Tag Archives: Cyclone

Mass devastation after powerful cyclone hit French Island Mayotte with 163mph winds; thousands feared dead

Cyclone Chido Mayotte France

Important Takeaways:

  • Thousands are feared dead after an island in the Indian Ocean was hit by a devastating cyclone which carried 163mph winds and left a trail of destruction likened to the aftermath of a nuclear war.
  • Cyclone Chido hit Mayotte, France’s poorest region, over the weekend, and has been considered the most violent that the island has experienced in almost a century.
  • Chido’s dizzying winds tore through the archipelago and left buildings heavily damaged, vehicles destroyed, and the main airport and hospital completely wrecked.
  • Mayotte Prefect Francois-Xavier Bieuville told local TV: ‘I think there are some several hundred dead, maybe we’ll get close to a thousand, even thousands… given the violence of this event.’
  • However, he said it was currently ‘extremely difficult’ to get an exact number.
  • The Interior Ministry echoed these concerns, saying it could not confirm any figures at this stage, as a Mayotte local explained: ‘What we are experiencing is a tragedy, it feels like the day after a nuclear war. I saw an entire neighborhood disappear.’
  • French civil security spokesperson Alexandre Jouassard told the France 2 news channel: ‘The next minutes and hours are very important.

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Cyclone Mocha leaves destruction and climbing death toll; Blizzard in China

Luke 21:25 ““And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves

Important Takeaways:

  • Deadly Cyclone Mocha displaces thousands in Bangladesh, Myanmar
  • Rescue and recovery operations continued across portions of Bangladesh and Myanmar on Tuesday, two days after Cyclone Mocha’s direct strike on the latter country left a trail of destruction and rising death toll in its wake.
  • At least six deaths have been reported, but officials feared the death toll would climb higher in the coming days.
  • Over 750,000 people evacuated villages close to the shoreline in Bangladesh in the days leading up to the storm, while the World Food Program was gathering food and relief supplies to assist more than 400,000 in Myanmar, Reuters reported.
  • An all-out blizzard was reported in parts of the province, which is located in the southwestern part of China that borders Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. Snow was able to accumulate due to cold air in place and plenty of moisture from Mocha, causing roads and properties to be blanketed in snow.

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Earthquake strikes Vanuatu amidst Cyclones Kevin and Judy

Mathew 24:7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.

Important Takeaways:

  • Vanuatu gets back-to-back earthquakes, cyclone
  • The Pacific nation experienced an initial 6.5 magnitude quake, followed by an aftershock.[5.4] A state of emergency has been declared amid the threat of Cyclone Kevin.
  • The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no tsunami threat from the initial quake.
  • Just a couple of days ago, strong winds and rain from Cyclone Judy had lashed Vanuatu. Electricity and communications in the island nation are still affected.

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5.7 earthquake strikes near New Zealand after cyclone

Mathew 24:7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.

Important Takeaways:

  • Strong earthquake shakes New Zealand
  • The temblor hit the Cook Strait off the coast of the capital Wellington at 7:38 p.m. local time, the U.S. Geological Survey said, adding it was at a depth of 46 miles.
  • The USGS said it was a 5.7 magnitude strike while its New Zealand counterpart, GeoNet, registered it as a magnitude 6.1.
  • More than 61,000 people reported experiencing the temblor, GeoNet said, explaining that the depth it hit means “it was felt more widely and strongly.”
  • A second earthquake, this one a magnitude 4.0, was registered at 8 p.m. near Taumarunui, which is about 227 miles north of Wellington.
  • No tsunami warning has been issued.
  • The earthquakes hit as New Zealand combats the effects of a cyclone that wreaked havoc on the North Island this week.
  • On Tuesday, the country declared a National State of Emergency for only the third time in its history.
  • “It is already a really stressful time for people

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Cyclone leaves more than 150,000 people homeless in eastern India

By Subrata Nagchoudhury and Jatindra Dash

KOLKATA, India (Reuters) – More than 150,000 people were left homeless in the aftermath of a cyclone that unleashed storm surges in eastern India and Bangladesh, officials said on Thursday, with heavy rains hampering relief work in some low-lying coastal areas.

At least five people were killed in the two countries after Cyclone Yaas moved inland from the Bay of Bengal on Wednesday, packing gusts of up to 140 kph (87 mph) and whipping up tidal surges in India’s West Bengal state and neighboring Bangladesh.

Indian officials said the storm had weakened into a depression after hitting the coast but heavy rain poured down in parts of West Bengal, where there was fresh inundation of sea water along some coastal villages on Thursday.

“Restoration work will be difficult unless the weather improves,” West Bengal state minister Bankim Hazra told Reuters.

In West Bengal’s Sundarbans delta, which stretches into Bangladesh, at least 25,000 homes, many of them traditional mud houses, had been destroyed, leaving 150,000 people homeless, Hazra said, citing preliminary estimates.

The storm, the second to hit India in a week, arrived as the country grapples with a deadly second wave of coronavirus infections that has stretched the healthcare system to breaking point.

Some 500,000 people were sheltered in relief camps in West Bengal and officials said they had taken steps to reduce the risk of a potential spread of the virus.

“Flood shelters have quarantine rooms for those showing symptoms of COVID-19 like fever, sore throat, body ache,” Dr. Indranil Bargi, a medical officer in Gosaba area, told Reuters.

People are being tested for coronavirus using the rapid antigen test and anyone who tests positive would be shifted to safe homes set up in government offices and schools, he said.

Authorities in Bangladesh reported flooding of villages due to torrential rains and tidal surges. Three people were dead, two by drowning and a third who was hit by a tree, an official at the Disaster Management Agency said.

“I have never seen a tidal surge rising to this level. It flooded many villages and washed away houses. Many people are marooned,” said Humayum Kabir, an official in the coastal district of Khulna.

Elsewhere on the sub-continent, Nepal was bracing for floods in its plains and landslides in the hills as heavy rains have lashed the Himalayan country since Wednesday and were forecast to last till Saturday.

(Reporting by Jatindra Dash in Bhubaneshwar, Subrata Nagchoudhury in Kolkata, Ruma Paul in Dhaka and Gopal Sharma in Kathmandu; Writing by Sanjeev Miglani and Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore/Mark Heinrich)

Scores missing at sea, at least 19 dead as cyclone tears up Indian west coast

By Sumit Khanna

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) -The Indian Navy mounted a massive air and sea rescue mission on Tuesday for 81 oil workers and crew whose barge sank in heavy seas following a powerful cyclone that tore up the west coast killing at least 19 people.

Around 180 of those on board the barge, off the coast of Mumbai, were rescued from the huge waves as it sank, the navy said.

The cyclone has piled up pressure on authorities at a time when India is grappling with a staggering rise in coronavirus cases and deaths as well as a shortage of beds and oxygen in hospitals.

“This is one of the most challenging search and rescue operations I have seen in the last four decades,” Murlidhar Sadashiv Pawar, Deputy Chief of Naval Staff, told Reuters partner ANI on Tuesday.

Navy spokesman Vivek Madhwal said waves were reaching 20 to 25 feet. “The winds are high and the visibility is low,” he said.

Three more barges have gone adrift near the Gujarat coast but the rescue operations were said to be under control.

Cyclone Tauktae, the most powerful storm to batter the west coast in two decades, ripped out power pylons, trees and caused house collapses killing at least 19 people, authorities said.

The storm made landfall in Gujarat state on Monday and is expected to weaken gradually into a deep depression overnight, the Indian Meteorological Department said.

Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said 160 state roads have been destroyed, 40,000 trees uprooted and several houses damaged.

Navy spokesman Madhwal said five ships backed by surveillance aircraft were scouring the site of the sinking of the barge “P305” in the Bombay High oilfield, where the country’s biggest offshore oil rigs are located.

On Monday, the crew sent an SOS that the ship had lost control as the cyclone roared past Mumbai. Naval ships were deployed to the area and on Tuesday, as it started sinking, many of the crew were rescued from the sea.

The oilfields are around 70 km (45 miles) southwest of Mumbai. The barges are deployed by Afcons Infrastructure Limited, a construction and engineering company based in Mumbai, and were engaged in contract work awarded by Oil and Natural Gas Corp, country’s top exploration company.

Afcons did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment, while ONGC said in a statement it was extending help to the navy and coastguard in the rescue effort.

More than 200,000 people had been evacuated from their homes in Gujarat before Tauktae, packing gusts of up to 210 kph (130 mph), made landfall.

No damage has been reported at refineries located in Gujarat and sea ports that were expected to be in the storm’s path.

The Jamnagar refinery, the world’s biggest oil refinery complex owned by Reliance Industries, had reported no damage, a company spokesman told Reuters.

Operations at the Mundra port, India’s largest private port, have resumed, a port official said.

(Additional reporting by Aishwarya Nair and Sudarshan Varadhan; Writing by Sanjeev Miglani and Nupur Anand; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Alex Richardson and Nick Macfie)

Rescuers hunt for survivors after cyclone kills 119 in Indonesia

By Agustinus Beo Da Costa

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Rescuers searched for dozens missing in the remote islands of southeast Indonesia on Tuesday, as reinforcements arrived to help in the aftermath of a tropical cyclone that killed at least 119 people.

Helicopters were deployed to aid the search, and ships carrying food, water, blankets and medicine reached ports previously blocked by high waves whipped up by tropical cyclone Seroja, which brought heavy rain and triggered deadly floods and landslides on Sunday.

Indonesia’s disaster agency BNPB revised upwards the death toll from the cyclone in the East Nusa Tenggara islands, after earlier saying 86 had died. Seventy-six people were still missing.

“The rescue team is moving on the ground. The weather is good,” BNPB spokesman Raditya Jati told a news briefing.

Search and rescue personnel, however, had trouble transporting heavy equipment for use in the search.

“Search for victims is constrained, the existing heavy equipment cannot be sent to their destination, especially in Adonara and Alor,” the head of BNPB, Doni Monardo, said.

The Adonara and Alor islands were among the islands worst hit by the cyclone, with 62 and 21 people dead respectively.

Aerial images from Adonara on Tuesday showed brown mud and flood water covering a vast area, burying houses, roads and trees.

The military and volunteers arrived on the islands on Tuesday and were setting up public kitchens, while medical workers were brought in.

Video taken by a local official in Tanjung Batu village on Lembata, home to the Ile Lewotolok volcano, showed felled trees and large rocks of cold lava that had crushed homes after being dislodged by the cyclone.

Thousands of people have been displaced, nearly 2,000 buildings including a hospital were impacted, and more than 100 homes heavily damaged by the cyclone.

Two people died in nearby West Nusa Tenggara province.

There were also concerns about possible COVID-19 infections in crowded evacuation centers.

In neighboring East Timor, at least 33 were killed in floods and landslides and by falling trees. Civil defense authorities were using heavy equipment to search for survivors.

“The number of victims could still increase because many victims have not been found,” the main director of civil protection, Ismael da Costa Babo, told Reuters.

“They were buried by landslides and carried away by floods.”

Some residents of Lembata island may have also been washed away by mud into the sea.

A volcano that erupted on Lembata last month wiped out vegetation atop the mountain, which allowed hardened lava to slide towards 300 houses when the cyclone struck, a senior district official said, hoping help was on the way.

“We were only able to search on the seashore, not in the deeper area, because of lack of equipment yesterday,” Thomas Ola Langoday told Reuters by phone.

He feared many bodies were still buried under large rocks.

President Joko Widodo urged his cabinet to speed up evacuation and relief efforts and to restore power.

Weather agency head Dwikorita Karnawati said once-rare tropical cyclones were happening more often in Indonesia and climate change could be to blame.

“Seroja is the first time we’re seeing tremendous impact because it hit the land. It’s not common,” she said.

(Reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costa, Stanley Widianto and Bernadette Christina Munthe in Jakarta and Nelson Da Cruz in Dili; Writing by Gayatri Suroyo and Fathin Ungku; Editing by Martin Petty, Tom Hogue and Bernadette Baum)

Cyclone kills 14 in India, Bangladesh leaving trail of destruction

By Subrata Nagchoudhary and Ruma Paul

KOLKATA/DHAKA (Reuters) – A powerful cyclone pounded eastern India and Bangladesh on Wednesday, killing at least 14 people and destroying thousands of homes, officials said, leaving authorities struggling to mount relief efforts amid a surging coronavirus outbreak.

The populous Indian state of West Bengal took the brunt of Cyclone Amphan, which barrelled out of the Bay of Bengal with gusting winds of up to 185 km per hour (115 mph) and a storm surge of around five meters.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said at least 10 people had died in the state, and two districts been completely battered by one of the strongest storms to hit the region in several years.

“Area after area has been devastated. Communications are disrupted,” Banerjee said, adding that although 500,000 people had been evacuated, state authorities had not entirely anticipated the ferocity of the storm.

With rains continuing, she said the hardest hits areas were not immediately accessible. Federal authorities said they could only make a proper assessment of the destruction on Thursday morning.

“We are facing greater damage and devastation than the CoVID-19,” Banerjee said, referring to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, which has so far killed 250 people in the state.

Members of National Disaster Rescue Force (NDRF) remove a branch of an uprooted tree after Cyclone Amphan made its landfall, in Digha, near the border between the eastern states of West Bengal and Odisha, India, May 20, 2020. REUTERS/Stringer NO ARCHIVES. NO RESALES.

In West Bengal’s capital city, Kolkata, strong winds upturned cars and felled trees and electricity poles. Parts of the city were plunged into darkness.

An official in the adjoining Hooghly district said thousands of mud homes were damaged by raging winds.

In neighboring Bangladesh, at least four people were killed, officials said, with power supplies cut off in some districts.

Authorities there had shifted around 2.4 million people to more than 15,000 storm shelters this week. Bangladeshi officials also said they had moved hundreds of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, living on a flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal, to shelter.

But officials said they feared that standing crops could be damaged and large tracts of fertile land in the densely-populated country washed away.

“Fortunately, the harvesting of the rice crop has almost been completed. Still, it could leave a trail of destruction,” said Mizanur Rahman Khan, a senior official in the Bangladesh agriculture ministry.

Cyclones frequently batter parts of eastern India and Bangladesh between April and December, often forcing the evacuations of tens of thousands and causing widespread damage.

SURGE AND HIGH TIDE

Surging waters broke through embankments surrounding an island in Bangladesh’s Noakhali district, destroying more than 500 homes, local official Rezaul Karim said.

“We could avoid casualties as people were moved to cyclone centers earlier,” Karim said.

Embankments were also breached in West Bengal’s Sundarban delta, where weather authorities had said the surge whipped up by the cyclone could inundate up to 15 km inland.

The ecologically-fragile region straddling the Indian-Bangladesh border is best known for thick mangrove forests that are a critical tiger habitat and is home to around 4 million people in India.

On the Sundarbans’ Ghoramara island, resident Sanjib Sagar said several embankments surrounding settlements had been damaged, and some flooding had started.

“A lot of houses have been damaged,” he told Reuters by phone.

Anamitra Anurag Danda, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation think-tank who has extensively studied the Sundarbans, said that embankments across the area may have been breached.

“The cyclone surge coincided with the new moon high tides. It is devastation in the coastal belt,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Jatindra Dash in BHUBANESHWAR, Writing by Rupam Jain and Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani, Nick Macfie, Alex Richardson and Nick Zieminski)

Cyclone Amphan tears into India, Bangladesh, destroys homes, whips up storm surge

By Subrata Nagchoudhary and Ruma Paul

KOLKATA/DHAKA (Reuters) – A powerful cyclone tore into eastern India and Bangladesh on Wednesday, destroying mud houses and embankments and whipping up a storm surge along the coast, officials said, after millions of people were moved out of its path.

At least one 70-year-old man was killed by a falling tree in Bangladesh’s coastal Bhola district, a police official said. The low-lying country has evacuated 2.4 million people to shelters.

Another 650,000 people have been moved to safety in the eastern Indian states of Odisha and West Bengal, authorities said, an operation carried out amid surging coronavirus infections.

It was too early to estimate a toll on life or damage to property.

Cyclone Amphan began moving inland with winds gusting up to 185 kph, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, director-general of the India Meteorological Department, told reporters.

Mohapatra said that the storm surge could rise to around five meters in the Sundarbans delta, home to around four million people and thick mangrove forests that are a critical tiger habitat.

“Our estimate is that some areas 10-15 kilometers from the coast could be inundated,” Mohapatra said.

On the Sundarbans’ Ghoramara island, resident Sanjib Sagar said several embankments surrounding settlements had been damaged, and some flooding had started.

“A lot of houses have been damaged,” he told Reuters by phone.

The storm will also sweep past Kolkata, a sprawling city of 4.5 million people, where strong winds uprooted trees and electricity poles, littering several streets, television showed.

A home ministry official said authorities in West Bengal and neighboring Odisha had struggled to house thousands of evacuees as shelters were being used as coronavirus quarantine centers.

Extra shelters were being prepared in markets and government buildings with allowances made for social distancing, while masks were being distributed to villagers.

Police in West Bengal said some people were unwilling to go to the shelters because they were afraid of being infected by the coronavirus and many were refusing to leave their livestock.

“We have literally had to force people out of their homes, make them wear masks and put them in government buildings,” said a senior police official in Kolkata.

In Bangladesh, standing crops could be damaged and large tracts of fertile land washed away, officials said. Farmers were being helped to move produce and hundreds of thousands of animals to higher ground.

“Fortunately, the harvesting of the rice crop has almost been completed. Still it could leave a trail of destruction,” Mizanur Rahman Khan, a senior official in the Bangladesh agriculture ministry, said.

Bangladeshi officials also said they had moved hundreds of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, living on a flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal, to shelter.

(GRAPHIC: Map of cyclone path – https://ppe.graphics.reuters.com/ASIA-STORM/INDIA-BANGLADESH/xklpykdqpgd/Amphan-cyclone.jpg)

(Additional reporting by Jatindra Dash in BHUBANESHWAR, Writing by Rupam Jain and Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Nick Macfie)

Rescuers hope to reach more cyclone victims as roads reopen in Mozambique

Aid workers offload maize meal for victims of Cyclone Idai at Siverstream Estates in Chipinge, Zimbabwe, March 24, 2019. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo

By Emma Rumney

BEIRA, Mozambique (Reuters) – Rescuers said they would reach hundreds of people on Monday still stranded more than a week after a powerful cyclone struck Mozambique and swathes of southeast Africa, as roads started to reopen.

Cyclone Idai lashed Mozambique’s port city of Beira with winds of up to 170 kph (105 mph) around midnight on March 14, then moved inland to Zimbabwe and Malawi, flattening buildings and killing at least 657 people across the three countries.

An evacuee from Buzi village carries her belongings as she arrives at a displacement center near the airport, after Cyclone Idai, in Beira, Mozambique, March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

An evacuee from Buzi village carries her belongings as she arrives at a displacement center near the airport, after Cyclone Idai, in Beira, Mozambique, March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

“We are more organized now, after the chaos that we’ve had, so we’re delivering food and shelter to more people today,” Mozambique’s Land and Environment Minister Celso Correia told reporters.

Correia said the number of people in makeshift camps had risen by 18,000 to 128,000 since Sunday, most of them in the Beira area.

Communities near Nhamatanda, around 100 km northwest of Beira and where some people haven’t received aid for days, would receive assistance on Monday, he added.

The cyclone and the heavy rains that followed hampered aid efforts and blocked deliveries of food and other essentials from Beira, which is an important gateway to landlocked countries in the region.

The water covering vast tracts of land west of the port has been receding, but the size of the disaster zone makes getting aid to the neediest difficult.

Aid workers distributed maize meal in the Chipinge district of eastern Zimbabwe – one of the areas where the cyclone wrought major destruction – while residents struggled without access to power or piped water.

“We lost all our perishables after Cyclone Idai,” Chipinge resident Kudakwashe Mapungwana said. “Since then we have no electricity at all and women are busy buying charcoal which is very expensive.”

Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said cases of diarrhea in Mozambique were increasing and they were keeping a close watch out for any outbreak of cholera.

“It’s a killer,” Rhodes Stampa said of cholera, naming the infection as one of his biggest concerns, alongside more flooding. But the weather for the next two weeks looked “pretty good” and dam releases were well-controlled, he added.

Correia said the death toll in Mozambique remained roughly unchanged at 447 on Monday. In Zimbabwe the tropical storm has killed at least 154 people, according to the government, while 56 died in Malawi.

(Additional reporting by Stephen Eisenhammer in Beira, and Philimon Bulawayo in Chipinge and MacDonald Dzirutwe in Harare; Writing by Alexander Winning; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Andrew Heavens)