Archive

Posts Tagged ‘Floods’

Earthquake deaths increasing worldwide – UN report

May 10, 2011 Comments off

tvnz

Earthquake deaths increasing worldwide - UN report (Source: ONE News)Charlotte Bellis took this photo in the Christchurch CBD shortly after the quake struck. – Source: ONE News


Fatalities from earthquakes are increasing worldwide but the chance of dying in a weather-related disaster is diminishing the United Nations said today.

The UN report also claimed economic losses from catastrophes are rising in all regions often due to a lack of investment

Damage to infrastructure – schools, health centres, roads, bridges – is soaring in many low- and middle-income countries despite improvements in many early warning systems, it said in the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction.

Rich countries are also increasingly exposed, with damage on the rise following floods in Australia and earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand already this year, it said.

“Progress is mixed,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in the report.

“The recent events in Japan point to new and catastrophic risks that need to be anticipated,” he warned, referring to the earthquake and tsunami in northeast Japan last March that triggered the worst nuclear crisis in 25 years.

Disasters have already caused more than $300 billion in losses so far this year, roughly the same as in all of 2010, a UN Read more…

Categories: Earth changes, Earthquake Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Scores flee homes as surging Mississippi nears record level

May 9, 2011 Comments off

smh.com

Houses have been engulfed by water in Memphis, Tennessee.Houses have been engulfed by water in Memphis, Tennessee. Photo: Getty Images

Tourists gathered and gawkers snapped photos of the rising Mississippi River, even as more residents were told to flee their homes and the river’s crest edged towards Memphis in Tennessee.

US officials went door-to-door on Sunday, warning about 240 people to get out before the river reached its expected peak on Tuesday.

In all, residents in more than 1300 homes have been told to go, and about 370 people were staying in shelters.


The Mississippi spared Kentucky and north-west Tennessee catastrophic flooding, but some low-lying towns and farmland along the Read more…

Categories: Flood, United States Tags: , , , , , , ,

Flooding forces more evacuations along Mississippi, Ohio rivers

May 6, 2011 Comments off

cnn

Authorities ordered more evacuations near the Mississippi and Ohio rivers as floodwaters continued to surge southward early Friday, inundating farmlands, highways and homes.

The east-central Arkansas towns of Cotton Plant, Gregory and McClelland were under mandatory evacuations, a spokesman for the state’s emergency management department said.

Waters toppled at least one levee in the area, prompting the evacuation order, the spokesman said. The order affected about 1,000 residents from the three small towns.

In Memphis, Tennessee, riverside parks were flooded and the Shelby County Office of Preparedness warned that homes on the upscale Mud Island were among the 2,832 properties that could be affected by flooding.

“There’s nothing you can do to stop it,” said Ben Ferguson, a syndicated talk show host who lives on the island.

Floods prompted authorities to close more than 20 miles of westbound Interstate 40 in eastern Arkansas. The eastbound stretch of Read more…

Categories: Flood, United States Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Rain Colombia’s ‘worst’ natural disaster: Santos

April 26, 2011 Comments off

france24

A Colombian police officer helps evacuate a shop after a landslide in Sabaneta, near Medellin in Colombia. Some 160,000 police officers in the country and 52 aircraft are participating in emergency operations following deadly floods that killed 67 people and caused widespread damage, officials have said.

AFP – Colombia faces its worst natural disaster on record due to the effects of relentless heavy rain that has been pounding most of Colombia this year, President Juan Manuel Santos has said.

The heavy rain, triggered by the La Nina weather phenomenon, has killed at least 69 people in April alone, bringing the total death toll to at least 90, officials said.

“It’s as if our territory had been struck by a hurricane that arrived last year and does not want to leave,” Santos said in an address to the nation.

“This is without doubt the worst natural tragedy of our history,” he said, as he called for “national unity” to face the Read more…

Categories: Colombia, Flood, Weather Tags: , , ,

Mississippi River nears highest level since ’37

April 26, 2011 Comments off

chicagobreakingnews

VICKSURG, Miss. — The National Weather Service has forecast that the Mississippi River will crest at 52.5 feet in Vicksburg on May 13, the highest level since 1937.”We’ve got water coming down on top of heavy rain,” Marty Pope, senior service hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson, told the Vicksburg Post.”It’s looking pretty bad right now. We have lots of rain to come, too.”

The Mississippi River at Cairo, Ill., at the confluence with the Ohio River, stood at 53.5 feet overnight Sunday, 13.5 feet above flood stage, and it was predicted to crest there May 3 at 60 feet.

The stage at Vicksburg stood at 39.2 feet Monday. It reached 43.3 feet on March 31.

In 1937, the Mississippi River topped out at 53.2 feet. In 2008, the river reached 50.9 feet, the highest since 1973 when it reached 51.6 feet.

The benchmark 1927 flood reached 56.2 feet on today’s gauges.

Pope said that 5 to 8 inches of rain were predicted over the next three days from Read more…

Categories: Flood, United States Tags: , , , , , ,

Texas Wildfires Threaten Wheat Crop, Drive Food Prices Higher

April 22, 2011 Comments off

care2.com

Texas Wildfires Threaten Wheat Crop, Drive Food Prices Higher
This month, raging wildfires in Texas have killed two firefighters, burned over a million acres of land and threatened thousands of homes. Three years of record droughts throughout the state have left fields full of dry and dead vegetation, making fighting the spread of wildfire flames extremely difficult.

As firefighters from around the country and the National Guard continue to battle the many blazes scattered across the state, with no immediate end to the crisis in sight, the future looks bleak for Texas farmers. Many farmers’ fields were already damaged by drought, and now some crops have been further harmed by smoke or entirely destroyed by flame.

Some agricultural experts are now predicting that Texas will lose two thirds of this year’s wheat crop to drought and Read more…

Categories: Droughts, Fires, Texas Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ozone hole linked to southern rain increases

April 22, 2011 Comments off

AFP

WASHINGTON — The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is a significant driver of climate change and rain increases in the southern hemisphere over the past 50 years, US scientists said Thursday.

The findings by a team at Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science are the first to link ozone depletion in the polar region to climate change all the way to the equator.

Researchers said the analysis should lead policy-makers to consider the ozone layer along with other environmental factors such as Arctic ice melt and greenhouse gas emissions when considering how to tackle climate change.

“It’s really amazing that the ozone hole, located so high up in the atmosphere over Antarctica, can have an impact all the way to the tropics and affect rainfall there,” said Sarah Kang, lead author of the study in the journal Science. Read more…

Categories: Earth changes Tags: , , , , , , ,

Disasters to slash Australian growth by 1 pct

April 16, 2011 1 comment

AFP

SYDNEY — The hit to exports from Japan’s quake and tsunami, devastating floods in its own northeast and a rallying dollar has shaved 1.0 percent off Australia’s growth forecasts, according to a report.

Accompanied by a slump in consumer spending, the disasters have led the Treasury to downgrade growth from the 3.25 percent flagged in November’s budget update to 2.25 percent, said The Age newspaper on Saturday, citing an internal memo.

The devastation and nuclear crisis in key trading partner Japan wiped 0.25 percent from economic growth, according to the memo, with Australia’s Read more…

Categories: Australia Tags: , , , ,

World Bank: Food prices have entered the ‘danger zone’

April 15, 2011 Comments off

telegraph

Robert Zoellick, World Bank president, said food prices are at “a tipping point”, having risen 36pc in the last year to levels close to their 2008 peak. The rising cost of food has been much more dramatic in low-income countries, pushing 44m people into poverty since June last year.

Another 10pc rise in food prices would push 10m into extreme poverty, defined as an effective income of less than $1.25 a day. Already, the world’s poor number 1.2bn.

Mr Zoellick said he saw no short term reversal in the damaging effect of food inflation, which is felt much more in the developing world as packaging and distribution accounts for a far larger proportion of the cost in the advanced economies.

Asked if he thought prices would remain high for a year, Mr Zoellick said: “The general trend lines are ones where we are in a danger zone… because prices have already gone up and stocks are relatively low.”

Rising prices have been driven by the changing diet of the ballooning middle classes in the emerging markets. “There is a demand change going on, with the higher incomes in developing countries. People will eat more meat products, for example, that will use more grain.

“I am not suggesting that the improved diets in the developing world are the source of the problem but it means it takes longer to Read more…

Categories: Food, Food Crisis, world Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Fires and Drought Trouble Texas and Other US Plains States

April 12, 2011 Comments off

voanews

A volunteer firefighter fights a fire which began outside Marfa, Texas, and was carried by winds to nearby Fort Davis, April 9, 2011

Photo: Alberto Tomas Halpern

A volunteer firefighter fights a fire which began outside Marfa, Texas, and was carried by winds to nearby Fort Davis, April 9, 2011

Drought conditions and high winds have fueled destructive wildfires in northern Mexico and the southern U.S. plains states, especially Texas, where dozens of homes have burned in recent days.  The dry weather is also having an impact on agriculture that is likely to cause some food prices to rise.

Fast-moving wildfires scorched around 32,000 hectares of land in the west Texas ranch country around Fort Davis on Saturday and Sunday, killing cattle and horses, and leaving pastures charred and smoky.  The fires reached populated areas near Fort Read more…

Categories: Droughts, Texas Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,