May 10, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Death Comes Ashore
By AMITAV GHOSH
THE word “cyclone” was coined in Calcutta (now called Kolkata) in the 1840s by an eccentric Englishman named Henry Piddington. Inspired by the great British meteorologist William Reid, Piddington became one of the earliest storm-chasers, besotted with a phenomenon that he once likened to a “beautiful meteorite.” His elegant coinage was originally intended as a generic name for all revolving weather events, but is now applied mainly to the storms of the Indian Ocean region like Cyclone Nargis, which struck Burma with devastating effect last week.
Piddington was among the earliest to recognize that a cyclone wreaks most of its damage not through wind but through water, by means of the devastating wave that is known as a “storm surge.” In 1853, when the British colonial authorities were planning an elaborate new port on the outer edge of Bengal’s mangrove forests, he issued an unambiguous warning: “Everyone and everything must be prepared to see a day when, in the midst of the horrors of a hurricane, they will find a terrific mass of salt water rolling in ...” His warning was neglected and Port Canning was built, only to be obliterated by a cyclonic surge in 1867.
The phenomenon of the storm surge has been extensively researched since Piddington’s day, yet few public-response systems have drawn the obvious lesson. To this day, the warnings that accompany a storm’s approach typically say nothing about moving to high ground: their prescription is usually to seek shelter indoors. As a result people tend to hunker down in the strongest structure within reach — only to find themselves trapped when the surge comes sweeping through.
But even if they were fully warned, where would those people go? The delta regions of Burma and Bengal are flat and swampy with very few elevations. To move millions quickly is not an easy task even for a technologically advanced country, as Hurricane Katrina showed.
Yet for the rapidly growing countries that surround the Bay of Bengal there is an increasing urgency to find a way to protect themselves. They have experienced some of the world’s most devastating storms. The Hooghly cyclone of 1737, for example, almost erased the infant settlement of Calcutta and was once considered the worst disaster in human history: the surge that accompanied it is reckoned to have reached a height of 40 feet (as opposed to the 12-foot wave generated by Cyclone Nargis).
There are no reliable casualty estimates of that storm, but two other cyclones are known to have killed some 300,000 people each: the Buckerganj cyclone of 1876 and the Bhola cyclone of 1970, both in what is now Bangladesh. As recently as 1991, a storm surge killed more than 100,000 people in Bangladesh.
Nor are the energies of the Bay of Bengal exhausted by its all-too-frequent cyclones — there is also the extremely unstable fault line that produced the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, which took some 230,000 lives. If global warming does bring an increase in cyclonic activity there can be no doubt that the bay’s heavily populated coastline will be among the most vulnerable regions of the world.
Natural phenomena like tsunamis and cyclones have no respect for national boundaries — in fact, they follow trajectories that seem almost to mock the vanities of nation-states. Cyclone Nargis, for example, had it stayed on its original path, would very likely have hit either India or Bangladesh; it was only in the last stretch of her journey that she veered off toward the Irrawaddy Delta.
Nation-states tend to see their interests as being confined within their own borders. But the reality is that the people who live around the Bay of Bengal have a vital interest in common that they do not share with their compatriots in the hinterlands: they are joined by the furies (and let it be said also, the blessings) of that body of water. Clearly they have a common interest in working together to mitigate the effects of natural disasters. For example, by designing inexpensive, elevated shelters that are appropriate to the terrain; by cooperating to preserve the mangrove forests that are the best natural safeguards against surges; and by creating a joint rapid-response force familiar with the local conditions.
This would require these governments first to acknowledge a basic and ever-more evident truth of the human condition, which is that in dealing with nature’s fury, no nation is an island. This is where national pride gets in the way, for this acknowledgment requires a humility that does not come easily; a glaring example was President Bush’s rejection of the offers of foreign aid that poured in after Hurricane Katrina. It was as if the world’s generosity were an affront.
Recent experience has demonstrated in spectacular ways that rich, technologically advanced nations are not invulnerable to extreme weather. What has also been demonstrated, but more quietly, is that a nation need not be wealthy or technologically advanced to be well prepared for natural disasters.
A case in point is Mauritius, a small Indian Ocean island in a zone that meteorologists call a “cyclone factory.” The islanders have evolved a sophisticated system of precautions, combining a network of cyclone shelters with education (including regular drills), a good early warning system and mandatory closings of businesses and schools when a storm threatens. It’s been a remarkable success: Cyclone Gamede of 2007, a monster of a storm that set global meteorological records for rainfall, killed only two people on the island.
I happened to be in Mauritius when Hurricane Katrina struck. I still remember the open-mouthed disbelief with which people there watched the unfolding of the events in Louisiana. Mauritius is a country that has learned, through trial and experience, that early warnings are not enough — preparation also demands public education and political will. In an age when extreme weather events are clearly increasing in frequency, the world would do well to learn from it.
Amitav Ghosh is the author of the forthcoming novel “Sea of Poppies.”
NATURAL DISASTERS
Myanmar referendum sparks protest
Workers directed away from cyclone aid effort
Aileen McCabe
Canwest News Service with files from Reuters and The Telegraph
Sunday, May 11, 2008
CREDIT: Reuters (Photo)
Despairing survivors of cyclone Nargis sit at a refugee centre in the town of Labutta, Myanmar, on Saturday awaiting international aid shipments.
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BANGKOK - Myanmar's generals diverted manpower from the cyclone aid effort Saturday to oversee a controversial referendum on a new constitution, while more than a million victims of the tragedy desperately awaited rescue.
Critics say the referendum, which comes in the wake of the junta's grudging response to the devastation of cyclone Nargis, will only serve to further cement the military's hold on power.
To the xenophobic regime, getting the vote out in areas not affected by the cyclone appeared as important as getting clean water, food and shelter to the 1.5 million to two million of its citizens the United Nations now estimates were "severely affected" by Nargis.
The regime's leaders found time Saturday to distribute small quantities of foreign relief supplies. The generals appeared on TV handing out boxes on which, in a clumsy publicity stunt, they stamped their own names over those of the original donors.
In Thailand, Japan and Malaysia there were demonstrations protesting the junta's decision to go ahead with the referendum despite the cyclone.
"People are dying and they still want to go on with this artificial democracy," said Than Tun Aung, a refugee who led the protest in Kuala Lumpur.
State media list 23,335 people dead and 37,019 missing after a cyclone with winds more than 100 km/h and a 3.5-metre tidal wave struck last weekend. One senior U.S. diplomat has predicted that, given the delays in dispatching aid, the death toll could reach 100,000.
The UN's Richard Horsey said Saturday that aid has reached about half a million survivors so far.
Myanmar cleared two more UN aid flights to land Saturday and allowed three UN trucks carrying enough tents and materials to shelter 10,000 people to cross from Thailand. The trucks will take at least two days to reach the capital, Yangon. It is days more by road to the hard hit Irrawaddy Delta area.
India, which Myanmar considers a friend, delivered four transport planes of supplies and two shiploads of aid the generals have allowed to be delivered. Thailand sent one planeload of relief supplies.
The UN has appealed for $187 million in aid, even though it's not confident the food, water and tents will make it to those most in need because of the junta's reluctance to admit international relief workers.
Meanwhile, the international community is growing increasingly concerned about the impact the delays on the spread of disease in the worst-hit areas. The World Health Organization said "outbreaks of communicable diseases such as dengue and malaria are now a big concern."
"This is the second disaster," said Greg Beck of the International Rescue Committee. "First was the cyclone and the surge of water. The second will come if there is no access to food, water and shelter. They will start dying."
UNICEF, which has delivered some supplies in with the help of the Thai government, says it is "very concerned about the impact of bad water on the health of children" left stranded or orphaned, by the cyclone.
It said that UNICEF health specialists estimate "20 per cent of children in the worst affected areas already have diarrhea and cases of malaria have also been reported."
Meanwhile, there are local media reports that two child traffickers were arrested in the worst-hit Irrawaddy Delta region, where many children have been orphaned by the disaster, leaving them vulnerable to abuse.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Workers directed away from cyclone aid effort
Aileen McCabe
Canwest News Service with files from Reuters and The Telegraph
Sunday, May 11, 2008
CREDIT: Reuters (Photo)
Despairing survivors of cyclone Nargis sit at a refugee centre in the town of Labutta, Myanmar, on Saturday awaiting international aid shipments.
http://www.canada.com/components/print. ... d&sponsor=
BANGKOK - Myanmar's generals diverted manpower from the cyclone aid effort Saturday to oversee a controversial referendum on a new constitution, while more than a million victims of the tragedy desperately awaited rescue.
Critics say the referendum, which comes in the wake of the junta's grudging response to the devastation of cyclone Nargis, will only serve to further cement the military's hold on power.
To the xenophobic regime, getting the vote out in areas not affected by the cyclone appeared as important as getting clean water, food and shelter to the 1.5 million to two million of its citizens the United Nations now estimates were "severely affected" by Nargis.
The regime's leaders found time Saturday to distribute small quantities of foreign relief supplies. The generals appeared on TV handing out boxes on which, in a clumsy publicity stunt, they stamped their own names over those of the original donors.
In Thailand, Japan and Malaysia there were demonstrations protesting the junta's decision to go ahead with the referendum despite the cyclone.
"People are dying and they still want to go on with this artificial democracy," said Than Tun Aung, a refugee who led the protest in Kuala Lumpur.
State media list 23,335 people dead and 37,019 missing after a cyclone with winds more than 100 km/h and a 3.5-metre tidal wave struck last weekend. One senior U.S. diplomat has predicted that, given the delays in dispatching aid, the death toll could reach 100,000.
The UN's Richard Horsey said Saturday that aid has reached about half a million survivors so far.
Myanmar cleared two more UN aid flights to land Saturday and allowed three UN trucks carrying enough tents and materials to shelter 10,000 people to cross from Thailand. The trucks will take at least two days to reach the capital, Yangon. It is days more by road to the hard hit Irrawaddy Delta area.
India, which Myanmar considers a friend, delivered four transport planes of supplies and two shiploads of aid the generals have allowed to be delivered. Thailand sent one planeload of relief supplies.
The UN has appealed for $187 million in aid, even though it's not confident the food, water and tents will make it to those most in need because of the junta's reluctance to admit international relief workers.
Meanwhile, the international community is growing increasingly concerned about the impact the delays on the spread of disease in the worst-hit areas. The World Health Organization said "outbreaks of communicable diseases such as dengue and malaria are now a big concern."
"This is the second disaster," said Greg Beck of the International Rescue Committee. "First was the cyclone and the surge of water. The second will come if there is no access to food, water and shelter. They will start dying."
UNICEF, which has delivered some supplies in with the help of the Thai government, says it is "very concerned about the impact of bad water on the health of children" left stranded or orphaned, by the cyclone.
It said that UNICEF health specialists estimate "20 per cent of children in the worst affected areas already have diarrhea and cases of malaria have also been reported."
Meanwhile, there are local media reports that two child traffickers were arrested in the worst-hit Irrawaddy Delta region, where many children have been orphaned by the disaster, leaving them vulnerable to abuse.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Schools, hospitals collapse, more than 8,500 feared dead in Chinese earthquake
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Aileen McCabe - Asia Correspondent
Canwest News Service
Monday, May 12, 2008
CREDIT: Reuters
A man rides a motorbike on a debris-covered road following an earthquake in Chengdu, Sichuan province May 12, 2008. A major earthquake measuring 7.8 Richter Scale jolted Wenchuan County of Sichuan province at 2:28 p.m. Beijing time (6:28 GMT) on Monday, Xinhua News Agency reported.
CREDIT: Reuters
Local residents search for their belongings in the debris of a collapsed house after an earthquake in Dujiangyan, Sichuan province May 12, 2008.
SHANGHAI - A devastating earthquake in China's southwestern Sichuan province on Monday killed more than 8,500 people in that province alone, the official Xinhua news agency said Monday, citing information from the provincial government. At least 10,000 are feared injured following the most devastating quake to rock China in more than 30 years.
The news agency gave the figure in a brief dispatch, shortly after quoting national relief headquarters as saying more than 7,600 people had been confirmed killed in Sichuan.
The earthquake, which measured 7.8 on the Richter scale, toppled eight schools and at least one hospital, state media said. At one high school, about 900 students were said to be buried in rubble. It hit in the early afternoon Monday, centred in Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County, in the mountainous Sichuan province of southwestern China, the state news agency said.
Most of the deaths and injuries occurred there as 80 per cent of the buildings collapsed. With a population of 161,000, about one in 10 residents is estimated to have been killed or injured in the quake.
Hundreds of people were buried under rubble in Shifang in Sichuan province, as several schools, factories and dormitories collapsed during the quake, according to state media reports. In Chongqing, a city of 10 million that is 360 kilometres away from the quake's centre, four primary school students were killed and 100 more injured when two schools collapsed.
The death toll in the region is expected to rise sharply as authorities and rescue teams make contact with the worst-hit areas, where phone lines have been cut off since the quake struck.
The quake is the worst to hit China since the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in northeastern China, where at least 240,000 people died.
Tremors from Monday's event were felt 1,500 kilometres away in the capital, Beijing, sending buildings swaying there and in the financial centre of Shanghai. Workers in those cities were evacuated.
In Shanghai, thousands were milling around in the plazas surrounding their office towers, enjoying the sunshine and not quite sure what was happening. China Mobile said more than 2,300 cell phone towers were knocked out by the tremors, temporarily breaking down communications.
The quake was felt as far afield as Taipei, Bangkok and Hanoi.
Deaths were also reported in neighbouring Gansu and Yunnan provinces.
Chinese President Hu Jintao called for an "all-out" rescue effort in Sichuan and Premier Wen Jiabao flew to the affected area to see the tragedy for himself.
He described the damage as "very severe."
The People's Liberation Army was dispatched to Wenchuan, the closest city to the quake and home to more than 111,000, to help deal with the aftermath.
The army is well trained to handle natural disasters: during typhoon season, the PLA is often called on to evacuate millions of flood victims.
In a heavily populated area, a 7.8-magnitude quake is capable of inflicting huge damage and loss of life.
The European Union's Global Disaster Alert and Co-ordination System said in a statement that "this earthquake has potentially a high humanitarian impact and the affected region has medium vulnerability to natural disasters."
The impact may be higher, the organization said, because the quake struck in the middle of a working day.
Experts say the quake was "shallow" - 10 kilometres below ground - which means the damage is likely to be greater.
The quake hit near Wolong Nature Reserve, China's main centre for research and breeding Giant Pandas, but there have been no reports of damage.
With files from Reuters and Agence France-Presse
© Canwest News Service 2008
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Aileen McCabe - Asia Correspondent
Canwest News Service
Monday, May 12, 2008
CREDIT: Reuters
A man rides a motorbike on a debris-covered road following an earthquake in Chengdu, Sichuan province May 12, 2008. A major earthquake measuring 7.8 Richter Scale jolted Wenchuan County of Sichuan province at 2:28 p.m. Beijing time (6:28 GMT) on Monday, Xinhua News Agency reported.
CREDIT: Reuters
Local residents search for their belongings in the debris of a collapsed house after an earthquake in Dujiangyan, Sichuan province May 12, 2008.
SHANGHAI - A devastating earthquake in China's southwestern Sichuan province on Monday killed more than 8,500 people in that province alone, the official Xinhua news agency said Monday, citing information from the provincial government. At least 10,000 are feared injured following the most devastating quake to rock China in more than 30 years.
The news agency gave the figure in a brief dispatch, shortly after quoting national relief headquarters as saying more than 7,600 people had been confirmed killed in Sichuan.
The earthquake, which measured 7.8 on the Richter scale, toppled eight schools and at least one hospital, state media said. At one high school, about 900 students were said to be buried in rubble. It hit in the early afternoon Monday, centred in Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County, in the mountainous Sichuan province of southwestern China, the state news agency said.
Most of the deaths and injuries occurred there as 80 per cent of the buildings collapsed. With a population of 161,000, about one in 10 residents is estimated to have been killed or injured in the quake.
Hundreds of people were buried under rubble in Shifang in Sichuan province, as several schools, factories and dormitories collapsed during the quake, according to state media reports. In Chongqing, a city of 10 million that is 360 kilometres away from the quake's centre, four primary school students were killed and 100 more injured when two schools collapsed.
The death toll in the region is expected to rise sharply as authorities and rescue teams make contact with the worst-hit areas, where phone lines have been cut off since the quake struck.
The quake is the worst to hit China since the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in northeastern China, where at least 240,000 people died.
Tremors from Monday's event were felt 1,500 kilometres away in the capital, Beijing, sending buildings swaying there and in the financial centre of Shanghai. Workers in those cities were evacuated.
In Shanghai, thousands were milling around in the plazas surrounding their office towers, enjoying the sunshine and not quite sure what was happening. China Mobile said more than 2,300 cell phone towers were knocked out by the tremors, temporarily breaking down communications.
The quake was felt as far afield as Taipei, Bangkok and Hanoi.
Deaths were also reported in neighbouring Gansu and Yunnan provinces.
Chinese President Hu Jintao called for an "all-out" rescue effort in Sichuan and Premier Wen Jiabao flew to the affected area to see the tragedy for himself.
He described the damage as "very severe."
The People's Liberation Army was dispatched to Wenchuan, the closest city to the quake and home to more than 111,000, to help deal with the aftermath.
The army is well trained to handle natural disasters: during typhoon season, the PLA is often called on to evacuate millions of flood victims.
In a heavily populated area, a 7.8-magnitude quake is capable of inflicting huge damage and loss of life.
The European Union's Global Disaster Alert and Co-ordination System said in a statement that "this earthquake has potentially a high humanitarian impact and the affected region has medium vulnerability to natural disasters."
The impact may be higher, the organization said, because the quake struck in the middle of a working day.
Experts say the quake was "shallow" - 10 kilometres below ground - which means the damage is likely to be greater.
The quake hit near Wolong Nature Reserve, China's main centre for research and breeding Giant Pandas, but there have been no reports of damage.
With files from Reuters and Agence France-Presse
© Canwest News Service 2008
Myanmar's refusal recipe for disaster
UN, aid groups warn of huge health risks; Junta celebrates 'overwhelming turnout' in vote as millions fight for survival
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Aileen McCabe
Canwest News Service
Monday, May 12, 2008
CREDIT: Khin Maung Win, Agence France-Presse, Getty Images
A cyclone survivor takes care of her child inside a broken hut in Kyauktan, southeast of Yangon, on Sunday. Cyclone Nargis has left at least 60,000 dead or missing and as many as two million more short of food, water and supplies. The UN warns the death toll could hit 150,000 if aid doesn't start flowing in.
CREDIT: Reuters
Myanmar's military government leader Gen. Than Shwe casts his ballot at a polling station in the new capital Nay Pyi Taw, 400 kilometres north of Yangon on Saturday.
Myanmar may be on the brink of a second disaster, "potentially larger than the first," but this time self-inflicted.
More than a week after cyclone Nargis hit, the Myanmar government's continued refusal to allow more than a trickle of aid into the country and no experienced disaster relief workers has upped the chance of disease wiping out more people than the cyclone and the tidal surge that followed it.
The regime now says 28,458 are dead and 33,416 missing, but international agencies put the death toll much higher and the UN warned Sunday that it could hit 150,000 if aid doesn't start flowing soon.
Gordon Bacon, the International Rescue Committee emergency coordinator in Yangon, said his teams are starting to penetrate some of the areas worst hit by Nargis and they are finding villages where all the homes are destroyed and survivors who have had no clean water since May 2.
"With each passing day, we come closer to a massive health disaster and a second wave of deaths that is potentially larger than the first," Bacon said.
In Thailand, the IRC's regional director Greg Beck said: "Everything hinges on access. Unless there's a massive and fast infusion of aid, experts and supplies into the hardest-hit areas, there's going to be a tragedy at an unimaginable scale."
Until now, both governments and aid agencies have been excessively careful when they talked about the disaster in Myanmar. They obviously did not want to cause panic, but neither did they want to anger the country's paranoid regime while there is still hope of access to one of the world's most isolated countries.
By telephone from a hotel in Yangon where he has set-up temporary headquarters after Nargis destroyed his offices, Brian Agland, country director for CARE International, said his workers have been interviewing survivors who have collected in makeshift camps in the Irrawaddy Delta area and hearing repeated stories of villages of 400 or so people where only three or four people survived.
He said the survivors they are seeing are mostly adults, "a lot of the dead are children and elderly."
Agland said he is working with local staff who "don't have experience" to deal with this kind of disaster. "We definitely need the experts to be brought in."
He also said the aid supplies and food sitting on tarmacs and in warehouses around the region, waiting for clearance from the Myanmar junta, are needed now.
The World Food Program estimates that aid has reached only about one-quarter of the 1.5 to two million victims of the cyclone.
In the midst of this tragedy, Myanmar's generals held a referendum on a new constitution on Saturday and on Sunday celebrated an "overwhelming turnout."
The state-controlled news was full of the vote and pictures of the generals who insisted it go forward despite worldwide pleas to postpone it and concentrate on the crisis.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said that by today it should have seven aid flights in Myanmar, but distribution of its supplies is a major problem, particularly after its first "relief boat" sank Sunday when it ran into a submerged tree.
The federation's disaster manager Michael Annear said in a statement from Yangon that the sinking was "a big blow. Apart from the delay in getting aid to people we may now have to re-evaluate how we transport that aid."
The Red Cross had already identified the logistics of moving aid as "one of the keys to this evolving operation."
It said its logistics unit in Kuala Lumpur is working on the problem, but it has no experts on the ground to assess the situation.
Moreover, until Sunday, when Head of Delegation Bridget Gardener was allowed to travel to the Delta area to evaluate the situation, only local staff had been permitted to venture into the worst hit areas. International staff is confined to Yangon, the former Burmese capital, Rangoon.
Oxfam, which is probably the best equipped international agency to deal with the drinking water and sanitation problems which are posing the greatest health risks to the cyclone survivors, is not registered in Myanmar and has yet to receive permission to enter the country.
Chief executive Barbara Stocking told the BBC that Oxfam had supplies and experts ready to move in an instant if the generals would only relent.
"We are at huge risk of diseases spreading now," she said, "particularly dysentery and cholera."
The World Health Organization, which is on the ground but has yet to penetrate far into the worst disaster zones, says it is already seeing diarrhea and dengue fever and fears outbreaks of malaria and measles, which are both endemic in Myanmar.
It takes hundreds of millions of dollars over a period that often stretches to two or three years to deal with a disaster on the scale Myanmar suffered.
The United Nations has launched an immediate appeal for $187 million US for disaster relief and individual aid agencies around the world are also raising funds. But while governments and ordinary people are stepping up to donate, fund raising is not being made any easier by the junta's intransigence.
CARE Canada's Kieran Green said that donors are hesitant, given what is happening on the ground. "They are concerned their money will not get through," he said.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
UN, aid groups warn of huge health risks; Junta celebrates 'overwhelming turnout' in vote as millions fight for survival
http://www.canada.com/components/print. ... 7&sponsor=
Aileen McCabe
Canwest News Service
Monday, May 12, 2008
CREDIT: Khin Maung Win, Agence France-Presse, Getty Images
A cyclone survivor takes care of her child inside a broken hut in Kyauktan, southeast of Yangon, on Sunday. Cyclone Nargis has left at least 60,000 dead or missing and as many as two million more short of food, water and supplies. The UN warns the death toll could hit 150,000 if aid doesn't start flowing in.
CREDIT: Reuters
Myanmar's military government leader Gen. Than Shwe casts his ballot at a polling station in the new capital Nay Pyi Taw, 400 kilometres north of Yangon on Saturday.
Myanmar may be on the brink of a second disaster, "potentially larger than the first," but this time self-inflicted.
More than a week after cyclone Nargis hit, the Myanmar government's continued refusal to allow more than a trickle of aid into the country and no experienced disaster relief workers has upped the chance of disease wiping out more people than the cyclone and the tidal surge that followed it.
The regime now says 28,458 are dead and 33,416 missing, but international agencies put the death toll much higher and the UN warned Sunday that it could hit 150,000 if aid doesn't start flowing soon.
Gordon Bacon, the International Rescue Committee emergency coordinator in Yangon, said his teams are starting to penetrate some of the areas worst hit by Nargis and they are finding villages where all the homes are destroyed and survivors who have had no clean water since May 2.
"With each passing day, we come closer to a massive health disaster and a second wave of deaths that is potentially larger than the first," Bacon said.
In Thailand, the IRC's regional director Greg Beck said: "Everything hinges on access. Unless there's a massive and fast infusion of aid, experts and supplies into the hardest-hit areas, there's going to be a tragedy at an unimaginable scale."
Until now, both governments and aid agencies have been excessively careful when they talked about the disaster in Myanmar. They obviously did not want to cause panic, but neither did they want to anger the country's paranoid regime while there is still hope of access to one of the world's most isolated countries.
By telephone from a hotel in Yangon where he has set-up temporary headquarters after Nargis destroyed his offices, Brian Agland, country director for CARE International, said his workers have been interviewing survivors who have collected in makeshift camps in the Irrawaddy Delta area and hearing repeated stories of villages of 400 or so people where only three or four people survived.
He said the survivors they are seeing are mostly adults, "a lot of the dead are children and elderly."
Agland said he is working with local staff who "don't have experience" to deal with this kind of disaster. "We definitely need the experts to be brought in."
He also said the aid supplies and food sitting on tarmacs and in warehouses around the region, waiting for clearance from the Myanmar junta, are needed now.
The World Food Program estimates that aid has reached only about one-quarter of the 1.5 to two million victims of the cyclone.
In the midst of this tragedy, Myanmar's generals held a referendum on a new constitution on Saturday and on Sunday celebrated an "overwhelming turnout."
The state-controlled news was full of the vote and pictures of the generals who insisted it go forward despite worldwide pleas to postpone it and concentrate on the crisis.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said that by today it should have seven aid flights in Myanmar, but distribution of its supplies is a major problem, particularly after its first "relief boat" sank Sunday when it ran into a submerged tree.
The federation's disaster manager Michael Annear said in a statement from Yangon that the sinking was "a big blow. Apart from the delay in getting aid to people we may now have to re-evaluate how we transport that aid."
The Red Cross had already identified the logistics of moving aid as "one of the keys to this evolving operation."
It said its logistics unit in Kuala Lumpur is working on the problem, but it has no experts on the ground to assess the situation.
Moreover, until Sunday, when Head of Delegation Bridget Gardener was allowed to travel to the Delta area to evaluate the situation, only local staff had been permitted to venture into the worst hit areas. International staff is confined to Yangon, the former Burmese capital, Rangoon.
Oxfam, which is probably the best equipped international agency to deal with the drinking water and sanitation problems which are posing the greatest health risks to the cyclone survivors, is not registered in Myanmar and has yet to receive permission to enter the country.
Chief executive Barbara Stocking told the BBC that Oxfam had supplies and experts ready to move in an instant if the generals would only relent.
"We are at huge risk of diseases spreading now," she said, "particularly dysentery and cholera."
The World Health Organization, which is on the ground but has yet to penetrate far into the worst disaster zones, says it is already seeing diarrhea and dengue fever and fears outbreaks of malaria and measles, which are both endemic in Myanmar.
It takes hundreds of millions of dollars over a period that often stretches to two or three years to deal with a disaster on the scale Myanmar suffered.
The United Nations has launched an immediate appeal for $187 million US for disaster relief and individual aid agencies around the world are also raising funds. But while governments and ordinary people are stepping up to donate, fund raising is not being made any easier by the junta's intransigence.
CARE Canada's Kieran Green said that donors are hesitant, given what is happening on the ground. "They are concerned their money will not get through," he said.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
In other news on CNN, UN has asked for 755 million dollars to meet the Global Food Crisis.
So far U.S. has contributed $260 million (chairty begins at home, Bush! Americans are subsisting on canned foods; Public food pantries are empty and are frequented by middle class who cannot pay their bills);
Canda and other European countries have contributed $250 million,
and OPEC countries have contributed a measly $1.5 million. I read and re-read hoping it was 1.5 billion but it was 1.5 million. Majority of these OPEC countries are Islamic countries.
Here is the icing on the cake!. Last year, Saudi Arabia's oil revenue was $164 billion!
No wonder one of the Royal princes got a Diamond Studded car for his 36th birthday! While people around the world are dying of hunger, and natural disasters!
And,
Saudis claim to be the caretakers of Islam! And also, they claim to be practicing the "pure Islam". May Allah help them.
In the Seerat conference Hazar Imam had predicted that Islamic countries will be very affluent in the days to come, but they should not forget their Islamic duty towards the less privileged and the unfortunate people.
So far I see only Hazar Imam and the Ismailis practicing their Islamic duty towards the poor people of the world. The rest of the Muslim world is still asleep and they are richer than the Ismailis.
On the other hand, Christian countries are joining us in every way possible to help the poor people of the world.
Virgo2
So far U.S. has contributed $260 million (chairty begins at home, Bush! Americans are subsisting on canned foods; Public food pantries are empty and are frequented by middle class who cannot pay their bills);
Canda and other European countries have contributed $250 million,
and OPEC countries have contributed a measly $1.5 million. I read and re-read hoping it was 1.5 billion but it was 1.5 million. Majority of these OPEC countries are Islamic countries.
Here is the icing on the cake!. Last year, Saudi Arabia's oil revenue was $164 billion!
No wonder one of the Royal princes got a Diamond Studded car for his 36th birthday! While people around the world are dying of hunger, and natural disasters!
And,
Saudis claim to be the caretakers of Islam! And also, they claim to be practicing the "pure Islam". May Allah help them.
In the Seerat conference Hazar Imam had predicted that Islamic countries will be very affluent in the days to come, but they should not forget their Islamic duty towards the less privileged and the unfortunate people.
So far I see only Hazar Imam and the Ismailis practicing their Islamic duty towards the poor people of the world. The rest of the Muslim world is still asleep and they are richer than the Ismailis.
On the other hand, Christian countries are joining us in every way possible to help the poor people of the world.
Virgo2
Cyclone Nargis casualties top 133,000
Agencies say only fraction of relief getting through
Aung Hla Tun
Reuters
Saturday, May 17, 2008
CREDIT: AFP-Getty Images
Exhausted children suffering diarrhea sleep together to keep warm at a temporary shelter in a monastery on the outskirts of Yangon, Myanmar.
Torrential rain lashed survivors of cyclone Nargis on Friday as Myanmar's junta raised its toll sharply to more than 133,000 people dead or missing, putting the disaster on a par with a 1991 cyclone that killed 143,000 in neighboring Bangladesh.
In a shocking update to a count that had consistently lagged international aid agency estimates, state television said 77,738 people were dead and 55,917 missing after the May 2 storm in the military-ruled country formerly known as Burma.
Up to 2.5 million survivors are clinging to life in the low-lying Irrawaddy delta, with thousands of people lining roadsides to beg for help in the absence of large-scale government or foreign relief operations.
In the town of Kunyangon, 100 kilometres southwest of Yangon, men, women and children stood in the mud and rain, their hands clasped together in supplication to the occasional passing aid vehicle.
"The situation has worsened in just two days," one aid volunteer said as children mobbed his vehicle, reaching through the window for scraps of bread or clothing.
The generals insist their relief operations are running smoothly, justifying their refusal to allow major aid distribution by outside agencies and workers to victims of the cyclone, which flooded an area the size of Austria.
The junta issued an edict in state-run media saying legal action would be taken against anybody found hoarding or selling relief supplies, amid rumors of military units expropriating trucks of food, blankets and water.
Aid groups, including UN agencies, say only a fraction of the required relief is getting through and, unless the situation improves, thousands more lives are at risk.
Given the junta's ban on foreign journalists and restrictions on the movement of most international aid workers, independent assessment of the situation is difficult.
The United Nations said its top humanitarian official, John Holmes, would arrive in Myanmar on Sunday to try to establish contact with its reclusive generals, the latest face of 46 years of unbroken military rule.
"I understand that he's now scheduled to meet with the prime minister of Myanmar (Thein Sein) on Sunday," UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said in an interview on U.S. television.
UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said Holmes was carrying a third letter from Ban to the junta's senior general, Than Shwe, who has repeatedly ignored Ban's requests for a conversation.
Four U.S. Hercules cargo planes landed in Yangon on Friday and "two of the shipments were handed directly" to non-governmental organizations, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
He did not name the NGOs, but said there was progress because this was the first time Myanmar's government had not taken possession of some of the U.S. aid.
"We're planning four to five flights for both Saturday and Sunday and it is our hope that some of those shipments, again, will be handed over directly to international NGOs," he said.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Agencies say only fraction of relief getting through
Aung Hla Tun
Reuters
Saturday, May 17, 2008
CREDIT: AFP-Getty Images
Exhausted children suffering diarrhea sleep together to keep warm at a temporary shelter in a monastery on the outskirts of Yangon, Myanmar.
Torrential rain lashed survivors of cyclone Nargis on Friday as Myanmar's junta raised its toll sharply to more than 133,000 people dead or missing, putting the disaster on a par with a 1991 cyclone that killed 143,000 in neighboring Bangladesh.
In a shocking update to a count that had consistently lagged international aid agency estimates, state television said 77,738 people were dead and 55,917 missing after the May 2 storm in the military-ruled country formerly known as Burma.
Up to 2.5 million survivors are clinging to life in the low-lying Irrawaddy delta, with thousands of people lining roadsides to beg for help in the absence of large-scale government or foreign relief operations.
In the town of Kunyangon, 100 kilometres southwest of Yangon, men, women and children stood in the mud and rain, their hands clasped together in supplication to the occasional passing aid vehicle.
"The situation has worsened in just two days," one aid volunteer said as children mobbed his vehicle, reaching through the window for scraps of bread or clothing.
The generals insist their relief operations are running smoothly, justifying their refusal to allow major aid distribution by outside agencies and workers to victims of the cyclone, which flooded an area the size of Austria.
The junta issued an edict in state-run media saying legal action would be taken against anybody found hoarding or selling relief supplies, amid rumors of military units expropriating trucks of food, blankets and water.
Aid groups, including UN agencies, say only a fraction of the required relief is getting through and, unless the situation improves, thousands more lives are at risk.
Given the junta's ban on foreign journalists and restrictions on the movement of most international aid workers, independent assessment of the situation is difficult.
The United Nations said its top humanitarian official, John Holmes, would arrive in Myanmar on Sunday to try to establish contact with its reclusive generals, the latest face of 46 years of unbroken military rule.
"I understand that he's now scheduled to meet with the prime minister of Myanmar (Thein Sein) on Sunday," UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said in an interview on U.S. television.
UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said Holmes was carrying a third letter from Ban to the junta's senior general, Than Shwe, who has repeatedly ignored Ban's requests for a conversation.
Four U.S. Hercules cargo planes landed in Yangon on Friday and "two of the shipments were handed directly" to non-governmental organizations, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
He did not name the NGOs, but said there was progress because this was the first time Myanmar's government had not taken possession of some of the U.S. aid.
"We're planning four to five flights for both Saturday and Sunday and it is our hope that some of those shipments, again, will be handed over directly to international NGOs," he said.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Survivors pulled from rubble
New 6.1-magnitude earthquake rattles Sichuan province
http://www.canada.com/components/print. ... 8&sponsor=
Aileen McCabe
Canwest News Service
Sunday, May 18, 2008
CREDIT: Paula Bronstein, Getty Images
A woman is rescued Saturday after being trapped in a collapsed chemical factory for five days.
Rescue workers in China uncovered a small miracle on Saturday -- 33 people pulled to safety after being trapped for 119 hours under the debris from Monday's 7.9-magnitude earthquake.
The 33 were found in Beichuan, near the epicentre of the quake, Reuters reported.
Another earthquake shook Sichuan province on Saturday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The 6.1-magnitude earthquake, which followed scores of weaker aftershocks throughout the week, was nearly 80 kilometres deep and hit 80 kilometres west of Guangyuan.
The quake occurred as thousands of Chinese fled their homes on Saturday amid fears a lake could burst its banks, hampering rescue efforts.
Aid workers returned to Beichuan county, near the epicentre of the quake in Sichuan province, but many residents were too frightened to go home, worried about a lake formed when aftershocks triggered landslides that blocked a river.
"After briefly evacuating, rescue work returned to normal at Beichuan," an official website said, blaming the evacuation on a false alarm.
Despite that official line, a paramilitary officer told Reuters news agency the likelihood of the lake bursting its banks was "extremely big." The situation was "very dangerous because there are still tremors causing landslides that could damage the dam," said Luo Gang, a building worker who left the southeastern port city of Xiamen and rushed home to look for his missing fiancee.
Everywhere you go in the quake- affected areas of China there are fatigue-clad soldiers digging through the rubble for survivors, clearing roads, securing badly damaged buildings, dams and bridges, erecting shelters, handing out food and even directing traffic.
China has mobilized more than 130,000 troops to deal with the deadly earthquake in Sichuan province that has now left 28,881 dead and injured 198,347 people.
The soldiers, however, are just one part of the impressive rescue and relief operation that is in full swing six days after the earthquake ravaged southwestern Sichuan.
The majority of the soldiers are involved in immediate disaster relief, but even now planning has begun for the medium-term crisis that is looming large.
Alongside the Shifang regional rescue headquarters, the soldiers converted a stadium into a tent city to house survivors. It's more permanent looking than the long lines of hastily erected tarps covering rows of beds and lining the roadsides throughout the quake zone, but it is just one of hundreds of camps now being erected in stadiums, on playing fields and in parks in areas that missed the worst of the quake.
Here, scores of newly homeless people are milling around aimlessly on the grass, at loose ends since their lives were turned upside down by the worst disaster to hit this country in 32 years.
The children are a different story. Many of them can't seem to sustain the mourning. They have too much energy to expend and they are racing each other around the track that circles the field of tents and playing games, enjoying the novelty of new surroundings and new people.
About 50,000 people now live in tents in Shifang and more are coming every day. They are among the 4.8 million people in the province China so far estimates are homeless -- an area about two-thirds the size of Alberta.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
New 6.1-magnitude earthquake rattles Sichuan province
http://www.canada.com/components/print. ... 8&sponsor=
Aileen McCabe
Canwest News Service
Sunday, May 18, 2008
CREDIT: Paula Bronstein, Getty Images
A woman is rescued Saturday after being trapped in a collapsed chemical factory for five days.
Rescue workers in China uncovered a small miracle on Saturday -- 33 people pulled to safety after being trapped for 119 hours under the debris from Monday's 7.9-magnitude earthquake.
The 33 were found in Beichuan, near the epicentre of the quake, Reuters reported.
Another earthquake shook Sichuan province on Saturday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The 6.1-magnitude earthquake, which followed scores of weaker aftershocks throughout the week, was nearly 80 kilometres deep and hit 80 kilometres west of Guangyuan.
The quake occurred as thousands of Chinese fled their homes on Saturday amid fears a lake could burst its banks, hampering rescue efforts.
Aid workers returned to Beichuan county, near the epicentre of the quake in Sichuan province, but many residents were too frightened to go home, worried about a lake formed when aftershocks triggered landslides that blocked a river.
"After briefly evacuating, rescue work returned to normal at Beichuan," an official website said, blaming the evacuation on a false alarm.
Despite that official line, a paramilitary officer told Reuters news agency the likelihood of the lake bursting its banks was "extremely big." The situation was "very dangerous because there are still tremors causing landslides that could damage the dam," said Luo Gang, a building worker who left the southeastern port city of Xiamen and rushed home to look for his missing fiancee.
Everywhere you go in the quake- affected areas of China there are fatigue-clad soldiers digging through the rubble for survivors, clearing roads, securing badly damaged buildings, dams and bridges, erecting shelters, handing out food and even directing traffic.
China has mobilized more than 130,000 troops to deal with the deadly earthquake in Sichuan province that has now left 28,881 dead and injured 198,347 people.
The soldiers, however, are just one part of the impressive rescue and relief operation that is in full swing six days after the earthquake ravaged southwestern Sichuan.
The majority of the soldiers are involved in immediate disaster relief, but even now planning has begun for the medium-term crisis that is looming large.
Alongside the Shifang regional rescue headquarters, the soldiers converted a stadium into a tent city to house survivors. It's more permanent looking than the long lines of hastily erected tarps covering rows of beds and lining the roadsides throughout the quake zone, but it is just one of hundreds of camps now being erected in stadiums, on playing fields and in parks in areas that missed the worst of the quake.
Here, scores of newly homeless people are milling around aimlessly on the grass, at loose ends since their lives were turned upside down by the worst disaster to hit this country in 32 years.
The children are a different story. Many of them can't seem to sustain the mourning. They have too much energy to expend and they are racing each other around the track that circles the field of tents and playing games, enjoying the novelty of new surroundings and new people.
About 50,000 people now live in tents in Shifang and more are coming every day. They are among the 4.8 million people in the province China so far estimates are homeless -- an area about two-thirds the size of Alberta.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
I hope the news below represents a change and that there are no strings attached to the help offered....Virgo2 wrote:Saudis claim to be the caretakers of Islam! And also, they claim to be practicing the "pure Islam". May Allah help them.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008 ... htm?csp=34
Saudi Arabia contributes $500M to U.N. food fund
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Saudi Arabia has made an unprecedented contribution of $500 million to the U.N. World Food Program to respond to rising food and fuel prices that threatened emergency aid to millions of needy people, the United Nations announced Friday.
The contribution was by far the largest response to the U.N. food agency's emergency appeal for $755 million to cover its increased costs.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "warmly welcomes the offer of the landmark contribution" from Saudi Arabia, U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said. "The secretary-general notes that this contribution of an unprecedented size and generosity comes not a moment too soon, given the needs of millions of people dependent on food rations."
The Saudi contribution means the agency, which operates the world's largest humanitarian program, will now have the $755 million it needs to carry on its activities without cutting the amount of food given to the world's needy, Okabe said.
Josette Sheeran, the agency's executive director, said donations actually topped the appeal target — reaching $960 million from 32 countries — which means WFP will have $205 million to use for other urgent needs.
"We turned to the world to help the hungry and the world has been generous," Sheeran said in a statement issued at the agency's Rome headquarters.
"The Saudi donation will help keep many people from dying, others from slipping into malnutrition and disease, and will even help to stave off civil unrest" over soaring food prices, she said.
According to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Saudi Arabia produces about 9 million barrels of oil a day, making it the largest oil producer in the world. Oil prices have now topped $130 a barrel.
Ban warned last month that the rapidly escalating global food crisis has reached emergency proportions and threatens to wipe out seven years of progress in the fight against global poverty.
The secretary-general echoed World Bank President Robert Zoellick's appeal to governments to quickly provide WFP with the $500 million in emergency aid it still needed by May 1.
He warned then that even if WFP's shortfall is met, more money will probably be needed because food and fuel prices are continuing to rise.
Ban has established a top-level task force to tackle the world food crisis. He has also invited all world leaders to join him at a summit in Rome from June 3-5 organized by the U.N. Food Agriculture Organization to work out a strategy to address and overcome the crisis.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
May 25, 2008
Grief in the Rubble
Chinese Are Left to Ask Why Schools Crumbled
By JIM YARDLEY
This story was reported by Jim Yardley, Jake Hooker and Andrew C. Revkin, and was written by Mr. Yardley.
DUJIANGYAN, China — The earthquake’s destruction of Xinjian Primary School was swift and complete. Hundreds of children were crushed as the floors collapsed in a deluge of falling bricks and concrete. Days later, as curiosity seekers came with video cameras and as parents came to grieve, the four-story school was no more than rubble.
In contrast, none of the nearby buildings were badly damaged. A separate kindergarten less than 20 feet away survived with barely a crack. An adjacent 10-story hotel stood largely undisturbed. And another local primary school, Beijie, catering to children of the elite, was in such good condition that local officials were using it as a refugee center.
“This is not a natural disaster,” said Ren Yongchang, whose 9-year-old son died inside the destroyed school. His hands were covered in plaster dust as he stood beside the rubble, shouting and weeping as he grabbed the exposed steel rebar of a broken concrete column. “This is not good steel. It doesn’t meet standards. They stole our children.”
There is no official figure on how many children died at Xinjian Primary School, nor on how many died at scores of other schools that collapsed in the powerful May 12 earthquake in Sichuan Province. But the number of student deaths seems likely to exceed 10,000, and possibly go much higher, a staggering figure that has become a simmering controversy in China as grieving parents say their children might have lived had the schools been better built.
The Chinese government has enjoyed broad public support for its handling of the earthquake, and in Sichuan on Saturday, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations praised the government’s response.
But as parents at different schools begin to speak out, the question of whether official negligence, and possibly corruption, contributed to the student deaths could turn public opinion. The government has launched an investigation, but censors, wary of the public mood, are trying to suppress the issue in state-run media and online.
An examination of the collapse of Xinjian Primary School offers a disturbing picture of a calamity that might have been avoided. Many parents say they were told the school was unsafe. Xinjian was poorly built when it opened its doors in 1992, they say, and never got its share of government funds for reconstruction because of its low ranking in the local education bureaucracy and the low social status of its students.
A decade ago, a detached wing of the school was torn down and rebuilt because of safety concerns. But the main building remained unimproved. Engineers and earthquake experts who examined photographs of its wreckage concluded that the structure had many failings and one critical flaw: inadequate iron reinforcing rods running up the school’s vertical columns. One expert described the unstable concrete floor panels as “time bombs.”
More and a related video linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/world ... ref=slogin
Grief in the Rubble
Chinese Are Left to Ask Why Schools Crumbled
By JIM YARDLEY
This story was reported by Jim Yardley, Jake Hooker and Andrew C. Revkin, and was written by Mr. Yardley.
DUJIANGYAN, China — The earthquake’s destruction of Xinjian Primary School was swift and complete. Hundreds of children were crushed as the floors collapsed in a deluge of falling bricks and concrete. Days later, as curiosity seekers came with video cameras and as parents came to grieve, the four-story school was no more than rubble.
In contrast, none of the nearby buildings were badly damaged. A separate kindergarten less than 20 feet away survived with barely a crack. An adjacent 10-story hotel stood largely undisturbed. And another local primary school, Beijie, catering to children of the elite, was in such good condition that local officials were using it as a refugee center.
“This is not a natural disaster,” said Ren Yongchang, whose 9-year-old son died inside the destroyed school. His hands were covered in plaster dust as he stood beside the rubble, shouting and weeping as he grabbed the exposed steel rebar of a broken concrete column. “This is not good steel. It doesn’t meet standards. They stole our children.”
There is no official figure on how many children died at Xinjian Primary School, nor on how many died at scores of other schools that collapsed in the powerful May 12 earthquake in Sichuan Province. But the number of student deaths seems likely to exceed 10,000, and possibly go much higher, a staggering figure that has become a simmering controversy in China as grieving parents say their children might have lived had the schools been better built.
The Chinese government has enjoyed broad public support for its handling of the earthquake, and in Sichuan on Saturday, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations praised the government’s response.
But as parents at different schools begin to speak out, the question of whether official negligence, and possibly corruption, contributed to the student deaths could turn public opinion. The government has launched an investigation, but censors, wary of the public mood, are trying to suppress the issue in state-run media and online.
An examination of the collapse of Xinjian Primary School offers a disturbing picture of a calamity that might have been avoided. Many parents say they were told the school was unsafe. Xinjian was poorly built when it opened its doors in 1992, they say, and never got its share of government funds for reconstruction because of its low ranking in the local education bureaucracy and the low social status of its students.
A decade ago, a detached wing of the school was torn down and rebuilt because of safety concerns. But the main building remained unimproved. Engineers and earthquake experts who examined photographs of its wreckage concluded that the structure had many failings and one critical flaw: inadequate iron reinforcing rods running up the school’s vertical columns. One expert described the unstable concrete floor panels as “time bombs.”
More and a related video linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/world ... ref=slogin
May 27, 2008
Turning Schools From Death Traps Into Havens
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
The potential for a modest school to survive a powerful earthquake is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in Balakot, Pakistan, one of hundreds of communities near the border with India shattered by a devastating tectonic jolt on Oct. 8, 2005.
About 80,000 people died in all, including 17,000 children in more than 7,000 schools that collapsed. Balakot, draped on a rugged hilltop, became a field of rubble. Out of several school buildings, the only one that remained standing was the one that had been reinforced two years earlier with a couple of extra columns and roof beams.
Garry de la Pomerai, a British rescue expert who spent days seeking survivors amid wreckage in the region in the days after the quake, said he marveled at the surviving schoolhouse when he returned to tour the town on May 15, just three days after another devastating quake in a different part of the world left hundreds of children and staff members crushed in their classrooms.
Mr. de la Pomerai was attending a long-planned international conference on school safety in Islamabad even as armies of rescuers were clawing at the remains of collapsed schools in China’s Sichuan province.
“I’m sick to death of going to schools where there are no survivors,” Mr. de la Pomerai, 49, said in a telephone interview from the safety conference. “That’s the very future of a community.”
After the Pakistan quake, he joined a growing international coalition of engineers, safety and community activists, earthquake experts and disaster agency officials trying to transform schools from death traps into havens when disaster strikes.
The movement really began in California in 1933, when 70 schools collapsed around Los Angeles in the so-called Long Beach earthquake and a mob sought to lynch a city school-building inspector. It was after hours when the quake occurred, and the inspector escaped the mob. But a month later the legislature passed what is now called the Field Act, a school earthquake-safety law with strict standards and penalties, requiring careful design and independently inspected construction.
Since then, no student or teacher has been hurt during a quake in a school built under the Field Act’s terms. And the cost of repairing damage to those schools has ranged from 10 to 100 times below repair costs for other schools, said Brian E. Tucker, an earth scientist and the founder of GeoHazards International, a group working to limit predictable losses in such calamities. Moreover, the quake-resistant schools cost only about 4 percent more than they otherwise would, he said.
In Balakot, new, sturdier school buildings — built with the help of a Swiss development agency — stand near the repaired surviving structure. But also nearby are the small graves of some of the children killed in 2005.
Despite progress in California and a few other places, including Bogotá, Colombia, vulnerability prevails around the world’s seismic hot spots, from the Pacific Northwest to the Philippines.
Pakistan has barely begun to deal with the threat. Mr. de la Pomerai, in a speech at the conference, noted that 80 percent of the country’s quake-threatened schools remained unfortified.
In India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, a massive existing school-construction program — producing about 30 new schools each day over the last several years — has begun to incorporate earthquake-resistant features and training for 10,000 masons and more than 1,100 junior engineers. But 125,000 existing schools remain “unsafe and in need of retrofit,” according to a 2007 report from the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center.
The persistent vulnerability is not limited to remote regions of developing countries, but extends to the city centers of places as cosmopolitan as Portland, Ore., and Istanbul, both of which face looming seismic shocks.
Yumei Wang, the director of Oregon’s geohazards team, said a quick evaluation last year found that 1,300 of the state’s schools (housing 340,000 students) and emergency-services buildings had a “high or very high” risk of collapse in a substantial earthquake.
And the region faces the near-inevitable prospect of a great earthquake on the Cascadia fault, possibly a 9.0 — 32 times more powerful than the 8.0-magnitude temblor in Sichuan. The last such quake there occurred in 1700, raising a tsunami potent enough to be recorded in Japan.
While money is slowly flowing to retrofitting programs in Oregon, Washington state and British Columbia, decades of work will be required to bolster all schools. “We don’t just need a few demonstration projects,” Ms. Wang said. “We have to start fixing dozens of buildings and then hundreds. Otherwise we’re going to have this tremendous disaster and huge cleanup like you’ve seen in other places.”
Retrofitting is advancing far faster in schools serving wealthier areas than those in poor ones, frustrating many earthquake experts. That pattern was revealed in some stricken Chinese cities. But it exists in Oregon as well, Ms. Wang said. “The poor districts don’t even know about this risk because they are struggling with everything else,” Ms. Wang said. “It’s ugly to talk about, but there’s this disparity. The rich school districts are getting better education, better textbooks, better sports — and safer schools.”
The main challenge in bolstering resilience to such geophysical shocks, Ms. Wang, Mr. Tucker and many other experts said, is not the structural engineering. There is no mystery to adding and securing iron rods in concrete, securing floors to beams, boosting the resilience of columns, monitoring the size of gravel mixed with cement.
It is not cost, either. In California, Dr. Tucker notes, the premium for building earthquake resistance into new schools is less than 4 percent. The payoff, beyond saved lives, is significantly lower repair costs after a temblor — 10 to 100 times less than in unimproved buildings. (In poorer countries, the differential in cost could be substantially higher, other experts note, but the payoff, they say, is priceless.)
Rich or poor, the big challenge lies in overcoming social and political hurdles that still give priority to pressing daily problems over foreseeable disasters that may not occur for decades, scores of years, or longer. In some developing countries there is a tendency to ascribe earthquakes and their consequences to fate, but Dr. Tucker and other experts say that lets the authorities off the hook.
“I can’t hold a government responsible for protecting its citizens against a meteorite falling out of the sky,” Dr. Tucker said. “But I can and do hold a government in a country with known seismic risk responsible for protecting its children, who are compelled to attend school, from the school collapsing during an earthquake.”
Dr. Tucker has written or co-written a lengthening string of reports pointing to the building risks worldwide as more populations shift to urban areas, often into shoddy, hastily built structures, with children sent to schools in similar, and often worse, condition.
Arthur Lerner-Lam, who maps disaster risks at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, agrees that urbanization in earthquake zones is setting the world up for its first true megadisaster — a million-casualty earthquake that many seismologists say is only a matter of time. The greatest risk, he said, lies in a belt from Italy and Turkey through central Asia and the Himalayas into central China.
In such regions, Dr. Tucker said, the best blueprints and materials are no guarantee of safety without adequate building codes, laws, training, inspections and enforcement.
The biggest challenge of all may simply be redefining security, and building societies that demand that government investments match risks, said Fouad Bendimerad, an engineering and risk-management consultant in California and chairman of the Earthquakes and Megacities Initiative.
“The typical government spends around 15 percent of its G.D.P. to defend against exterior military threats that may never occur during the lifetime of generation,” Dr. Bendimerad said. “Why do we want to exonerate governments from dedicating a small portion of that 15 percent to protect against the threats of natural hazards that we know will happen?”
Turning Schools From Death Traps Into Havens
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
The potential for a modest school to survive a powerful earthquake is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in Balakot, Pakistan, one of hundreds of communities near the border with India shattered by a devastating tectonic jolt on Oct. 8, 2005.
About 80,000 people died in all, including 17,000 children in more than 7,000 schools that collapsed. Balakot, draped on a rugged hilltop, became a field of rubble. Out of several school buildings, the only one that remained standing was the one that had been reinforced two years earlier with a couple of extra columns and roof beams.
Garry de la Pomerai, a British rescue expert who spent days seeking survivors amid wreckage in the region in the days after the quake, said he marveled at the surviving schoolhouse when he returned to tour the town on May 15, just three days after another devastating quake in a different part of the world left hundreds of children and staff members crushed in their classrooms.
Mr. de la Pomerai was attending a long-planned international conference on school safety in Islamabad even as armies of rescuers were clawing at the remains of collapsed schools in China’s Sichuan province.
“I’m sick to death of going to schools where there are no survivors,” Mr. de la Pomerai, 49, said in a telephone interview from the safety conference. “That’s the very future of a community.”
After the Pakistan quake, he joined a growing international coalition of engineers, safety and community activists, earthquake experts and disaster agency officials trying to transform schools from death traps into havens when disaster strikes.
The movement really began in California in 1933, when 70 schools collapsed around Los Angeles in the so-called Long Beach earthquake and a mob sought to lynch a city school-building inspector. It was after hours when the quake occurred, and the inspector escaped the mob. But a month later the legislature passed what is now called the Field Act, a school earthquake-safety law with strict standards and penalties, requiring careful design and independently inspected construction.
Since then, no student or teacher has been hurt during a quake in a school built under the Field Act’s terms. And the cost of repairing damage to those schools has ranged from 10 to 100 times below repair costs for other schools, said Brian E. Tucker, an earth scientist and the founder of GeoHazards International, a group working to limit predictable losses in such calamities. Moreover, the quake-resistant schools cost only about 4 percent more than they otherwise would, he said.
In Balakot, new, sturdier school buildings — built with the help of a Swiss development agency — stand near the repaired surviving structure. But also nearby are the small graves of some of the children killed in 2005.
Despite progress in California and a few other places, including Bogotá, Colombia, vulnerability prevails around the world’s seismic hot spots, from the Pacific Northwest to the Philippines.
Pakistan has barely begun to deal with the threat. Mr. de la Pomerai, in a speech at the conference, noted that 80 percent of the country’s quake-threatened schools remained unfortified.
In India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, a massive existing school-construction program — producing about 30 new schools each day over the last several years — has begun to incorporate earthquake-resistant features and training for 10,000 masons and more than 1,100 junior engineers. But 125,000 existing schools remain “unsafe and in need of retrofit,” according to a 2007 report from the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center.
The persistent vulnerability is not limited to remote regions of developing countries, but extends to the city centers of places as cosmopolitan as Portland, Ore., and Istanbul, both of which face looming seismic shocks.
Yumei Wang, the director of Oregon’s geohazards team, said a quick evaluation last year found that 1,300 of the state’s schools (housing 340,000 students) and emergency-services buildings had a “high or very high” risk of collapse in a substantial earthquake.
And the region faces the near-inevitable prospect of a great earthquake on the Cascadia fault, possibly a 9.0 — 32 times more powerful than the 8.0-magnitude temblor in Sichuan. The last such quake there occurred in 1700, raising a tsunami potent enough to be recorded in Japan.
While money is slowly flowing to retrofitting programs in Oregon, Washington state and British Columbia, decades of work will be required to bolster all schools. “We don’t just need a few demonstration projects,” Ms. Wang said. “We have to start fixing dozens of buildings and then hundreds. Otherwise we’re going to have this tremendous disaster and huge cleanup like you’ve seen in other places.”
Retrofitting is advancing far faster in schools serving wealthier areas than those in poor ones, frustrating many earthquake experts. That pattern was revealed in some stricken Chinese cities. But it exists in Oregon as well, Ms. Wang said. “The poor districts don’t even know about this risk because they are struggling with everything else,” Ms. Wang said. “It’s ugly to talk about, but there’s this disparity. The rich school districts are getting better education, better textbooks, better sports — and safer schools.”
The main challenge in bolstering resilience to such geophysical shocks, Ms. Wang, Mr. Tucker and many other experts said, is not the structural engineering. There is no mystery to adding and securing iron rods in concrete, securing floors to beams, boosting the resilience of columns, monitoring the size of gravel mixed with cement.
It is not cost, either. In California, Dr. Tucker notes, the premium for building earthquake resistance into new schools is less than 4 percent. The payoff, beyond saved lives, is significantly lower repair costs after a temblor — 10 to 100 times less than in unimproved buildings. (In poorer countries, the differential in cost could be substantially higher, other experts note, but the payoff, they say, is priceless.)
Rich or poor, the big challenge lies in overcoming social and political hurdles that still give priority to pressing daily problems over foreseeable disasters that may not occur for decades, scores of years, or longer. In some developing countries there is a tendency to ascribe earthquakes and their consequences to fate, but Dr. Tucker and other experts say that lets the authorities off the hook.
“I can’t hold a government responsible for protecting its citizens against a meteorite falling out of the sky,” Dr. Tucker said. “But I can and do hold a government in a country with known seismic risk responsible for protecting its children, who are compelled to attend school, from the school collapsing during an earthquake.”
Dr. Tucker has written or co-written a lengthening string of reports pointing to the building risks worldwide as more populations shift to urban areas, often into shoddy, hastily built structures, with children sent to schools in similar, and often worse, condition.
Arthur Lerner-Lam, who maps disaster risks at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, agrees that urbanization in earthquake zones is setting the world up for its first true megadisaster — a million-casualty earthquake that many seismologists say is only a matter of time. The greatest risk, he said, lies in a belt from Italy and Turkey through central Asia and the Himalayas into central China.
In such regions, Dr. Tucker said, the best blueprints and materials are no guarantee of safety without adequate building codes, laws, training, inspections and enforcement.
The biggest challenge of all may simply be redefining security, and building societies that demand that government investments match risks, said Fouad Bendimerad, an engineering and risk-management consultant in California and chairman of the Earthquakes and Megacities Initiative.
“The typical government spends around 15 percent of its G.D.P. to defend against exterior military threats that may never occur during the lifetime of generation,” Dr. Bendimerad said. “Why do we want to exonerate governments from dedicating a small portion of that 15 percent to protect against the threats of natural hazards that we know will happen?”
June 5, 2008
Experts Warned of Quake Risk in China
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
SHANGHAI — Chinese scientists say that even before a final accounting can be made in last month’s earthquake in Sichuan Province, one thing is painfully evident: The huge death toll stems partly from a failure to heed clear warnings of a devastating earthquake in the area.
For decades, Chinese scientists say, they have known of the risk of a potentially catastrophic earthquake along the Longmenshan belt, the area where the Wenchuan earthquake struck, and repeatedly raised their concerns with government authorities. But they say preparations for a quake there were cursory at best, and building codes remained well short of the codes that have become standard in other well-known earthquake zones, including Beijing itself.
The ruling Communist Party has hailed its own vigorous response to the quake as evidence of its concern for human life, and has generally received positive reviews at home and abroad for its rescue efforts after the quake. To date, however, China’s state-run news media have paid little attention to the fact that government officials apparently did little to shore up structures, limit urban growth or even conduct basic safety drills that might have reduced the death toll.
“Chinese people have a saying, that you learn a fence needs mending after the sheep have run away,” said Gao Jianguo, a researcher with the China Earthquake Administration, in Beijing. “In this case, people wouldn’t recognize the danger until the sheep actually died. We tried to lay out the reasons beforehand, but people wouldn’t listen.”
One after another, Chinese experts have emphasized that they are unable to predict the timing of an event like the one May 12, which left about 87,000 people dead or missing. But they say the general danger to this region has been known since at least 1933, when a major quake struck Wenchuan, and has been studied fairly intensively since the 1970s.
“The line of the middle fault is as clear as a string,” said Li Yong, a geological expert at Chengdu University of Technology. “It suggests continuous and strong movement. Such a long and clear lineament should trigger a big quake. Other scientists have had similar ideas.”
In July, a paper by Mr. Li and another scientist raised the likelihood of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake along the Longmenshan belt, and spoke again of the dangers there at a conference in China a month before the disaster.
While many say scientists advocated stronger precautionary measures for years, some also expressed a deep sense of failure for not having warned the government in stronger terms that seismic danger there was being underestimated. The Longmenshan belt did not appear, for example, on a recent priority watch list of likely trouble spots.
“Beyond the pain felt by ordinary Chinese, we in earthquake science are guilty beyond description,” said Ma Shengli, deputy director of the Institute of Geology of the Chinese Earthquake Administration. “Our ability fell far short of what was needed, and we can’t help but cry.”
Some seismologists also say that the earthquake agency, based in Beijing, did not press the government to impose tougher building codes in the region. So even if most buildings there had been built to code — many appeared to fall far short — they might well have failed to withstand the May quake, which the Chinese government says had a magnitude of 8.0, the most powerful in China in modern times.
“The earthquake administration didn’t warn the government enough,” said Mr. Gao, the researcher with the earthquake agency. “We told them things should be built to withstand seventh-degree crack resistance, but we should have insisted on ninth degree, just as experts from the Soviet Union advised us back in the 1950s.”
Mr. Gao referred to an earthquake building code standard used in China. A building would have required construction to an 11th-degree standard to have escaped damage in last month’s earthquake. Many Chinese experts invoked the high cost of building structures to withstand major earthquakes as a rationale for the failure to do so.
Earthquake-related building codes exist throughout China, but experts say they have been applied spottily. In Beijing, where the earthquake risk is high, more strenuous efforts have been made to enforce strict building codes. In many other high-risk areas, this has not been the case.
“Standards are one thing, and the implementation is another,” said Liu Hang, a professor and senior engineer at the Beijing Construction Engineering Research Institute. “The quake-proof level for Wenchuan’s local buildings is rated Degree 7, but based on what I’ve seen on-site, the buildings there are far from reaching this standard. Let’s not talk about whether the degree of quake-proofing is high enough; the buildings in the affected areas just have no quake-proof protection at all.”
Speaking of the capital, Mr. Liu said, “Unless the epicenter of an earthquake like this occurred right in Tiananmen Square, central Beijing would not be seriously damaged.”
Officials at China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development did not respond to a request for an interview. An official at Sichuan Province’s construction department who identified himself only as Lu denied there were widespread problems of enforcing building standards, but declined to say more.
In light of the huge loss of life, many said that whatever the rationale, the failure to enforce adequate building standards in Sichuan was unacceptable.
Hu Xingdou, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, called the failure to enforce adequate building standards a case of “serious malfeasance” on the part of local governments.
“One of their basic responsibilities is to ensure people’s safety, which means supervising the quality of people’s homes, and making sure that new houses comply with standards,” Professor Hu said. “Even if they haven’t made the effort to cover all rural housing, initially they should make sure public buildings, such as schools and hospitals, are safe and compliant.”
China has long pushed major infrastructure and even military developments in the area despite the quake risk. The mountainous region outside Chengdu became a major military production base in the 1960s, when China feared the possibility of an attack from the Soviet Union or the United States. Nuclear design, plutonium and fighter jet production facilities were located not far from the Longmenshan belt, largely because the region, deep in central China, was far from the country’s borders and considered relatively safe from aerial assault.
Under Mao’s Third Front policy, major industrial and military facilities were located in the Chinese heartland rather than in coastal areas viewed as more vulnerable. “The awareness of earthquake risk has been a gradual process, while the construction of the Third Front was primarily a political decision,” said Ma Dingsheng, a military expert and commentator on Phoenix TV, based in Hong Kong. He said that even after the quake risk was better understood, military facilities there continued to expand.
There is no evidence of serious damage to military facilities, though information about them is highly classified in China.
On Wednesday, China’s State Council passed a draft regulation on post-quake restoration and reconstruction at an executive meeting, the official Xinhua news agency reported Thursday. It introduced special requirements on earthquake-resistance levels of infrastructure construction in the quake-hit regions, including schools and hospitals.
Local governments must organize personnel to conduct safety appraisals of all school buildings as soon as possible to ensure the safety of students as they return to school, according to the statement.
A disproportionately large number of the earthquake’s victims were children crushed when thousands of classrooms crumbled or collapsed. Facing pressure from parents over the loss of their children, this week the Sichuan Education Bureau published a list of five reasons school-related deaths were so high. The reasons included the timing of the quake, while classes were in session, and the age of school buildings. No mention was made of government failure to enforce standards, or of corruption, which are taboo subjects.
Treading carefully around a politically delicate subject, Mr. Li, the co-author of last year’s paper warning of the danger to this region, said, “Many experts have provided their knowledge and suggestions, but how much of it became a reality in these towns and villages isn’t something that’s convenient for me to say.”
Some scientists said that given the known risk, the areas with the worst damage should never have been settled. “How could a populous city be built in such a risky area, particularly right at the foot of mountains?” said Liu Jingbo, a professor at the Construction Institute of Disaster Preparation and Relief at Tsinghua University, in Beijing. “When an earthquake occurs, it’s not just the collapse of buildings that buries people, but boulders and huge rocks and mud flows follow on immediately.”
More than 15,000 people died in Beichuan, or about one-tenth of the city’s population. “The ignorance of the local government or the lack of attention to implementation of the departments with real power contributed to this tragedy,” Professor Liu said.
Beichuan, a county capital, was moved in 1952 to its present site at the foot of three mountains, from a nearby site that was prone to flooding. But concerns about the risk of a major earthquake have been voiced almost continuously since the relocation.
“Ever since I was small,” said Sun Xiaotao, director of the general office of Beichuan County’s fiscal bureau, “I’ve heard talk about how if an earthquake happened, we’d be wrapped in, just like a dumpling.”
Reporting was contributed by Fan Wenxin, Li Zhen and Shi Jing from Shanghai, and John Schwartz from New York.
Experts Warned of Quake Risk in China
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
SHANGHAI — Chinese scientists say that even before a final accounting can be made in last month’s earthquake in Sichuan Province, one thing is painfully evident: The huge death toll stems partly from a failure to heed clear warnings of a devastating earthquake in the area.
For decades, Chinese scientists say, they have known of the risk of a potentially catastrophic earthquake along the Longmenshan belt, the area where the Wenchuan earthquake struck, and repeatedly raised their concerns with government authorities. But they say preparations for a quake there were cursory at best, and building codes remained well short of the codes that have become standard in other well-known earthquake zones, including Beijing itself.
The ruling Communist Party has hailed its own vigorous response to the quake as evidence of its concern for human life, and has generally received positive reviews at home and abroad for its rescue efforts after the quake. To date, however, China’s state-run news media have paid little attention to the fact that government officials apparently did little to shore up structures, limit urban growth or even conduct basic safety drills that might have reduced the death toll.
“Chinese people have a saying, that you learn a fence needs mending after the sheep have run away,” said Gao Jianguo, a researcher with the China Earthquake Administration, in Beijing. “In this case, people wouldn’t recognize the danger until the sheep actually died. We tried to lay out the reasons beforehand, but people wouldn’t listen.”
One after another, Chinese experts have emphasized that they are unable to predict the timing of an event like the one May 12, which left about 87,000 people dead or missing. But they say the general danger to this region has been known since at least 1933, when a major quake struck Wenchuan, and has been studied fairly intensively since the 1970s.
“The line of the middle fault is as clear as a string,” said Li Yong, a geological expert at Chengdu University of Technology. “It suggests continuous and strong movement. Such a long and clear lineament should trigger a big quake. Other scientists have had similar ideas.”
In July, a paper by Mr. Li and another scientist raised the likelihood of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake along the Longmenshan belt, and spoke again of the dangers there at a conference in China a month before the disaster.
While many say scientists advocated stronger precautionary measures for years, some also expressed a deep sense of failure for not having warned the government in stronger terms that seismic danger there was being underestimated. The Longmenshan belt did not appear, for example, on a recent priority watch list of likely trouble spots.
“Beyond the pain felt by ordinary Chinese, we in earthquake science are guilty beyond description,” said Ma Shengli, deputy director of the Institute of Geology of the Chinese Earthquake Administration. “Our ability fell far short of what was needed, and we can’t help but cry.”
Some seismologists also say that the earthquake agency, based in Beijing, did not press the government to impose tougher building codes in the region. So even if most buildings there had been built to code — many appeared to fall far short — they might well have failed to withstand the May quake, which the Chinese government says had a magnitude of 8.0, the most powerful in China in modern times.
“The earthquake administration didn’t warn the government enough,” said Mr. Gao, the researcher with the earthquake agency. “We told them things should be built to withstand seventh-degree crack resistance, but we should have insisted on ninth degree, just as experts from the Soviet Union advised us back in the 1950s.”
Mr. Gao referred to an earthquake building code standard used in China. A building would have required construction to an 11th-degree standard to have escaped damage in last month’s earthquake. Many Chinese experts invoked the high cost of building structures to withstand major earthquakes as a rationale for the failure to do so.
Earthquake-related building codes exist throughout China, but experts say they have been applied spottily. In Beijing, where the earthquake risk is high, more strenuous efforts have been made to enforce strict building codes. In many other high-risk areas, this has not been the case.
“Standards are one thing, and the implementation is another,” said Liu Hang, a professor and senior engineer at the Beijing Construction Engineering Research Institute. “The quake-proof level for Wenchuan’s local buildings is rated Degree 7, but based on what I’ve seen on-site, the buildings there are far from reaching this standard. Let’s not talk about whether the degree of quake-proofing is high enough; the buildings in the affected areas just have no quake-proof protection at all.”
Speaking of the capital, Mr. Liu said, “Unless the epicenter of an earthquake like this occurred right in Tiananmen Square, central Beijing would not be seriously damaged.”
Officials at China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development did not respond to a request for an interview. An official at Sichuan Province’s construction department who identified himself only as Lu denied there were widespread problems of enforcing building standards, but declined to say more.
In light of the huge loss of life, many said that whatever the rationale, the failure to enforce adequate building standards in Sichuan was unacceptable.
Hu Xingdou, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, called the failure to enforce adequate building standards a case of “serious malfeasance” on the part of local governments.
“One of their basic responsibilities is to ensure people’s safety, which means supervising the quality of people’s homes, and making sure that new houses comply with standards,” Professor Hu said. “Even if they haven’t made the effort to cover all rural housing, initially they should make sure public buildings, such as schools and hospitals, are safe and compliant.”
China has long pushed major infrastructure and even military developments in the area despite the quake risk. The mountainous region outside Chengdu became a major military production base in the 1960s, when China feared the possibility of an attack from the Soviet Union or the United States. Nuclear design, plutonium and fighter jet production facilities were located not far from the Longmenshan belt, largely because the region, deep in central China, was far from the country’s borders and considered relatively safe from aerial assault.
Under Mao’s Third Front policy, major industrial and military facilities were located in the Chinese heartland rather than in coastal areas viewed as more vulnerable. “The awareness of earthquake risk has been a gradual process, while the construction of the Third Front was primarily a political decision,” said Ma Dingsheng, a military expert and commentator on Phoenix TV, based in Hong Kong. He said that even after the quake risk was better understood, military facilities there continued to expand.
There is no evidence of serious damage to military facilities, though information about them is highly classified in China.
On Wednesday, China’s State Council passed a draft regulation on post-quake restoration and reconstruction at an executive meeting, the official Xinhua news agency reported Thursday. It introduced special requirements on earthquake-resistance levels of infrastructure construction in the quake-hit regions, including schools and hospitals.
Local governments must organize personnel to conduct safety appraisals of all school buildings as soon as possible to ensure the safety of students as they return to school, according to the statement.
A disproportionately large number of the earthquake’s victims were children crushed when thousands of classrooms crumbled or collapsed. Facing pressure from parents over the loss of their children, this week the Sichuan Education Bureau published a list of five reasons school-related deaths were so high. The reasons included the timing of the quake, while classes were in session, and the age of school buildings. No mention was made of government failure to enforce standards, or of corruption, which are taboo subjects.
Treading carefully around a politically delicate subject, Mr. Li, the co-author of last year’s paper warning of the danger to this region, said, “Many experts have provided their knowledge and suggestions, but how much of it became a reality in these towns and villages isn’t something that’s convenient for me to say.”
Some scientists said that given the known risk, the areas with the worst damage should never have been settled. “How could a populous city be built in such a risky area, particularly right at the foot of mountains?” said Liu Jingbo, a professor at the Construction Institute of Disaster Preparation and Relief at Tsinghua University, in Beijing. “When an earthquake occurs, it’s not just the collapse of buildings that buries people, but boulders and huge rocks and mud flows follow on immediately.”
More than 15,000 people died in Beichuan, or about one-tenth of the city’s population. “The ignorance of the local government or the lack of attention to implementation of the departments with real power contributed to this tragedy,” Professor Liu said.
Beichuan, a county capital, was moved in 1952 to its present site at the foot of three mountains, from a nearby site that was prone to flooding. But concerns about the risk of a major earthquake have been voiced almost continuously since the relocation.
“Ever since I was small,” said Sun Xiaotao, director of the general office of Beichuan County’s fiscal bureau, “I’ve heard talk about how if an earthquake happened, we’d be wrapped in, just like a dumpling.”
Reporting was contributed by Fan Wenxin, Li Zhen and Shi Jing from Shanghai, and John Schwartz from New York.
Fertility team sent to quake zone
Beijing to help grieving parents have another child
http://www.canada.com/components/print. ... 0&sponsor=
Reuters
Saturday, June 07, 2008
CREDIT: Nir Elias, Reuters
In China, many parents blame government corruption for the collapse of so many schools during the recent quake, leaving few pupils surviving to attend outdoor classes like this one at a refugee camp in Sichuan province. (photo)
Beijing will send a medical team to China's earthquake zone to reverse sterilization operations on parents who have lost children in the disaster to allow them to have another child, Xinhua said on Friday.
The team will provide technological support for those wanting to give birth to another child, the agency quoted Zhang Shikun, director of the science and technology bureau of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, as saying.
The announcement comes after a growing number of parents from across the quake-hit area have been demanding the government explain why so many schools collapsed during the quake.
Many parents believe corruption in school construction was to blame for the shoddy buildings.
At least 69,000 people died in the quake.
The medical team will also provide free counselling, guidance, surgery, and the implementation of artificial reproduction technology for those who wish to have another child, said Xinhua.
Under China's "one child" policies, parents who lose a child or have a disabled child are allowed to have a second baby.
The Sichuan provincial Population and Family Planning Commission estimated about 7,000 dead and 16,000 injured were the only children of their families.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Beijing to help grieving parents have another child
http://www.canada.com/components/print. ... 0&sponsor=
Reuters
Saturday, June 07, 2008
CREDIT: Nir Elias, Reuters
In China, many parents blame government corruption for the collapse of so many schools during the recent quake, leaving few pupils surviving to attend outdoor classes like this one at a refugee camp in Sichuan province. (photo)
Beijing will send a medical team to China's earthquake zone to reverse sterilization operations on parents who have lost children in the disaster to allow them to have another child, Xinhua said on Friday.
The team will provide technological support for those wanting to give birth to another child, the agency quoted Zhang Shikun, director of the science and technology bureau of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, as saying.
The announcement comes after a growing number of parents from across the quake-hit area have been demanding the government explain why so many schools collapsed during the quake.
Many parents believe corruption in school construction was to blame for the shoddy buildings.
At least 69,000 people died in the quake.
The medical team will also provide free counselling, guidance, surgery, and the implementation of artificial reproduction technology for those who wish to have another child, said Xinhua.
Under China's "one child" policies, parents who lose a child or have a disabled child are allowed to have a second baby.
The Sichuan provincial Population and Family Planning Commission estimated about 7,000 dead and 16,000 injured were the only children of their families.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
June 18, 2008
Burmese Endure in Spite of Junta, Aid Workers Say
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
YANGON, Myanmar — More than six weeks have passed since Cyclone Nargis swept through the Irrawaddy Delta in southern Myanmar, leaving a trail of flattened villages and broken lives and arousing international sympathy that turned to anguish as the military government obstructed foreign aid.
Now doctors and aid workers returning from remote areas of the delta are offering a less pessimistic picture of the human cost of the delay in reaching survivors.
They say they have seen no signs of starvation or widespread outbreaks of disease. While it is estimated that the cyclone may have killed 130,000 people, the number of lives lost specifically because of the junta’s slow response to the disaster appears to have been smaller than expected.
Relief workers here continue to criticize the government’s secretive posture and obsession with security, its restrictions on foreign aid experts and the weeks of dawdling that left bloated bodies befouling waterways and survivors marooned with little food. But the specific character of the cyclone, the hardiness of villagers and aid from private citizens helped prevent further death and sickness, aid workers say.
Most of the people killed by the cyclone, which struck on May 2-3, drowned. But those who survived were not likely to need urgent medical attention, doctors say.
“We saw very, very few serious injuries,” said Frank Smithuis, manager of the substantial mission of Doctors Without Borders in Myanmar. “You were dead or you were in O.K. shape.”
The cyclone swept away bamboo huts throughout the delta; in the hardest-hit villages, it left almost no trace of habitation. Some survivors carried away by floods found themselves many miles from home when the waters receded.
But those who survived were not likely to be injured in the aftermath by falling rocks or collapsing buildings, as often happens during natural disasters, like the earthquake in China.
That appears to be the primary reason villagers were able to stay alive for weeks without aid. As they waited, the survivors, most of whom were fishermen and farmers, lived off of coconuts, rotten rice and fish.
“The Burmese people are used to getting nothing,” said Shari Villarosa, the highest-ranking United States diplomat in Myanmar, formerly Burma. “I’m not getting the sense that there have been a lot of deaths as a result of the delay.”
The United States has accused the military government of “criminal neglect” in its handling of the disaster caused by the cyclone. Privately, many aid workers have, too. The junta, widely disliked among Myanmar’s citizens, did not have the means to lead a sustained relief campaign, they say.
But relief workers say the debate over access for foreigners and the refusal of the government to allow in military helicopters and ships from the United States, France and Britain overshadowed a substantial relief operation carried out mainly by Burmese citizens and monks.
They organized convoys of trucks filled with drinking water, clothing, food and construction materials that poured into the delta.
“It’s been overwhelmingly impressive what local organizations, medical groups and some businessmen have done,” said Ruth Bradley Jones, second secretary in the British Embassy in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. “They are the true heroes of the relief effort.”
Aid workers emphasize that of the estimated 2.4 million Burmese strongly affected by the storm, thousands remain vulnerable to sickness and many are still without adequate food, shelter and supplies.
But their ailments are — for now — minor. Medical logs from Doctors Without Borders show that of the 30,000 people the group’s workers treated in the six weeks after the cyclone, most had flesh wounds, diarrhea or respiratory infections. The latter two afflictions are common in rural Southeast Asia even in normal times. Diarrhea can be especially dangerous for infants and young children, but doctors say that, while they have treated thousands of cases, the illness has not reached critical levels.
“I can’t say it was an outbreak,” said May Myad Win, a general practitioner who works for Doctors Without Borders and spent 25 days in the delta treating an average of 25 patients a day. “It was not as severe as we feared.”
The number of people in need of serious medical aid was judged to be low enough that officials at a British medical group canceled plans to bring in a team of surgeons in the days after the storm, said Paula Sansom, the manager of the emergency response team for the group, Merlin.
For several weeks after the disaster, the government prevented all but a small number of foreigners from entering the delta. Now a more comprehensive picture of the damage is being assembled by a team of 250 officials led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The officials plan to release their findings next week.
The number of people killed in the storm may never be known. The government has not updated its toll since May 16, when it said 77,738 people were killed and 55,917 were missing.
In a country that has not had a full census in decades, it is not even certain how many people had been living in the area before the storm. Itinerants who worked in the salt marshes and shrimp farms were probably not counted among the dead, aid workers say.
But it is clear that in many villages, women and children died in disproportionate numbers, said Osamu Kunii, chief of the health and nutrition section of Unicef in Myanmar.
“Only people who could endure the tidal surge and high winds could survive,” Mr. Kunii said. In one village of 700, all children under the age of 7 died, he said.
With only minimal food supplies in villages, aid workers say, delta residents will require aid until at least the end of the year. The United Nations, after weeks of haggling with Myanmar’s government for permission to provide assistance, is now using 10 helicopters to deliver supplies to hard-to-reach places and alerting relief experts at the earliest sign of disease outbreaks.
Still, the military government continues to make it difficult for aid agencies to operate.
Last week, the government issued a directive that accused foreign aid agencies and the United Nations of having “deviated from the normal procedures.” The government imposed an extra layer of approvals for travel into the delta, effectively requiring that all foreigners be accompanied by government officials.
“They’re changing the goal posts,” said Chris Kaye, the director of operations in Myanmar for the United Nations World Food Program. “We have a whole set of new procedures.”
Myanmar’s government says it issued 815 visas for foreign aid workers and medical personnel in the month after the cyclone. But some aid workers were never allowed in, including the disaster response team from the United States Agency for International Development.
Local news media reported over the weekend that the government planned to build 500 cyclone shelters in the delta. These structures are used in neighboring Bangladesh, which has a relatively widespread early warning system.
When Cyclone Sidr struck Bangladesh in November, the winds reached an intensity similar to the 155-mile-an-hour gusts that blew through the Irrawaddy Delta last month.
Tellingly, the number of people killed by Cyclone Sidr — about 3,500 — was a small fraction of those killed in last month’s cyclone here.
Burmese Endure in Spite of Junta, Aid Workers Say
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
YANGON, Myanmar — More than six weeks have passed since Cyclone Nargis swept through the Irrawaddy Delta in southern Myanmar, leaving a trail of flattened villages and broken lives and arousing international sympathy that turned to anguish as the military government obstructed foreign aid.
Now doctors and aid workers returning from remote areas of the delta are offering a less pessimistic picture of the human cost of the delay in reaching survivors.
They say they have seen no signs of starvation or widespread outbreaks of disease. While it is estimated that the cyclone may have killed 130,000 people, the number of lives lost specifically because of the junta’s slow response to the disaster appears to have been smaller than expected.
Relief workers here continue to criticize the government’s secretive posture and obsession with security, its restrictions on foreign aid experts and the weeks of dawdling that left bloated bodies befouling waterways and survivors marooned with little food. But the specific character of the cyclone, the hardiness of villagers and aid from private citizens helped prevent further death and sickness, aid workers say.
Most of the people killed by the cyclone, which struck on May 2-3, drowned. But those who survived were not likely to need urgent medical attention, doctors say.
“We saw very, very few serious injuries,” said Frank Smithuis, manager of the substantial mission of Doctors Without Borders in Myanmar. “You were dead or you were in O.K. shape.”
The cyclone swept away bamboo huts throughout the delta; in the hardest-hit villages, it left almost no trace of habitation. Some survivors carried away by floods found themselves many miles from home when the waters receded.
But those who survived were not likely to be injured in the aftermath by falling rocks or collapsing buildings, as often happens during natural disasters, like the earthquake in China.
That appears to be the primary reason villagers were able to stay alive for weeks without aid. As they waited, the survivors, most of whom were fishermen and farmers, lived off of coconuts, rotten rice and fish.
“The Burmese people are used to getting nothing,” said Shari Villarosa, the highest-ranking United States diplomat in Myanmar, formerly Burma. “I’m not getting the sense that there have been a lot of deaths as a result of the delay.”
The United States has accused the military government of “criminal neglect” in its handling of the disaster caused by the cyclone. Privately, many aid workers have, too. The junta, widely disliked among Myanmar’s citizens, did not have the means to lead a sustained relief campaign, they say.
But relief workers say the debate over access for foreigners and the refusal of the government to allow in military helicopters and ships from the United States, France and Britain overshadowed a substantial relief operation carried out mainly by Burmese citizens and monks.
They organized convoys of trucks filled with drinking water, clothing, food and construction materials that poured into the delta.
“It’s been overwhelmingly impressive what local organizations, medical groups and some businessmen have done,” said Ruth Bradley Jones, second secretary in the British Embassy in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. “They are the true heroes of the relief effort.”
Aid workers emphasize that of the estimated 2.4 million Burmese strongly affected by the storm, thousands remain vulnerable to sickness and many are still without adequate food, shelter and supplies.
But their ailments are — for now — minor. Medical logs from Doctors Without Borders show that of the 30,000 people the group’s workers treated in the six weeks after the cyclone, most had flesh wounds, diarrhea or respiratory infections. The latter two afflictions are common in rural Southeast Asia even in normal times. Diarrhea can be especially dangerous for infants and young children, but doctors say that, while they have treated thousands of cases, the illness has not reached critical levels.
“I can’t say it was an outbreak,” said May Myad Win, a general practitioner who works for Doctors Without Borders and spent 25 days in the delta treating an average of 25 patients a day. “It was not as severe as we feared.”
The number of people in need of serious medical aid was judged to be low enough that officials at a British medical group canceled plans to bring in a team of surgeons in the days after the storm, said Paula Sansom, the manager of the emergency response team for the group, Merlin.
For several weeks after the disaster, the government prevented all but a small number of foreigners from entering the delta. Now a more comprehensive picture of the damage is being assembled by a team of 250 officials led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The officials plan to release their findings next week.
The number of people killed in the storm may never be known. The government has not updated its toll since May 16, when it said 77,738 people were killed and 55,917 were missing.
In a country that has not had a full census in decades, it is not even certain how many people had been living in the area before the storm. Itinerants who worked in the salt marshes and shrimp farms were probably not counted among the dead, aid workers say.
But it is clear that in many villages, women and children died in disproportionate numbers, said Osamu Kunii, chief of the health and nutrition section of Unicef in Myanmar.
“Only people who could endure the tidal surge and high winds could survive,” Mr. Kunii said. In one village of 700, all children under the age of 7 died, he said.
With only minimal food supplies in villages, aid workers say, delta residents will require aid until at least the end of the year. The United Nations, after weeks of haggling with Myanmar’s government for permission to provide assistance, is now using 10 helicopters to deliver supplies to hard-to-reach places and alerting relief experts at the earliest sign of disease outbreaks.
Still, the military government continues to make it difficult for aid agencies to operate.
Last week, the government issued a directive that accused foreign aid agencies and the United Nations of having “deviated from the normal procedures.” The government imposed an extra layer of approvals for travel into the delta, effectively requiring that all foreigners be accompanied by government officials.
“They’re changing the goal posts,” said Chris Kaye, the director of operations in Myanmar for the United Nations World Food Program. “We have a whole set of new procedures.”
Myanmar’s government says it issued 815 visas for foreign aid workers and medical personnel in the month after the cyclone. But some aid workers were never allowed in, including the disaster response team from the United States Agency for International Development.
Local news media reported over the weekend that the government planned to build 500 cyclone shelters in the delta. These structures are used in neighboring Bangladesh, which has a relatively widespread early warning system.
When Cyclone Sidr struck Bangladesh in November, the winds reached an intensity similar to the 155-mile-an-hour gusts that blew through the Irrawaddy Delta last month.
Tellingly, the number of people killed by Cyclone Sidr — about 3,500 — was a small fraction of those killed in last month’s cyclone here.
August 15, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Where’s the Trauma and the Grief?
By DAVID BROOKS
Dujiangyan, China
Three months ago, an earthquake struck China’s Sichuan Province, killing nearly 70,000 people. Xian Tianquan was at home with his wife in the village of Pengshua at the time. They made a dash to get outside. Xian’s wife was just ahead of him, crossing the threshold of their house when the frame collapsed. She was killed instantly.
The village was cut off from outside help for three days. Xian took his wife’s body and carried it up to the hills, where he buried her.
This week, he sat on the spot of her death, telling the story with a matter-of-fact, almost cheerful air. A small group of villagers was hanging around, and the interview, outside under a tarp, was a communal affair. The villagers joked with each other and smiled frequently in a manner I found hard to fathom as they described the horrible events from May.
I asked Xian if he had thought about leaving the village after what had happened. The idea had never crossed his mind, he said. Many families lost people (a nearby kindergarten building collapsed), and if the healthy left, who would look after the young ones and the elders? Members of the village now share cooking duties and help each other with everything.
I asked if people in the village have suffered any psychological aftershocks from the trauma. Another villager, Tan Fubian, piped up and said that they just try not to think about it. Then I asked about the reconstruction.
To my eyes, this part of the region looks forlorn. Houses and stores have been reduced to empty shells. Piles of rubble line the streets. In one town, an elderly man stood atop some concrete stairs laboriously swinging a hammer in an attempt to destroy them. There’s little construction equipment in the residential areas.
Tan pointed out that the government had established priorities. Public buildings like hospitals, schools and government offices would be rebuilt first. Private houses after that.
I asked if the villagers were watching the Olympics, and wondered if the lavish spending on the Games could better be used to address their own needs. “Our problems are temporary,” one villager responded. “The Olympics are for the national community.” Last Friday, the whole village had gathered (just by the spot where Xian’s wife had died) to have a feast and watch the opening ceremony.
We’d visited the village without warning and selected our interview subjects at random, but some of the answers were probably crafted to please the government. Still, there was no disguising the emotional resilience and intense mutual support in that village. And there was no avoiding the baffling sense of equanimity. Where was the trauma and grief?
The next day we approached Qi Chengbin, a retired food vendor in the city of Dujiangyan. Qi was working in the garden outside his six-story apartment building when the quake hit. His only child, an 18-year-old son, was taking a nap inside when the entire building collapsed on top of him.
Qi never saw his son or any of his possessions again. His own wounds were treated and his son’s body was cremated by the military. Qi says he hopes to have a funeral for the boy, but he hasn’t had a chance to organize it.
When I asked about the psychological effects of such a shock, Qi emphasized the positive. The government had provided free medical care. Within nine days, he had been resettled in a one-room apartment in a temporary housing camp. He’d lived through China’s dark days, and this apartment was nicer than any place he’d lived in the 1960s.
Moreover, the government had given him everything he now owns. “The government wants us to look on the positive side,” he said.
There were no pictures of his dead son around, but from under his bed he pulled a photo album that had been at his mother-in-law’s at the time of the quake. I thought he would betray some emotion as he passed around photos of his handsome, scholarly looking boy. There was nothing. He kept speaking in that pragmatic tone, just as Xian had done. Qi’s wife added that she was very satisfied with all that had been done for them.
These were weird, unnerving interviews, and I don’t pretend to understand what’s going on in the minds of people who have suffered such blows and remained so optimistic. All I can imagine is that the history of this province has given these people a stripped-down, pragmatic mentality: Move on or go crazy. Don’t dwell. Look to the positive. Fix what needs fixing. Work together.
I don’t know if it’s emotionally sustainable or even healthy, but it raises at least one interesting question. When you compare these people to the emotional Sturm und Drang over lesser things on reality TV, you do wonder if we Americans are a nation of whiners.
Op-Ed Columnist
Where’s the Trauma and the Grief?
By DAVID BROOKS
Dujiangyan, China
Three months ago, an earthquake struck China’s Sichuan Province, killing nearly 70,000 people. Xian Tianquan was at home with his wife in the village of Pengshua at the time. They made a dash to get outside. Xian’s wife was just ahead of him, crossing the threshold of their house when the frame collapsed. She was killed instantly.
The village was cut off from outside help for three days. Xian took his wife’s body and carried it up to the hills, where he buried her.
This week, he sat on the spot of her death, telling the story with a matter-of-fact, almost cheerful air. A small group of villagers was hanging around, and the interview, outside under a tarp, was a communal affair. The villagers joked with each other and smiled frequently in a manner I found hard to fathom as they described the horrible events from May.
I asked Xian if he had thought about leaving the village after what had happened. The idea had never crossed his mind, he said. Many families lost people (a nearby kindergarten building collapsed), and if the healthy left, who would look after the young ones and the elders? Members of the village now share cooking duties and help each other with everything.
I asked if people in the village have suffered any psychological aftershocks from the trauma. Another villager, Tan Fubian, piped up and said that they just try not to think about it. Then I asked about the reconstruction.
To my eyes, this part of the region looks forlorn. Houses and stores have been reduced to empty shells. Piles of rubble line the streets. In one town, an elderly man stood atop some concrete stairs laboriously swinging a hammer in an attempt to destroy them. There’s little construction equipment in the residential areas.
Tan pointed out that the government had established priorities. Public buildings like hospitals, schools and government offices would be rebuilt first. Private houses after that.
I asked if the villagers were watching the Olympics, and wondered if the lavish spending on the Games could better be used to address their own needs. “Our problems are temporary,” one villager responded. “The Olympics are for the national community.” Last Friday, the whole village had gathered (just by the spot where Xian’s wife had died) to have a feast and watch the opening ceremony.
We’d visited the village without warning and selected our interview subjects at random, but some of the answers were probably crafted to please the government. Still, there was no disguising the emotional resilience and intense mutual support in that village. And there was no avoiding the baffling sense of equanimity. Where was the trauma and grief?
The next day we approached Qi Chengbin, a retired food vendor in the city of Dujiangyan. Qi was working in the garden outside his six-story apartment building when the quake hit. His only child, an 18-year-old son, was taking a nap inside when the entire building collapsed on top of him.
Qi never saw his son or any of his possessions again. His own wounds were treated and his son’s body was cremated by the military. Qi says he hopes to have a funeral for the boy, but he hasn’t had a chance to organize it.
When I asked about the psychological effects of such a shock, Qi emphasized the positive. The government had provided free medical care. Within nine days, he had been resettled in a one-room apartment in a temporary housing camp. He’d lived through China’s dark days, and this apartment was nicer than any place he’d lived in the 1960s.
Moreover, the government had given him everything he now owns. “The government wants us to look on the positive side,” he said.
There were no pictures of his dead son around, but from under his bed he pulled a photo album that had been at his mother-in-law’s at the time of the quake. I thought he would betray some emotion as he passed around photos of his handsome, scholarly looking boy. There was nothing. He kept speaking in that pragmatic tone, just as Xian had done. Qi’s wife added that she was very satisfied with all that had been done for them.
These were weird, unnerving interviews, and I don’t pretend to understand what’s going on in the minds of people who have suffered such blows and remained so optimistic. All I can imagine is that the history of this province has given these people a stripped-down, pragmatic mentality: Move on or go crazy. Don’t dwell. Look to the positive. Fix what needs fixing. Work together.
I don’t know if it’s emotionally sustainable or even healthy, but it raises at least one interesting question. When you compare these people to the emotional Sturm und Drang over lesser things on reality TV, you do wonder if we Americans are a nation of whiners.
August 30, 2008
Millions Are Displaced by Floods in India
By HEATHER TIMMONS and HARI KUMAR
There is a photograph at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/world ... ref=slogin
Villagers navigated floodwaters on Friday in Jankipur, India. Aid workers said the official death toll, currently at 12, was low. An antipoverty agency estimated that 2,000 people had died.
By HEATHER TIMMONS and HARI KUMAR
Published: August 29, 2008
NEW DELHI — Millions of farmers and their families may be displaced for months after severe floods in northern India wiped out crops and homes, leaving hundreds of villages under several feet of water.
The Kosi River in Bihar, one of India’s poorest and most populous states, jumped its banks this week after a dam burst in bordering Nepal, causing the worst floods in the area in 50 years.
Rescue efforts continued on Friday, and boats were dispatched and trains mobilized to find and move millions who have been left stranded by the rising waters. More than 2.1 million people and over 394 square miles have been affected by the flooding, the Bihar government said on Friday. About a quarter of a million people have been evacuated.
Evacuees may not be able to return to their homes, if those homes still exist, until fall, state government officials said. “This water will remain for some time,” said Devi Rajak, the chief engineer for Bihar’s water resource department. “It may start decreasing in September depending upon upstream discharge.”
The breach in the dam that caused the flooding is eight miles inside Nepal, he said, and therefore difficult to gain access to and fix. “We are facing labor problems, law and order problems, and logistics problems,” he said.
The Nepalese government said that work to fix the break was under way, and that its officials were cooperating with the Indian government. The river has flooded its banks in Nepal as well, displacing tens of thousands of people.
About a quarter of a million homes in India have already been destroyed by the floods, Indian officials say.
The official death toll from the flooding was set at 12 by the Bihar government, but aid workers and people in the area said that number was low, in part because access to the area to assess the damage and recover bodies is limited. ActionAid, an anti-poverty agency based in South Africa, estimates that 2,000 people have died and that thousands more are missing.
“We are helpless,” Rajiv Kumar Singh, 36, said in a telephone interview from Singheshwar, a village in the flooded Madhepura district of Bihar. Some people have been washed away as their families watched, he said, and survivors have been living for days on the roadside, in government offices or in schools. “This whole area is under three or four feet of water,” he said, adding that fevers and diarrhea were spreading. “There is only one doctor here, and he cannot cater to all the people,” he said.
Kamlesh Prasad Singh, 50, a farmer from the village of Patori in the Madhepura district, said in a telephone interview that his village was full of water four or five feet deep. “I left my home, my five cattle and my six acres of rice fields behind,” he said. “I am completely ruined.”
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared the situation a “national calamity” on Thursday and said the government had earmarked about $230 million in aid for the region.
Water continued to flow into new areas on Friday, and helicopters, hundreds of military boats and thousands of enlisted personnel were picking up stranded people.
Trains full of supplies were being sent from New Delhi to assist and transport evacuees. The situation is expected to worsen over the weekend, with meteorologists predicting heavy rain in the region.
Millions Are Displaced by Floods in India
By HEATHER TIMMONS and HARI KUMAR
There is a photograph at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/world ... ref=slogin
Villagers navigated floodwaters on Friday in Jankipur, India. Aid workers said the official death toll, currently at 12, was low. An antipoverty agency estimated that 2,000 people had died.
By HEATHER TIMMONS and HARI KUMAR
Published: August 29, 2008
NEW DELHI — Millions of farmers and their families may be displaced for months after severe floods in northern India wiped out crops and homes, leaving hundreds of villages under several feet of water.
The Kosi River in Bihar, one of India’s poorest and most populous states, jumped its banks this week after a dam burst in bordering Nepal, causing the worst floods in the area in 50 years.
Rescue efforts continued on Friday, and boats were dispatched and trains mobilized to find and move millions who have been left stranded by the rising waters. More than 2.1 million people and over 394 square miles have been affected by the flooding, the Bihar government said on Friday. About a quarter of a million people have been evacuated.
Evacuees may not be able to return to their homes, if those homes still exist, until fall, state government officials said. “This water will remain for some time,” said Devi Rajak, the chief engineer for Bihar’s water resource department. “It may start decreasing in September depending upon upstream discharge.”
The breach in the dam that caused the flooding is eight miles inside Nepal, he said, and therefore difficult to gain access to and fix. “We are facing labor problems, law and order problems, and logistics problems,” he said.
The Nepalese government said that work to fix the break was under way, and that its officials were cooperating with the Indian government. The river has flooded its banks in Nepal as well, displacing tens of thousands of people.
About a quarter of a million homes in India have already been destroyed by the floods, Indian officials say.
The official death toll from the flooding was set at 12 by the Bihar government, but aid workers and people in the area said that number was low, in part because access to the area to assess the damage and recover bodies is limited. ActionAid, an anti-poverty agency based in South Africa, estimates that 2,000 people have died and that thousands more are missing.
“We are helpless,” Rajiv Kumar Singh, 36, said in a telephone interview from Singheshwar, a village in the flooded Madhepura district of Bihar. Some people have been washed away as their families watched, he said, and survivors have been living for days on the roadside, in government offices or in schools. “This whole area is under three or four feet of water,” he said, adding that fevers and diarrhea were spreading. “There is only one doctor here, and he cannot cater to all the people,” he said.
Kamlesh Prasad Singh, 50, a farmer from the village of Patori in the Madhepura district, said in a telephone interview that his village was full of water four or five feet deep. “I left my home, my five cattle and my six acres of rice fields behind,” he said. “I am completely ruined.”
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared the situation a “national calamity” on Thursday and said the government had earmarked about $230 million in aid for the region.
Water continued to flow into new areas on Friday, and helicopters, hundreds of military boats and thousands of enlisted personnel were picking up stranded people.
Trains full of supplies were being sent from New Delhi to assist and transport evacuees. The situation is expected to worsen over the weekend, with meteorologists predicting heavy rain in the region.
China quake damages more than 180,000 homes, 27 dead
Reuters
Sunday, August 31, 2008
CREDIT: Reuters
A local resident walks past a collapsed house after an earthquake hit Lixi town of Huili County, Sichuan province.
BEIJING -- An earthquake that hit southwest China's Sichuan and Yunnan provinces has killed 27 people, damaged or destroyed more than 180,000 homes and affected at least 800,000 residents, state media said on Sunday.
The epicentre of Saturday's quake, which struck around 4:30 p.m. (0730 GMT), was about 20 miles (30 km) southeast of Panzhihua, near Sichuan's border with Yunnan, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake was about 6 miles (10 km) deep.
The USGS put the magnitude of the quake at 5.7, while China's official Xinhua news agency said it measured 6.1.
A 5.6-magnitude aftershock hit the same area 24 hours later, the USGS said on Sunday. There were no immediate reports of further damage.
Xinhua said Saturday's quake had injured more than 350 people, and three more were missing in addition to the 27 already confirmed dead.
"More than 800,000 people were affected by the disaster. About 40,000 were evacuated to safe places," it said. "In addition, around 180,000 houses were destroyed. Three large bridges in Sichuan's Panzhihua city, the epicenter of the quake, were damaged. Cracks were found in three reservoirs."
It added that 656 schools had also been damaged and that heavy rain and difficult terrain were hampering rescue efforts, with mobile telephone communications patchy.
State media showed pictures of houses with large cracks in their sides, broken tiles on the road and people receiving medical attention under tents.
But state television said that operations at the Panzhihua steel group, one of western China's largest steel makers, had only been slightly affected, without providing further details.
The government was rushing disaster relief to the affected areas, including thousands of tents and blankets and tonnes of food and water, Xinhua said.
Parts of Sichuan province were devastated by an earthquake that killed about 70,000 people in May.
The province, known for its pandas and fiery cuisine, has struggled to rebuild after the disaster, which left 10 million people homeless.
© Reuters 2008
****
Three million displaced in India floods
Reuters
Sunday, August 31, 2008
CREDIT:
Flood-affected people move to safer grounds through a flooded road in Madhepura town in India's eastern state of Bihar August 30, 2008. Indian authorities, hampered by heavy rain and damaged roads, were struggling on Saturday to provide aid to millions of displaced villagers in Bihar hit by the worst flooding in 50 years. REUTERS/Krishna Murari Kishan
PATNA, India (Reuters) - Authorities struggling to provide aid after devastating floods in eastern India said on Sunday they needed more boats and rescuers to help hundreds of thousands of people still marooned in remote villages.
Bad weather and heavy rain over the past few days have hampered rescue and relief operations in the worst-ever floods to hit Bihar state in 50 years, officials said.
"I can't say specifically how many people are still stranded in floods," Nitish Mishra, the state's disaster management minister said on Sunday.
"But their numbers are in lakhs (hundreds of thousands) and we require more resources, more boats, army and rescue efforts to evacuate them."
Floods have killed more than 1,000 people in South Asia since the monsoon began in June, mainly in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where 785 people died, and deaths were also reported in Nepal and Bangladesh.
In Bihar, the toll rose to 90 on Sunday with five more people drowning overnight in separate districts.
At least 3 million people have been displaced and those figures could rise as heavy rain continued, officials said.
Television pictures showed villagers holding on to tails of cattle as they crossed flooded roads with belongings on their heads. Some were seen frantically waving at a few boatmen to come and rescue them.
"I presented my buffalo to the boatman in exchange for a place in his boat since I don't have any money," Shambhoo Yadav, a rescued villager said.
Authorities also complained that thousands of villagers have refused to be evacuated and go to camps, saying they wanted to stay back and protect their belongings.
The latest flooding occurred after the Kosi river burst a dam in neighboring Nepal earlier this month and changed its course, swamp hundreds of villages in Bihar and destroy over 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of farmlands.
In Nepal, officials said repairing the dam was under way but turning the river back to its original course would take time.
At least seven people were killed in monsoon floods and landslides in Nepal on Saturday, raising the monsoon-related death toll in the Himalayan nation to more than 100 this year.
NO RELIEF
Villagers in Bihar complained that relief was not reaching them and many are living without food for three-four days.
"We ate after nearly a week today," Manohar Prasad, a rescued villager from flood-hit Madhepura district told reporters at a camp near Patna. "Some people donated us money," he said, while eating some bread.
The Bihar government has been severely criticized by newspapers for failing to act in time to evacuate villagers.
More than 350,000 people have been evacuated over the past 11 days, officials said, admitting they did not have enough boats or resources to step up relief operations.
A Reuters photographer in Bihar said people were fighting among themselves to lay their hands on air-dropped food.
Cases of diarrhea were beginning to be reported from many relief camps in the state, UNICEF said.
(Additional reporting by Gopal Sharma in Kathmandu; Writing by Bappa Majumdar; Editing by Alex Richardson)
© Reuters 2008
Reuters
Sunday, August 31, 2008
CREDIT: Reuters
A local resident walks past a collapsed house after an earthquake hit Lixi town of Huili County, Sichuan province.
BEIJING -- An earthquake that hit southwest China's Sichuan and Yunnan provinces has killed 27 people, damaged or destroyed more than 180,000 homes and affected at least 800,000 residents, state media said on Sunday.
The epicentre of Saturday's quake, which struck around 4:30 p.m. (0730 GMT), was about 20 miles (30 km) southeast of Panzhihua, near Sichuan's border with Yunnan, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake was about 6 miles (10 km) deep.
The USGS put the magnitude of the quake at 5.7, while China's official Xinhua news agency said it measured 6.1.
A 5.6-magnitude aftershock hit the same area 24 hours later, the USGS said on Sunday. There were no immediate reports of further damage.
Xinhua said Saturday's quake had injured more than 350 people, and three more were missing in addition to the 27 already confirmed dead.
"More than 800,000 people were affected by the disaster. About 40,000 were evacuated to safe places," it said. "In addition, around 180,000 houses were destroyed. Three large bridges in Sichuan's Panzhihua city, the epicenter of the quake, were damaged. Cracks were found in three reservoirs."
It added that 656 schools had also been damaged and that heavy rain and difficult terrain were hampering rescue efforts, with mobile telephone communications patchy.
State media showed pictures of houses with large cracks in their sides, broken tiles on the road and people receiving medical attention under tents.
But state television said that operations at the Panzhihua steel group, one of western China's largest steel makers, had only been slightly affected, without providing further details.
The government was rushing disaster relief to the affected areas, including thousands of tents and blankets and tonnes of food and water, Xinhua said.
Parts of Sichuan province were devastated by an earthquake that killed about 70,000 people in May.
The province, known for its pandas and fiery cuisine, has struggled to rebuild after the disaster, which left 10 million people homeless.
© Reuters 2008
****
Three million displaced in India floods
Reuters
Sunday, August 31, 2008
CREDIT:
Flood-affected people move to safer grounds through a flooded road in Madhepura town in India's eastern state of Bihar August 30, 2008. Indian authorities, hampered by heavy rain and damaged roads, were struggling on Saturday to provide aid to millions of displaced villagers in Bihar hit by the worst flooding in 50 years. REUTERS/Krishna Murari Kishan
PATNA, India (Reuters) - Authorities struggling to provide aid after devastating floods in eastern India said on Sunday they needed more boats and rescuers to help hundreds of thousands of people still marooned in remote villages.
Bad weather and heavy rain over the past few days have hampered rescue and relief operations in the worst-ever floods to hit Bihar state in 50 years, officials said.
"I can't say specifically how many people are still stranded in floods," Nitish Mishra, the state's disaster management minister said on Sunday.
"But their numbers are in lakhs (hundreds of thousands) and we require more resources, more boats, army and rescue efforts to evacuate them."
Floods have killed more than 1,000 people in South Asia since the monsoon began in June, mainly in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where 785 people died, and deaths were also reported in Nepal and Bangladesh.
In Bihar, the toll rose to 90 on Sunday with five more people drowning overnight in separate districts.
At least 3 million people have been displaced and those figures could rise as heavy rain continued, officials said.
Television pictures showed villagers holding on to tails of cattle as they crossed flooded roads with belongings on their heads. Some were seen frantically waving at a few boatmen to come and rescue them.
"I presented my buffalo to the boatman in exchange for a place in his boat since I don't have any money," Shambhoo Yadav, a rescued villager said.
Authorities also complained that thousands of villagers have refused to be evacuated and go to camps, saying they wanted to stay back and protect their belongings.
The latest flooding occurred after the Kosi river burst a dam in neighboring Nepal earlier this month and changed its course, swamp hundreds of villages in Bihar and destroy over 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of farmlands.
In Nepal, officials said repairing the dam was under way but turning the river back to its original course would take time.
At least seven people were killed in monsoon floods and landslides in Nepal on Saturday, raising the monsoon-related death toll in the Himalayan nation to more than 100 this year.
NO RELIEF
Villagers in Bihar complained that relief was not reaching them and many are living without food for three-four days.
"We ate after nearly a week today," Manohar Prasad, a rescued villager from flood-hit Madhepura district told reporters at a camp near Patna. "Some people donated us money," he said, while eating some bread.
The Bihar government has been severely criticized by newspapers for failing to act in time to evacuate villagers.
More than 350,000 people have been evacuated over the past 11 days, officials said, admitting they did not have enough boats or resources to step up relief operations.
A Reuters photographer in Bihar said people were fighting among themselves to lay their hands on air-dropped food.
Cases of diarrhea were beginning to be reported from many relief camps in the state, UNICEF said.
(Additional reporting by Gopal Sharma in Kathmandu; Writing by Bappa Majumdar; Editing by Alex Richardson)
© Reuters 2008
September 8, 2008
Hurricane Ike Smashes West Through Caribbean
By MARC LACEY
MIAMI — Hurricane Ike barreled west across the already beleaguered islands of the Caribbean on Sunday, raising the death toll and destruction across the waterlogged region.
In Haiti, where the fourth-largest city, Gonaïves, remained underwater from Hurricane Gustav, rain fell and at least 10 more people died of drowning, according to reports from news services. By late Sunday the number of people reported killed in Haiti just from the effects of Hurricane Ike reached at least 58. The total of those killed in Haiti in the recent storms was in the hundreds.
In Cuba, where relief efforts from Hurricane Gustav were under way in the west, the government evacuated vulnerable communities as the new hurricane bore down on the island with heavy winds and rain that could total 10 inches.
In the Florida Keys, the authorities also ordered residents and tourists to leave as the outer reaches of the storm could be felt.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami reported Monday morning that Hurricane Ike had weakened, from a Category 4 storm to Category 2, after it hit Cuba, but it was still considered a major hurricane with tremendous destructive force.
Earlier Sunday, it slammed into the southernmost islands of the Bahamas, where Janice McKinney, who ran a disaster shelter, told The Associated Press, “Oh my God, I can’t describe it.”
With winds up to 135 miles per hour, the storm also struck the Turks and Caicos Islands, where rain came in horizontally, according to witnesses, and more than 80 percent of the homes in some areas were reported damaged.
“They got hit really, really bad,” The Associated Press quoted Michael Misick, the chief minister of the islands, as saying. “A lot of people have lost their houses, and we will have to see what we can do to accommodate them.”
The effect of any rain at all on Haiti worried relief workers, who were struggling to reach hungry people cut off by floodwaters from a string of earlier storms. Officials opened an overflowing dam, further inundating residential and agricultural areas.
Meanwhile, a bridge collapsed, adding to the isolation of the suffering people of Gonaïves.
“What I saw in this city today is close to hell on earth,” Hédi Annabi, the United Nations special representative to Haiti, said on Saturday in Gonaïves, where children were chasing trucks carrying food and shouting, “Hungry! Hungry!”
The airport in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, was closed for part of Sunday, and flights from Miami were canceled.
Some travelers who were lined up at the Miami airport toted huge duffel bags that they said contained supplies for ailing relatives.
Exactly which path Hurricane Ike would take next remained unclear as night fell Sunday, causing alarm in island after island.
The National Hurricane Center said Ike was expected to continue on a path that would turn toward the west-northwest on Monday, heading toward the Gulf Coast possibly by Wednesday.
The hurricane center said the storm was generating large swells at sea that could generate life-threatening rip currents along portions of coast in the southeastern United States, still recovering from Gustav, which made landfall on Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday, and Tropical Storm Hanna, which hit the Carolinas on Saturday and by late Sunday was dumping rain on Canada.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/world ... nted=print
Hurricane Ike Smashes West Through Caribbean
By MARC LACEY
MIAMI — Hurricane Ike barreled west across the already beleaguered islands of the Caribbean on Sunday, raising the death toll and destruction across the waterlogged region.
In Haiti, where the fourth-largest city, Gonaïves, remained underwater from Hurricane Gustav, rain fell and at least 10 more people died of drowning, according to reports from news services. By late Sunday the number of people reported killed in Haiti just from the effects of Hurricane Ike reached at least 58. The total of those killed in Haiti in the recent storms was in the hundreds.
In Cuba, where relief efforts from Hurricane Gustav were under way in the west, the government evacuated vulnerable communities as the new hurricane bore down on the island with heavy winds and rain that could total 10 inches.
In the Florida Keys, the authorities also ordered residents and tourists to leave as the outer reaches of the storm could be felt.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami reported Monday morning that Hurricane Ike had weakened, from a Category 4 storm to Category 2, after it hit Cuba, but it was still considered a major hurricane with tremendous destructive force.
Earlier Sunday, it slammed into the southernmost islands of the Bahamas, where Janice McKinney, who ran a disaster shelter, told The Associated Press, “Oh my God, I can’t describe it.”
With winds up to 135 miles per hour, the storm also struck the Turks and Caicos Islands, where rain came in horizontally, according to witnesses, and more than 80 percent of the homes in some areas were reported damaged.
“They got hit really, really bad,” The Associated Press quoted Michael Misick, the chief minister of the islands, as saying. “A lot of people have lost their houses, and we will have to see what we can do to accommodate them.”
The effect of any rain at all on Haiti worried relief workers, who were struggling to reach hungry people cut off by floodwaters from a string of earlier storms. Officials opened an overflowing dam, further inundating residential and agricultural areas.
Meanwhile, a bridge collapsed, adding to the isolation of the suffering people of Gonaïves.
“What I saw in this city today is close to hell on earth,” Hédi Annabi, the United Nations special representative to Haiti, said on Saturday in Gonaïves, where children were chasing trucks carrying food and shouting, “Hungry! Hungry!”
The airport in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, was closed for part of Sunday, and flights from Miami were canceled.
Some travelers who were lined up at the Miami airport toted huge duffel bags that they said contained supplies for ailing relatives.
Exactly which path Hurricane Ike would take next remained unclear as night fell Sunday, causing alarm in island after island.
The National Hurricane Center said Ike was expected to continue on a path that would turn toward the west-northwest on Monday, heading toward the Gulf Coast possibly by Wednesday.
The hurricane center said the storm was generating large swells at sea that could generate life-threatening rip currents along portions of coast in the southeastern United States, still recovering from Gustav, which made landfall on Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday, and Tropical Storm Hanna, which hit the Carolinas on Saturday and by late Sunday was dumping rain on Canada.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/world ... nted=print
September 10, 2008
Ike Gains Strength Over Gulf and Aims for Texas
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:34 a.m. ET
HAVANA (AP) -- Hurricane Ike grew stronger as it barreled across the warm, energizing waters of the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday toward the Texas coast after crashing through Cuba's tobacco country and toppling aging Havana buildings.
Forecasters said the Category 1 storm could become major Category 3 storm before slamming into Texas or northern Mexico on Saturday.
Ike has already killed at least 80 people in the Caribbean, and Texas put 7,500 National Guard members on standby and urged coastal residents to stock up on supplies.
The U.S. Federal Emergency Management agency still was uncertain about the timing of evacuations along the coast.
Cuban state television said some 2.6 million people -- nearly a fourth of the island's population -- sought refuge from Ike, which killed four people and shredded hundreds of homes as it swept across the country. Power was still spotty in Havana on Wednesday morning.
As it left Cuba, Hurricane Ike delivered a punishing blow to towns such as Los Palacios, which already suffered a direct hit from a Category-4 Hurricane Gustav on Aug. 30.
In a poor neighborhood along the train tracks, the combined fury of Ike and Gustav left nearly two-thirds of the wooden homes leveled or without roofs.
''The first one left me something, but this one left me nothing,'' said Olga Atiaga, a 53-year-old housewife. Gustav obliterated her roof and some walls. Then Ike blew away a mattress and smashed the kitchen sink.
''I don't even have anything to sleep on,'' she said.
Odalis Cruz, a 45-year-old housing inspector, said she evacuated to a shelter in the town's rice mill when it became clear Ike was following Gustav's path through Pinar del Rio, the westernmost province where Cuba produces tobacco used in its famous cigars.
She surveyed the damage to her home Tuesday.
''We repaired the roof two days ago and this one took the new one,'' she said. ''I'm ready to move to Canada! We have spent eight days drying out things, cleaning everything, sleeping on the floor, and now we are hit again.''
Gustav damaged at least 100,000 homes but didn't kill anyone because of massive evacuations. Cubans were ordered to evacuate for Ike as well, with those in low-lying or wooden homes seeking safety with friends or relatives in sturdier structures. Others were taken to government shelters.
State television said two men were killed removing an antenna from a roof, a woman died when her home collapsed and a man was killed by a falling tree.
Evacuations are not mandatory except for pregnant women and small children, but in an authoritarian state, few people ignore the government's advice.
In Havana, towering waves broke over the seaside Malecon promenade as downpours soaked historic but crumbling buildings in the capital's picturesque older areas. Some of the most dilapidated structures collapsed, including four houses on a single block.
Police told 21-year-old Niyel Rodriguez she had to move to a shelter with her 19-day-old daughter Chanel. She huddled Tuesday with 109 expectant and new mothers and their children in a wing of an Old Havana maternity hospital.
''They came looking for me yesterday and brought me here in a patrol car,'' Rodriguez said. ''I probably would have been scared to stay at home with my little one, and here they take good care of us.''
Elsewhere in Cuba, officials evacuated about 10,000 tourists from vulnerable seaside hotels, mostly from Varadero beach, east of Havana.
Ike's possible threat to Gulf oil installations didn't keep crude oil prices from dipping to US$102.40 a barrel in Wednesday morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Mexican officials warned that unrelated heavy rains in the northern part of the country had caused more than a dozen dams to reach capacity or spill over. If Ike brings more rain to the area, evacuations may be needed.
Ike was centered about 225 miles (365 kilometers) west-southwest of Key West, Florida, and about 430 miles (695 kilometers) southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River late Wednesday morning.
It was generally moving northwest at 8 mph (13 kph). Maximum sustained winds remained near 90 mph (150 kph), still at Category 1 storm.
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Lowell weakened to a tropical depression off Mexico's Pacific coast and it was expected to move across the Baja California Peninsula Wednesday night or Thursday morning. It had maximum sustained of near 35 mph (55 kph).
------
Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez and Anita Snow in Havana, and Kathy Corcoran in Mexico City contributed to this report.
Ike Gains Strength Over Gulf and Aims for Texas
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:34 a.m. ET
HAVANA (AP) -- Hurricane Ike grew stronger as it barreled across the warm, energizing waters of the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday toward the Texas coast after crashing through Cuba's tobacco country and toppling aging Havana buildings.
Forecasters said the Category 1 storm could become major Category 3 storm before slamming into Texas or northern Mexico on Saturday.
Ike has already killed at least 80 people in the Caribbean, and Texas put 7,500 National Guard members on standby and urged coastal residents to stock up on supplies.
The U.S. Federal Emergency Management agency still was uncertain about the timing of evacuations along the coast.
Cuban state television said some 2.6 million people -- nearly a fourth of the island's population -- sought refuge from Ike, which killed four people and shredded hundreds of homes as it swept across the country. Power was still spotty in Havana on Wednesday morning.
As it left Cuba, Hurricane Ike delivered a punishing blow to towns such as Los Palacios, which already suffered a direct hit from a Category-4 Hurricane Gustav on Aug. 30.
In a poor neighborhood along the train tracks, the combined fury of Ike and Gustav left nearly two-thirds of the wooden homes leveled or without roofs.
''The first one left me something, but this one left me nothing,'' said Olga Atiaga, a 53-year-old housewife. Gustav obliterated her roof and some walls. Then Ike blew away a mattress and smashed the kitchen sink.
''I don't even have anything to sleep on,'' she said.
Odalis Cruz, a 45-year-old housing inspector, said she evacuated to a shelter in the town's rice mill when it became clear Ike was following Gustav's path through Pinar del Rio, the westernmost province where Cuba produces tobacco used in its famous cigars.
She surveyed the damage to her home Tuesday.
''We repaired the roof two days ago and this one took the new one,'' she said. ''I'm ready to move to Canada! We have spent eight days drying out things, cleaning everything, sleeping on the floor, and now we are hit again.''
Gustav damaged at least 100,000 homes but didn't kill anyone because of massive evacuations. Cubans were ordered to evacuate for Ike as well, with those in low-lying or wooden homes seeking safety with friends or relatives in sturdier structures. Others were taken to government shelters.
State television said two men were killed removing an antenna from a roof, a woman died when her home collapsed and a man was killed by a falling tree.
Evacuations are not mandatory except for pregnant women and small children, but in an authoritarian state, few people ignore the government's advice.
In Havana, towering waves broke over the seaside Malecon promenade as downpours soaked historic but crumbling buildings in the capital's picturesque older areas. Some of the most dilapidated structures collapsed, including four houses on a single block.
Police told 21-year-old Niyel Rodriguez she had to move to a shelter with her 19-day-old daughter Chanel. She huddled Tuesday with 109 expectant and new mothers and their children in a wing of an Old Havana maternity hospital.
''They came looking for me yesterday and brought me here in a patrol car,'' Rodriguez said. ''I probably would have been scared to stay at home with my little one, and here they take good care of us.''
Elsewhere in Cuba, officials evacuated about 10,000 tourists from vulnerable seaside hotels, mostly from Varadero beach, east of Havana.
Ike's possible threat to Gulf oil installations didn't keep crude oil prices from dipping to US$102.40 a barrel in Wednesday morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Mexican officials warned that unrelated heavy rains in the northern part of the country had caused more than a dozen dams to reach capacity or spill over. If Ike brings more rain to the area, evacuations may be needed.
Ike was centered about 225 miles (365 kilometers) west-southwest of Key West, Florida, and about 430 miles (695 kilometers) southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River late Wednesday morning.
It was generally moving northwest at 8 mph (13 kph). Maximum sustained winds remained near 90 mph (150 kph), still at Category 1 storm.
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Lowell weakened to a tropical depression off Mexico's Pacific coast and it was expected to move across the Baja California Peninsula Wednesday night or Thursday morning. It had maximum sustained of near 35 mph (55 kph).
------
Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez and Anita Snow in Havana, and Kathy Corcoran in Mexico City contributed to this report.
There is a related multimedia linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/world ... haiti.html
September 11, 2008
Meager Living of Haitians Is Wiped Out by Storms
By MARC LACEY
GONAÏVES, Haiti — Their cupboards were virtually bare before the winds started whipping, the skies opened up and this seaside city filled like a caldron with thick, brown, smelly muck.
Suffering long ago became normal here, passed down through generations of children who learn that crying does no good.
But the enduring spirit of the people of Gonaïves is being tested by a string of recent tropical storms and hurricanes whose names Haitians spit out like curses: Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike.
After four fierce storms in less than a month, the little that many people had has turned to nothing at all. Their humble homes are under water, forcing them onto the roofs. Schools are canceled. Hunger is now intense. Difficult lives have become untenable ones and, if that was not enough, hurricane season has only just reached the traditional halfway mark.
One can see the misery in the eyes of Edith Pierre, who takes care of six children on her roof in the center of Gonaïves, a city of about 300,000 in Haiti’s north. She has strung a sheet up to shield them, somewhat, from the piercing sun. The few scraps of clothing she could salvage sit in heaps off to a side. “Now I have nothing,” she said before pausing a minute, staring down from the roof at the river of floodwater and then saying again in an even more forlorn way: “Nothing.”
At the home of Daniel Dupiton, who leads the local Red Cross, displaced relatives, friends and complete strangers have moved in, more than 100 in all, taking up every inch of floor space as well as the surrounding yard. “There are official shelters, and then there are unofficial ones, like my house,” he said.
More misery in Haiti is an almost unfathomable thing. Already the poorest place in the Western Hemisphere, it has become even more destitute. Haitians were struggling to feed themselves before the hurricanes battered their agricultural lands, killed their livestock and washed away their tiny stores of rice. Now, the country will be even more dependent on imports, and the high food prices across the globe will only increase the sting.
“Life was very, very difficult even before this,” said Raphael Chuinard, who is organizing the distribution of emergency aid in Gonaïves for the United Nations World Food Program. “The malnutrition rate was too high. People were resigned to suffer.”
And now that suffering has been turned up a notch. The hurricanes have struck all 10 of Haiti’s regions, and by knocking out bridges and washing away roads they have created isolated pockets of misery across the countryside. Relief workers and Haitian authorities have reported more than 300 deaths, most from Hanna, and they are just beginning to reach all the trouble spots.
In Gonaïves, still largely cut off from the rest of Haiti, sunny skies have helped bring the water levels down in recent days, but still residents move through the streets with their ankles, their knees and sometimes even their hips submerged in effluent. The hospital is covered with floodwater. So are thousands of homes.
At the main cathedral, the water rushed in the front door, toppling pews and leaving the place stained with mud and smelling of sewage. Upstairs, dozens of people have taken refuge, huddled together on the concrete floor. When a visitor arrived, they rubbed their bellies and pleaded for nourishment.
Getting food to the hungry is no easy task, dependent on planes, ships and helicopters — including a nearby United States Navy vessel — since trucks are getting stuck in the mud. Once food reaches a place like Gonaïves, the crush of desperate people turns handouts into melees. As a solution, food trucks, protected by heavily armed Argentine soldiers serving with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the country, have begun setting out before dawn to distribute high-energy biscuits while most of the city still sleeps.
Haitian politicians, known more for their infighting than for comforting the country’s poor, were busy squabbling when the storms were striking. The legislature voted out President René Préval’s last prime minister in April, after food riots broke out, and then rejected two subsequent nominees. That left the government, ineffectual at the best of times, adrift.
Taking over as prime minister in the midst of the recovery effort is Michèle Pierre-Louis, who tried to reach Gonaïves by motorcade in recent days but could not get through. She flew over the disaster zone on Tuesday, prompting grumbling on the ground in Gonaïves that she did not land.
The Navy vessel is now shuttling food and United Nations personnel between Port-au-Prince and Gonaïves. As for the extent of the damage, Mr. Préval told The Miami Herald, “This is Katrina in the entire country, but without the means that Louisiana had.”
Gonaïves, the worst of the worst on the scale of the death and destruction, has always been especially vulnerable when hurricanes strike. A northern port city, it is located in a flood plain and fills up fast when rivers break their banks and rain rushes down mountains long ago stripped of trees. But that same geography gives the place agricultural potential, and much of the rice grown in the country is from the area around here.
It was just four years ago that Hurricane Jeanne hit Gonaïves, killing about 3,000 people and leveling much of the city. The ensuing years have been spent rebuilding.
This time, though, there is talk about whether it makes sense to try to recreate the same old place again. Authorities are talking about shifting some of the population away from the lowest-lying areas.
There is discussion of strengthening building codes so that structures are not so easily leveled in the next storm — and everyone knows there will be one. The local emergency operations center was flooded, and Yolène Surena, its coordinator, vowed that the new one would move to higher ground. “We should have done it before,” she acknowledged with a shake of her head.
In Port-au-Prince, Patrick Élie, a presidential adviser who is preparing a report on whether Haiti ought to reform its army, said the string of storms made it clearer than ever to him that the country’s biggest enemies were not other armies.
“We need a civil defense system,” he said. “These storms have pointed out the weakness of the Haitian state. Why are we surprised every time a storm hits when we know another one will come?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/world ... haiti.html
September 11, 2008
Meager Living of Haitians Is Wiped Out by Storms
By MARC LACEY
GONAÏVES, Haiti — Their cupboards were virtually bare before the winds started whipping, the skies opened up and this seaside city filled like a caldron with thick, brown, smelly muck.
Suffering long ago became normal here, passed down through generations of children who learn that crying does no good.
But the enduring spirit of the people of Gonaïves is being tested by a string of recent tropical storms and hurricanes whose names Haitians spit out like curses: Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike.
After four fierce storms in less than a month, the little that many people had has turned to nothing at all. Their humble homes are under water, forcing them onto the roofs. Schools are canceled. Hunger is now intense. Difficult lives have become untenable ones and, if that was not enough, hurricane season has only just reached the traditional halfway mark.
One can see the misery in the eyes of Edith Pierre, who takes care of six children on her roof in the center of Gonaïves, a city of about 300,000 in Haiti’s north. She has strung a sheet up to shield them, somewhat, from the piercing sun. The few scraps of clothing she could salvage sit in heaps off to a side. “Now I have nothing,” she said before pausing a minute, staring down from the roof at the river of floodwater and then saying again in an even more forlorn way: “Nothing.”
At the home of Daniel Dupiton, who leads the local Red Cross, displaced relatives, friends and complete strangers have moved in, more than 100 in all, taking up every inch of floor space as well as the surrounding yard. “There are official shelters, and then there are unofficial ones, like my house,” he said.
More misery in Haiti is an almost unfathomable thing. Already the poorest place in the Western Hemisphere, it has become even more destitute. Haitians were struggling to feed themselves before the hurricanes battered their agricultural lands, killed their livestock and washed away their tiny stores of rice. Now, the country will be even more dependent on imports, and the high food prices across the globe will only increase the sting.
“Life was very, very difficult even before this,” said Raphael Chuinard, who is organizing the distribution of emergency aid in Gonaïves for the United Nations World Food Program. “The malnutrition rate was too high. People were resigned to suffer.”
And now that suffering has been turned up a notch. The hurricanes have struck all 10 of Haiti’s regions, and by knocking out bridges and washing away roads they have created isolated pockets of misery across the countryside. Relief workers and Haitian authorities have reported more than 300 deaths, most from Hanna, and they are just beginning to reach all the trouble spots.
In Gonaïves, still largely cut off from the rest of Haiti, sunny skies have helped bring the water levels down in recent days, but still residents move through the streets with their ankles, their knees and sometimes even their hips submerged in effluent. The hospital is covered with floodwater. So are thousands of homes.
At the main cathedral, the water rushed in the front door, toppling pews and leaving the place stained with mud and smelling of sewage. Upstairs, dozens of people have taken refuge, huddled together on the concrete floor. When a visitor arrived, they rubbed their bellies and pleaded for nourishment.
Getting food to the hungry is no easy task, dependent on planes, ships and helicopters — including a nearby United States Navy vessel — since trucks are getting stuck in the mud. Once food reaches a place like Gonaïves, the crush of desperate people turns handouts into melees. As a solution, food trucks, protected by heavily armed Argentine soldiers serving with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the country, have begun setting out before dawn to distribute high-energy biscuits while most of the city still sleeps.
Haitian politicians, known more for their infighting than for comforting the country’s poor, were busy squabbling when the storms were striking. The legislature voted out President René Préval’s last prime minister in April, after food riots broke out, and then rejected two subsequent nominees. That left the government, ineffectual at the best of times, adrift.
Taking over as prime minister in the midst of the recovery effort is Michèle Pierre-Louis, who tried to reach Gonaïves by motorcade in recent days but could not get through. She flew over the disaster zone on Tuesday, prompting grumbling on the ground in Gonaïves that she did not land.
The Navy vessel is now shuttling food and United Nations personnel between Port-au-Prince and Gonaïves. As for the extent of the damage, Mr. Préval told The Miami Herald, “This is Katrina in the entire country, but without the means that Louisiana had.”
Gonaïves, the worst of the worst on the scale of the death and destruction, has always been especially vulnerable when hurricanes strike. A northern port city, it is located in a flood plain and fills up fast when rivers break their banks and rain rushes down mountains long ago stripped of trees. But that same geography gives the place agricultural potential, and much of the rice grown in the country is from the area around here.
It was just four years ago that Hurricane Jeanne hit Gonaïves, killing about 3,000 people and leveling much of the city. The ensuing years have been spent rebuilding.
This time, though, there is talk about whether it makes sense to try to recreate the same old place again. Authorities are talking about shifting some of the population away from the lowest-lying areas.
There is discussion of strengthening building codes so that structures are not so easily leveled in the next storm — and everyone knows there will be one. The local emergency operations center was flooded, and Yolène Surena, its coordinator, vowed that the new one would move to higher ground. “We should have done it before,” she acknowledged with a shake of her head.
In Port-au-Prince, Patrick Élie, a presidential adviser who is preparing a report on whether Haiti ought to reform its army, said the string of storms made it clearer than ever to him that the country’s biggest enemies were not other armies.
“We need a civil defense system,” he said. “These storms have pointed out the weakness of the Haitian state. Why are we surprised every time a storm hits when we know another one will come?”
September 12, 2008
Editorial
Help for Cuba and Haiti
The devastating string of tropical storms and hurricanes that rushed through the Caribbean in the last month — Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike — left hundreds dead and tens of thousands of people hurt and displaced in Haiti. The country’s crops appear to be destroyed. In Cuba, Gustav and Ike destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of homes. A fifth of the population was evacuated to higher ground.
The scale of devastation calls for an extraordinary assistance effort that is, so far, not happening. While the United States has offered some emergency aid to Haiti, it has not done enough for an impoverished nation that Americans have a moral responsibility to help. And the Bush administration’s peculiar fixation with an obsolete trade embargo and deep-pocketed anti-Castro hard-liners in Miami is standing in the way of dispatching desperately needed assistance for Cuba.
In the last week, Washington has announced $10 million in aid for Haiti. It sent the amphibious assault ship Kearsarge, which carries helicopters and airplanes, to assist in the relief effort. It is a good start. But Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, will need more. Only half the American aid is new money — the rest is being diverted from less urgently needed programs. And the United Nations has asked for more than $100 million to help those stricken by the storm.
Aid to Cuba is being complicated by outdated cold-war politics. The United States has, so far, offered only $100,000 in aid, with a promise of more if Cuba allows an American team in to assess the damage. Havana has foolishly rejected it. And the United States is refusing to temporarily ease core aspects of the longstanding trade embargo to help Cuba deal with the emergency.
The Treasury Department increased the dollar limit that organizations authorized to work with Cuban dissidents may send to Cuba. But Washington is refusing Cuba’s request to buy American construction materials to rebuild homes and repair the mangled electricity grid. It won’t allow Cuba to buy American food on credit, and it has, so far, refused to lift restrictions on the money that Cuban-Americans may send back to their relatives.
We believe the embargo against Cuba is about as wrongheaded a policy as one can devise. It gives credibility to the regime in Havana while contributing to the misery of ordinary Cubans, all for the sake of some votes in Florida. But we are not even asking the Bush administration to lift the embargo forever. The right thing to do to alleviate the crisis wrought by the storms is to temporarily lift all the restrictions on private remittances and private aid flows to Cuba.
Editorial
Help for Cuba and Haiti
The devastating string of tropical storms and hurricanes that rushed through the Caribbean in the last month — Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike — left hundreds dead and tens of thousands of people hurt and displaced in Haiti. The country’s crops appear to be destroyed. In Cuba, Gustav and Ike destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of homes. A fifth of the population was evacuated to higher ground.
The scale of devastation calls for an extraordinary assistance effort that is, so far, not happening. While the United States has offered some emergency aid to Haiti, it has not done enough for an impoverished nation that Americans have a moral responsibility to help. And the Bush administration’s peculiar fixation with an obsolete trade embargo and deep-pocketed anti-Castro hard-liners in Miami is standing in the way of dispatching desperately needed assistance for Cuba.
In the last week, Washington has announced $10 million in aid for Haiti. It sent the amphibious assault ship Kearsarge, which carries helicopters and airplanes, to assist in the relief effort. It is a good start. But Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, will need more. Only half the American aid is new money — the rest is being diverted from less urgently needed programs. And the United Nations has asked for more than $100 million to help those stricken by the storm.
Aid to Cuba is being complicated by outdated cold-war politics. The United States has, so far, offered only $100,000 in aid, with a promise of more if Cuba allows an American team in to assess the damage. Havana has foolishly rejected it. And the United States is refusing to temporarily ease core aspects of the longstanding trade embargo to help Cuba deal with the emergency.
The Treasury Department increased the dollar limit that organizations authorized to work with Cuban dissidents may send to Cuba. But Washington is refusing Cuba’s request to buy American construction materials to rebuild homes and repair the mangled electricity grid. It won’t allow Cuba to buy American food on credit, and it has, so far, refused to lift restrictions on the money that Cuban-Americans may send back to their relatives.
We believe the embargo against Cuba is about as wrongheaded a policy as one can devise. It gives credibility to the regime in Havana while contributing to the misery of ordinary Cubans, all for the sake of some votes in Florida. But we are not even asking the Bush administration to lift the embargo forever. The right thing to do to alleviate the crisis wrought by the storms is to temporarily lift all the restrictions on private remittances and private aid flows to Cuba.
There is a related multimedia linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/us/13cnd-ike.html
September 13, 2008
Hurricane Damage Extensive in Texas
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
HOUSTON — Hurricane Ike barreled across a wide swath of Texas on Saturday, deluging the city of Galveston with a wall of water, flooding coastal towns and leaving extensive damage across metropolitan Houston.
With wind gusts approaching 100 miles per hour, the 600-mile-wide Category 2 hurricane peeled sheets of steel off skyscrapers in Houston, smashed bus shelters and blew out windows, sending shattered glass and debris across the nation’s fourth-largest city, with a population of 2.2 million.
The storm came ashore on Galveston Island, which in 1900 suffered one of the worst hurricanes to hit the United States. Winds covered the main highway with a layer of boats and debris, shutting it down. In Orange, Tex., near the Louisiana coast, the sea rose so rapidly that people were forced to flee to attics and roofs, and the city used trucks to rescue them, local police said.
Yet officials expressed relief that the damage was not as catastrophic as federal and state officials had warned it would be, in part because forecasters appear to have overestimated how much the sea would rise in the path of the storm.
“Fortunately the worst-case scenario did not occur,” Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said at a news conference Saturday afternoon. “The good news is the surge was not as big as we thought it would be.”
There were reports of as many as four people killed, but it could take days to search flooded homes to assess the full impact of the storm, officials said.
Authorities said the hurricane could still prove to be the most punishing storm to hit the area since Hurricane Alicia 25 years ago.
Almost the entire metropolitan area lost power, and authorities said more than three million people were trying to manage in the dark. Utility officials said it could be weeks before power is restored throughout the region.
The magnitude of the power loss and the flooding raised the possibility that several major oil refineries would take more than a week to reopen. As a result, gasoline prices will probably spike around the country, even if oil prices continue to ease on international markets. Overnight, prices rose an average of 5 cents a gallon, to $3.73 for regular gasoline, according to AAA.
The expectations at nightfall Friday that a virtual tsunami of 20-foot waves would crash directly into Galveston, a city of 57,000, were fortunately dashed after midnight when the eye of the hurricane hit shore. City officials estimated the seas rose about 12 feet, though some tide gauges showed a 15-foot rise, and federal officials said it would take time to determine the exact number.
Whatever the height of the surge, longtime residents of Galveston said the damage was still the worst they had ever seen.
More than two million people evacuated coastal areas of Texas and Louisiana before the storm struck, but the authorities estimated that more than 100,000 people throughout the region, including 20,000 in Galveston, had disregarded mandatory evacuation orders.
For industries in the area, officials at refining companies said early damage reports were encouraging, because the center of the storm missed the refineries. The surge of water into Galveston’s shipping channel, an important depot for imported oil, was not as strong as many had feared, and officials hope to reopen it early in the week if no major obstacles are blocking shipping lanes.
At least 100,000 homes were inundated by surging waters, while isolated fires broke out around the region when trees and flying objects fell on electrical transformers, causing sparks.
In Houston, only the downtown area and the medical center section had power as of Saturday evening.
“It’s going to be weeks before we get power to the last customers,” said Mike Rodgers, a spokesman for Entergy Texas, the primary electricity provider between Houston and the Louisiana border.
President Bush issued a major disaster declaration for 29 Texas counties and said federal officials were prepared to help with recovery efforts.
“Obviously, this is a huge storm that is causing a lot of damage not only in Texas, but also in parts of Louisiana,” Mr. Bush said. “Some people didn’t evacuate when asked, and I’ve been briefed on the rescue teams there in the area. They’re prepared to move as soon as weather conditions permit.”
Senator Barack Obama canceled an appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” aides said, because he felt it would be inappropriate.
Civic leaders asked residents to conserve water and call 911 only in life-or-death situations.
“We don’t know what we’re going to find,” said Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas of Galveston, according to The Houston Chronicle. “We hope we’ll find that the people who didn’t leave here are alive and well.”
Despite the devastating flooding in Galveston, experts said the storm surge had not been as severe as some predicted.
Benton McGee, a hydrologist with the United States Geological Survey, told The Associated Press that the surge at Galveston, where the storm made landfall, was about 11 feet. Forecasters had predicted a surge of up to 25 feet.
But Stacey Stewart, a senior hurricane analyst at the National Hurricane Center, defended the government’s predictions of a 15- to 20-foot surge and said it would take time to determine the exact rise in sea level.
“I wouldn’t go out and say that surge values weren’t as high as predicted,” he said. “We have received reports of 15 feet and the sea wall being topped.”
Mr. Stewart said a shift in the storm’s track to the north just before landfall may have kept the rise in sea levels on the lower side of what had been forecast.
The storm moved through the region more quickly than some previous hurricanes and tropical storms, limiting flooding. By early afternoon, the National Hurricane Center had downgraded Ike to a tropical storm.
Mike Varela, chief of the Galveston Fire Department, said flooding was 8- to 10-feet deep in some areas of the city. “The low-lying neighborhoods are extremely flooded right now,” Chief Varela said.
Twenty-two men aboard a crippled freighter, which was adrift off the coast of Galveston when the hurricane hit, came through the storm safely, the Coast Guard said.
Initial reports from residential neighborhoods around Houston suggested that flooding and property damage were not as serious as some had feared early in the morning after hearing reports from downtown, where windows were shattered on skyscrapers and hotels. Winds downtown were particularly intense.
At Reliant Park, in southwest Houston, the storm tore chunks from the retractable roof of the football stadium, the park’s president and general manager told The Associated Press. The game between the Texans and the Baltimore Ravens scheduled for Monday night would probably have to be postponed, he said.
-Late in the afternoon, Air Force helicopters began plucking people out of flooded homes in Galveston and carrying them to shelters on the mainland.
Joyce Williams, 58, arrived on the first chopper with her 80-year-old mother, Eunice Haley, who had spent the night in a house with four feet of water on the ground floor. Ms. Williams was trying to get her mother out of the swamped house when she saw the helicopter and waved. “I was relieved,” she said.
Steven Rushing, who had tried to ride out the storm at his Galveston home with his family, eventually left by boat. Mr. Rushing, six relatives and two dogs wound up at a hotel in Galveston.
“I know my house was dry at 11 o’clock, and at 12:30 a.m., we were floating on the couch putting lifejackets on,” he said. Once the water reached the television, four feet off the floor, Mr. Rushing said, he retrieved his boat from the garage and loaded his family into it.
“I didn’t keep my boat there to plan on evacuating because I didn’t plan on the water getting that high, but I sure am glad it was there,” he said.
Thayer Evans contributed reporting from Galveston, Tex., and Rick Rojas from College Station.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/us/13cnd-ike.html
September 13, 2008
Hurricane Damage Extensive in Texas
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
HOUSTON — Hurricane Ike barreled across a wide swath of Texas on Saturday, deluging the city of Galveston with a wall of water, flooding coastal towns and leaving extensive damage across metropolitan Houston.
With wind gusts approaching 100 miles per hour, the 600-mile-wide Category 2 hurricane peeled sheets of steel off skyscrapers in Houston, smashed bus shelters and blew out windows, sending shattered glass and debris across the nation’s fourth-largest city, with a population of 2.2 million.
The storm came ashore on Galveston Island, which in 1900 suffered one of the worst hurricanes to hit the United States. Winds covered the main highway with a layer of boats and debris, shutting it down. In Orange, Tex., near the Louisiana coast, the sea rose so rapidly that people were forced to flee to attics and roofs, and the city used trucks to rescue them, local police said.
Yet officials expressed relief that the damage was not as catastrophic as federal and state officials had warned it would be, in part because forecasters appear to have overestimated how much the sea would rise in the path of the storm.
“Fortunately the worst-case scenario did not occur,” Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said at a news conference Saturday afternoon. “The good news is the surge was not as big as we thought it would be.”
There were reports of as many as four people killed, but it could take days to search flooded homes to assess the full impact of the storm, officials said.
Authorities said the hurricane could still prove to be the most punishing storm to hit the area since Hurricane Alicia 25 years ago.
Almost the entire metropolitan area lost power, and authorities said more than three million people were trying to manage in the dark. Utility officials said it could be weeks before power is restored throughout the region.
The magnitude of the power loss and the flooding raised the possibility that several major oil refineries would take more than a week to reopen. As a result, gasoline prices will probably spike around the country, even if oil prices continue to ease on international markets. Overnight, prices rose an average of 5 cents a gallon, to $3.73 for regular gasoline, according to AAA.
The expectations at nightfall Friday that a virtual tsunami of 20-foot waves would crash directly into Galveston, a city of 57,000, were fortunately dashed after midnight when the eye of the hurricane hit shore. City officials estimated the seas rose about 12 feet, though some tide gauges showed a 15-foot rise, and federal officials said it would take time to determine the exact number.
Whatever the height of the surge, longtime residents of Galveston said the damage was still the worst they had ever seen.
More than two million people evacuated coastal areas of Texas and Louisiana before the storm struck, but the authorities estimated that more than 100,000 people throughout the region, including 20,000 in Galveston, had disregarded mandatory evacuation orders.
For industries in the area, officials at refining companies said early damage reports were encouraging, because the center of the storm missed the refineries. The surge of water into Galveston’s shipping channel, an important depot for imported oil, was not as strong as many had feared, and officials hope to reopen it early in the week if no major obstacles are blocking shipping lanes.
At least 100,000 homes were inundated by surging waters, while isolated fires broke out around the region when trees and flying objects fell on electrical transformers, causing sparks.
In Houston, only the downtown area and the medical center section had power as of Saturday evening.
“It’s going to be weeks before we get power to the last customers,” said Mike Rodgers, a spokesman for Entergy Texas, the primary electricity provider between Houston and the Louisiana border.
President Bush issued a major disaster declaration for 29 Texas counties and said federal officials were prepared to help with recovery efforts.
“Obviously, this is a huge storm that is causing a lot of damage not only in Texas, but also in parts of Louisiana,” Mr. Bush said. “Some people didn’t evacuate when asked, and I’ve been briefed on the rescue teams there in the area. They’re prepared to move as soon as weather conditions permit.”
Senator Barack Obama canceled an appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” aides said, because he felt it would be inappropriate.
Civic leaders asked residents to conserve water and call 911 only in life-or-death situations.
“We don’t know what we’re going to find,” said Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas of Galveston, according to The Houston Chronicle. “We hope we’ll find that the people who didn’t leave here are alive and well.”
Despite the devastating flooding in Galveston, experts said the storm surge had not been as severe as some predicted.
Benton McGee, a hydrologist with the United States Geological Survey, told The Associated Press that the surge at Galveston, where the storm made landfall, was about 11 feet. Forecasters had predicted a surge of up to 25 feet.
But Stacey Stewart, a senior hurricane analyst at the National Hurricane Center, defended the government’s predictions of a 15- to 20-foot surge and said it would take time to determine the exact rise in sea level.
“I wouldn’t go out and say that surge values weren’t as high as predicted,” he said. “We have received reports of 15 feet and the sea wall being topped.”
Mr. Stewart said a shift in the storm’s track to the north just before landfall may have kept the rise in sea levels on the lower side of what had been forecast.
The storm moved through the region more quickly than some previous hurricanes and tropical storms, limiting flooding. By early afternoon, the National Hurricane Center had downgraded Ike to a tropical storm.
Mike Varela, chief of the Galveston Fire Department, said flooding was 8- to 10-feet deep in some areas of the city. “The low-lying neighborhoods are extremely flooded right now,” Chief Varela said.
Twenty-two men aboard a crippled freighter, which was adrift off the coast of Galveston when the hurricane hit, came through the storm safely, the Coast Guard said.
Initial reports from residential neighborhoods around Houston suggested that flooding and property damage were not as serious as some had feared early in the morning after hearing reports from downtown, where windows were shattered on skyscrapers and hotels. Winds downtown were particularly intense.
At Reliant Park, in southwest Houston, the storm tore chunks from the retractable roof of the football stadium, the park’s president and general manager told The Associated Press. The game between the Texans and the Baltimore Ravens scheduled for Monday night would probably have to be postponed, he said.
-Late in the afternoon, Air Force helicopters began plucking people out of flooded homes in Galveston and carrying them to shelters on the mainland.
Joyce Williams, 58, arrived on the first chopper with her 80-year-old mother, Eunice Haley, who had spent the night in a house with four feet of water on the ground floor. Ms. Williams was trying to get her mother out of the swamped house when she saw the helicopter and waved. “I was relieved,” she said.
Steven Rushing, who had tried to ride out the storm at his Galveston home with his family, eventually left by boat. Mr. Rushing, six relatives and two dogs wound up at a hotel in Galveston.
“I know my house was dry at 11 o’clock, and at 12:30 a.m., we were floating on the couch putting lifejackets on,” he said. Once the water reached the television, four feet off the floor, Mr. Rushing said, he retrieved his boat from the garage and loaded his family into it.
“I didn’t keep my boat there to plan on evacuating because I didn’t plan on the water getting that high, but I sure am glad it was there,” he said.
Thayer Evans contributed reporting from Galveston, Tex., and Rick Rojas from College Station.
There is a related multimedia presentation at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/world ... ?ref=world
October 30, 2008
Quake in Pakistan Kills at Least 215
By SALMAN MASOOD
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A powerful earthquake jolted parts of southwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, causing widespread destruction in one of the poorest areas of the country, officials said.
The Associated Press put the death toll at 215 early Thursday. Hundreds more were injured as hundreds of mud houses in desolate villages and hamlets in several districts of Baluchistan Province were leveled by the magnitude 6.5 quake, which struck at 5:10 a.m. Army and paramilitary troops and aid workers scrambled to help the survivors and pull bodies and the injured out of the rubble, but they were hampered by significant damage to roads and the telecommunications network.
The death toll is expected to rise as reports from remote areas funnel in. Meanwhile, an estimated 15,000 people left homeless are trying to withstand the cold and serious aftershocks. Local television showed residents sitting in the open, shivering in the cold. Women huddled in groups with their panicked children. Debris of mud houses with caved roofs presented a bleak sight.
People were shown searching through the rubble for survivors and belongings. There were reports of mass burials.
“It was a shallow earthquake, which is very destructive,” said Qamar Zaman Chaudhry, the director general of the Pakistan Meteorological Department. “The aftershocks will be felt for a week with more or less the same intensity.” Indeed, one on Wednesday evening had a magnitude of 6.2.
The quake struck along a 44-mile stretch including Quetta, the provincial capital, which lies on a fault line and was leveled in 1935 by a quake that killed 35,000 people.
“It was scary,” Malik Siraj Akbar, a resident of Quetta and a journalist for The Daily Times, an English-language daily, said by telephone. “The walls of the apartment complex where I live shook so hard that I just closed my eyes and waited for the roof to collapse. I feel so lucky to be alive.”
Aid workers said that 2,000 to 3,000 homes were damaged and that 500 had collapsed.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it had sent two teams of aid workers to the area, a total of 28 staff members and volunteers, and two mobile health teams.
“Shelter is the most critical need now,” said Hasan Muzamdar, the country director of the relief agency CARE, noting that nighttime temperatures fall to 40 degrees. “Winter has already started here.”
The earthquake on Wednesday brought back bitter memories of the magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck in October 2005 and left more than 75,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands homeless in the northern parts of Pakistan and parts of the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is divided between Pakistan and India. In that disaster, frustration with the slow pace of government assistance tended to run high.
A poor government response in Baluchistan, where bitterness against the federal government in Islamabad has simmered for years, could be very damaging. One of Pakistan’s four provinces, Baluchistan is rich with natural resources and sparsely populated, and armed Baluch nationalists have been demanding greater autonomy and a larger share of the national wealth. However, the affected area is inhabited by Pashtuns, a strongly tribal ethnic group that constitutes the majority of the population of Afghanistan.
But officials in Islamabad said the government was taking necessary measures. “It is a localized affair,” said Farooq Ahmed Khan, head of the National Disaster Management Authority, at a news conference in Islamabad.
He said that 2,000 tents, 5,000 blankets and 4,000 plastic mats had been sent to Baluchistan and that 12 helicopters were taking part in the rescue operation. “There were no major buildings in the area,” he said. “So, there was no need for a technical search-and-rescue operation.”
In the hilly tourist resort of Ziarat, a tent village has been established for women and children, as well as a field hospital in the worst-affected district. Eight villages were completely flattened there, officials said.
Mr. Khan said there was no immediate need to appeal for international assistance but also welcomed “any outside help.”
Jane Perlez contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/world ... ?ref=world
October 30, 2008
Quake in Pakistan Kills at Least 215
By SALMAN MASOOD
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A powerful earthquake jolted parts of southwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, causing widespread destruction in one of the poorest areas of the country, officials said.
The Associated Press put the death toll at 215 early Thursday. Hundreds more were injured as hundreds of mud houses in desolate villages and hamlets in several districts of Baluchistan Province were leveled by the magnitude 6.5 quake, which struck at 5:10 a.m. Army and paramilitary troops and aid workers scrambled to help the survivors and pull bodies and the injured out of the rubble, but they were hampered by significant damage to roads and the telecommunications network.
The death toll is expected to rise as reports from remote areas funnel in. Meanwhile, an estimated 15,000 people left homeless are trying to withstand the cold and serious aftershocks. Local television showed residents sitting in the open, shivering in the cold. Women huddled in groups with their panicked children. Debris of mud houses with caved roofs presented a bleak sight.
People were shown searching through the rubble for survivors and belongings. There were reports of mass burials.
“It was a shallow earthquake, which is very destructive,” said Qamar Zaman Chaudhry, the director general of the Pakistan Meteorological Department. “The aftershocks will be felt for a week with more or less the same intensity.” Indeed, one on Wednesday evening had a magnitude of 6.2.
The quake struck along a 44-mile stretch including Quetta, the provincial capital, which lies on a fault line and was leveled in 1935 by a quake that killed 35,000 people.
“It was scary,” Malik Siraj Akbar, a resident of Quetta and a journalist for The Daily Times, an English-language daily, said by telephone. “The walls of the apartment complex where I live shook so hard that I just closed my eyes and waited for the roof to collapse. I feel so lucky to be alive.”
Aid workers said that 2,000 to 3,000 homes were damaged and that 500 had collapsed.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it had sent two teams of aid workers to the area, a total of 28 staff members and volunteers, and two mobile health teams.
“Shelter is the most critical need now,” said Hasan Muzamdar, the country director of the relief agency CARE, noting that nighttime temperatures fall to 40 degrees. “Winter has already started here.”
The earthquake on Wednesday brought back bitter memories of the magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck in October 2005 and left more than 75,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands homeless in the northern parts of Pakistan and parts of the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is divided between Pakistan and India. In that disaster, frustration with the slow pace of government assistance tended to run high.
A poor government response in Baluchistan, where bitterness against the federal government in Islamabad has simmered for years, could be very damaging. One of Pakistan’s four provinces, Baluchistan is rich with natural resources and sparsely populated, and armed Baluch nationalists have been demanding greater autonomy and a larger share of the national wealth. However, the affected area is inhabited by Pashtuns, a strongly tribal ethnic group that constitutes the majority of the population of Afghanistan.
But officials in Islamabad said the government was taking necessary measures. “It is a localized affair,” said Farooq Ahmed Khan, head of the National Disaster Management Authority, at a news conference in Islamabad.
He said that 2,000 tents, 5,000 blankets and 4,000 plastic mats had been sent to Baluchistan and that 12 helicopters were taking part in the rescue operation. “There were no major buildings in the area,” he said. “So, there was no need for a technical search-and-rescue operation.”
In the hilly tourist resort of Ziarat, a tent village has been established for women and children, as well as a field hospital in the worst-affected district. Eight villages were completely flattened there, officials said.
Mr. Khan said there was no immediate need to appeal for international assistance but also welcomed “any outside help.”
Jane Perlez contributed reporting.
Burst dam'tsunami' kills 58 in Indonesia
Dozens missing as up to 500 homes are destroyed
By Arlina Arshad, Agence France-PresseMarch 28, 2009
A wall of water that broke through this dam near Jakarta killed at least 58 people Friday, sweeping through homes as residents slept.
Photograph by: Reuters, Agence France-Presse
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 2&sponsor=
Adam burst its banks near the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Friday, drowning at least 58 people in a torrent of muddy water that flooded hundreds of homes, officials said.
Dozens remained missing after a huge wall of water broke through the man-made earthen dam as residents slept, giving them little chance to flee their low-lying homes.
One resident compared it to a tsunami, recalling the 2004 disaster that killed 168,000 people in Indonesia.
Houses and concrete buildings were flattened and buckled by the force of the water, which left many survivors in the suburbs of Cireundeu and Ciputat trapped on rooftops waiting to be rescued.
"This disaster happened so suddenly," said Danang Susanto, an official with the health ministry's crisis centre. "Because people were sleeping, they couldn't get away."
He estimated up to 500 homes were destroyed or submerged after heavy rains caused the breach in the dam at the edge of Situ Gintung lake in Cireundeu. The flooding in some places was six metres high.
Crisis centre head Rustam Pakaya put the death toll at 58, saying dozens more were injured.
A nearby university assembly hall was converted into a makeshift morgue, where mud-smeared residents searched for missing loved ones among the bodies of the dead lined up on the floor.
Ghufron, a 17-year-old student, said he narrowly escaped waters that crashed into his home, but an uncle was dead and three other relatives were missing.
"By the time I woke up the water was up to my nose. I climbed to the roof to save myself. I heard people screaming and shouting," he said.
Dewi Masitoh, a 40-year-old house-wife, said she narrowly escaped with her husband and two daughters after they saw rising water reach the door of their stilt house.
"We were on the second floor but my daughter went back downstairs when the window broke and water gushed in. My husband jumped in and pulled her out of the water by her neck.
"I punched a hole through the roof and we all climbed up through," she said, showing cuts and scratches on her arms.
Television images showed bodies floating through the twisting streets nearby and water rushing through the breach in the dam, emptying the lake.
"It was like being in the middle of a
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Dozens missing as up to 500 homes are destroyed
By Arlina Arshad, Agence France-PresseMarch 28, 2009
A wall of water that broke through this dam near Jakarta killed at least 58 people Friday, sweeping through homes as residents slept.
Photograph by: Reuters, Agence France-Presse
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 2&sponsor=
Adam burst its banks near the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Friday, drowning at least 58 people in a torrent of muddy water that flooded hundreds of homes, officials said.
Dozens remained missing after a huge wall of water broke through the man-made earthen dam as residents slept, giving them little chance to flee their low-lying homes.
One resident compared it to a tsunami, recalling the 2004 disaster that killed 168,000 people in Indonesia.
Houses and concrete buildings were flattened and buckled by the force of the water, which left many survivors in the suburbs of Cireundeu and Ciputat trapped on rooftops waiting to be rescued.
"This disaster happened so suddenly," said Danang Susanto, an official with the health ministry's crisis centre. "Because people were sleeping, they couldn't get away."
He estimated up to 500 homes were destroyed or submerged after heavy rains caused the breach in the dam at the edge of Situ Gintung lake in Cireundeu. The flooding in some places was six metres high.
Crisis centre head Rustam Pakaya put the death toll at 58, saying dozens more were injured.
A nearby university assembly hall was converted into a makeshift morgue, where mud-smeared residents searched for missing loved ones among the bodies of the dead lined up on the floor.
Ghufron, a 17-year-old student, said he narrowly escaped waters that crashed into his home, but an uncle was dead and three other relatives were missing.
"By the time I woke up the water was up to my nose. I climbed to the roof to save myself. I heard people screaming and shouting," he said.
Dewi Masitoh, a 40-year-old house-wife, said she narrowly escaped with her husband and two daughters after they saw rising water reach the door of their stilt house.
"We were on the second floor but my daughter went back downstairs when the window broke and water gushed in. My husband jumped in and pulled her out of the water by her neck.
"I punched a hole through the roof and we all climbed up through," she said, showing cuts and scratches on her arms.
Television images showed bodies floating through the twisting streets nearby and water rushing through the breach in the dam, emptying the lake.
"It was like being in the middle of a
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
There is a related video linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/world ... ?th&emc=th
April 7, 2009
Death Toll in Italian Quake Rises to 150
By RACHEL DONADIO and ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
L’AQUILA, Italy — A powerful earthquake shook central Italy early Monday, killing 150 people, Italy’s ANSA news reported.
The 6.3 magnitude quake also injured some 1500 people, left tens of thousands homeless and wrought major damage to historic buildings in the medieval hill towns of Abruzzo Region east of Rome, officials said.
Most of the deaths and damage were centered in L’Aquila, a picturesque fortress town at the quake’s epicenter.
“It’s a disaster never before seen,” said Franco Totani, a lawyer who said he was leaving the town to stay at an uncle’s house in Rome. “I’ve seen earthquakes before but this is a catastrophe.”
Outside a damaged convent, a dozen nuns still dressed in bright orange and blue bathrobes climbed into a van headed to an assistance center. Sister Lidia, the mother superior, said an 82-year old nun had died of shock. “The quake, it was very strong,” she said.
The narrow streets of the historic center were filled with rubble, and parked cars were crushed under large blocks of debris.
The damage to historic monuments was extensive. The cupola of the 18th-century Santa Maria del Suffragio church cracked open like an eggshell, exposing the stucco patterns inside the dome.
Part of the transept of the 13th-century Santa Maria di Collemaggio basilica collapsed, as well as a small cupola in the 18th-century church of Sant’Agostino.
Other historic buildings were damaged in at least 26 surrounding towns in the Apennine mountains. “Some towns in the area have been virtually destroyed in their entirety,” Gianfranco Fini, speaker of the lower house of Parliament, said in Rome before the chamber observed a moment of silence.
Aftershocks shuddered through the area during the day, and rain came in the evening, hampering rescue efforts as people clawed through the debris by hand, frantically seeking survivors.
Friday night, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on national television that 150 people had been killed. Mr. Berlusconi, who canceled a trip to Moscow to survey the region by helicopter, declared a state of emergency.
Authorities said 1,500 people had been injured. A spokesman for Italy’s Civil Protection Agency said on national television that an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people had been left homeless.
The situation is “extremely critical, as many buildings have collapsed,” Luca Spoletini, a spokesman for the civil protection agency, told ANSA shortly after the quake struck.
In L’Aquila, authorities assisted elderly residents in leaving the historic main square, where they had fled in search of safety.
Parts of the main hospital were evacuated because they were at risk of collapse, The Associated Press reported, and only two operating rooms were in use. Bloodied victims waited in hospital hallways or in the courtyard and many were being treated in the open.
Four children died in the hospital after their house collapsed, ANSA reported. A fifth child died in the village of Fossa, eight miles from L’Aquila, a town of 80,000.
The quake struck around 3:30 a.m. and could be felt as far away as Rome, some 60 miles to the west, where it rattled furniture and set off car alarms. The United States Geological Survey said the earthquake that hit L’Aquila was just one of several quakes to hit the region overnight.
Part of a student dormitory in L’Aquila collapsed, and initial reports said one person died and seven people were missing in the debris. At midday, shaken students sat outside the rubble of the four-story dormitory, expressing fears for the fate of others who may not have survived.
“We’re waiting for my son,” said a woman who declined to give her name. She stood among a knot of anxious onlookers and hid her red eyes behind large sunglasses.
“This shouldn’t have happened,” said Gabriele Magrini, 21, a physics student at L’Aquila University, who had been across town at a friend’s house when the quake struck. He said he had been waiting at the university since 4 a.m., adding: “We’ve only seen two people come out. We’re still waiting for 10.”
The worst hit seemed to be the city center in L’Aquila. The Italian Culture Ministry also reported damage to the steeple of the church of San Bernardino, a palazzo housing the state archives and parts of the 16th century castle that houses the National Museum of Abruzzo, which has been closed to the public.
But modern buildings in the outer part of the city were also affected. Residents wheeling dusty suitcases wandered through the streets as rescue workers sifted through the rubble. Electricity, phone and gas lines were also reported damaged.
In a letter to the archbishop of L’Aquila, the Vatican secretary of state, Tarcisio Bertone, wrote that Pope Benedict XVI was praying “for the victims, in particular for children.”
Speaking on Rainews 24, Guido Bertolaso, Italy’s top civil protection official said that the earthquake was “comparable if not superior to the one which struck Umbria in 1997.” That quake killed 10 people and damaged medieval buildings and churches across the region, including Assisi’s famed basilica.
Seismic activity is relatively common in Italy, but intensity like that of Monday’s quake is rare. The L’Aquila quake was the worst to hit Italy since 1980, when a 6.9-magnitude earthquake struck Eboli, south of Naples, leaving more than 2,700 people dead.
The last major quake to hit central Italy struck the south-central Molise region on Oct. 31, 2002, killing 28 people, including 27 children who died when their school collapsed.
Rachel Donadio reported from L’Aquila, and Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome.
****
Update:
Quake victims laid to rest
Thousands mourn at funeral for 205
By Gunther Kern, Agence France-Presse
April 11, 2009 7:47 AM
Italy bade a final farewell Friday to the nearly 300 people killed in the earthquake that devastated the central Abruzzo region, with thousands attending an emotional funeral.
The families of 205 of the 290 victims laid their loved ones to rest after the ceremony, with top government and Catholic Church dignitaries among a throng of more than 5,000.
Many broke into sobs at the sight of so many coffins covered with floral wreaths and arrayed on red carpets at a military college near the devastated Abruzzo capital L'Aquila, nestled in a valley of the Apennine Mountains.
Small, white children's coffins set atop brown ones holding adult victims deepened the sense of loss at the ceremony on Good Friday, the most sombre day of the Christian calendar, marking the death of Jesus Christ.
A toy motorcycle was attached to one of the baby coffins.
Pope Benedict told the mourners in a message: "In this tragic hour . . . I feel spiritually close to you and share your anguish."
The Pontiff, who is expected to visit the region after Easter, wished for "rapid healing for the wounded and courage to have the strength to continue," in the message read out by his personal secretary Georg Ganswein.
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Quake ... story.html
*****
There is a related multimedia linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/arts/ ... ?th&emc=th
Where Culture Is Another Casualty
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
L’AQUILA, Italy — Nadia Gabrielli and her sister, Giuliana, dragged suitcases over the rubble of what remained of L’Aquila. The earthquake early on Monday morning devastated this city of about 68,000 in the Abruzzo region of central Italy. Nearly 300 were killed in the area, and some 28,000 people forced into tent villages and other temporary shelters. Save for a few like the Gabriellis, desperate to retrieve belongings, only stray dogs and rescue workers now wander this city’s empty streets, picking through debris.
Anxiously, the two women asked for help fetching medicine from an apartment in a building that had cracked like a hard-boiled egg, a gaping horizontal fissure running straight through the second-story windows and balcony. Afterward the sisters lamented what had happened to their beloved “city of culture,” as Nadia Gabrielli put it.
In the aftermath, tending to the injured and the dead comes first. But local residents as well as teams of officials have already begun to assess the cultural damage. The earthquake 12 years ago that ravaged Umbria wasn’t nearly as severe but it made headlines abroad because it damaged tourist sites like the famous basilica in Assisi. Less glamorous, Abruzzo is rich in its own heritage, which is priceless to the people here.
“I lived in Latin America and South America for many years,” Nadia Gabrielli added, “but I came back here because this is my city, my culture. It’s our identity.”
Italy is not like America. Art isn’t reduced here to a litany of obscene auction prices or lamentations over the bursting bubble of shameless excess. It’s a matter of daily life, linking home and history. Italians don’t visit museums much, truth be told, because they already live in them and can’t live without them. The art world might retrieve a useful lesson from the rubble.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/world ... ?th&emc=th
April 7, 2009
Death Toll in Italian Quake Rises to 150
By RACHEL DONADIO and ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
L’AQUILA, Italy — A powerful earthquake shook central Italy early Monday, killing 150 people, Italy’s ANSA news reported.
The 6.3 magnitude quake also injured some 1500 people, left tens of thousands homeless and wrought major damage to historic buildings in the medieval hill towns of Abruzzo Region east of Rome, officials said.
Most of the deaths and damage were centered in L’Aquila, a picturesque fortress town at the quake’s epicenter.
“It’s a disaster never before seen,” said Franco Totani, a lawyer who said he was leaving the town to stay at an uncle’s house in Rome. “I’ve seen earthquakes before but this is a catastrophe.”
Outside a damaged convent, a dozen nuns still dressed in bright orange and blue bathrobes climbed into a van headed to an assistance center. Sister Lidia, the mother superior, said an 82-year old nun had died of shock. “The quake, it was very strong,” she said.
The narrow streets of the historic center were filled with rubble, and parked cars were crushed under large blocks of debris.
The damage to historic monuments was extensive. The cupola of the 18th-century Santa Maria del Suffragio church cracked open like an eggshell, exposing the stucco patterns inside the dome.
Part of the transept of the 13th-century Santa Maria di Collemaggio basilica collapsed, as well as a small cupola in the 18th-century church of Sant’Agostino.
Other historic buildings were damaged in at least 26 surrounding towns in the Apennine mountains. “Some towns in the area have been virtually destroyed in their entirety,” Gianfranco Fini, speaker of the lower house of Parliament, said in Rome before the chamber observed a moment of silence.
Aftershocks shuddered through the area during the day, and rain came in the evening, hampering rescue efforts as people clawed through the debris by hand, frantically seeking survivors.
Friday night, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on national television that 150 people had been killed. Mr. Berlusconi, who canceled a trip to Moscow to survey the region by helicopter, declared a state of emergency.
Authorities said 1,500 people had been injured. A spokesman for Italy’s Civil Protection Agency said on national television that an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people had been left homeless.
The situation is “extremely critical, as many buildings have collapsed,” Luca Spoletini, a spokesman for the civil protection agency, told ANSA shortly after the quake struck.
In L’Aquila, authorities assisted elderly residents in leaving the historic main square, where they had fled in search of safety.
Parts of the main hospital were evacuated because they were at risk of collapse, The Associated Press reported, and only two operating rooms were in use. Bloodied victims waited in hospital hallways or in the courtyard and many were being treated in the open.
Four children died in the hospital after their house collapsed, ANSA reported. A fifth child died in the village of Fossa, eight miles from L’Aquila, a town of 80,000.
The quake struck around 3:30 a.m. and could be felt as far away as Rome, some 60 miles to the west, where it rattled furniture and set off car alarms. The United States Geological Survey said the earthquake that hit L’Aquila was just one of several quakes to hit the region overnight.
Part of a student dormitory in L’Aquila collapsed, and initial reports said one person died and seven people were missing in the debris. At midday, shaken students sat outside the rubble of the four-story dormitory, expressing fears for the fate of others who may not have survived.
“We’re waiting for my son,” said a woman who declined to give her name. She stood among a knot of anxious onlookers and hid her red eyes behind large sunglasses.
“This shouldn’t have happened,” said Gabriele Magrini, 21, a physics student at L’Aquila University, who had been across town at a friend’s house when the quake struck. He said he had been waiting at the university since 4 a.m., adding: “We’ve only seen two people come out. We’re still waiting for 10.”
The worst hit seemed to be the city center in L’Aquila. The Italian Culture Ministry also reported damage to the steeple of the church of San Bernardino, a palazzo housing the state archives and parts of the 16th century castle that houses the National Museum of Abruzzo, which has been closed to the public.
But modern buildings in the outer part of the city were also affected. Residents wheeling dusty suitcases wandered through the streets as rescue workers sifted through the rubble. Electricity, phone and gas lines were also reported damaged.
In a letter to the archbishop of L’Aquila, the Vatican secretary of state, Tarcisio Bertone, wrote that Pope Benedict XVI was praying “for the victims, in particular for children.”
Speaking on Rainews 24, Guido Bertolaso, Italy’s top civil protection official said that the earthquake was “comparable if not superior to the one which struck Umbria in 1997.” That quake killed 10 people and damaged medieval buildings and churches across the region, including Assisi’s famed basilica.
Seismic activity is relatively common in Italy, but intensity like that of Monday’s quake is rare. The L’Aquila quake was the worst to hit Italy since 1980, when a 6.9-magnitude earthquake struck Eboli, south of Naples, leaving more than 2,700 people dead.
The last major quake to hit central Italy struck the south-central Molise region on Oct. 31, 2002, killing 28 people, including 27 children who died when their school collapsed.
Rachel Donadio reported from L’Aquila, and Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome.
****
Update:
Quake victims laid to rest
Thousands mourn at funeral for 205
By Gunther Kern, Agence France-Presse
April 11, 2009 7:47 AM
Italy bade a final farewell Friday to the nearly 300 people killed in the earthquake that devastated the central Abruzzo region, with thousands attending an emotional funeral.
The families of 205 of the 290 victims laid their loved ones to rest after the ceremony, with top government and Catholic Church dignitaries among a throng of more than 5,000.
Many broke into sobs at the sight of so many coffins covered with floral wreaths and arrayed on red carpets at a military college near the devastated Abruzzo capital L'Aquila, nestled in a valley of the Apennine Mountains.
Small, white children's coffins set atop brown ones holding adult victims deepened the sense of loss at the ceremony on Good Friday, the most sombre day of the Christian calendar, marking the death of Jesus Christ.
A toy motorcycle was attached to one of the baby coffins.
Pope Benedict told the mourners in a message: "In this tragic hour . . . I feel spiritually close to you and share your anguish."
The Pontiff, who is expected to visit the region after Easter, wished for "rapid healing for the wounded and courage to have the strength to continue," in the message read out by his personal secretary Georg Ganswein.
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Quake ... story.html
*****
There is a related multimedia linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/arts/ ... ?th&emc=th
Where Culture Is Another Casualty
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
L’AQUILA, Italy — Nadia Gabrielli and her sister, Giuliana, dragged suitcases over the rubble of what remained of L’Aquila. The earthquake early on Monday morning devastated this city of about 68,000 in the Abruzzo region of central Italy. Nearly 300 were killed in the area, and some 28,000 people forced into tent villages and other temporary shelters. Save for a few like the Gabriellis, desperate to retrieve belongings, only stray dogs and rescue workers now wander this city’s empty streets, picking through debris.
Anxiously, the two women asked for help fetching medicine from an apartment in a building that had cracked like a hard-boiled egg, a gaping horizontal fissure running straight through the second-story windows and balcony. Afterward the sisters lamented what had happened to their beloved “city of culture,” as Nadia Gabrielli put it.
In the aftermath, tending to the injured and the dead comes first. But local residents as well as teams of officials have already begun to assess the cultural damage. The earthquake 12 years ago that ravaged Umbria wasn’t nearly as severe but it made headlines abroad because it damaged tourist sites like the famous basilica in Assisi. Less glamorous, Abruzzo is rich in its own heritage, which is priceless to the people here.
“I lived in Latin America and South America for many years,” Nadia Gabrielli added, “but I came back here because this is my city, my culture. It’s our identity.”
Italy is not like America. Art isn’t reduced here to a litany of obscene auction prices or lamentations over the bursting bubble of shameless excess. It’s a matter of daily life, linking home and history. Italians don’t visit museums much, truth be told, because they already live in them and can’t live without them. The art world might retrieve a useful lesson from the rubble.
April 12, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Confusing Patterns With Coincidences
By SUSAN HOUGH
Pasadena, Calif.
IN the aftermath of the earthquake at L’Aquila, Italy, on Monday that killed nearly 300 people, splashy headlines suggested that these victims didn’t have to die.
An Italian researcher, Giampaolo Giuliani, began to sound alarm bells a month earlier, warning that an earthquake would strike near L’Aquila on March 29. The prediction was apparently based on anomalous radon gas concentrations in the air; the region had also experienced a number of small tremors starting in mid-January. Mr. Giuliani was denounced for inciting panic by Italy’s Civil Protection Agency, and he was forced to take his warning off the Web after March 29 came and went without significant activity.
Should Italian officials have listened? Should the public have heeded the warnings? With 20-20 hindsight the answer certainly appears to be yes. The real answer is no.
Scientists have been chasing earthquake prediction — the holy grail of earthquake science — for decades. In the 1970s American seismologists declared that the goal was reachable. Yet we have little to no real progress to show for our efforts. We have a good understanding of the planet’s active earthquake zones. We’re pretty good at forecasting the long-term rates of earthquakes in different areas. But prediction per se, which involves specifying usefully narrow windows in time, location and magnitude, has eluded us.
The key question is, can we find precursors that tell us that a large earthquake is imminent? Various phenomena have been investigated: radon levels, changes in earthquake wave speeds, the warping of the earth’s crust, even the behavior of cockroaches and other animals.
The game goes like this: you look back at past recordings of X, where X is radon or whatever, and find that X had shown anomalies before large earthquakes. But the problem is that X is typically what we call a “noisy signal” — data that includes a lot of fluctuations, often for varied and not entirely understood reasons — so finding correlations looking backward is about as meaningful as finding animals in the clouds.
We do know that some earthquakes, including the L’Aquila event, have foreshocks, but we can’t sound alarm bells every time little earthquakes happen because the overwhelming majority — 95 percent or so — will not indicate a coming major quake.
The public heard about Mr. Giuliani’s prediction because it appears to have been borne out, albeit several days after he said the earthquake would happen. But there are scores of other predictions that the public never hears about. And that is a good thing because scientists have yet to be able to accurately predict coming earthquakes. Investigating precursors like radon is a legitimate avenue of research, but until and unless the track record of a method is shown to be statistically significant, making public predictions is irresponsible.
Progress is slow in developing prediction methods, since, after all, they can be tested only by waiting for earthquakes to happen, and the earthquakes we care most about, like the deadly 6.3 magnitude quake in Italy, fortunately don’t happen every day. In the meantime, society’s keen interest in the subject occasionally collides with deliberative research, and misunderstandings like that involving Mr. Giuliani are the unfortunate consequences.
The public would like scientists to predict earthquakes. We can’t do that. We might never be able to do that. What people and government can do is work to make sure our houses, schools and hospitals don’t fall down when the next big one strikes, and that we’re all prepared for the difficult aftermaths. We can look around our homes and our workplace and think about what would happen to them if the terra firma suddenly ceased being firm. We can stop worrying about predicting the unpredictable, and start doing more to prepare for the inevitable.
Susan Hough is a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey.
Op-Ed Contributor
Confusing Patterns With Coincidences
By SUSAN HOUGH
Pasadena, Calif.
IN the aftermath of the earthquake at L’Aquila, Italy, on Monday that killed nearly 300 people, splashy headlines suggested that these victims didn’t have to die.
An Italian researcher, Giampaolo Giuliani, began to sound alarm bells a month earlier, warning that an earthquake would strike near L’Aquila on March 29. The prediction was apparently based on anomalous radon gas concentrations in the air; the region had also experienced a number of small tremors starting in mid-January. Mr. Giuliani was denounced for inciting panic by Italy’s Civil Protection Agency, and he was forced to take his warning off the Web after March 29 came and went without significant activity.
Should Italian officials have listened? Should the public have heeded the warnings? With 20-20 hindsight the answer certainly appears to be yes. The real answer is no.
Scientists have been chasing earthquake prediction — the holy grail of earthquake science — for decades. In the 1970s American seismologists declared that the goal was reachable. Yet we have little to no real progress to show for our efforts. We have a good understanding of the planet’s active earthquake zones. We’re pretty good at forecasting the long-term rates of earthquakes in different areas. But prediction per se, which involves specifying usefully narrow windows in time, location and magnitude, has eluded us.
The key question is, can we find precursors that tell us that a large earthquake is imminent? Various phenomena have been investigated: radon levels, changes in earthquake wave speeds, the warping of the earth’s crust, even the behavior of cockroaches and other animals.
The game goes like this: you look back at past recordings of X, where X is radon or whatever, and find that X had shown anomalies before large earthquakes. But the problem is that X is typically what we call a “noisy signal” — data that includes a lot of fluctuations, often for varied and not entirely understood reasons — so finding correlations looking backward is about as meaningful as finding animals in the clouds.
We do know that some earthquakes, including the L’Aquila event, have foreshocks, but we can’t sound alarm bells every time little earthquakes happen because the overwhelming majority — 95 percent or so — will not indicate a coming major quake.
The public heard about Mr. Giuliani’s prediction because it appears to have been borne out, albeit several days after he said the earthquake would happen. But there are scores of other predictions that the public never hears about. And that is a good thing because scientists have yet to be able to accurately predict coming earthquakes. Investigating precursors like radon is a legitimate avenue of research, but until and unless the track record of a method is shown to be statistically significant, making public predictions is irresponsible.
Progress is slow in developing prediction methods, since, after all, they can be tested only by waiting for earthquakes to happen, and the earthquakes we care most about, like the deadly 6.3 magnitude quake in Italy, fortunately don’t happen every day. In the meantime, society’s keen interest in the subject occasionally collides with deliberative research, and misunderstandings like that involving Mr. Giuliani are the unfortunate consequences.
The public would like scientists to predict earthquakes. We can’t do that. We might never be able to do that. What people and government can do is work to make sure our houses, schools and hospitals don’t fall down when the next big one strikes, and that we’re all prepared for the difficult aftermaths. We can look around our homes and our workplace and think about what would happen to them if the terra firma suddenly ceased being firm. We can stop worrying about predicting the unpredictable, and start doing more to prepare for the inevitable.
Susan Hough is a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey.
April 30, 2009
Op-ed Contributor
How to Prevent a Pandemic
By NATHAN WOLFE
Washington
THE swine flu outbreak seems to have emerged without warning. Within a few days of being noticed, the flu had already spread to the point where containment was not possible. Yet the virus behind it had to have existed for some time before it was discovered. Couldn’t we have detected it and acted sooner, before it spread so widely? The answer is likely yes — if we had been paying closer attention to the human-animal interactions that enable new viruses to emerge.
While much remains unknown about how pandemics are born, we are familiar with the kinds of microbes — like SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), influenza and H.I.V. — that present a risk of widespread disease. We know that they usually emerge from animals and most often in specific locations around the world, places like the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia.
By monitoring people who are exposed to animals in such viral hotspots, we can capture viruses at the very moment they enter human populations, and thus develop the ability to predict and perhaps even prevent pandemics.
Over the past 10 years, my colleagues and I have demonstrated that such monitoring is possible. In Cameroon, we have studied hunters who are exposed to the blood and body fluids of monkeys, bats, wild pigs and other hunted animals. By collecting specimens from both the hunters and their prey, we have discovered previously unknown viruses and documented how they’ve jumped from animals to humans. We have seen, for example, a gorilla retrovirus, never before seen in humans, infect one of our study subjects.
Then, by monitoring infected people and those who are in contact with them, we observe what effects these novel viruses have on people, and how easily they can move from person to person.
We can also identify a virus’s genetic and immunological signatures and other biological information that is needed to create diagnostic tests, vaccines and treatments — so that when a disease appears, it is possible to respond as quickly as possible.
Had similar monitoring systems been in place at farms in Mexico, where the current swine flu outbreak is assumed to have emerged, perhaps we would have been able to identify the movement of the virus at or near the point where it entered humans. Such information could have significantly speeded up our response.
We are not alone in working on pandemic prevention. Many federal agencies — including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States Agency for International Development and the Department of Defense — as well as the World Health Organization and private conservation organizations like the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Wildlife Trust are also looking for ways to stop pandemics early. But much more work is needed.
My organization and its collaborators have recently set up virus monitoring stations in China, Laos, Madagascar, Malaysia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Yet this is just a beginning. To establish a worldwide safety net, we would need to monitor thousands of people exposed to animals in dozens of sites around the world — not only hunters but also people working on farms and in animal markets. It is important that the American government make pandemic prevention a priority and devote more resources to expanding disease surveillance in people and in wild and domestic animal populations throughout the world.
Our current global public health strategies are reminiscent of cardiology in the 1950s — when doctors focused solely on responding to heart attacks and ignored the whole idea of prevention.
We needn’t have been so surprised by the swine flu last week, and we must make sure that we are not caught off guard by the epidemics that will certainly follow it.
Nathan Wolfe, the director of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, is a visiting professor of human biology at Stanford.
Op-ed Contributor
How to Prevent a Pandemic
By NATHAN WOLFE
Washington
THE swine flu outbreak seems to have emerged without warning. Within a few days of being noticed, the flu had already spread to the point where containment was not possible. Yet the virus behind it had to have existed for some time before it was discovered. Couldn’t we have detected it and acted sooner, before it spread so widely? The answer is likely yes — if we had been paying closer attention to the human-animal interactions that enable new viruses to emerge.
While much remains unknown about how pandemics are born, we are familiar with the kinds of microbes — like SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), influenza and H.I.V. — that present a risk of widespread disease. We know that they usually emerge from animals and most often in specific locations around the world, places like the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia.
By monitoring people who are exposed to animals in such viral hotspots, we can capture viruses at the very moment they enter human populations, and thus develop the ability to predict and perhaps even prevent pandemics.
Over the past 10 years, my colleagues and I have demonstrated that such monitoring is possible. In Cameroon, we have studied hunters who are exposed to the blood and body fluids of monkeys, bats, wild pigs and other hunted animals. By collecting specimens from both the hunters and their prey, we have discovered previously unknown viruses and documented how they’ve jumped from animals to humans. We have seen, for example, a gorilla retrovirus, never before seen in humans, infect one of our study subjects.
Then, by monitoring infected people and those who are in contact with them, we observe what effects these novel viruses have on people, and how easily they can move from person to person.
We can also identify a virus’s genetic and immunological signatures and other biological information that is needed to create diagnostic tests, vaccines and treatments — so that when a disease appears, it is possible to respond as quickly as possible.
Had similar monitoring systems been in place at farms in Mexico, where the current swine flu outbreak is assumed to have emerged, perhaps we would have been able to identify the movement of the virus at or near the point where it entered humans. Such information could have significantly speeded up our response.
We are not alone in working on pandemic prevention. Many federal agencies — including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States Agency for International Development and the Department of Defense — as well as the World Health Organization and private conservation organizations like the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Wildlife Trust are also looking for ways to stop pandemics early. But much more work is needed.
My organization and its collaborators have recently set up virus monitoring stations in China, Laos, Madagascar, Malaysia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Yet this is just a beginning. To establish a worldwide safety net, we would need to monitor thousands of people exposed to animals in dozens of sites around the world — not only hunters but also people working on farms and in animal markets. It is important that the American government make pandemic prevention a priority and devote more resources to expanding disease surveillance in people and in wild and domestic animal populations throughout the world.
Our current global public health strategies are reminiscent of cardiology in the 1950s — when doctors focused solely on responding to heart attacks and ignored the whole idea of prevention.
We needn’t have been so surprised by the swine flu last week, and we must make sure that we are not caught off guard by the epidemics that will certainly follow it.
Nathan Wolfe, the director of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, is a visiting professor of human biology at Stanford.
Thousands homeless after typhoon
At least 22 killed in northern Philippines
Agence France-PresseMay 9, 2009
The mangled roof of a gas station is seen in the town of Alaminos, Pangasinan province, after typhoon Chan-hom hit the northern Philippines on Thursday.
Photograph by: AFP-Getty Images, Agence France-Presse
A t least 22 people were killed and thousands displaced overnight as typhoon Chan-hom raked the northern Philippines, officials said Friday.
The typhoon blew out into the Philippine Sea off the northeast coast of Luzon island early Friday after unleashing landslides, floods, and power cuts across the north of the country.
Among the worst-hit areas was the mountain town of Kiangan and nearby areas that were devastated by landslides, and the cape of Bolinao on the South China Sea coast that bore the full force of its landfall late Thursday.
"Bolinao -- well frankly speaking it's devastated,"De-fence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro told reporters in Manila after a helicopter overflight of the coastal region swamped with floods and littered with downed pylons.
Chan-hom killed 12 people in Bolinao and nearby towns, where strong winds knocked down houses, trees and electric posts, he added.
In the Cordillera mountain region northeast of Bolinao, nine villagers were crushed to death by large boulders that rolled down slopes in Kiangan and nearby towns on Thursday night, Olive Luces of the local civil defence office said.
The rocks hit homes and a truck, whose driver was killed. Five people were injured, while two elderly residents were missing after two houses were buried by another landslide in the neighbouring town of Lagawe, Luces added.
The civil defence office in Manila said a man died of a heart attack in a landslide in Olongapo city, northwest of Manila.
The weather disturbance displaced more than 4,000 people, it added.
Power was knocked out in many areas while entire towns in the north remained flooded. Ferry services between south-ern Luzon and nearby islands resumed Friday, allowing more than 1,000 passengers stranded overnight Tuesday to leave the ports.
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At least 22 killed in northern Philippines
Agence France-PresseMay 9, 2009
The mangled roof of a gas station is seen in the town of Alaminos, Pangasinan province, after typhoon Chan-hom hit the northern Philippines on Thursday.
Photograph by: AFP-Getty Images, Agence France-Presse
A t least 22 people were killed and thousands displaced overnight as typhoon Chan-hom raked the northern Philippines, officials said Friday.
The typhoon blew out into the Philippine Sea off the northeast coast of Luzon island early Friday after unleashing landslides, floods, and power cuts across the north of the country.
Among the worst-hit areas was the mountain town of Kiangan and nearby areas that were devastated by landslides, and the cape of Bolinao on the South China Sea coast that bore the full force of its landfall late Thursday.
"Bolinao -- well frankly speaking it's devastated,"De-fence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro told reporters in Manila after a helicopter overflight of the coastal region swamped with floods and littered with downed pylons.
Chan-hom killed 12 people in Bolinao and nearby towns, where strong winds knocked down houses, trees and electric posts, he added.
In the Cordillera mountain region northeast of Bolinao, nine villagers were crushed to death by large boulders that rolled down slopes in Kiangan and nearby towns on Thursday night, Olive Luces of the local civil defence office said.
The rocks hit homes and a truck, whose driver was killed. Five people were injured, while two elderly residents were missing after two houses were buried by another landslide in the neighbouring town of Lagawe, Luces added.
The civil defence office in Manila said a man died of a heart attack in a landslide in Olongapo city, northwest of Manila.
The weather disturbance displaced more than 4,000 people, it added.
Power was knocked out in many areas while entire towns in the north remained flooded. Ferry services between south-ern Luzon and nearby islands resumed Friday, allowing more than 1,000 passengers stranded overnight Tuesday to leave the ports.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
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Landslides in southern Philippines kill 10
ReutersMay 19, 2009
Landslides triggered by several days of heavy rains killed 10 people and about 20 more were missing in a mining village in the southern Philippines, local government officials said on Monday.
About 30 small-scale miners were rescued with minor injuries after they were pulled out from under tonnes of mud and debris near Pantukan town on the southern island of Mindanao, said Arturo Uy, governor of Compostela Valley province.
Uy told reporters rescue teams backed by soldiers and police officers rushed to the disaster area to look for survivors.
"Based on the latest reports, at least 10 bodies have been dug up by the rescue teams," he said. "We're still looking for nearly two dozen more, but our teams lack equipment. Some have shovels but most of the rescuers are using their bare hands."
Uy said several days of rain caused the heavily mined slopes to collapse and bury dozens of make-shift houses. About 200 people live in the town.
Last month, the local government ordered the suspension of small-scale mining operations in the area due to bad weather conditions, but some miners ignored the order and continued working despite the dangers.
Landslides and flash floods are common in the disaster-prone Philippines during the monsoon months between May and October, particularly near mining areas, low-lying and coastal areas.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
ReutersMay 19, 2009
Landslides triggered by several days of heavy rains killed 10 people and about 20 more were missing in a mining village in the southern Philippines, local government officials said on Monday.
About 30 small-scale miners were rescued with minor injuries after they were pulled out from under tonnes of mud and debris near Pantukan town on the southern island of Mindanao, said Arturo Uy, governor of Compostela Valley province.
Uy told reporters rescue teams backed by soldiers and police officers rushed to the disaster area to look for survivors.
"Based on the latest reports, at least 10 bodies have been dug up by the rescue teams," he said. "We're still looking for nearly two dozen more, but our teams lack equipment. Some have shovels but most of the rescuers are using their bare hands."
Uy said several days of rain caused the heavily mined slopes to collapse and bury dozens of make-shift houses. About 200 people live in the town.
Last month, the local government ordered the suspension of small-scale mining operations in the area due to bad weather conditions, but some miners ignored the order and continued working despite the dangers.
Landslides and flash floods are common in the disaster-prone Philippines during the monsoon months between May and October, particularly near mining areas, low-lying and coastal areas.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Cyclone's sea surge hits India, Bangladesh
Agence France-PresseMay 27, 2009
People carry their belongings as they wade through flooded roads to safety in the Indian state of West Bengal on Tuesday after cyclone Aila swept over coastal regions.
Photograph by: Rupak De Chowdhuri, Reuters, Agence France-Presse
Bangladesh and India launched major relief operations Tuesday after a cyclone tore into the northern coast of the Bay of Bengal, killing at least 126 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.
Many children drowned when cyclone Aila triggered a four-metre ocean surge as it made landfall Monday.
About 430,000 people were marooned, and military and civil defence teams were struggling to deliver food, water and emergency shelters.
Bangladesh's Disaster Management Minister Abdur Razzak said people on remote islands had been worst affected and could not be reached because of rough seas.
"Army helicopters are being deployed to carry food and other supplies until the seas calm, but they could not land in some of the islands because of bad weather," he said.
The minister said 91 people in Bangladesh were confirmed dead, including 23 from one village that was swept out to sea after a dam burst.
"Tidal water has started receding, but there is a huge crisis of drinking water in the remotest areas. We have ordered army to set up some 278 water purification plants there," he added.
Dalil Uddin, a spokesman in the disaster control room, said several hundred people were injured as the storm tore over an area where about three million people live, damaging or destroying 180,000 mud and bamboo homes.
"Hundreds of kilometres of roads and embankments have been wiped out," he said.
At least 35 people were killed in India's West Bengal when the cyclone hit crowded Kolkata, bringing down trees and electricity pylons and smashing cars.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Cyclo ... story.html
Agence France-PresseMay 27, 2009
People carry their belongings as they wade through flooded roads to safety in the Indian state of West Bengal on Tuesday after cyclone Aila swept over coastal regions.
Photograph by: Rupak De Chowdhuri, Reuters, Agence France-Presse
Bangladesh and India launched major relief operations Tuesday after a cyclone tore into the northern coast of the Bay of Bengal, killing at least 126 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.
Many children drowned when cyclone Aila triggered a four-metre ocean surge as it made landfall Monday.
About 430,000 people were marooned, and military and civil defence teams were struggling to deliver food, water and emergency shelters.
Bangladesh's Disaster Management Minister Abdur Razzak said people on remote islands had been worst affected and could not be reached because of rough seas.
"Army helicopters are being deployed to carry food and other supplies until the seas calm, but they could not land in some of the islands because of bad weather," he said.
The minister said 91 people in Bangladesh were confirmed dead, including 23 from one village that was swept out to sea after a dam burst.
"Tidal water has started receding, but there is a huge crisis of drinking water in the remotest areas. We have ordered army to set up some 278 water purification plants there," he added.
Dalil Uddin, a spokesman in the disaster control room, said several hundred people were injured as the storm tore over an area where about three million people live, damaging or destroying 180,000 mud and bamboo homes.
"Hundreds of kilometres of roads and embankments have been wiped out," he said.
At least 35 people were killed in India's West Bengal when the cyclone hit crowded Kolkata, bringing down trees and electricity pylons and smashing cars.
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