Tag Archives: Mudslides

Hurricane Matthew hammers Haiti and Cuba, bears down on U.S.

Damage from Hurricane Matthew

By Makini Brice and Sarah Marsh

LES CAYES, Haiti/GUANTANAMO, Cuba (Reuters) – Hurricane Matthew, the fiercest Caribbean storm in almost a decade, hit Cuba and Haiti with winds of well over 100 miles-per-hour on Tuesday, pummeling towns, farmland and resorts and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to take cover.

Dubbed by the U.N. the worst humanitarian crisis to hit Haiti since a devastating 2010 earthquake, the Category Four hurricane unleashed torrential rain on the island of Hispaniola that Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic.

As it barreled towards the United States, the eye of the storm had moved off the northeastern coast of Cuba by Tuesday night, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

At least four people were killed in the Dominican Republic by collapsing walls and mudslides, as well as two in Haiti, where communications in the worst-hit areas were down, making it hard for authorities to assess the scale of the damage.

“Haiti is facing the largest humanitarian event witnessed since the earthquake six years ago,” said Mourad Wahba, the U.N. Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for Haiti.

Over 200,000 people were killed in Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, by the January 2010 earthquake.

Matthew was blowing sustained winds of 140 mph (230 kph) or more for much of Tuesday, though as night fell, the windspeed eased to about 130 mph, the NHC said.

Early reports suggested that Cuba had not been hit as hard as Haiti, where the situation was described as “catastrophic” in the port town of Les Cayes.

In the Cuban city of Guantanamo, streets emptied as people moved to shelters or inside their homes.

Matthew is likely to remain a powerful hurricane through at least Thursday night as it sweeps through the Bahamas towards Florida and the Atlantic coast of the southern United States, the NHC said. The storm is expected to be very near the east cost of Florida by Thursday evening, the center added.

The governor of South Carolina ordered the evacuation of more than 1 million people from Wednesday afternoon.

With communications out across most of Haiti and a key bridge impassable because of a swollen river, there was no immediate word on the full extent of potential casualties and damage from the storm in the poorest country in the Americas.

But Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters in Washington the U.S. Navy was considering sending an aircraft carrier and other ships to the region to aid relief efforts.

The United States has already offered Haiti the use of some helicopters, said Haitian Interior Minister Francois Anick Joseph, who added that damage to housing and crops in the country was apparently extensive.

Twice destroyed by hurricanes in the 18th century, Les Cayes was hit hard by Matthew.

“The situation in Les Cayes is catastrophic, the city is flooded, you have trees lying in different places and you can barely move around. The wind has damaged many houses,” said Deputy Mayor Marie Claudette Regis Delerme, who fled a house in the town of about 70,000 when the wind ripped the roof off.

One man died as the storm crashed through his home in the nearby beach town of Port Salut, Haiti’s civil protection service said. He had been too sick to leave for a shelter, officials said. The body of a second man who went missing at sea was also recovered, the government said. Another fisherman was killed in heavy seas over the weekend as the storm approached.

STARTING FROM SCRATCH

As much as 3 feet (1 meter) of rain was forecast to fall over hills in Haiti that are largely deforested and prone to flash floods and mudslides, threatening villages as well as shantytowns in the capital Port-au-Prince.

The hurricane has hit Haiti at a time when tens of thousands of people are still living in flimsy tents and makeshift dwellings because of the 2010 earthquake.

“Farms have been hit really hard. Things like plantains, beans, rice – they’re all gone,” said Hervil Cherubin, country director in Haiti for Heifer International, a nonprofit organization that is working with 30,000 farming families across Haiti. “Most of the people are going to have to start all over again. Whatever they accumulated the last few years has been all washed out.”

Matthew was churning around 20 miles (32 km) northwest of the eastern tip of Cuba at 11 p.m. EDT (0300 GMT). It was moving north at about 8 miles per hour (13 kph), the NHC said.

Cuba’s Communist government traditionally puts extensive efforts into saving lives and property in the face of storms, and authorities have spent days organizing teams of volunteers to move residents to safety and secure property.

The storm thrashed the tourist town of Baracoa in the province of Guantanamo, passing close to the disputed U.S. Naval base and military prison.

The U.S. Navy ordered the evacuation of 700 spouses and children along with 65 pets of service personnel as the storm approached. U.S. President Barack Obama had earlier canceled a trip to Florida scheduled for Wednesday because of the potential impact of the storm, the White House said.

A hurricane watch was in effect for Florida from an area just north of Miami Beach to the Volusia-Brevard county line, near Cape Canaveral, which the storm could reach on Thursday, the hurricane center said.

Tropical storm or hurricane conditions could affect parts of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina later this week, even if the center of Matthew remained offshore, the NHC said.

Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for Florida on Monday, designating resources for evacuations and shelters and putting the National Guard on standby.

(Reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva in Port-au-Prince and Makini Brice in Les Cayes; Additional reporting by Marc Frank in Cuba and Jorge Pineda in Dominican Republic; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel and Dave Graham; Editing by Simon Gardner, Sandra Maler and Nick Macfie)

Mudslides triggered by storm claim 40 in Eastern Mexico

A view of the house where three members of a family died after a mudslide following heavy showers caused by the passing of Tropical Storm Earl in the town of Temazolapa

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mudslides triggered by intense rainfall in eastern Mexico killed 40 people at the weekend as saturated hillsides collapsed onto modest homes in the wake of now-dissipated Tropical Storm Earl.

The death toll rose late on Sunday after state governors in the two most affected states confirmed two more deaths from a series of mudslides that struck hillside communities.

The head of national emergency services previously put the death toll at 38, the vast majority of whom were found in Puebla state, while the remainder died in neighboring Veracruz.

Rafael Morena Valle, governor of Puebla state, said canine units were searching for the missing, but the number of unaccounted for residents was unclear.

Images of the damage from Earl, broadcast on Mexican television, showed massive mudslides burying entire hillsides, trees felled and buildings creaking under collapsed walls and roofs.

On the Pacific coast, Mexico’s Baja California peninsula braced for another major storm to strike as early as Monday.

Tropical Storm Javier was generating maximum sustained winds of 50 miles per hour (80 kph) on Sunday night and was forecast to become a hurricane late Monday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in a statement.

The center of the storm was expected to strike the southern tip of Baja, home to the beach resort of Los Cabos, by Monday night.

At least 25 of the deaths in Puebla state were confirmed on Sunday near the town of Huauchinango in the rugged Sierra Norte de Puebla mountains, site of the worst destruction so far.

Eleven people have died in Veracruz, buried in landslides after intense rainfall and flooding struck the Gulf coast state after Earl crossed the Yucatan peninsula.

“We continue to monitor rivers that are above critical levels,” Veracruz Governor Javier Duarte said in a post on Twitter on Sunday.

Before striking Mexico, Earl battered Belize last Thursday, smashing car windows and punching holes in the roofs of Belize City’s wooden houses. It also flooded parts of the coast.

(Reporting by Adriana Barrera and David Alire Garcia; Editing by David Gregorio, Bill Trott and Paul Tait)

Tropical storm Earl moves along Mexico’s Gulf coast

Bridge collapse because of Hurricane Earl

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Tropical storm Earl moved along Mexico’s Gulf coast on Friday, dumping large amounts of rain in southern states after battering Belize, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

The hurricane center, in its 7 a.m. CDT (1100 GMT) update, said Earl was about 175 miles (282 kilometers) east southeast of Veracruz, with maximum sustained winds of 40 miles per hour (64 km per hour).

The storm will produce 8 to 12 inches (20 to 30 cm) of rain in parts of the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Puebla, Tabasco and Veracruz, the hurricane center said. It said the rains could result in life-threatening flash floods and mudslides.

Earl, which briefly reached hurricane status on Wednesday but was downgraded on Thursday, was expected to start weakening on Saturday as it moves into mainland Mexico.

Before crossing Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, Earl battered Belize earlier this week, smashing car windows and punching holes in the roofs of Belize City’s wooden houses. It also downed trees and flooded parts of the coast.

State-owned oil company Pemex said late on Thursday it was monitoring Earl but that so far it had not needed to evacuate its offshore platforms.

(Reporting by Christine Murray; Editing by Bill Trott)

Hopes fade for over 130 feared buried in Sri Lanka landslides

A trishaw is seen stuck in the mud at Elangipitiya village in Aranayaka, Sri Lanka May 19, 2016.

By Ranga Sirilal

ARANAYAKA, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – Hopes faded on Thursday for the survival of about 130 people trapped under the mud and rubble of two landslides in Sri Lanka, as heavy rain hampered rescue operations and the death toll from the disaster rose to 58.

Days of torrential rains have forced around 300,000 people from their homes across the island nation, official data showed. Thirty bodies have been retrieved at the landslide sites.

That figure is likely to rise sharply as authorities battling muddy conditions begin to give up hope of reaching 132 people believed to be trapped beneath the landslides.

“I don’t think there will be any survivors,” Major General Sudantha Ranasinghe, the officer in charge of the rescue operation, told Reuters.

“There are places where the mud level is up to 30 feet. We will keep going until we can recover the maximum.”

Rescue efforts have focused on the town of Aranayaka, 100 km (60 miles) northeast of the capital, Colombo, where three villages with at least 66 houses were buried late on Tuesday in the central district of Kegalle.

Military officials used hoes and shovels to shift mud as they scrambled to find survivors amid heavy rain that made walking in the hilly terrain difficult.

Material from destroyed homes littered the area, including mud-swathed dog cages and water tanks, while a three-wheeler was seen partially buried.

The military pulled three bodies and parts of another two from rubble at the site of the second landslide that buried 16 people, Ranasinghe said.

H.P. Kamalawathi, 41, said she is still looking for her mother and two elder sisters, who were buried on Tuesday.

“We may get only the dead bodies,” the mother of two said as tears rolled down her cheeks. She and her family had sought safety in a nearly Buddhist temple.

“We can’t take any chance. We will dig and see,” Disaster Management Minister Anura Priyadharshana Yapa told reporters in Colombo after briefing diplomats and international bodies. Sri Lanka is seeking assistance to deal with the worst landslides in its history.

Health officials said they are monitoring for water-borne disease outbreaks while Yapa said the government has sought foreign aid in the form of motors, boats and purifying tablets.

Aid agencies in Colombo canvassed for boats to rescue hundreds of people trapped by rising river waters. Disaster management authorities said around 300,000 people displaced across the country by the disaster had been sent to 610 safe locations.

Troops also used boats and helicopters in rescue operations. The torrential rains since Sunday have caused floods and landslides in nineteen of the country’s 25 districts.

Flooding and drought are cyclical in Sri Lanka, which is battered by a southern monsoon between May and September, while a northeastern monsoon runs from December to February.

(Additional reporting and writing by Shihar Aneez; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Aftershocks bring Misery for Japan

Yuji Maeda cries as he watches search and rescue operation at a site where houses collapsed due to a landslide caused by an earthquake in Minamiaso town

By Elaine Lies

TOKYO (Reuters) – Aftershocks rattled survivors of deadly Japanese earthquakes on Wednesday, nearly a week after the first one struck, as the area braced for heavy rain and the possibility of more landslides.

Rescuers using backhoes and shovels to dig through crumpled houses swept away in a landslide found a woman’s body, one of several people still missing. Another death was confirmed later in the day, taking the toll to 48.

Hundreds of people in the Kumamoto area of southwestern Japan spent another night in their cars, afraid to return to damaged houses.

Medical experts warned of the danger of potentially fatal blood clots from sitting too long in cramped conditions after a 51-year-old woman died and at least 12 people were hospitalized.

Eleven people appear to have died of illnesses related to their prolonged stay in evacuation centers, NHK national television said. The first quake hit late last Thursday and the largest, at magnitude 7.3, some 27 hours later.

“I keep thinking the earthquakes will stop, but they just go on and on,” one woman at an evacuation center in Mashiki, one of the worst-hit areas, told NHK.

“It’s really scary.”

Of more than 680 aftershocks hitting Kyushu island since April 14, more than 89 have registered at magnitude 4 or more on Japan’s intensity scale, strong enough to shake buildings.

An earthquake of 5.8 magnitude struck off Japan’s northeast coast on Wednesday evening, the U.S. Geological Survey said, but there was no tsunami warning, nor were there any reports of damage or casualties.

The agency gave an initial magnitude of 6.1 for the quake that was centered 104 km (about 60 miles) southeast of Sendai, Honshu, near where a devastating quake and tsunami struck in March 2011, killing about 20,000 people.

On Kyushu, nearly 100,000 people were in evacuation centers, some huddling in blankets outside as night temperatures fell as low as 8 Celsius (46 Fahrenheit).

Heavy rain is expected over the area, raising fear that slopes weakened by the quakes could collapse.

Authorities have begun condemning buildings and other structures deemed unsafe. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of buildings collapsed, many brought down by their heavy roofs of traditional tiles.

Though public buildings must abide by stringent safety standards, the law is lax for private homes.

“When a big earthquake hits, structures may sustain damage that’s impossible to fix if there’s another quake within days,” said Akira Wada, professor emeritus at Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Most of those who were killed had returned to their homes after the first quake.

(Additional reporting by Kwiyeon Ha; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Ecuador disaster toll tops 500, big new quake shakes coast

A flattened car is seen under the debris of a collapsed hotel after an earthquake struck off the Pacific coast in Pedernales, Ecuador

PEDERNALES, Ecuador (Reuters) – A magnitude 6.2 earthquake shook Ecuador’s coast early on Wednesday, terrifying locals and impeding rescuers after a bigger weekend quake battered the same area and killed nearly 500 people.

The latest earthquake hit 25 km (15 miles) off Muisne on the northwest Pacific coast at a depth of 15 km, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.

That was near the epicenter of Saturday’s 7.8 quake, which devastated a long swath of the coast and dealt a major blow to the oil-producing nation’s already fragile economy.

Witnesses said two strong tremors of about 30 seconds each woke people up and sent them running into the street.

No tsunami warning was issued, and there were no immediate reports of major damage.

Ecuador’s Geophysical Institute said there were in fact two quakes of magnitude 6.2, followed by 17 aftershocks. The USGS, however, mentioned one quake of 6.1 size.

Local media reported that rescue operations were temporarily suspended because of the new earthquake, amid dwindling hopes of finding more survivors from Saturday’s quake.

That earthquake quake killed 480 people, left another 107 missing, and injured more than 4,600. It also destroyed about 1,500 buildings, triggered mudslides and tore up roads.

Some 20,500 people were left sleeping in shelters.

“PLEASE, GIVE US THE CORPSES”

Supervising work in the disaster zone, President Rafael Correa said the weekend quake had inflicted $2 billion to $3 billion of damage to the economy and could knock 2 to 3 percentage points off growth.

Lower crude revenue had already left the poor Andean nation of 16 million people facing near-zero growth, cutting investment and forcing it to seek financing.

In isolated villages and towns, survivors struggled without water, power or transport, although aid was trickling in.

Along Ecuador’s Pacific coast, sports stadiums served as both morgues and aid-distribution centers.

Scores of foreign aid workers and experts have come to help. About 14,000 security force members are keeping order, but sporadic looting has been reported.

Rescuers were losing hope of finding more people alive, although relatives of the missing begged them to keep looking.

“There is still a small margin of time to find survivors,” Correa said. “But I don’t want to give excessive hope.”

One woman arrived from the highland capital Quito in search of her daughter and niece, who had been on a beach trip, and urged police to take care with excavators as they searched a destroyed hotel in Pedernales.

“Please,” she said, “at least give us the corpses intact.”

(Additional reporting by Alexandra Valencia and Diego Ore in Quito; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Larry King and Lisa Von Ahn)

Cyclone Chapala Dumps One Year of Rain Plus on War Torn Yemen

Yemen, a country that gets an average of 4 inches of rain per year has received that and more in just this one day as Cyclone Chapala crashed it’s way onto its coast. Some news reports in Yemen are reporting up to 48 inches of flooding rains. Thousands are fleeing something that they have never seen before!  This tropical storm is the first on record to make landfall in the impoverished Arab country.

The country has been plunged into chaos this year by a conflict between Houthi rebels and forces loyal to deposed President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi. A Saudi-led coalition in March began bombing the Houthis, who are aligned with Iran.

Yemen is already dealing with one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world, according to the United Nations. The widespread fighting has killed thousands of people, many of them civilians, and left millions more desperately short of food, water and medical supplies.

Now the Yemeni people are faced with 85 mph winds, incredible flash flooding, rock and mud slides and very little help.  According to news reports at least 6000 have fled to upper ground to escape the escalating flooding.  

According to news reports, Abdul-Jamil Mohammed, deputy director of the Environmental Protection Authority on the island of Socotra, a Yemeni island where Chapala has already passed reported strong winds, heavy rain and big waves overnight into Monday.

At least three people were killed and over 200 injured.  

Mohammed said the storm damaged some homes and uprooted trees in Hadibo, the capital of Socotra. Contact has been lost with the northeastern part of the island since Sunday night, and floods have covered the roads leading there, he said.

“Our problem is we have no one to help us here,” he said, explaining the island has one hospital and four ambulances. A shortage of fuel has already caused great trouble for the island.

While numerous tropical systems have formed in the Arabian Sea, it is uncommon for a storm the strength of Chapala to occur so far south and west. Chapala was the equivalent of a low-end Category 4 hurricane as it passed by Socotra.

170,000 Evacuated in Eastern Japan from Massive Flooding

Typhoon Etau has dumped more than 2 feet of rain in areas of Eastern Japan since Monday causing unprecedented flooding. Raging waters have torn houses from their foundations, uprooted trees and forced more than 170,000 people from their homes. Those who didn’t leave found their houses submerged within minutes.

Helicopters hovering over swirling, muddy waters rescued 101 people from the roofs of their homes as of Thursday. Seven people are missing and at least 17 were injured, one seriously.

“Tochigi Prefecture is facing a grave danger and is in an emergency situation,” Japan Meteorological Agency Spokesman Takuya Deshimaru said. “It is experiencing unprecedented downpour.”  

The disaster is far from over. Parts of eastern Japan will get another 2-4 inches of rain over the next 36 hours, according to CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam.

The mountains will help induce more rain and will funnel the precipitation, intensifying flooding and causing an even greater risk of mudslides.

Remnants of Tropical Storm Erika Cause Flooding

Tropical Storm Erika collapsed before making landfall in Florida but the remnants of the storm are wreaking havoc across parts of three states.

Parts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina are being doused with torrential rains which has led to flooding and even mudslides.

“It is difficult to pinpoint exactly which locations will see the heaviest rainfall on any given day, but a general swath from the Florida peninsula to the coastal plain of the Carolinas may see heavy rainfall through the first half of the new week,” The Weather Channel said.

ABC 4 Charleston reported that 6.43 inches of rain fell by 10 a.m. making the day already the fifth wettest in the city’s history with the rest of the day to go.  Schools across the region were closed and even the city’s trolley service had to be shut down by the flooding.

Fire officials said there was at least one water rescue.

They also reported a dangerous animal situation: a gator was photographed swimming down a flooded residential street.  Officials even used drones to patrol the area to make sure the gator couldn’t sneak up on some of the animal control officials sent to capture it.

Much of the city of Charleston is at or just above sea level and the rainfall struck the same time as high tides.

Erika claimed 21 lives before it broke apart after crossing Cuba.

At Least 28 Dead from Typhoon Soudelor

Officials in China and Taiwan report that at least 28 people have been confirmed dead as a result of Typhoon Soudelor.  The death toll has been steadily rising since the storm roared through Taiwan into mainland China.

Taiwanese officials say that six people are confirmed dead including a mother and her twin daughters who were swept out to sea.  At least 379 people were injured by the storm and over four million homes were without power, a record for most homes without power at one time.

Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported the storm’s heavy rains caused mudslides which buried homes in the Wenzhou and Lishui areas.

Some areas reported 27 inches of rain in a 24 hour period, the most for that area in over 120 years according to state media.

Damage to crops from the storm is estimated at $644 million with overall damage estimated at $1.43 billion.

The western Pacific has experienced ten typhoons this year.