This has led many people to charge that shoddy con struction practices may be to blame ... least some of this tragedy ... Cassini to the surface of the Saturn moon.
Eos,Vol. 80, No. 35, August 31,1999 Palace—were not damaged, the quake flat tened hundreds of newer buildings. This has led many people to charge that shoddy con struction practices may be to blame for at least s o m e of this tragedy Brian Tucker, president of Geohazards Inter national (GHI),said that while the earth quake was devastating, similar damages could o c c u r in many developing countries if a major quake o c c u r r e d there. The group has just c o n c l u d e d a 2-year study, commis sioned by the United Nations, that finds that nine out of 10 earthquake-threatened cities in developing countries are no better pre pared to survive a major earthquake than Izmit, Turkey. "I wish that people would learn from Izmit that this problem exists throughout the world," said Tucker."Let us all try to help these other people before it happens, as it certainly will." For more information, visit the GHI Web site: http://www.geohaz.org.
Cassini c r u i s e s t o S a t u r n While s o m e peo ple had warned that the Cassini spacecraft might crash into the Earths atmosphere and spread plutonium dust around the planet, its flyby around the Earth on route to Saturn went smoothly, according to NASA. The $3.4 billion probe that is powered by more than 32 kg of plutonium swung by the Earth at 03.28 Universal Time on August 18 at a distance of 1171 km above the Earth, according to engineers at NASAs Jet Propul sion Laboratory The spacecraft, launched on October 15, 1997, is scheduled to arrive into an orbit around Saturn on July 1,2004 for a 4-year mis sion. The Huygens probe will parachute from Cassini to the surface of the Saturn moon Titan. NASA has said plutonium is necessary for Cassini to reach Saturn, and that the en cased plutonium posed practically no threat to Earth. S o m e opponents have maintained
that improved solar technologies might b e able to power future missions to distant locales. The Cassini/Huygens program is a joint en deavor of NASA, the European S p a c e Agency, and the Italian S p a c e Agency For further information, visit the NASA Web site: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini. Natural d i s a s t e r W e b site For natural disas ter information concerning Latin America, the Virtual Disaster Library offers a useful, new Web site.The library is a project of the Pan American Health Organization—the regional office for the Americas of the World Health Organization—in collaboration with the Regional Disaster Documentation Center and the International D e c a d e for Natural Disaster Reduction. For more information, visit the Web site: http://www.paho.org/english/ped/pedhome. htm. Randy Showstack,
Staff Writer
