Tornadoes Spread Destruction and Death in Missouri and Arkansas

Tornadoes struck Arkansas and Missouri with deadly force on New Year’s Eve, leaving seven dead and dozens more injured. Six of the dead were killed on Friday, while the seventh died of her injuries on Saturday.

The seventh victim was with a friend when her trailer was hit by a twister. Bruce Southard, the chief of the Rolla Rural Fire Department explained that there was nothing left of the trailer except for its frame. Debris was scattered as far away as 40-50 yards from the trailer’s location. Southard said “It’s like you set a bomb off in it. It just annihilated it.”

At a farmstead not far from the trailer Loretta Anderson, 64-year-old grandmother was sitting with her granddaughter Megan Ross, 21, when the tornado struck. Mrs. Andersen was killed in the onslaught.

In addition to the deaths and injuries power was curtailed to about 20,000 customers, with 10,000 still without power by Saturday afternoon. According to the Governor of Missouri, Jay Nixon, who was touring the areas damaged by the tornadoes, there was damage also not far from St. Louis.

California Condors Face More Challenges in Their Efforts Back to Viability

Califoria-CondorCalifornia Condors have sure had a difficult time of it in recent years. On the verge of extinction for many years, attempts to get their population up have been going through hurdles to confound the most dedicated of biologists. Back in 2006 the first nesting attempt in Central California in more than a century happened with a nest 200 feet up a redwood tree. At first delighted with this great new development, biologist Joe Burnett of the Ventana Wildlife Society was stunned to find that the reason the birds did not immediately reproduce was not because of inexperience, but because the eggs which they did produce had fatally thin shells, too thin to support the development of condor chicks inside.

“The eggshell fragments we found appeared abnormally thin,” Mr. Burnett said. “They were so thin that we had to run tests to confirm that it was a condor egg.” The fragments reminded him of the thin-shelled eggs from birds like brown pelicans and peregrine falcons, which had been devastated by DDT but are now on the rebound.

Looking for possible sources of DDT which is a pesticide that has been banned from use since 1972 led Mr. Burnett to suspect the California sea lions, food for the California condors, may themselves by contaminated with DDT.