Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Severe flooding in Thailand has left more than 300 people dead and stranded thousands of others. As rain waters continue to inundate farms and flood cities, the country now faces about $7 billion in damages.
The situation began at the start of monsoon season in July, and three months of rain has resulted in the worst flooding in Thailand for 50 years.
Yingluck Shinawatra, the country's newly elected prime minister, warned Thai citizens that unless waters can be diverted into the sea, Bangkok could be even more severely damaged. Around 90 percent of the locks in the capital, which sits on the Gulf of Thailand, have been opened to allow water to drain out of the city, but additional storms could still cause massive floods, according to The Guardian.
Thai soldiers also built flood walls in Bangkok using more than one million sandbags.
The situation has invited criticism of Yingluck, who some Thais feel didn't properly warn or prepare the country for the disaster. So far, she has refused to call a state of emergency, fearing it would scare off tourists, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The rainy season has also affected Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, where nearly 10,000 people have had to leave their homes.
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Two months of flooding have inundated 58 of Thailand's 77 provinces -- with 25 still severely affected -- and damaged the homes or livelihoods of millions of people, according to the government.
"It's the worst flooding yet in terms of the amount of water and people affected," said an official at the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation who preferred not to be named.
Wat Chaiwatthanaram, one of Ayutthaya's best known temples, has been closed to visitors after a makeshift dyke was breached at the former capital, a popular tourist destination north of Bangkok.
"The water level inside the temple grounds is now 1.50 metres," said Supoj Prommanoch, head of the Fine Arts Office in Ayutthaya, located north of the capital Bangkok.
But he said the authorities were confident they could prevent the floods from reaching Ayutthaya's main World Heritage Park, which is located further away from Chao Phraya River.
The northern city of Chiang Mai, another popular tourist destination, has been badly hit and the authorities are battling to stop the floods reaching central Bangkok.
"The current flood situation is the worst that I have ever seen and it will last until the first week of November," said independent flood expert Royal Chitradon, director of Thai Integrated Water Resource Management.
Diamond stud
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Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Most deaths occurred in metropolitan Manila, which already was soaked by heavy monsoon rains ahead of Typhoon Nesat’s arrival with more downpours and wind gusts of up to 93 miles per hour. Downtown areas along Manila Bay suffered their worst flooding in decades.
Pounding rains obscured the view of anyone on the streets as soldiers and police scrambled to evacuate thousands of people in low-lying areas, where rivers and the sea spilled into shanties, hospitals, swanky hotels, and even the seaside US Embassy compound.
“It’s flooded everywhere. We don’t have a place to go for shelter. Even my motorcycle got filled with water,’’ said Ray Gonzales, one of thousands stranded by fast-rising flood waters.
The massive flooding came exactly a day after this sprawling, coastal city of 12 million held two-year commemorations for the nearly 500 people killed during a 2009 cyclone, which dumped a month’s rainfall in just 12 hours. The archipelago receives about 20 storms and typhoons from the Pacific each year.
Some residents acted more quickly this time to evacuate homes as waters rose, including in the Manila suburb of Marikina, where 2,000 people escaped the swelling river by flocking to an elementary school, carrying pets, TV sets, bags of clothes, and bottled water.
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Friday, September 23, 2011
The Chinese Counsel General handed over these tents to Provincial Disaster Management Director at the Karachi airport for distribution among flood affectees.
The Chinese Counsel General said his country will always stand with Pakistan in difficult times.
While efforts continue to tackle the catastrophe, flood affectees in lower and central Sindh have protested against the shortage of basic necessities including food, medicines and clean drinking water.
People from several districts protested against the shortage of aid and the government’s inability to drain flood waters from several villages in Sindh. Police have reportedly baton charged people protesting the ineffective and insufficient aid.
A shutter down strike is also being observed in the southern town of Kunri.
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Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Heavy record rains for more than a week have swamped several provinces in northern, central and southwest China, also injuring dozens of people, Newscore reports.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs said in a statement that the rain had forced authorities to evacuate more than 1.2 million people from their homes, BBC reports.
Landslides and mudslides have toppled homes and blocked roads in the area, and the National Meteorological Center forecast that the torrential rains that caused them will last for another three days, AFP reports.
"Constant strong rainfall has caused serious flood disasters in Sichuan [southwest], Shaanxi [north] and Henan [central] - 12.3 million people were affected, 57 died and 29 are missing," it said.
One area of the southwestern province of Sichuan, Bazhong, was severely affected, with 13 people killed, 10 missing and 156 injured, a spokesman for the local government told the official China Daily newspaper.
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Tuesday, May 17, 2011
The Mississippi River is flooding with increasing frequency. The mighty Mississippi River flows covers over 2,300 miles from Minnesota down into the Gulf of Mexico with 159 cities situated along its banks. The increased flooding along the Mississippi is due to climate change. This latest flooding of the Mississippi River, brought about by record April rainfall in the Ohio River Valley and very high levels in other states, killing at least 18 people, flooding millions of acres of farmland. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened the Morganza Spillway in an effort to prevent flood waters from effecting larger cities like New Orleans and Baton Rouge by intentionally flooding surrounding areas. It is the first time the spillway has been opened in 40 years.
The fact is we had a tremendous amount of snow over the winter and all that started melting about the same time all this rain started falling a few weeks ago. To be plagued with too much rain will destroy property and lives. It swells the rivers and creeks. Large bodies of water at the ocean shores lines will be made to swell with unusually high waves, dumping billions of tons of water over the now seashore line.
Rain weakens and destroys railroads, truck line beds and bridges. Rain undermines foundations of all types of buildings. Rain makes the atmosphere too heavy with moisture causing sickness. Wind with rain can bring destruction to towns and cities, bringing various germs, causing sickness to the people. It produces unclean water by the swelling of streams and destroying reservoirs of pure drinking water used for the health of the people. Rain is a destructive army within itself. Hail stones are also a property and life destroyer. The weather calamities would increase, taking both a physical and economic toll on a country. Millions of acres of land andcity infrastructure have been destroyed or damaged.
