Tag Archives: Flash Flood

In Indian Himalayas, drones draw blank in search for workers missing in flooded tunnel

By Alasdair Pal and Neha Arora

TAPOVAN, India (Reuters) – Rescuers in northern India made a vain attempt on Wednesday to find signs of life using a drone to search for 35 construction workers missing inside a tunnel days after a flash flood swept down a mountain valley destroying dams and bridges.

Some 204 people remain unaccounted for since Sunday’s disaster in Uttarakhand state, most of them workers at the Tapovan Vishnugad hydroelectric project and at the smaller Rishiganga dam, which was swept away by the torrent.

At the Tapovan tunnel’s entrance, anxious relatives lingered in heavy rain, desperate for word on whether anyone had been found.

“We don’t know what else to do,” said Deepa Chauhan the sister of 30-year-old Patminder Bisht, a supervisor among the workers at the site.

A drone with five cameras was sent inside a short stretch of the tunnel for a second day on Wednesday, but found no-one, either alive or dead, an official said.

So far, police say, 32 bodies have been retrieved from the Himalayan mountainsides or pulled out of the Dhauliganga river further downstream.

As the hours passed in the winter cold, there was a mounting risk hypothermia could kill anyone in the tunnel who had survived, said Vivek Pandey, a spokesman for the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, a paramilitary force involved in the rescue effort.

Excavators had cleared more than 80 meters of mud blocking the tunnel entrance, but still have at least another 80 meters to go to reach where most of the workers were believed to be trapped, officials at the site said.

Giant boulders were blocking progress.

“Sediment and water has entered the tunnel and we are unable to clear it,” a government official monitoring the situation from New Delhi told Reuters.

Elsewhere in the valley, helicopters dropped food parcels and villagers set up a zip wire across the river to deliver supplies to some of the 13 mountain villages cut off by the disaster.

A team of scientists have reached the glacier site to determine what triggered a calamity, which fueled concern about the building of hydropower projects in the ecologically sensitive mountains.

The flash flood was initially thought to have been caused by a glacier breaking apart and crashing into the river, but some scientists now say it was more likely to have been due to an avalanche.

(Additional reporting by Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow; Writing by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Dozens collapsed glacier after Himalayan glacier’s collapse, scores still missing

LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) – Rescuers raced to free around 35 Indian construction workers trapped in a tunnel, two days after the hydroelectric dam they were helping to build was swept away by a wall of water from a collapsed glacier that barreled down a Himalayan river.

The workers were among 197 people who officials said were still unaccounted for as the death toll from the disaster – which also broke apart bridges, cut off villages and scarred tracts of mountain landscape – rose to 28.

Packing rocks, dirt and construction debris and thought to have been triggered when a glacier lake fed by India’s second highest peak, Nanda Devi, collapsed, the flood swept down the Dhauliganga river on Sunday.

Officials said most of those still missing were shift workers at either the Tapovan Vishnugad hydroelectric project, where the tunnel was situated, or at Rishiganga, a smaller dam which was swept away in the flood.

Soldiers using bulldozers had cleared away rocks at the mouth of the 2.5-km (1.5-mile) tunnel, and video posted by the Indo-Tibetan border police service showed rescuers checking the water level deeper inside.

Rescuers hoped to open the tunnel up by Tuesday afternoon, said Ashok Kumar, director general of police in Uttarakhand state, where the flash flood occurred.

Officials said thermal imaging equipment had also been deployed to help locate would-be survivors, and Uttarakhand’s chief minister, Trivendra Singh Rawat, said 28 bodies had been recovered so far.

Thirteen villages had been cut off by the floodwaters were being resupplied from the air, Home Minister Amit Shah told parliament.

A government official said many locals had apparently managed to escape the waters by fleeing to higher ground as soon as they heard the rumble of the water racing down the valley.

“The workers in the tunnel may not have heard anything and got stuck,” the official said.

The 520 MW Tapovan project, being built by state firm NTPC, is one of many run-of-river projects being developed to upgrade Uttarakhand’s power network.

Officials have yet to conclusively determine what caused the disaster, though scientists investigating it believe heavy snowfall followed by bright sunshine combined with a rise in temperatures may have triggered the glacier’s collapse.

A clearer picture of the circumstances is expected to emerge later this week, officials said.

(Writing by Sanjeev Miglani; editing by John Stonestreet)

At least 18 people, mostly children, die in flash flood in Jordan

A child survivor is helped as residents and relatives gather outside a hospital near the Dead Sea, Jordan October 25, 2018. REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed

DEAD SEA Jordan (Reuters) – At least 18 people, mainly schoolchildren and teachers, were killed on Thursday in a flash flood near Jordan’s Dead Sea that happened while they were on an outing, rescuers and hospital workers said.

Thirty-four people were rescued in a major operation involving police helicopters and hundreds of army troops, police chief Brigadier General Farid al Sharaa told state television. Some of those rescued were in a serious condition.

Many of those killed were children under 14. A number of families picnicking in the popular destination were also among the dead and injured, rescuers said, without giving a breakdown of numbers.

Hundreds of families and relatives converged on Shounah hospital a few kilometers from the resort area. Relatives sobbed and searched for details about the missing children, a witness said.

King Abdullah canceled a trip to Bahrain to follow the rescue operations, state media said.

Israel sent search-and-rescue helicopters to assist, an Israeli military statement said, adding the team dispatched at Amman’s request was operating on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea.

Civil defense spokesman Captain Iyad al Omar told Reuters the number of casualties was expected to rise. Rescue workers using flashlights were searching the cliffs near the shore of the Dead Sea where bodies had been found.

A witness said a bus with 37 schoolchildren and seven teachers had been on a trip to the resort area when the raging flood waters swept them into a valley.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Alison Williams)

Seminary head arrested after Israeli teenage deaths in flood: police

Israeli rescue services personnel operate near the site where a group of Israeli youths was swept away by a flash flood, near the Zafit river bed, south to the Dead Sea, Israel, April 26, 2018. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

By Ori Lewis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The head of a seminary who organized a desert trek in which 10 Israeli teenagers were killed in a flash flood has been arrested on suspicion of causing death through negligence, police said.

Nine girls and a boy were killed when a sudden, powerful torrent gushed through a usually arid Zafit river bed in southern Israel near the Dead Sea on Thursday. Seven of the 10 were buried on Friday.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the head of the seminary and a teacher were remanded in custody until Tuesday on suspicion of causing death through negligence.

It was the deadliest incident of several caused by unusually heavy rains over two days, which caused many normally dry river beds to swell into potentially deadly torrents.

The floods also claimed the lives of two children from Israel’s Bedouin community who were washed away in separate torrents on Wednesday.

A Palestinian teenage girl drowned in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, medics said. A truck driver is still missing after he was apparently swept away in another torrent in Israel, south of the Dead Sea, police said.

Flash floods are a common phenomenon in Israel and the West Bank after heavy rains, as surges of water run through narrow channels into the Dead Sea and the rift valley region that runs along the Negev Desert.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement saying: “All of Israel laments in the terrible tragedy that cut short the lives of ten young, wonderful people who had such promising futures.”

A text message conversation published by Israeli media quoted one of the trek’s participants, who was unnamed, saying: “I can’t believe that I am actually going out in this weather, it’s not logical that we should go to such a place where there will be floods, it’s tempting fate, we will die, I am serious.”

Another conversation participant thought her friend’s comments were exaggerated; she presumed the organizers “have some sense and will take you to other places.”

A small section of Israel’s concrete separation wall in East Jerusalem that was built to seal off Palestinian areas collapsed due to the heavy rainfall but construction teams were on site to seal the breach, police said.

Fearing more heavy thunder storms on Friday, police closed some main roads in the Dead Sea region and warned torrent hunters seeking views of spectacular waterfalls and gushing streams to stay away.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Writing by Ori Lewis, Editing by Stephen Farrell and William Maclean)

Thousands flee Texas towns flooded by Harvey; gas prices spike

Lorenzo Salina helps a neighbor to clean a house damaged by Tropical Storm Harvey in East Houston, Texas, U.S. September 1, 2017.

By Emily Flitter and Peter Henderson

ORANGE, Texas/HOUSTON (Reuters) – Rescuers searched flooded sections of southeastern Texas for people trapped by Hurricane Harvey’s deluge on Friday, and Houston’s mayor warned residents of the city’s west that their neighborhoods may remain underwater for two weeks.

The storm, one of the costliest to hit the United States, has displaced more than 1 million people, with up to 44 feared dead from flooding that paralyzed Houston, swelled river levels to record highs and knocked out the drinking water supply in Beaumont, Texas, a city of about 120,000 people.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner called for voluntary evacuations of flooded homes, which he said may remain waterlogged as the Army Corps of Engineers continues to release water into the Buffalo Bayou to prevent dam and levee failures.

About 80 miles (130 km) east of the city, the Neches River, which flows into Beaumont and nearby Port Arthur, was forecast to crest on Friday.

Rescue officials were still working to determine the scope of flooding caused by releases from Orange County dams, said Rodney Smith, deputy chief of the Cedar Hill, Texas, Fire Department.

“A lot of what gives us a snapshot of what’s on the ground are 911 (emergency) calls,” Smith said, adding that about 80 rescue crews were rotating through the county. “If the water starts to recede, we’ll start doing searches door-to-door, block-to-block to see if anyone is still in their homes.”

Tiana Kelly, 22, was waiting in a shelter in Orange, Texas, after being rescued from her flooded street by National Guard troops in a special high-water truck at 2 a.m. Friday.

“I was checking on my neighbor’s dogs and I saw their flashlights, so I flashed my flashlight and they came and got us,” Kelly said as she sat with her 11-month old son, Kalameet, in her arms. “They told us there was an eight-foot flash (flood) that was supposed to come.”

Chemical maker Arkema SA said a fire started on Thursday in a truck storing chemicals at a flooded plant 25 miles (40 km) east of Houston had burned itself out by Friday, but that more blasts were likely in eight other trucks storing the same chemicals in the coming days. Police were enforcing 1.5-mile (2.4-km) exclusion zone around the Crosby, Texas facility.

With three months remaining in the official Atlantic hurricane season, a new storm, Irma, had strengthened into a Category 3 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, on Friday. It remained hundreds of miles from land but was forecast to possibly hit the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and neighboring Haiti by the middle of next week.

Harvey shut about a quarter of U.S. refinery capacity, much of which is clustered along the Gulf Coast, and caused gasoline prices to spike to a two-year high ahead of the long Labor Day holiday weekend.

Harvey roared ashore a week ago as a Category 4 storm and the most powerful hurricane to hit Texas in half a century. It dumped unprecedented amounts of rain and left devastation across more than 300 miles (480 km) of the state’s coast.

 

OIL RELEASED FROM FEDERAL SUPPLY

The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline has risen 17 cents since the storm hit, hitting $2.519 as of Friday morning, the highest since August 2015, according to motorists group AAA.

Supply concerns prompted the U.S. Energy Department to authorize the release of up to 4.5 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Several East Coast refineries have run out of gasoline, raising fears that travelers will face fuel shortages during the three-day holiday.

In major Texas cities including Dallas, there were long lines at gas stations.

The storm came on the 12th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which killed about 1,800 around New Orleans. Then-U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration was roundly criticized for its botched early response to the storm.

Signaling that he did not want to be seen as repeating those mistakes, President Donald Trump plans a second visit to the region on Saturday.

“The people of Texas and Louisiana were hit very hard by a historic flood and their response taught us all a lesson, a very, very powerful lesson,” Trump said after meeting with charity organizations in the Oval Office. “There was no outbreak in crime. There was an outbreak of compassion only … and it really inspired us as a nation.”

U.S. first lady Melania Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. President Donald Trump receive an update on Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts at the White House in Washington, U.S., September 1, 2017.

U.S. first lady Melania Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. President Donald Trump receive an update on Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts at the White House in Washington, U.S., September 1, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Lawmakers will replenish a federal disaster relief fund to keep aid flowing, but full assistance will come from Congress in installments, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said.

“The cash drain is fast. And so we’re going to have to do some quick responses,” Ryan said in an interview with radio station WCLO in his hometown Janesville, Wisconsin.

Moody’s Analytics estimated the economic cost from Harvey for southeastern Texas at $51 billion to $75 billion.

 

 

 

(Additional reporting by Richard Valdmanis, Marianna Parraga, Ernest Scheyder, Ruthy Munoz, Peter Henderson and Andy Sullivan in Houston, David Gaffen in New York, Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, and Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Scott Malone Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Bill Trott and Jonathan Oatis)

 

Body of missing man believed found after deadly flash flood in Arizona

By David Schwartz

PHOENIX (Reuters) – The remains of a 27-year-old man were believed to have been recovered on Wednesday, four days after a flash flood rushed down a rain-swollen canyon in central Arizona killing his wife and eight other family members, a local sheriff said.

Authorities said the body of Hector Miguel Garnica was spotted by a state helicopter surveying the area on Wednesday afternoon during a search near Payson, Arizona, about 90 miles northeast of Phoenix.

“We have located remains that we believe to be involved in this tragic flooding incident,” said Gila County Sheriff Adam Shepherd, during a news conference at the search site.

Sheperd said family members have been notified and a formal confirmation is pending a DNA analysis by state officials.

The remains were recovered on the fifth day of an intense search launched on Saturday, when a group of family members were swept away by what authorities described as a wall of water that crashed down the canyon at a popular swimming spot in the Tonto National Forest.

The 14-member group was celebrating Garnica’s wife’s birthday, authorities said.

Five children and five adults were killed in the incident ranging from two to 57 years old, sheriff’s officials said. Four family members were rescued.

Authorities said the group was engulfed by a sudden flash flood when a thunderstorm dumped as much as 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) of rain in 20 to 30 minutes about 8 miles (13 km) away from an area that had been burned by a nearly 7,200-acre (2,914 hectares) wildfire last month.

A video posted on social media showed the muddy, debris-filled torrent rushing down a canyon on Ellison Creek where the family was taking in the cool waters at a swimming spot frequented by dozens that day.

Some 130 searchers from 24 agencies took part in the search at its peak, including divers and cadaver dogs, authorities said.

(Reporting by David Schwartz in Phoenix; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

Flash flood watches issued in four Southern states ahead of thunderstorms

Portions of four Southern states are bracing for the possibility of flash flooding later this week.

The National Weather Service on Monday issued flash flood watches for parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana ahead of a series of thunderstorms that is expected to bring anywhere between three and 10 inches of rain to those regions between Tuesday and Thursday.

The flash flood watch states the heaviest rains are expected in eastern Texas, western Louisiana and southwestern Arkansas, increasing the risk of flash flooding in those communities.

The storms are expected to bring lighter precipitation totals across the Great Plains, South and Midwest over the next three days, and National Weather Service forecasts indicate that some parts of Missouri, Illinois and Mississippi could all receive three or more inches of rain.

Residents of all of the affected states are encouraged to monitor their local forecasts.

The service also said there is a slight chance of severe thunderstorms across the Southern Plains tonight, but had yet to issue any watches or warnings for those storms as of 1 p.m. Central time.

The flash flood watches come after California was hit with heavy rains over the weekend.

The National Weather Service’s unofficial totals show more than 10 inches of rain fell in parts of Monterey, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties between Friday morning and Monday morning.

The weekend storms also brought more than two feet of snow and wind gusts that topped 60 mph to some mountainous areas, the service said, including an 88-mph gust near Mount Diablo.

Those topped trees and power lines, knocking out power to thousands of homes and businesses.

Utility company PG&E said reported more than 265,000 of its customers in the Bay Area lost power during the storm, though all but 8,700 had their service restored as of Sunday morning.

Radar showed some California communities were receiving additional rain and snow Monday, and the National Weather Service warned that some areas could see another 10 inches of snow.

8 Dead in Utah Flash Flood

A flash flood that washed through a town on the Utah/Arizona border has left 8 people confirmed dead and others missing.

All of the victims are mothers and small children who reportedly were sitting in cars watching the rushing waters.

The flooding roared through the streets of Hildale, Utah to Colorado City, Arizona.  Heavy rains started Monday night in mountains around the town causing the water to rush into canyons and valleys.

“It happened within like a half-hour, 45 minutes,” Chris Wyler told CNN. “(Then) it was just gone. And then the sun was shining again.”

The two vehicles that contained those who died had 16 people within them.  Many were thrown from the vehicles by the force of the water.

Rescuers were forced to call off rescue efforts because of dangerous conditions overnight but resumed work with heavy equipment during the morning.