Natural disaster
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Sparse international aid despite ‘enormous challenges’ This disaster would have challenged a “really rich, fully functioning” country, says Alex Crawford of Sky News. “So the challenges here are enormous”, she says, given how many problems Libya was already facing. Among them are two opposing governments in the east and west, the legacy of a NATO military…
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A huge package of medical supplies – including body bags – has arrived in flood-hit Libya as aid workers urge authorities to stop burying victims in mass graves. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said 29 metric tonnes of health supplies – enough to reach almost 250,000 people – had landed in Benghazi. The supplies, which…
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A few days ago, the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, alerted Nigerians of impending flooding along the River Benue Basin. According to the alert, the Cameroonian Government has plans to “open the flood gates of the Lagdo Dam on the Benue River”. Recall that a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, was signed in 2016 between Nigeria…
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More than 20 rivers have burst their banks in Italy, leaving 13 people dead and forcing thousands from their homes after six months’ rainfall fell in a day and a half. More bodies were found on Thursday after almost every river flooded between Bologna and the north-east coast 115km (70 miles) away. Some 280 landslides…
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As the human death toll topped 28,000, the desperation mounted with each hour that passed for those who hoped to find their relatives alive in the rubble days after two earthquakes devastated Turkey and Syria. But as rescue workers continued their round-the-clock search in freezing temperatures Saturday, the chances of finding survivors among those trapped…
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Rescuers have saved two children wedged underneath the rubble of their home in northern Syria, following the world’s deadliest earthquake for more than a decade. The sisters had been trapped for over 36 hours after the 7.8 magnitude tremor struck on Monday. More than 9,000 deaths have now been recorded in Syria and Turkey due to the quake, with search…
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A strong, shallow earthquake has killed at least 162 people and toppled buildings in Indonesia. The 5.6 magnitude quake hit Indonesia’s densely populated main island, injuring hundreds and forcing many more to flee into the streets, some covered in blood and debris. Officials are currently gathering information on the toll of those injured and killed…
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The Japan Meteorological Agency issued a special typhoon warning on Saturday for Kagoshima prefecture on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s main islands, as the region braces for a powerful and potentially destructive super typhoon. The warning came after the weather agency earlier in the day urged residents to evacuate parts of the Kyushu, ahead of…
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The unforeseen floods that killed at least 1,300 individuals and immersed vast areas of Pakistan in water have also impacted the country’s historical sites, prompting the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to allocate emergency funds to rebuild these heritage sites. The UN body said in a statement on Thursday that it had…
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Hundreds of volunteers joined hands on Saturday to pack thousands of urgent relief kits and food supplies for people affected by the devastating floods in Pakistan. Emiratis, residents, children and people of determination came together at Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre, Dubai Expo City and Expo Centre in Sharjah between 9am and 1pm, in a nationwide volunteering…
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Parts of Pakistan seemed “like a sea”, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Wednesday, after visiting some of the flood-hit areas that cover as much as a third of the South Asian nation, where 18 more deaths took the toll from days of rain to 1,343. As many as 33 million of a population of…
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Hurricane Ida has already resulted in widespread flooding in parts of Louisiana and Mississippi and power outages that are estimated to potentially last for weeks, as the category four storm made landfall in Louisiana Sunday afternoon and moved toward New Orleans. KEY FACTS Ida made landfall at approximately 12:55 p.m. EDT Sunday with maximum sustained winds…
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Most new pandemics have originated through the “zoonotic” transmission of pathogens from animals to humans (Murphy 1998; Woolhouse and Gowtage-Sequeria 2005), and the next pandemic is likely to be a zoonosis as well. Zoonoses enter into human populations from both domesticated animals (such as farmed swine or poultry) and wildlife. But many historically significant zoonoses were…
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A new case of Ebola virus disease was confirmed today in the city of Beni in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). “While not welcome news, this is an event we anticipated. We kept response teams in Beni and other high risk areas for precisely this reason,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. As…
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A major rescue operation to pull survivors from collapsed buildings in eastern Turkey began winding down on Sunday, a day and a half after a powerful earthquake killed dozens. Teams had worked through the night to rescue 45 people from the rubble, Turkey’s disaster authority said, using drills, mechanical diggers, buckets and bare hands in…
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Communities across Asia commemorated the more than 230,000 victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami on Thursday, the 15th anniversary of one of the world’s most deadly disasters. On the morning after Christmas Day in 2004, a 9.1 magnitude quake off northern Sumatra island triggered a tsunami with waves as high as 17.4 meters (57 feet) that swept over vulnerable…
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