The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. – Benjamin Franklin
Record rains have already left huge parts of the northeast state of Queensland under water, killing 30 people and damaging or destroying 30,000 homes and businesses.
As the flood waters move across southeast Victoria state some residents of the small Victorian community of Murrabit West were urged to evacuate as water from the Murray River began spilling over the levees protecting the township.
Residents of the town of Horsham, which lies 190 miles northwest of Melbourne and is home to 14,000 people, were rushing to protect their homes with sandbags as the swollen Wimmera River threatened 500 properties.
The river is expected to peak overnight at more than 13ft and could inundate another small 12 towns.
“It’s predicted to be a one-in-200-year event,” a Victoria emergency services spokesman said.
“We are expecting [Horsham] will be cut in half by the river and that the highway be cut as well.”
Across Victoria, more than 1,600 properties have been affected by rising water and 3,500 people have been evacuated from their homes.
Last night a seven-year-old child was missing after falling into a flooded river.
After receiving an urgent e-mail from a contact in Australia informing me of bizarre weather on the weather satellite imagery, I checked out the data and just hours later more strangeness. I am waiting to hear from the Australian Government’s weather bureau for their own explanation.
“There is very strange weather happening here – please check”
A contact in Australia just alerted me to what he describes as “very strange weather taking place over the south west of Australia”. He told me to go to the national weather satellite images if I could not open the images he attached (See left). By the time I had discovered the e-mail and checked, the large clearly defined ring had mostly dissipated but still was just visible on a time loop which was spiraling counter clockwise (Low Pressure system).
The images above is what my contact sent which shows a wide band ring covering many hundreds of miles across the south west of Australia with a small dot (presumably cloud) shown just right of center.
I saved the loop of the area when I checked the site several hours later but unfortunately it was encrypted not to permit this. The loop is not now on the site but the satellite image taken at 16:30 UTC is also very interesting.
Update: Brazil flood death toll jumps to 335 (Telegraph)
Three towns in the Serrana mountain region north of Rio were devastated as landslides destroyed homes, roads and power lines and buried families alive as they slept.
Teresopolis, 62 miles north of Rio, was the worst hit town with 130 deaths recorded after hillsides gave way and a river burst its banks following the equivalent of a month’s rainfall in 24 hours.
In Nova Friburgo 107 were killed, including three firemen buried by mudslides, while 20 people died in Petropolis, according to Brazil’s Globo News television channel.
Read moreBrazil: Floods Leave More Than 257 Dead – Update: Death Toll Jumps to 335
Stormy weather forced President Mahinda Rajapaksa to cut short his tour of flood-affected areas on Wednesday as torrential rain continued to play havoc in parts of Sri Lanka, killed 18 people and affecting at least 960,000 more.
The Disaster management Centre said that 180,151 people were living in 453 centres for the displaced set up in affected districts. The government has appealed to the public to donate essentials including dry rations, mattresses, bed sheets and drinking water.
R.M.S. Bandara of the National Building Research Organisation told reporters that landslide warnings were issued in 10 districts including Matale, Badulla and Kandy.
What is worse is that the livelihood of the victims is likely to be affected with more than one third of the country’s paddy productions coming from the flooded districts. About 40,000 acres of paddy cultivation has already been damaged.
Because of incessant rain drinking water ponds have also been contaminated. In Colombo, prices vegetables have shot up because of supply shortage.
Emergency sirens blared across Brisbane, Australia’s third-largest city, on Wednesday as floodwaters that have torn a deadly path across the northeast poured into an empty downtown, swamping neighbourhoods. At least 22 people have died and more than 40 are missing across Australia’s northeastern state of Queensland since drenching rains that began in November sent swollen rivers spilling over their banks, flooding an area larger than France and Germany combined.
Added: 3. Januar 2011
You’re watching multisource world news analysis from Newsy
Australia is experiencing one of the worst floods in the past 70 years. BBC says the flooding has reached ‘biblical proportions.’
“Even in a land as vast as Australia the scale of the flooding is hard to comprehend. In central Queensland, murky brown flood waters cover an area the size of Germany and France combined.”
Al Jazeera reports the residents of local towns don’t seem to have any miracles coming their way any time soon.
“The water has gone down, but the trouble we have here is that all the dams on every tributary are actually full. So if we were to another 200 millimeters of rain like we did on the night before the flood — things could turn nasty quite quickly.”
Added: 10. Januar 2011
At least four are dead after flash floods swept through Toowoomba, carrying away cars and people.
Added: 10. Januar 2011
Rapid flash flooding in Toowoomba, Queensland sweeps several cars downstream. The death toll is currently at 8 with 72 missing due to the ‘inland tsunami’. This flood is said to be a 1 in 100 year event. The damage bill of the flooding is currently over $5billion, but the human cost is what is more important.
Added: 11. Januar 2011
Related article:
– Cotton Jumps by Limit Amid Australia Floods (BusinessWeek):
Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) — Cotton prices jumped the most allowed by ICE Futures U.S. after the worst floods in half a century damaged crops in Australia, the world’s fourth-largest exporter.
Officials have warned that the disaster may last for weeks
(BBC NEWS) — Food prices in Australia could rise by as much as 30% in the coming months as a result of the Queensland floods, it has been warned.
The investment bank JP Morgan says it expects food prices to spike, which will also push up headline inflation.
The bank’s chief economist in Australia said 50% of crops had been affected by the floods, with 20% wiped out.
Stephen Walters also told the BBC that rises in Australia could have a knock-on impact on prices in Asia.
JP Morgan also said that coal mining had been significantly damaged and estimated that the floods would shave 0.4% off GDP growth in the last quarter of 2010 and the first three months of 2011.
The worst floods to hit Queensland for more than 50 years have left 10 people dead and more than 70 missing.
Read moreAustralia Floods: Food Prices to Rise 30% – 50% of Crops Affected, With 20% Wiped Out
– More rain worsens floods in Australia (AP):
BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — Almost a foot (300 millimeters) of rain in just a few hours renewed flood fears in Australia’s already waterlogged Queensland state Saturday, sending a surging river over its banks and into another large town.
Officials said about only 20 buildings in Maryborough, where about 22,000 people live, were expected to be flooded after the river burst its banks in the overnight downpour. The waters were expected to peak on Sunday.
“A number of businesses … will have floodwaters in their basements,” Mayor Mick Kruger said.
But the new flooding was a reminder that the state has almost no capacity to absorb more heavy rains after weeks of drenching tropical weather submerged an area the size of Germany and France combined.
– Australia floods: new storms hit flood region (Telegraph):
Heavy rains fell in eastern Australia on Thursday, bringing fresh misery to flood-hit communities as the mayor of the flooded city of Rockhampton warned it could take up to a year to recover from the worst flooding in decades.
– Australian floods raise fears of wheat shortage (Telegraph):
US wheat futures rose heavily yesterday as concerns grew that Australian wheat growers will be unable to deliver their harvests as a result of the devastation. Australia is the world’s fourth largest exporter of wheat after the USA, Canada and Russia.
At the Chicago Board of Trade, the price of wheat for March delivery rose over 3pc, at one point hitting $8.25 (£5.30) a bushel, the highest since last August. Warnings over impending cold weather in the US were also cited as reasons for the rise.
See also:
– Australian Floods Affect Bigger Area Than France and Germany Combined (Video)
– 200,000 Australians Affected By Floods Covering Larger Area Than France And Germany
A play ground affected by flooded waters is seen in Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia January 1, 2011.
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Floods that have inundated 22 Australian towns and forced more than 200,000 from their homes headed towards the northeast coast on New Year’s Day, forcing further evacuations and warnings of 30-ft flood waters.
Australia has endured its wettest spring on record, causing six river systems in tropical Queensland to flood, as soaring temperatures in the states of Victoria and South Australia sparked warnings of devastating bushfires.
The rain has flooded coal mines and hit farming hard, with many roads still impassable, and prompted warnings of the dangers of crocodiles and snakes in flooded homes.
The inland sea that stretches across Queensland is dotted with the roofs of flooded homes, islands of dry ground crowded with stranded livestock and small boats ferrying people and emergency supplies.
On Saturday, coastal areas were preparing for the worst. Evacuations were under way in the town of Rockhampton where the Fitzroy River, one of Australia’s largest river systems, was expected to flood.
The town’s airport was closed to commercial flights, while relief officials warned the floods would likely reach more than nine metres (30 ft) in height.
Read moreAustralia: Now Coastal Queensland Braces For 30-Ft Flood Waters
Added: 31. December 2010
Flooding across Australia’s northeast is continuing to cause chaos and shows no sign of abating.
The country’s now recorded its wettest spring, causing six major river systems in Queensland state to burst their banks.
An area bigger than France and Germany combined has been affected, with some 22 towns across the state inundated, leaving some 200,000 people stranded.
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Dozens of people have been killed and thousands have abandoned their homes as floods and mudslides ravage Colombia and Venezuela.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Tuesday urged nearly 500 people to evacuate from the vulnerable hillside of a poor Medellin suburb where a landslide killed dozens as it buried about 30 homes.
The bodies of 36 victims — at least a third of them children — have been recovered from Sunday’s disaster. Authorities say about 90 people remain missing.
Santos on Tuesday visited the stricken suburb of Bello, about 155 miles (250 kilometers) northeast of Bogota, and told reporters the landslide was a tragedy waiting to happen. He promised to build 1,000 homes for at-risk families in the town, where officials say between 80 and 100 homes are in danger.
Meanwhile, authorities in Venezuela evacuated 5,000 more people from high-risk areas, bringing the total number of Venezuelans displaced by weeks of rain to more than 106,900, Defense Minister Carlos Mata Figueroa said Tuesday. At least 35 people have been killed by flooding and mudslides.
A state of emergency has been declared in several areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina after five days of torrential rain caused what has been decribed as the worst flooding in a century.
The Bosian Army is using boats to deliver food and drinking water to houses cut-off, due to roads and bridges being submerged by water.
Read moreBosnia: Worst Floods In A Century, State of Emergency Declared
Added: 4. September 2010
Related article: Heavy rains devastate Guatemala (BBC News)
A bus was caught in a landslide killing at least ten people near central Chimaltenango city
GUATEMALA CITY — At least 20 people were killed in Guatemala in landslides triggered by weeks of driving rains, according to figures released by national emergency and rescue services.
President Alvaro Colom has declared a national emergency in the wake of the disaster.
“Top priority at present is dealing with this emergency. There are no funds left to deal with earlier disasters like the one caused by tropical storm Agatha,” in late May, Colom told reporters after a surveying tour of the country Saturday
He said damage estimates across Guatemala after weeks of rain stood at 350-500 million dollars, or 40 percent of the damage wrought by Agatha, which killed 183 people in Central America, including 165 in Guatemala earlier this year, and left thousands homeless.
The latest rains have triggered several dozen landslides around the country.
One swept away a bus on a road near central Chimaltenango city killing at least 10 people and injuring 20.
The other killed four people inside a house in western Quetzaltenango.
Read moreGuatemala Floods: President Alvaro Colom Declares State of Emergency
Added: 4. September 2010
Heavy rains have caused chaos in Australia’s southern states on Saturday, with major flooding in Victoria state, Australian media reported. (Sept. 4)
Pakistanis displaced by the floods return to their homes in Shikapur, in Sindh province
A senior Pakistan diplomat has accused “powerful” figures of diverting floodwaters into unprotected areas to save their own land.
Abdullah Hussain Haroon, Pakistan’s representative to the UN, has called for an inquiry into a “handful” of cases where influential people took “advantage of these floods and saved themselves” in a disaster that has left more than 1,600 people dead.
Mr Haroon, one of a number of senior officials including a former prime minister who have made the allegations, called for a full judicial inquiry amid claims that unprotected villages had been swamped, forcing the inhabitants to abandon their homes.
However, he said the incidents of embankments being breached by a few influential figures should not hamper the international effort to help the millions affected by the flooding.
The International Monetary Fund said yesterday that it will give Pakistan £290m in emergency aid over the coming weeks. The IMF’s managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said yesterday that discussions on repayment of a £7.1bn loan would continue.
The announcement came amid continuing pressure on Pakistan over its handling of the unprecedented floods that have affected more than 18 million people and caused nearly £28bn of damage to infrastructure and agriculture, the mainstay of the economy.
Read morePakistan: Rich ‘Diverted Floods To Save Their Land’
Nineteen-month old Amina at Save the Children’s clinic for severely manlnourished children in Aguie, Niger, yesterday. Two of her siblings have already died within the past year HARRIET LOGAN/SAVE THE CHILDREN
Hundreds of thousands of children across central Africa are at risk of death from starvation and disease after flash flooding worsened an already chronic humanitarian crisis caused by drought.
Aid agencies warned yesterday that 10 million people are already facing severe food shortages, particularly in the landlocked countries of Chad and Niger, after a drought led to the failure of last year’s crops. As many as 400,000 children are at risk of dying from starvation in Niger alone, according to Save the Children.
Now unusually heavy rains have washed away this year’s crops and killed cattle in a region dependent on subsistence agriculture. Organisations including Oxfam and Save the Children say that the slow international response to the emergency means that only 40 per cent of those affected are receiving food aid. As many as four out of five children require treatment for malnutrition in clinics.
Such is the shortage of international aid that the United Nations World Food Programme has had to scale back its £57m operation to feed eight million people in Niger and instead concentrate its efforts on the most vulnerable – children under two – according to Oxfam.
Save the Children says the increased malnutrition rate could swiftly be followed by an increase in the number of children dying from disease because of floods in Niger caused by heavy rain over the past few weeks. “Stagnant pools of water have been contaminated by animal carcasses and are a breeding ground for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. This has increased the threat of malaria, respiratory disease and diarrhoea – the biggest killers of young children,” the organisation said.
Related article:
– Floods cut off N Korean city (Telegraph):
North Korea has been forced to deploy military units to rescue 5,000 people who were left stranded by a fresh wave of flooding along the impoverished state’s border with China.
BEIJING (AP) — Flooding has forced the evacuation of more than a quarter-million people in northern China along its border with North Korea, state media said Monday.
Heavy rains over the last several days caused the Yalu river, which marks the border, to breach its banks, although the water level had started to fall late Sunday, the official Xinhua News Agency state media said Monday.
It said four people died, including a couple in their 70s and a mother and son, after their homes in Dandong were swept away by flash floods. Xinhua said 253,500 residents have been evacuated after the Yalu rose to its highest level in a decade.
An official with the Water Resources Department in Liaoning province, where Dandong is located, confirmed that four people had died though he was unable to provide details. He refused to give his name because he was not authorized to speak with the media.
North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said torrential rain and water from the overflowing Yalu — or Amnok as it is known in Korean — swamped houses, public buildings and farmland in more than five villages near Sinuiju, the city opposite Dandong.
The report described Sinuiju and the surrounding area as having been “severely affected” by the flooding and said officials, the military and ordinary civilians were involved in rescue work. It said at least 5,150 people had been evacuated and residents were clambering on rooftops or taking shelter on hilltops.
Much of North Korea’s trade with the world passes through the city, forming a vital lifeline for the isolated, economically struggling country. Flooding in previous years has destroyed crops and pushed North Korea deeper into poverty, increasing its dependence on international food aid.
For China, the Dandong flooding is the latest disaster in the country’s worst flood season in over a decade. Landslides caused by heavy rains have smothered communities in western China and accounted for most of the more than 2,500 people killed.
Authorities in the northwestern province of Gansu on Sunday called off rescue efforts for 330 people still missing after an Aug. 8 mudslide tore through Zhouqu county, killing 1,435 people, Xinhua said. The Zhouqu government forbade digging in the debris, fearing that recovering corpses buried for two weeks would spread disease.
In the tropical island of Hainan in southern China, communities were bracing for the arrival of a tropical storm, expected to reach land late Monday or early Tuesday.
Xinhua said more than 20,000 fishing boats had been called back to their ports ahead of the arrival of “Mindulle,” which means dandelion in Korean.
—
Associated Press Writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
AP foreign, Monday August 23 2010
ALEXA OLESEN
Source: The Guardian
“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”
– John Adams
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– Pakistan Forced To Take Loan From World Bank (Because Of Slow Pace Of Aid Forces)
– Russia and Pakistan: ‘Blocked’ jetstream to blame for freak weather, say scientists
Once your fate depends on the elite mafia you are doomed.
– Max Keiser on Greece: ‘The IMF is a Financial Mafia’:
The International Monetary Fund is that last thing you need. You will lose your sovereignty. It exercises terrorism. You will be raped in such a way, that it will be the worst pain you have ever felt.
Flood survivors in Punjab province jostling for emergency relief yesterday as about 150,000 people were forced to move to higher ground when the swollen Indus River submerged more villages (AP)
Pakistan’s already creaky economy has been pushed to the verge of ruin by the devastating floods of the past month.
With foreign aid only now beginning to trickle in, the impoverished country has been forced to take out further loans while pleading for outstanding ones to be restructured.
Already burdened by heavy debt, the country’s economy has suffered a major setback. Funds will have to be poured into reconstruction efforts while many sectors of the economy, especially agriculture, will suffer losses for up to several months, if not years. So far, the floods have covered a fifth of the country, cost at least 1,600 lives, displaced 4.6 million people, destroyed roads, bridges and schools, damaged power stations and dams, and swamped millions of acres of agricultural land.
About 150,000 Pakistanis were forced to move to higher ground yesterday as water from a freshly swollen Indus River submerged dozens more towns and villages in the south. Officials expect the floods to recede across the country in the next few days as the last river torrents empty into the Arabian Sea. Survivors may find little left when they return home. Already, 600,000 people are in relief camps set up in Sindh during the past month. The floods have affected about one-fifth of Pakistan’s territory; at least six million people have been made homeless, and 20 million affected overall.
A top-level delegation from Pakistan’s Finance Ministry will travel to Washington this week to ask the International Monetary Fund to ease the restrictions imposed on its $11.3bn (£7.3bn) support package. Before the floods, Pakistan was struggling to meet the fund’s requirements. Meeting those conditions now will be impossible.
Some officials estimate that the cost of rebuilding infrastructure could be $15bn, money that Islamabad simply doesn’t have. As of July, Pakistan had a debt of $55.5bn. That figure will jump to $73bn in 2015-16, as debts that were rescheduled after 9/11, in exchange for Pakistan’s co-operation in the “war on terror”, will come back into play.
See also:
A displaced family wades through floodwaters in the Muzaffargarh district of Pakistan’s Punjab province. The lives of 20 million people have been disrupted by the worst floods to hit the country (REUTERS)
The world Bank has offered a $900m (£577m) loan to Pakistan to help with the country’s flood recovery programme.
As aid donations to the beleaguered nation fall short of what is needed, the body said that funds would be diverted from ongoing and planned projects in the country. “We are re-prioritising to make the funds immediately available,” said spokeswoman Mariam Altaf.
With widespread destruction of roads, bridges and other vital infrastructure, experts say that rebuilding could take many years and cost billions to complete. There are concerns that millions of people will need food aid, emergency shelter and medicine for weeks, if not months, to come. While the lives of an estimated 20 million people have been disrupted by the floods, agencies say that food and clean water have only so far been provided to 500,000. Anywhere between 3.5 million to 6 million children are said to be at risk from water-borne diseases.
Read morePakistan Forced To Take Loan From World Bank (Because Of Slow Pace Of Aid Forces)
See also:
– Russia and Pakistan: ‘Blocked’ jetstream to blame for freak weather, say scientists
A Pakistani mother carries her children through floodwater in Muzaffargarh, Pakistan. (AP)
Two weeks into the worst natural disaster in its history, Pakistan is braced for further flooding as waters in the upper reaches of the swollen Indus river reach critical levels.
With more than 1,600 people confirmed dead and as many as 20 million made homeless, the country is reeling from the scale of the catastrophe wrought by torrential monsoon rains. The prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, said Pakistan now faced challenges similar to those during the 1947 partition of the subcontinent when as many as 500,000 people were killed.
He called on Pakistanis to rise to the occasion, amid growing fears of social unrest or even a military takeover given the government’s shambolic response to the floods. “The nation faced the situation successfully at that time of the partition and, God willing, we will emerge successful in this test,” he said.
Yousuf Raza Gilani, prime minister, told his cabinet to speed up relief work and try and estimate the financial scale of the damage.
Continuing heavy rain in the northwest triggered more flood warnings and some 15,000 houses were destroyed in the south as rivers carried the floodwaters into Pakistan’s Punjab province.
Survivors were facing starvation after four-fifths of food stocks had been washed away, the United Nations’ World Food Programme warned.
DEC launches Pakistan floods appeal
Punjab is Pakistan’s most populous area and contains nearly three fifths of the nation’s people. It is also holds swathes of farmland, earning it a reputation as the country’s breadbasket.
Flood waters receded in the worst hit northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, but the area remained devastated by landslides and flash floods from last week’s record monsoon that dumped a foot of rain in 36 hours.
In southern Punjab more than 130,000 people were evacuated by the army, but fears for further casualties grew as many were stranded when they ignored flood warnings.
At least 1.1 million acres of crops have been destroyed in the Punjab agricultural heartland alone the National Disaster Management Authority said.
Read morePakistan: Floods Spread Into Populous Punjab Region
See also: UN: Deadly Floods Affect 1 Million Pakistanis
Pakistan floods strand thousands
The death toll from flooding in north-west Pakistan rose to 1,100 today as rescue workers struggled to save more than 27,000 people still trapped by the water.
The rescue effort was aided by a slackening of the monsoon rains that caused the worst flooding in decades in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa province. But as the waters started to recede, authorities began to understand the full scale of the disaster.
“Aerial monitoring is being conducted, and it has shown that whole villages have washed away, animals have drowned and grain storages have washed away,” said Latifur Rehman, a spokesman for the provincial disaster management authority. “The destruction is massive.”
Read morePakistan Floods Wash Whole Villages Away, Death Toll Rises To 1,100