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Tag: floods

  • ‘No Man’s Sky’ Creators’ Offices Flooded

    ‘No Man’s Sky’ Creators’ Offices Flooded

    This year’s Spike video game awards show was a bit of a bust when it came to game announcements (actually, it was an all-around bust). Buried amongst the Telltale games and the Cranky Kong gameplay at the rebranded VGX, however, was No Man’s Sky.

    No Man’s Sky will be an exploration-based game where players can explore entire procedurally-generated worlds, then blast off into space to explore other planets and systems. The game’s incredible ambition and slick art was emphasized by the sincere excitement of the developer announcing the game for Hello Games.

    With that hype coming out of the VGX, Hello Games set about the task of actually finishing No Man’s Sky, only to hit a major roadblock this week.

    According to a tweet from the No Man’s Sky Twitter account, the company’s studio was met with a Christmas Eve surprise – and not a good one:

    The entire Hello Games office in Guildford, UK has apparently been destroyed in a flash flood. Subsequent posts on both the Hello Games and No Man’s Sky Twitter accounts have revealed that nearly everything in the offices has been lost.

    Though the situation is obviously a disaster, Hello Games demonstrated its good sense of humor, joking about floating laptops and Joe Danger cardboard cutouts:

    Luckily for No Man’s Sky fans it doesn’t appear that the flood has ended the project or the studio. Hello Games is keeping its chin up and promising to carry on:

  • Kevin Spacey “Tweets” Photo Standing in the Flood

    Movie Star, Kevin Spacey, visited Charleston, South Carloina this weekend and “tweeted” a picture of himself standing on in the flooded waters that were making there way down Wentworth Street, in downtown Charleston. “I had a great time in Charleston, SC. Beautiful summer weather,” the 53-year-old tweeted on Sunday. It is reported that Charleston frequently floods due to it’s location so near to the Atlantic Ocean and it’s streets lying so low.

    (image)

    Spacey, one of the most well known Hollywood actors, has recently been nominated for an Emmy award for his role in the Netflix original series, “House of Cards”. Receiving the nomination marks the first time that television’s top awards has recognized a series delivered online as equal in quality to the series only viewed on television. “House of Cards” earned a total of nine nominations in all. Spacey was also nominated for the best drama series actor award. All 13 episodes of the season can be seen via Netflix.

  • Lourdes Flooding Kills 1, Closes Pilgrimage Sites

    Heavy rains in the southwestern French town of Lourdes have caused massive flooding, closing down a Catholic holy site and killing at least one person.

    According to France 24, the flooding has closed down the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, a famous French pilgrimage site for Roman Catholics. The site is sacred to Catholics due to reported sightings of apparitions of the Virgin Mary around the area in 1858. The holy site draws millions of tourists each year, causing Lourdes to have the second greatest number of hotels per square mile in France, just behind Paris.

    One 70-year-old woman was reportedly killed in the nearby village of Pierrefitte-Nestalas while trying to exit her car. The vehicle had become caught in the flooding after the Gave de Pau River became overflown.

    Some roads in the area have been cut off by water and around 200 people have been evacuated. This is the second year in a row that holy sites in Lourdes have been closed due to flooding.

    The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes has posted videos to its YouTube account showing the extent of the flooding and the damage the water has caused to the Basilica of St. Pius, a Catholic church at the pilgrimage site:

    (Image courtesy Milorad Pavlek under Creative Commons License)

    (via France 24)

  • Google Crisis Response Launches Resources For Jakarta Flooding

    As it typically does when there’s a major natural disaster, Google’s Crisis Response team has put together a resource page for those affected by flooding in Jakarta. The page helps users track affected areas, and provides updated emergency info.

    “We also have a mobile page with emergency contact numbers and lists of shelters, and enhanced search results on google.co.id to provide information directly when people search,” says Google Crisis Response software engineer Alice Bonhomme-Biais. “We’ve also included this information in our FreeZone service to reach affected users on feature phones.”

    The page and the accompanying embeddable map are available in English as well as in Bahasa Indonesia. Users will be able to see updates on flood locations and related info like traffic conditions.

    Google says it will update the content as more info becomes available.

  • Google Offers Resources, Person Finder For Flood In Philippines

    Flooding from a monsoon has terrorized the Philippines, and Google has set up a crisis response site with related resources. This includes a person finder, emergency contact information, maps showing shelters, donation centers and the flood extent, and news and updates related to the flooding.

    Google Maps .

    Google Maps .8 minutes ago

    New Google Crisis Response site for the Philippines features Google Person Finder, emergency contact information, a map of shelter locations and more. 

    View the site here:
    http://www.google.org/crisisresponse/2012-08-philippines-flood.html 

    #phalerts   #philippines  #phfloods 

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    Though Google is often accused of being “evil,” by those who question certain business practices related to its search engine (mostly because of the company’s famous “do no evil” mantra), I don’t think many would disagree that this is a decidedly un-evil action from the company’s philanthropic arm, Google.org.

    In fact, Google has offered similar resources for a number of natural disasters.

  • Tornado Bludgeons San Antonio, Texas

    Tornado Bludgeons San Antonio, Texas

    A tornado southwest of San Antonio caused considerable damage and flooding across the region. The flooding was caused by a line of thunderstorms that shadowed the fierce cone of destruction.

    The natural disaster touched down late Monday about 25 miles southwest of San Antonio and moved toward the city. Most of the damage was to rural homes north of the towns of Natalia and Lytle, officials said.

    The following YouTube video shows a Large cone tornado in Lytle, TX on March 19, 2012:

    “We have multiple homes damaged, several homes were taken by this tornado,” Roy Bermudez, a deputy with the Medina County Sheriff’s Office southwest of San Antonio, told Reuters Tuesday morning. Several people suffered injuries but a full assessment of the damage would be unavailable until after daylight.

    More injuries of fatalities could have resulted but dozens of people took refuge in a community center set up in the town of Somerset, southwest of San Antonio.

    The National Weather Service had issued flash flood warnings for parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. The flooding and debris caused dozens of streets to be closed, making it harder for people to check on their loved ones.

    (image)

    Weather radar images showed a slow-moving band of storms stretching from near the Texas-Mexico border through eastern Oklahoma and into southeastern Kansas. Meteorologists with the weather service said the line would continue to move eastward through the morning.

    (image)

    Power outages were reported across the area; 23,000 homes were without power early Tuesday.

    Other damage included two house fires that may have been caused by lightning strikes.

    One truck driver had a particularly terrifying experience; the man was trapped inside his vehicle after a live power line was blown onto his truck by the strong winds. The San Antonion Fire Department rescued the man in the knick of time.

    The flooding rains are a half blessing for south and central Texas. The region has been suffering from a drought that began early in 2011. It developed into the state’s worst one-year drought ever.

    Hopefully this disaster will help crops grow to fruition later this year.

  • Mississippi Flood Photos from Google Maps Satellite Imagery

    Google has put together a whole bunch of data and imagery from the Mississippi floods on Google Maps.

    On Google’s Lat Long Blog, Pete Giencke of the Google Crisis Response Team writes:

    Emerging as one of the worst flooding events along the U.S. waterway in the past century, the Mississippi River floods of April and May 2011 have caused widespread destruction along the 2,300 mile river system. Historically high water levels from heavy rains and springtime snowmelt have provided no shortage of dramatic scenes — levees breached, downtown areas completely submerged, spillways opened, and more.

    The Google Crisis Response team has assembled a collection of flood data including satellite imagery for impacted cities along the river from GeoEye, flood extent and crest data forecasts from the US Army Corps of Engineers (kml) and NOAA’s National Weather Service (kml), and shelter locations from the American Red Cross (kml).

    The image at the top is Morganza, Louisiana on May 15. The following image is from Cairo, Illinois on May 8.

    Mississippi flood imagery

    Google Crisis Response is a project of Google.org, the company’s philanthropic arm. Its stated goal is to make critical info more accessible around natural disasters and humanitarian crises. Just this year it has provided data and resources for the earthquake/tsunami in Japan, the Christchurch earthquake, the Brazil floods and landslides, and Australian floods.

    Last year, it provided resources for the Pakistan floods, gulf oil spill, Qinghai earthquake, Chile earthquake, and Haiti earthquake. In 2009 it provided resources for Typhoon Morakot, the Lockheed Wildfire in Santa Cruz, the L’Aquila Earthquake, and Red River Floods.

    To see all available data for the Mississippi floods, simply search for “Mississippi flooding” on Google Maps. The data is also accessible in Google Earth via the “places” layer.