Mr Chealander said on Friday.

The plane’s de-icing system had been switched on before the crew talked about the ice, he said.

Preliminary investigations suggested the plane was pointing away from the airport at which it was meant to land when it crashed.

Analysis of the data recorders shows the plane made a series of severe pitches and rolls seconds before plunging into the house.

The dead include 44 passengers, four crew and one off-duty pilot on board, and one person on the ground.

The twin-prop Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 aircraft, operated by Colgan Air for Continental Airlines, was flying from Newark airport in New Jersey to Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

In our Winter Edition of our alumni paper, she was given the award of Distinguished Alumnae Christus Super Omnia Award at the annual “Spirit of SHA” Awards Dinner, formerly the SHA Gala dinner.

Link to the Cordecho

Beverly Eckert ‘69

Distinguished Alumnae Christus Super Omnia Award

After graduating from Sacred Heart Academy and Buffalo State College, Beverly pursued a rewarding career in insurance, working in Boston and New York City. She became a vice president at General Re, a Fortune 500/Berkshire Hathaway Company headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. But, it was the events that unfolded on September 11, 2001 that forever changed her life, when her husband, Sean Rooney was killed while working in the World Trade Center.

Inspired by her husband’s unflinching courage in the face of his impending death, Beverly rejected the conventional victim’s role, and instead co founded an advocacy group called “Voices of September 11th”, helping to represent the interests of 9/11 families on a variety of contentious issues. Most notably, she lobbied in Washington for a full investigation into the terrorists attacks. She helped orchestrate country-wide support for a 9/11 Commission, participating in press conferences, testifying on Capitol Hill and organizing rallies, protests, and vigils in Washington and New York. She then helped Congress pass legislation implementing 9/11 Commission recommendations that were critically needed to prevent future attacks.

Beverly’s efforts and those of her colleagues have been acknowledged on the floor of both the House and Senate, and in 2007, she and five other 9/11 family leaders received special recognition at an awards ceremony at The Center for National Policy in Washington, DC. She has been interviewed on national TV and radio, and the story of her life with Sean and her work as an activist after 9/11 was featured in an “NBC Dateline” special with Tom Brokaw. Beverly believes her decision to help others and make the country safer, rather than focus on her personal loss has been beneficial to the slow, but steady process of healing.

Currently on SHA’s page there is a tribute to her.

Plane crashes into house in Clarence
Everyone who was in the house got out safely

Updated: Friday, 13 Feb 2009, 12:21 AM EST
Published : Thursday, 12 Feb 2009, 10:31 PM EST

CLARENCE, N.Y. (WIVB) – Continental flight 3407 has crashed into a house on Long Street west of Goodrich.

The aircraft has fifty to sixty seats.

We are told everyone who was in that house got out safely, but that house is engulfed in flames.

It’s described as a ‘massive fire’ at the scene.

There is no word on the fate of the pilot of the plane or anyone else who may have been on board.

The first report of this crash came in about 10:20 p.m.

The area is shut down right now.

A command center has been set up at Roll Road and Goodrich, that is near the scene.

Some residents have been evacuated to the Clarence Center fire hall.

For Continental information: 1-800-523-3273

Some bratty kid visiting their relatives in the lunch room pulled the fire alarm. I had no coat!!!

Someone had a blanket in their car to give to me! BRRRRRRRRRRR! I’m freezing.

The other portion of the article deals with where I used to live, Stony Road in Lancaster. The woman in the article, Heidi Marki nee Schneggenburger, is someone I used to go to Grammar School with in Bowmansville.

Record rain, warmth add up to a fast thaw that raises water levels in creeks — and basements
Updated: 12/28/08 07:31 AM

By Dan Herbeck and Michelle Kearns
NEWS STAFF REPORTERS

The white Christmas was a nice touch. But then came the record-setting rains and record high temperatures that flooded basements, closed roads and turned Western New York into one sloppy mess on Saturday.

And today’s weather could be a wind-swept nightmare for kickers and quarterbacks when the Buffalo Bills take on the New England Patriots in Ralph Wilson Stadium.

“This is an extremely unusual weather day,” Steve McLaughlin, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said on Saturday. “We set a record for rainfall and a record for high temperature, both on the same day.”

The temperature reached 63 degrees late Saturday night, the highest reading ever for a Dec. 27 in Buffalo, and the 1.21 inches of rainfall also was a record for the date.

As a result, many homeowners in the region spent the day pumping out and cleaning out their basements.

Police in many communities — including Orchard Park, Evans, West Seneca, Boston, Collins and Hamburg — reported that they were inundated with basement flooding calls in residential neighborhoods.

“The storm sewers are just full up, and the water is backing up into basements,” said Orchard Park Police Officer Leonard Govenettio. “[Town workers] are trying to keep the storm drains open.”

In Buffalo, complaints came from residents on the upper West Side as well as those driving on the Delaware Avenue S-curves near Forest Lawn.

The water level was dangerously high at a number of area creeks.

“Last week, we accumulated about 30 inches of snow. [Now] we’re seeing all that snow melt over a period of two days,” McLaughlin said. “And, you have all that rain. That is a very fast thaw.”

The heaviest of the rain was over by Saturday afternoon, but for homeowners like Bill Ernst of Orchard Park Road in Orchard Park, the damage had already been done.

Just as Ernst was preparing to set up a second sump pump in his flooded basement, he noticed the flood waters from nearby Cazenovia Creek were taking over his backyard.

“All of a sudden in the last half hour, it just broke loose and came this way,” Ernst said as he somberly watched the floodwaters rise above the benches on his picnic table.

A few houses farther down, near the Ridge Road intersection, muddy brown water had risen almost as high as a four-foot above-ground swimming pool.

West Seneca disaster coordinator John Gullo stopped by to offer sandbags and said he had been fielding general calls from people worrying about their basements. “It could challenge us,” Gullo said of the rain and melting snow.

In nearby West Seneca, flooding caused West Seneca Police Lt. David Szmania to close the southbound lane of Transit Road near Bullis Road.

“We’re adapting as we go along here,” he said. “Once the temperature drops, I hope that [flood waters] will stabilize and go back down.”

To Ernst, who lives near a location where his late grandparents began farming about 100 years ago, flooding was starting to seem more frequent.

Since he bought his house in 1983, water has flooded from the creek into the basement two other times, just in the last few years, once forcing him to replace the furnace, water heater, washer and dryer.

He blamed the flooding on new development taking up land that used to be able to absorb water like this. “The water just doesn’t have any place to go anymore,” he said.

Ernst was not alone in his misery. Erie County sheriff’s deputies received reports of flooded basements in Collins, Colden, Alden and Grand Island, said dispatcher Greg Hayden.

In Lancaster, Roy Schneggenburger, 74, reported that the brand new wood floor that his daughter, Heidi Marki, just had installed in the basement of her Stony Road home was ruined by flooding.

And state police said a number of roads had to be temporarily closed in the Southern Tier because of deep water and vehicles that became stuck on the roads.

“People need to be careful. If you see deep water in the road, don’t try to plow through it,” said trooper Thomas James at the Boston station.

In North Buffalo, the Delaware Avenue S-curves that wind their way through Delaware Park also had to be shut down by police for a few hours. Traffic was diverted from the curves after several vehicles stalled out in deep water and had to be towed away.

Meanwhile, on the city’s upper West Side, a Lexington Avenue resident complained of severe basement flooding in her neighborhood.

Not everyone was unhappy with the sudden and surprising warm-up.

Two professional dog walkers — Lana McCoy and Rose Sims — were walking Harley, a big black Labrador retriever, and Harper, a little brown dachshund on Forest Avenue near the S-curves.

Puddles were a problem, they said, but the warm spell was nice.

“Is this global warming? Hard to say,” said Bob Perry, a resident of nearby Bird Avenue. “This is freaky weather. It’s wonderful if you don’t have a flood in your basement.”

McLaughlin added there will be more freaky weather in store at the 1 p.m. Bills-Patriots game in Orchard Park.

This morning should start out as very balmy, with temperatures nearing 60 degrees, but around 10 a.m., a cold front is expected to move in and the temperature should move down sharply, possibly reaching the high 30s during the game.

Heavy winds are expected throughout the game, gusting at times to well over 40 miles per hour.

“It looks like this is going to be one of the windiest games ever played at the Ralph,” McLaughlin said. “There should be some roaring winds.”

Less extreme winter weather is expected Monday and Tuesday, with temperatures ranging from the high 20s into the low 40s, and not much snow.

VALENTINE’S DAY

Here is Wegmans tonight: