Weather

Citation

(2006), "Weather", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 15 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2006.07315cac.003

Weather

18 February 2005, Afghanistan

A cold snap has claimed at least 267 lives in Afghanistan in the past month and thousands more people are thought to be stranded in remote areas. Public Health Minister Mohammad Amin Fatimie says many of the deaths are of children under the age of five, who are suffering from respiratory infections, pneumonia and whooping cough caused by the freezing conditions. “We can confirm some 105 people, mainly children, died of diseases throughout the country in the past one month,” Mr Fatimie said. At least 162 other people have died in avalanches, road accidents and collapsing mud-brick houses due to heavy snowfalls in the poverty-stricken rural areas. Mr Fatimie says that lives in 22 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, mainly in central, northern and north-eastern regions, are under threat from the coldest winter in Afghanistan for six years. Countryside areas are the worst hit and there are fears that more children and elderly people might have died in districts that remain cut off from aid.

20 February 2005India and Pakistan

Avalanches killed 16 people in Kashmir today and cut the Himalayan region off from the rest of India for a second day, stranding thousands of motorists on roads, officials said. A day earlier, two Hindu pilgrims died from exposure in the snowy, freezing weather. The storm cut road and telephone links with the Kashmir valley and shut the main airport in India’s Jammu-Kashmir state. Power outages plunged large parts of the state into darkness. Landslides stranded 4,000 motorists and truckers on the main Jammu-Srinagar highway, the sole route to deliver goods into the Kashmir valley. Army soldiers recovered ten bodies from houses buried by an avalanche in Loran village in south-west Kashmir, Jammu police said. Four men clearing a section of the 190 mile highway were killed when caught in an avalanche, said Manish Kumar, an official responsible for highways in the frontier areas. Two other people died when the roof of their house collapsed in Soura, a Srinagar suburb. Authorities yesterday halted a Hindu pilgrimage to a mountainous cave in Vaishnodevi in south-west Kashmir, after two pilgrims died from exposure. Most pilgrims making the journey on foot or on ponies were turned back, while others waited in Jammu for the weather to improve. Army soldiers rescued 37 villagers trapped in a village in Doda district, after their houses were submerged in snow and the village was cut off. State authorities declared an alert in Jammu-Kashmir yesterday, after the state was cut off from the rest of the country.

21 February 2005. Rescuers today dug out dozens of bodies buried by avalanches in Indian Kashmir, taking the death toll to 110 after the worst snows in two decades swept the Himalayan region. Most of the dead were villagers from southern Anantnag district, whose homes were slammed by walls of snow yesterday, police said. The bodies of four road workers killed by a separate avalanche on the main highway linking Kashmir with the outside world were found and two more workers are missing. “At least 200 people are missing in the avalanche hit villages,” Inspector General Javid Makhdomi told state-run Doordarshan TV. The state was snowed under for the fourth day, largely cut off from the rest of India with flights cancelled, roads blocked and power and phones disrupted. “The army has started moving into the village and will soon start rescue operations,” army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel V.K. Batra said of Sidhnag, in south Kashmir, where ten people are dead and four missing. The army, which has a large presence in the heavily militarised state, said about 15 feet of snow had fallen on parts of the highway linking the Kashmir Valley with the winter capital, Jammu, in the south and troops were providing food and shelter to about 2,000 stranded travellers.

21 February 2005. Avalanches and slides triggered by heavy weekend snowfall in India’s portion of Kashmir have killed at least 154 people and left 200 missing, an official said today. Much of the region remained cut off for a third straight day, blanketed under the heaviest snowfall in 15 years. At least 117 people were killed in avalanches that began yesterday night in a series of Kashmiri villages south of Srinagar, said police officer Imtiyaz Ahmed, who said the toll of the dead and missing remained incomplete. Elsewhere in the region, three separate landslides killed eight people, police said. “Because of heavy snow, we are unable to establish contact with most of the remote areas. The number of dead could increase as reports start to trickle in,” said Khursheed Ganai, a senior administrator of Kashmir valley. At least 1,000 houses have been damaged in the region, which has received up to 15 feet of snow since Friday (February 18). Many road and air links to Jammu-Kashmir were severed, and Indian Air Force pilots were flying in fuel, milk and other necessities. Helicopters had dropped 440 pounds of rations in a tunnel along the Srinagar-Jammu highway, where more than 100 soldiers from the Indo-Tibetan Border Police have taken shelter, said an army spokesman, Col. D.K. Badola. Indian air force helicopters rescued 45 tourists who had been stranded for nearly a week in the Ladakh region, said Air Vice-Marshal S.K. Gehlaut.

22 February 2005. Avalanches and extreme cold have killed at least 244 people in the divided Himalayan province of Kashmir, and about 150 others are missing on both sides, Indian and Pakistani officials said today. Heavy snow has gripped the region since last week, temperatures have dropped to −34 degrees and rescue workers are finding more bodies beneath the snow. Avalanches have closed roads throughout the region, cutting off Indian and Pakistani residents for the fifth straight day. Indians in one region were ordered to evacuate immediately. In Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, officials said at least 58 people had been killed by the freezing weather during the past two weeks, mostly by avalanches. In India-controlled Kashmir, at least 186 people have died since Friday (February 18) from the weather, and the Indian air force flew in food and fuel to the affected areas. India’s top military commander in the Kashmir valley ordered people living in the Pir Panjal mountains, south of Srinagar, where most avalanches have occurred, to immediately evacuate. The snow began falling in Indian Kashmir on Friday and the avalanches began Sunday night. Between Friday and Sunday, 41 people were killed. By yesterday, another 113 bodies were found. Another 32 were discovered today. In some areas, Indian army soldiers used explosives to trigger avalanches and pre-empt future slides, said Maj Gen Raj Mehta, India’s top military commander in the Kashmir valley. About a dozen villages were buried by slides in the Pir Panjal mountain range. In Rang Munda, a village there, three people were killed today. At least ten residents were missing from that village, Mehta said. In two nearby villages, rescue workers found 15 bodies as they began clearing away the snow today, said Aashiq Bukhari, senior superintendent of police. Police and soldiers found another ten bodies today in the village of Ramsu, which was hit by an avalanche on Sunday night, said a police officer in Jammu, the state’s other major city. At least 12 people were still missing in the village, which is about 60 miles south of Srinagar, the officer said. In Srinagar, restaurant workers found the bodies of four colleagues who were asphyxiated after leaving a coal fire burning in their room to keep warm as they slept. Soldiers rescued 58 people in several villages, and army helicopters dropped food packets and blankets for rescue workers to distribute to stranded residents, Mehta said. Weather officials expect the cold spell to continue for a few more days. “There will be snow or rain over the next few days but the worst is over,” said G.K. Mohanty, director of the meteorological office in Srinagar. In Srinagar, the temperature dropped to −34 degrees today. The intense cold was aggravated by at least the fifth straight day of power outages in most parts of Srinagar city and the rest of the state. It will take up to ten days to restore power to the Kashmir valley, said the state’s chief engineer, Shaukat Wani.

21 February 2005Indonesia

At least seven people were killed and up to 100 others were missing after a landslide in a slum near the Indonesian city of Bandung, south-east of Jakarta, early today, police and local officials said. The landslide was triggered by heavy rain and buried the shacks of more than 40 families living in a dumpsite west of Bandung. The city is about 200 km south-east of Jakarta. “So far, we have found seven people dead while five other people were rescued alive but injured,” Second Sergeant Sudrajat from the Batujajar sub-district police post said. A local official at the Batujajar sub-district office who only identified himself as Edi said an estimated 90 to 100 people were missing.

Thirteen people have been killed and 139 are missing under rubble and mud after heavy rain caused a landslide near a garbage dump on the outskirts of the Indonesian city of Bandung, police said today. “So far we have 139 missing, 13 have been found dead and 29 injured,” West Java police commissioner Rachmat Sudanto said. “Those who are missing are buried, and we are trying to find them. We still cannot tell how many of them are dead,” he said. Police said heavy rains appeared to have brought down piles of garbage up to 7 m high from the dump, about a kilometre away from houses, which in turn triggered the landslide early this morning. “The heavy rain brought piles of garbage and prompted the landslide,” detective Caca Supriatna said. Thick piles of black garbage mixed with dirt were blocking the road to two affected villages. Scores of police and soldiers were trying to clear a path to the villages with bulldozers. Rescuers feared the effects of more rain. “If it rains again tonight, there can be another landslide and things can get worse,” Sudanto said. South of Bandung, more than 10,000 were evacuated as floods neared their homes, local radio said. Batujajar district is at the outskirts of Bandung in West Java, 140 km south-east of Jakarta.

22 February 2005. The death toll from a landslide in Indonesia’s West Java Province rose to 46 today with about 140 others still missing, a local government official said. “The number of those who are missing keeps increasing,” said Endin Hendradin, the local head of the Welfare and Development Agency. The landslide triggered by heavy rains occurred in the early hours of Monday (February 21) in a hilly area of the Batujajar district, about 25 K west of Bandung, which was being used as a garbage dump.

12 March 2005China

Heavy snow and rain in south-west China’s Yunnan province has left at least 15 people dead and ten missing, state media reported yesterday. Blizzards and rainstorms have ravaged the Lisu Autonomous Prefecture since the weekend, with snow falls in mountain areas of up to 1 m deep, Xinhua news agency said. Communication and power lines have been cut and houses and farmland ruined. The local government has rushed tons of food and other relief supplies to disaster-affected people, the agency said.

16 March 2005. Severe and un-seasonal snow storms have left at least 36 people dead in southwest China, with about 190,000 people snowed in and 21,000 collapsed houses, a news report said today. More than eight million people have been affected by the blizzards in Yunnan province, which normally enjoys a mild climate but had a metre of snow in some areas between March 3 and 12, the semi-official China News Service said. The province’s economic losses due to the bad weather conditions were estimated at 2.5 billion yuan (300 million dollars).

16 March 2005Madagascar

Thirteen people have died and nearly 9,000 have been left homeless after several weeks of heavy flooding in Madagascar, the Interior Ministry said. Villages were engulfed last week when the eastern Lake Alaotra burst its banks.

19 March 2005Afghanistan

Severe floods across much of Afghanistan have killed at least 88 people and left thousands more homeless. The floods, triggered by heavy rain, hit the south-central province of Uruzgan, Farah and Ghor provinces in the west and Jawzjan in the north today. At least 88 people, most of them children, have been confirmed dead. Officials say more are feared dead in remote districts that have been cut off by the floods. The Interior Ministry says 85 died in Farah province, 680 km west of Kabul. A woman and two children were also killed in neighbouring Ghor province. “At least 21 elders and 64 children were drowned due to floods in Farah,” press officer Dad Mohammed Rasa told AFP. In Uruzgan, scores of houses were destroyed. “Around 600 houses have been destroyed in the Deh Rawood district of Uruzgan province. They are in severe need of food and tents,” ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said. US military spokesman Major Steve Wollman says US-led forces, stationed in Uruzgan to battle the Taliban, used a helicopter to evacuate around 200 people stranded in an island in the middle of a river. In Ghor province, some 266 families have been displaced due to floods. “Some 63 families have been displaced in Chaghcharan, 40 in Charchana district, 100 families in Kanda district and 63 in Shahrak district of Ghor province,” Mr Rasa said. In Jawzjan, around 600 people have been displaced in Khawaja Du Koh district and over 1,000 hectares of farmland has been washed away.

20 March 2005. Torrential rains have killed more than 200 people and destroyed thousands of houses in several parts of Afghanistan in recent days, officials said today. The worst hit areas were Deh Rawud district in the rugged central Uruzgan province and the western provinces of Farah and Herat, they said. “The deaths of 115 have been confirmed, while thousands of homes have been destroyed,” Uruzgan’s governor Jan Mohammad Khan said, adding that many more people were missing. US military Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters rescued around 250 people in the Deh Rawud District, some 70 km north-east of the US at Kandahar, after the Helmand river burst its banks. In Farah, 68 people died as a result of floods, its governor Assadullah Falah said. Officials reported 40 more deaths in Faryab and Ghor provinces. “We have reports of total destruction of 7,800 houses in Farah,” Falah said, adding that large numbers of livestock had been killed. Some 2,500 houses had collapsed in Herat province. Most houses in Afghanistan are built from mud and are highly vulnerable to flooding. Local officials also reported an outbreak of dysentery in Herat’s mountainous and inaccessible Pashtun Zarghoon area. Afghanistan had its worst winter for over a decade after nearly six years of harsh drought. Several hundred people lost their lives during the winter and the current rains coupled with melting snow have caused the latest calamity.

21 March 2005Bangladesh

At least 13 people were killed and 70 injured when a storm lashed parts of northern Bangladesh yesterday, local officials and reporters said. They said the storm, with winds estimated at 90 km/h, ripped through several villages in Gaibandha district, flattening hundreds of houses, uprooting trees and electric poles and damaging crops. Police said they could not yet confirm the number of casualties as rescue teams had not reached the affected areas because of fallen trees and debris. “We are unable to get into the battered villages at night due to bad roads and darkness,” one police officer told reporters in the nearby Bogra district.

21 March 2005. At least 35 people have been killed and 500 injured in a violent tropical storm that whipped through northern Bangladesh overnight. Officials said the storm, packing winds of 60 mph, tore through several villages in the districts of Gaibandha and Rangpur, flattening hundreds of houses, uprooting trees and electric poles and damaging crops. “The storm also turned nearly 10,000 people homeless,” said an official at Gaibandha, some 300 km from Dhaka. “The storm has left a trail of destruction and we are carrying relief to the affected people,” he added. Rural homes, mostly made of bamboo, straw and corrugated iron sheets, could not withstand the rain and wind.

22 March 2005. Bangladesh troops pulled out seven more bodies from the rubble of collapsed homes in the country’s north today, raising the death toll from a storm in the area to 45, officials said. They said efforts were on to locate more bodies from several villages that were mostly razed by Sunday’s storm that also injured at least 700 people. District administration officials said dozens of people were still missing and some of the injured in hospitals may die, taking the death toll even higher. It would take several more days to assess the full extent of damage, they added. Officials said the storm made 10,000 people homeless and damaged rice and other crops.

24 March 2005. At least 80 people have been killed and some 1,000 others have been injured after tropical storms swept Bangladesh over the past four days, officials said today. Of the victims, 32 died and 300 were hurt in storms which lashed 21 districts over the last two days. Forty-eight others were killed and 700 were injured in northern Gaibandha and Rangpur areas on Sunday (March 20). Most of the victims died under collapsed houses and uprooted trees. Others were killed by lightning, hailstorms and boat sinkings, disaster management officials said today. The recent storms also left more than 15,000 people homeless, they said. Meteorology officials said today that more storms were likely to hit the country until the end of May

31 March 2005. Tropical storms that swept across Bangladesh killed at least seven people, injured hundreds of others and destroyed thousands of homes, officials and news reports said today. The storms pounded dozens of farming villages in central and northern Bangladesh yesterday, damaging rice crops and uprooting trees and electricity poles. Five people were killed and about 500 others were injured in Natore district, 100 miles north of the capital Dhaka, said local government official Aminul Islam. Islam said the victims were killed by collapsing homes, flying debris and lightning. The storms also destroyed about 6,000 straw-hut homes in about 50 farming villages in Natore. The storms also killed two people in neighbouring Sirajganj and Pabna districts, the Janakantha daily newspaper said. About 150 others were injured and some 600 homes destroyed. In Dhaka, central Bangladesh, another sudden storm forced several flights to be diverted from the city’s international airport, and stranded many commuters as they headed home from work.

31 March 2005. A tropical storm sweeping through central Bangladesh has left 11 people dead and about 10,000 homeless, local officials said today. Rescue workers said at least 100 people were also injured in three central districts struck by the overnight storm, which was followed by heavy rain. At least 500 rural homes were blown away while rice crops on thousands of hectares were destroyed by the winds, said Natore district administrator Aminul Islam. Seven people were killed in Natore, the worst hit among the three districts. Two other people were crushed under flattened homes and uprooted trees in Manikganj district, 130 km north of Dhaka. Two other people were killed in Pabna district. The storm also toppled electric poles, disrupted phone links and cut off roads.

18 March 2005Turkey

A persistent risk of fresh landslides impeded rescue workers in their efforts today to find 15 people buried after a landslip yesterday in north-eastern Turkey. More than 20 houses were buried in Sivas province’s Sugozu village, surrounded by mountains, in the landslide officials blamed on heavy rains unsettling the mushy ground typical of the region. An earlier toll said 17 people were trapped under the earth, but a new count today by the local crisis centre put the figure at 15. Nine other people were injured in the disaster, but their lives are not at risk, the crisis centre in Ankara said. Dozens of rescuers and earth-moving machines were immediately dispatched to the stricken area, about 400 km north-east of Ankara, but were forced to call off their efforts overnight due to unfavourable conditions. They were unable to resume work on this morning due to continuing landslides.

25 March 2005India

Two days of gales and heavy rains have left at least 18 people dead, 50 hurt and 7,500 homeless in West Bengal. Eight people died in Burdwan, 200 km west of Kolkata, and another ten died in coastal villages strung along the Bay of Bengal. “We have received reports of the deaths and relief has been sent to the affected places,” West Bengal relief minister Hafiz Alem Sairani said. The casualties included 30 children hurt when a school roof collapsed on Wednesday (March 23), he said.

23 March 2005Pakistan

At least 12 people were killed in Kohlu and Zhob areas of Balochistan as a fresh spell of heavy rain caused flash floods in different areas. Train service between Sibi and Jacobabad was suspended and a large number of villages in Sibi, Nasirabad, Pishin and Zhob districts are reported to have been inundated. According reports reaching here eight people were swept away by water torrents in the Kahan area of Kohlu and four young girls were killed when the roof of their house collapsed in Killi Machan village of Pishin district. The seasonal Tani Nullah in Suri Dara of Kahan is in high flood. Heavy rain caused havoc in Nasirabad and Sibi with Bolan, Nari and Lehri rivers reported to be in high flood. Several hundred villages have been affected by a breach in the bank of Lehri river. “At least 300 villages have been inundated in Nasirabad district,” District Nazim Babu Amin Umrani said, adding that the standing wheat crop in the area has been destroyed. Army troops and Frontier Works Organization personnel have launched a relief operation in the area.

23 March 2005. Flash floods triggered by heavy rains hit remote areas of south-western Pakistan today, killing 21 people and forcing thousands of others to flee their flooded homes, officials said. The deaths were reported from some villages near Kolhu, a town about 180 miles east of Quetta after floodwater destroyed many homes there, said Razaq Bugti, a spokesman for the Baluchistan government. He said authorities had started rescue work in the area.

10 April 2005China

Storms, hail and torrential rain have claimed the lives of 18 people in south-west China, state media said today. Thirteen of the victims died in Sichuan province and five in neighbouring Chongqing municipality on Friday (April 8), the Xinhua news agency and Beijing News said. One person remains missing and 30 were injured in Sichuan, Xinhua quoted the local disaster relief office as saying. Most of the 13 people who died in Sichuan were killed by lightning or house collapses, a local official said. The violent weather, the worst so far this year, also destroyed more than 20,000 houses, damaged cropland and cut off power in more than 20 cities and counties in Sichuan, Xinhua said. The largest hailstones were 30 mm in diameter. In Chongqing more than 458,800 residents in 80 townships and districts were affected, with 25 injured. Losses were estimated at 140 million yuan million dollars, the Beijing News reported, citing local officials.

12 April 2005Colombia

At least 11 people were killed and three others missing after torrential rains lashed Colombia over the past two days, local media said today. In Maripi District, in the northern Boyaca department, three adults and three children of the same family were killed when the car they were on board was swept away by floods. In a similar accident in the north-western Antioquia department, three soldiers drowned and three others disappeared while trying to cross a river during a routine patrol. Heavy rains also caused a landslide which buried a house in a rural area of Belen de Umbria, in Risaralda department, killing two children. Traffic leading to the south-western municipality of Colombia was disrupted when the “El Milagro” bridge was swept away by floods from the Ambica river.

11 April 2005India

At least 38 Hindu pilgrims have died and 35 are missing after they were struck by a flash flood while praying on the banks of the Narmada River in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, police said today. Local police chief Swaraj Puri said two bodies had been found on Friday (April 8), while the rest had been recovered over the weekend from Dharaji, near Dewas, some 300 km from Madhya Pradesh’s state capital Bhopal. “Thirty-eight bodies have been recovered so far and 35 people are still reported missing,” Suri said. Locals said the Narmada rose suddenly on Thursday after state run National Hydel Development Corporation (NHDC) released water from the Indira Sagar reservoir on the heavily dammed Narmada River. The NHDC has denied the locals’ version of events but could not immediately explain the surge of water, which came despite the fact there has been no rain in the area. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Babulal Gaur ordered a probe into the incident. “I will present my report within 15 days and the brief includes not just finding out reasons for the tragedy but ways to prevent it in the future,” Principal Secretary Arvind Joshi, who is heading the probe, told reporters. The controversial Narmada Valley project involves the building of 3,000 dams across three states on the Narmada and its tributaries.