Georgia and much of the Southeast is recuperating from the heavy rains and floods that destroyed homes and cars this week. Ten people have officially been reported dead because of the floods. Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue declared a state of emergency and has asked the federal government for assistance. For an update on the situation, we speak to Susanna Capelouto, news director for Georgia Public Broadcasting, and Angela Olson, whose house was damaged in the flooding.

Wildfires continue to blaze in Southern California. According to The Los Angeles Times, what's now being called "the Station fire" is now 22% contained after scorching over 127,000 acres.  Parts of Los Angeles, the Mt. Wilson Observatory and the communications station there are still threatened, however. Hundreds of homes have been lost and thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes.

How are residents handling the stress of evacuation? We check in with Sylvia Avanessian, a recent graduate of UCLA. She and her family were evacuated from their home in La Canada, California last Friday.

Wildfires blazing around the Los Angeles area have threatened nearly 12,000 homes in their path. The fires killed two firefighters yesterday, destroyed at least 18 homes, and are now threatening the complex at the Mt. Wilson Observatory.  Mt. Wilson is both a historic space observatory and, with its high vantage point and many antennas, the effective telecommunications nerve center for Los Angeles.

We talk to Justin Seastrand, natural resources specialist for the U.S. Forest Service, on the latest news.

Smokey Bear turned 65 on Sunday. He represents the longest running public service campaign in U.S. history, and it's still going strong. Joining The Takeaway is Helene Cleveland, fire prevention program manager for the U.S. Forest Service, to talk about Smokey's impact on preventing wildfires.

Today in New Orleans a trial gets underway that could ultimately determine what kind of damages thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina can demand from the government. Five residents and one business are suing the Army Corps of Engineers because, they say, the Corps did not properly maintain a shipping channel and that act intensified the storm surge, causing the devastation of neighborhoods including St. Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward. Saiward Pharr is a radio host in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and is reporting on the case. She'll join The Takeaway with a preview.

Early this morning in L'Aquila, Italy, the funerals began for some of the 289 people killed in Monday's earthquake. While normally in the Catholic tradition no funerals are allowed on Good Friday, the Vatican granted a dispensation for the funeral mass for the earthquake victims. For more on the somber scene, we turn to BBC Correspondent Helen Fawkes joins us from L'Aquila, Italy.

As residents of the central Italian city L'Aquila slept on Sunday, a deadly earthquake hit the surrounding region. Entire blocks of buildings were destroyed, rendering an estimated 17,000 people homeless and causing the deaths of 179 people. According to the U.S. Geological Survey the quake registered a 6.3 magnitude, while Italy's National Institute of Geophysics recorded it as a 5.8. Aftershocks and inclement weather have been interfering with rescue efforts and an estimated 37 people are still missing. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi declared a state of emergency for the Abruzzo region, approximately 60 miles from Rome. For more we turn to the BBC's Rome Correspondent David Willey.

Watch Italian rescue teams sift through rubble in the aftermath of the earthquake in L'Aquila.

Just after 3:30 this morning local time, central Italy was rocked by an earthquake measuring at least 5.8 on the Richter scale – though the U.S. Geological Survey measured it at 6.3. It's a significant tremor by any measure. At least 50 people have died, and tens of thousands of people are homeless. For more, we go to Rachel Donadio. She's the Rome bureau chief for our partners The New York Times, but right now she's walking the streets of L'Aquila, Italy, which is near the center of the quake and 60 miles northeast of Rome.

As residents of the central Italian city L'Aquila slept, a deadly earthquake hit the surrounding region, killing at least 50 people. Entire blocks of buildings were destroyed, displacing around 10,000 people. According to the U.S. Geological Survey the quake registered a 6.3 magnitude, while Italy's National Institute of Geophysics recorded it as a 5.8. For more we turn to the BBC's Rome Correspondent David Willey.

Watch CNN's footage of the devastating earthquake in the clip below.

The Red River in Fargo, North Dakota broke a 112-year-old record last Friday morning when it rose past 40.33 feet — the highest level ever measured. Across the river the situation isn't much better officials in Moorhead, Minnesota have asked approximately one-third of the households in the city to evacuate for fear of the river rising.

Joining The Takeaway are residents dealing with the situation on the ground. Dick Bailly lives in Fargo and his home may soon be flooded as the water fills up her back yard. Sarah Mayo, a junior at North Dakota University, is one of the army of volunteers helping put down sandbags. Also joining the conversation is Courtney Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross.

One Fargo resident made this photo slide show documenting the North Dakota flooding.

Over the course of two days last week, 50 to 60 small earthquakes shook the Earth at the foot of the San Andreas Fault. Some fear the chances of a Big One hitting the Los Angeles area are greater now than ever before. Leonardo Seeber is a Senior Research Scientist at Columbia University and he joins us on the show to talk about this.

If you don't remember what to do in the event of an earthquake, watch this clip:

Fargo, North Dakota is being protected from rising floodwaters by an energetic band of volunteers who are filling and stacking sandbags to construct temporary dikes. Among those volunteers is Sarah Mayo, a junior at North Dakota State University, who joins John to tell us how things are looking in her hometown.

Here's a CNN iReport of the flood:

On Oct. 5 at an observatory on Mount Lemmon in Arizona an astronomer noticed a comet headed this way. He sent the coordinates to the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and, Timothy B. Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center, swung into action. The asteroid was being affected by Earth's gravity and looked as if it was being pulled directly into Earth. A few calculations later and, sure enough, the asteroid was going to hit Earth. Luckily It was small enough to disintegrated in the atmosphere and sure enough it ended up raining down rocks on Sudan.

This morning, we talk with Dr. Spahr about the asteroid tracking system and a new article in Nature that reports on the composition of the asteroid, which landed in Sudan.

Want more? Of course you do! Here's a clip from the BBC's Averting Armageddon and some tips on avoiding asteroids:

Volunteers in Fargo spent Wednesday sandbagging as quickly as they could as estimates of how high the Red River would crest were raised. Donald Schwert, Professor of Geology at North Dakota State University in Fargo, joins John to explain why the area is so vulnerable to floods, and Todd McDonald, a reporter for Prairie Public Radio, will describe how the city is coping.

For more information, check out Donald Schwert's Fargo Flood Homepage

"They were talking about installing a siren system in Sumatra and Java where there are major risks for tsunami activity."
--Stuart Weinstein on the tsunami warming system

"At ten o'clock, the massive, make-believe 7.8-magnitude earthquake rolls along the San Andreas fault."
-- Patricia Nazario