11.   The lights had also been dismantled, perhaps to hamper a search, but the police confiscated some chemistry equipment and several hundred reference books, news reports said.

12.   The search had been hampered by high winds and snow.

13.   Two major new slides just before dawn Thursday and a series of smaller slides during the night hampered a search for other possible victims that resumed at dawn.

14.   Waters took exception to broadcast reports that Disney had hampered police searches of the pond.

15.   Police said flood waters were hampering the search for the remaining Europeans and Egyptian crewman.

16.   A thick curtain of toxic fumes and intense heat hampered the search for victims of the truck fire that turned the Mont Blanc tunnel into a death chamber.

17.   Bad weather hampered the search on Monday, said Maj. Piet Paxton, spokesman for the Maritime Rescue Coordinating Center.

18.   Bad weather hampered the search Friday.

19.   Bad weather hampered the search for four mountain guides swept away by an avalanche in the Himalayas over the weekend, rescuers said Sunday.

20.   Bombs and bulldozers made the site almost unrecognizable, and concern about unexploded land mines left over from the war hampered the search for it, the report said.