Tag Archives: Missing

Texas floodwaters claim five soldiers’ lives at Fort Hood

Emergency crews patrol Fort Bend County after heavy rainfall caused the Brazos River to surge to its highest level causing flooding outside Housto

By Jon Herskovitz and Jim Forsyth

AUSTIN, Texas/SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – A U.S. Army truck overturned in a swollen Fort Hood creek on Thursday, killing five soldiers and leaving four missing as storms dumped more rain on flood-hit parts of Texas.

The rising floodwaters in Texas scrambled transportation, further swelled rivers already over their banks and sent more people to evacuation shelters.

The U.S. Army said the truck overturned at Fort Hood’s Owl Creek low-water crossing during a training exercise. Three bodies were recovered downstream, the Army said. It is unclear where the bodies of the additional two soldiers were found.

A search was being conducted for four soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division, it said in a statement.

Three soldiers were rescued from the water and were in stable condition at a hospital, the statement said. Fort Hood, about 70 miles (110 km) north of Austin, is the biggest active-duty armor post in the United States.

The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for parts of east Texas and Louisiana. It placed most of Texas on a flash flood watch because of a slow-moving storm system expected to linger through the weekend.

About 200 flights were canceled in Houston and Dallas as of Thursday evening because of heavy rains, according to tracking service FlightAware.com. Major highways have seen delays caused by accidents linked to the storms, transport officials said.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster in 31 counties on Wednesday, mobilizing state resources to help cope with the disaster.

Six people were killed in the past week in Texas due to severe weather.

Thousands of people have evacuated their homes in low-lying areas, rivers have swelled to levels not seen in more than 100 years, and emergency workers have completed hundreds of high-water rescues.

Evacuations were ordered for parts of two towns in Fort Bend County, about 30 miles (50 km) southwest of Houston, where the Brazos River has risen to levels not seen for more than a century.

The pounding rains led to some dramatic rescues, including one in San Antonio of a man described as a Polish immigrant with limited knowledge of English who found himself and his car washed away by a wall of water.

Crews putting up flood barricades heard the man scream and a helicopter was sent to look for him, said James Keith, spokesman for the Bexar County Sheriff’s Department.

“We were able to locate this man standing on the top of a submerged car holding on to a tree,” he said.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee, and Jim Forsyth in San Antonio; Editing by Peter Cooney and Leslie Adler)

With Social Media ‘we could have saved more lives’ in disasters

Members of Sri Lankan military rescue team work at the site of a landslide at Elangipitiya village in Aranayaka

By Amantha Perera

ARANAYAKE, Sri Lanka (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – For the first 48 hours after a huge landslide wiped out his hometown of Aranayake and buried 220 families, Prabath Wedage was on his mobile phone constantly.

“I have not been off the phone for five minutes,” said Wedage, who has been trying to coordinate consignments of relief supplies for 1,700 displaced people in 13 emergency shelters, including Rajagiri School, where he normally works.

In this devastated community – as in many disaster-hit places – the ubiquitous mobile phone and its social media apps are becoming a vital tool for relief and rescue workers, officials and families to share and gather information and keep in touch.

As Sri Lanka is hit with more disasters, from droughts to floods to landslides, making the most of the tools will be key curbing losses, experts say.

“We could have saved more lives if we had used these properly,” Wedage told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

He noted that it was only after last week’s landslide, which followed three days of incessant rain, that many residents begun to use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to share disaster-related information.

But government agencies dealing with disaster management also have been slow to adopt social media as a tool, experts say.

NO FACEBOOK, NO TWITTER

The country’s Disaster Management Centre, the main government agency dealing with disasters, does not have an active Facebook page or Twitter account. It relies on daily or twice-daily fax updates and press releases to media.

It has the capacity to send text messages to all mobile phone subscribers in the island, but has rarely used that facility, according to Pradeep Koddiplli, a spokesman for the center.

The same is the case with the Meteorological Department, which has made its daily updates on its website more detailed, but is yet to get on to social media or use text messaging.

“We have looked into this, but we have to devise a mechanism that is tested and proven,” said Lal Chandrapala, head of Meteorological Department.

For now, Wedage said, people looking for quick information during disasters “have to wait until a TV channel or a radio station broadcasts these updates, and that is too late to save any lives. We need live updates.”

Others agencies, however, are already finding the value of turning to social media. As Sri Lanka was hit by 355 millimeters (14 inches) of rain last week, the Sri Lanka Red Cross (SLRC) relied heavily on its Twitter and Facebook platforms to get disaster-related information out.

In fact it was a SLRC tweet on the morning of May 19 that first alerted the nation to the enormity of the disaster. The tweet said 220 families were buried in the Aranayake landslide, while government officials balked at confirming a missing figure even 72 hours after the disaster.

The SLRC has also used social media to put out weather alerts, disaster warnings and relief and rescue information.

The organization’s aggressive push into social media has happened in part because of the lack of any other effective public warning system, said Mahieash Johnney, SLRC’s communications manager.

“In Sri Lanka we do not have a proper dissemination mechanism to reach people when it comes to natural disasters,” he said.

APPS TO THE RESCUE

Other smaller organizations also have taken to social media to give live updates and information during extreme weather.

Road.lk,, for instance, is a home-grown, user-fed information channel on road conditions, normally used to help drivers avoid traffic jams.

During the recent heavy rain, its Twitter feed and mobile app worked as a conduit for hundreds of bits of information aimed to help people deal with flooding and other problems, its creator Raditha Dissanayake told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Even this morning there were tweets telling people to get onto their roofs and wave blankets because rescue helicopters would be passing overhead. It’s unlikely that these people have access to radio or television but if their mobiles are still on, they can receive this information,” he said of the service, which has 22,000 Twitter followers.

PickMe, a local taxi app, also has introduced a flood relief button that allows users to donate flood-related relief material, and an SOS button that those trapped in flood waters can use to mark their location.

With no national media organizations providing constant live updates during the recent heavy rain, Roar.lk, a local current affairs website, began a live blog, while another, Yamu.lk, started a “How to help” page.

Road.lk’s Dissanayake feels that if such efforts could be better coordinated – preferably by a government body or large agency like the Sri Lanka Red Cross – they could be more effective and share key data.

“We believe that the data that we collect is quite useful to rescue effort organizers and we hope that we will be able to better coordinate with them in the future,” he said.

Johnney of the Sri Lanka Red Cross thinks it’s time public authorities harnessed the power of social media in their disaster management efforts.

“During the floods these few days, we have seen the power of social media,” he said. “When we needed to collect some items for flood relief, we just posted one message on Facebook and Twitter requesting donations. Within few hours, we had over 300 people at our headquarters.”

(Reporting by Amantha Perera; editing by Laurie Goering :; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, women’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate)

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)

EgyptAir jet missing after mid-air plunge

Unidentified relatives and friends of passengers who were flying in an EgyptAir plane that vanished from radar en route from Paris to Cairo react as they wait outside the Egyptair in-flight service building where relatives are being held at Cairo International Airport, Egypt

By Lin Noueihed and Lefteris Papadimas

CAIRO/ATHENS (Reuters) – An EgyptAir jet carrying 66 passengers and crew from Paris to Cairo disappeared from radar over the Mediterranean sea on Thursday after swerving in mid-air and plunging from cruising height. French President Francois Hollande confirmed the aircraft “came down and is lost”.

Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail announced a search was under way for the missing Airbus A320 but it was too early to rule out any explanation, including an attack like the one blamed for bringing down a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai peninsula last year.

Officials with the airline and the Egyptian civil aviation department told Reuters they believed the Airbus had crashed into the Mediterranean between Greece and Egypt.

In Athens, Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said the Airbus had first swerved 90 degrees to the left, then spun through 360 degrees to the right. After plunging from 37,000 feet to 15,000, it vanished from Greek radar screens.

Greece deployed aircraft and a frigate to the area to help with the search. A defense ministry source said authorities were also investigating an account from the captain of a merchant ship who reported a ‘flame in the sky’ about 130 nautical miles south of the island of Karpathos.

According to Greece’s civil aviation chief, calls from Greek air traffic controllers to the jet went unanswered just before it left the country’s airspace, and it disappeared from radar screens soon afterwards.

By early afternoon, the search in the Mediterranean had yet to turn up anything. “Absolutely nothing has been found so far,” a senior Greek coastguard official told Reuters.

There was no official suggestion of whether the disappearance was due to technical failure or any other reason such as sabotage by ultra-hardline Islamists, who have targeted airports, airliners and tourist sites in Europe, Egypt, Tunisia and other Middle Eastern countries over the past few years.

The aircraft was carrying 56 passengers – with one child and two infants among them – and 10 crew, EgyptAir said. They included 30 Egyptian and 15 French nationals, along with citizens of 10 other countries.

Asked if he could rule out that terrorists were behind the incident, Prime Minister Ismail told reporters: “We cannot exclude anything at this time or confirm anything. All the search operations must be concluded so we can know the cause.”

In Paris, Hollande also said the cause remained unknown. “Unfortunately the information we have … confirms to us that the plane came down and is lost,” he said. “No hypothesis can be ruled out, nor can any be favored over another.”

With its archeological sites and Red Sea resorts, Egypt is traditionally a popular destination for Western tourists. But the industry has been badly hit following the downing of the Russian Metrojet flight last October, killing all 224 people on board, as well as by an Islamist insurgency and a string of bomb attacks.

NO RESPONSE

Greek air traffic controllers spoke to the pilot as the jet flew over the island of Kea, in what was thought to be the last broadcast from the aircraft, and no problems were reported.

But just ahead of the handover to Cairo airspace, calls to the plane went unanswered, before it dropped off radars shortly after exiting Greek airspace, Kostas Litzerakis, the head of Greece’s civil aviation department, told Reuters.

“During the transfer procedure to Cairo airspace, about seven miles before the aircraft entered the Cairo airspace, Greek controllers tried to contact the pilot but he was not responding,” he said.

Greek authorities are searching in the area south of the island of Karpathos without result so far, Defence Minister Kammenos told a news conference.

“At 3.39am (0039 GMT) the course of the aircraft was south and south-east of Kassos and Karpathos (islands),” he said. “Immediately after, it entered Cairo FIR (flight information region) and made swerves and a descent I describe: 90 degrees left and then 360 degrees to the right.”

The Airbus plunged from 37,000 feet (11,280 meters) to 15,000 feet before vanishing from radar, he added.

Egyptian Civil Aviation minister Sherif Fathi said authorities had tried to resume contact but without success.

“NO ONE KNOWS ANYTHING”

At Cairo airport, authorities ushered families of the passengers and crew into a closed-off waiting area.

Two women and a man, who said they were related to a crew member, were seen leaving the VIP hall where families were being kept. Asked for details, the man said: “We don’t know anything, they don’t know anything. No one knows anything.”

Ayman Nassar, from the family of one of the passengers, also walked out of the passenger hall with his daughter and wife in a distressed state. “They told us the plane had disappeared, and that they’re still searching for it and not to believe any rumors,” he said.

A mother of flight attendant rushed out of the hall in tears. She said the last time her daughter called her was Wednesday night. “They haven’t told us anything,” she said.

EgyptAir said on its Twitter account that Flight MS804 had departed Paris at 23:09 (CEST). It disappeared at 02:30 a.m. at an altitude of 37,000 feet ) in Egyptian air space, about 280 km (165 miles) from the Egyptian coast before it was due to land at 03:15 a.m.

In Paris, a police source said investigators were now interviewing officers who were on duty at Roissy airport on Wednesday evening to find out whether they heard or saw anything suspicious. “We are in the early stage here,” the source said.

Airbus said the missing A320 was delivered to EgyptAir in November 2003 and had operated about 48,000 flight hours.

The missing flight’s pilot had clocked up 6,275 hours of flying experience, including 2,101 hours on the A320, while the first officer had 2,766 hours, EgyptAir said.

At one point EgyptAir said the plane had sent an emergency signal at 04:26 a.m., two hours after it disappeared from radar screens. However, Fathi said later that further checks found that no SOS was received.

FRANCE, EGYPT TO COOPERATE

The weather was clear at the time the plane disappeared, according to Eurocontrol, the European air traffic network.

“Our daily weather assessment does not indicate any issues in that area at that time,” it said.

Under U.N. aviation rules, Egypt will automatically lead an investigation into the accident assisted by countries including France, where the jet was assembled, and the United States, where engine maker Pratt & Whitney is based.

Russia and Western governments have said the Metrojet plane that crashed on Oct. 31 was probably brought down by a bomb, and the Islamic State militant group said it had smuggled an explosive device on board.

That crash called into question Egypt’s campaign to eradicate Islamist violence. Militants have stepped up attacks on Egyptian soldiers and police since Sisi, then serving as army chief, toppled elected President Mohamed Mursi, an Islamist, in 2013 after mass protests against his rule.

In March, an EgyptAir plane flying from Alexandria to Cairo was hijacked and forced to land in Cyprus by a man with what authorities said was a fake suicide belt. He was arrested after giving himself up.

EgyptAir has a fleet of 57 Airbus and Boeing jets, including 15 of the Airbus A320 family of aircraft, according to airfleets.com.

(Additional reporting by Amina Ismail, Ali Abdelatti, Mostafa Hashem, Asma Alsharif, Victoria Bryan, Siva Govindasamy, Sophie Louet, Tim Hepher, Michele Kambas, George Georgiopoulos, Renee Maltezou, Brian Love and Miral Fahmy.; Writing by Lincoln Feast, Samia Nakhoul and David Stamp; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Paul Tait and Peter Graff)

Brazilian Dam Breaks, Flooding Village with Mud; 2 Dead, Dozens Missing

Two dams at a Brazilian iron ore mine collapsed on Friday, resulting in a devastating mudslide that has killed at least 2 people, injured 30, and left dozens missing.

A spokesman representing the firefighters said that the numbers of deaths, injured, and missing will likely rise due to the mudslide knocking over cell towers and blocking roads. Time Magazine reports that union officials believe the casualties could be as high as 15.

“In reality there are a lot more, but we can’t confirm any more than that. We don’t even know that we’ll find everybody,” firefighter Adão Severino Junior in the nearby city of Mariana told Reuters.

Hundreds of families were evacuated from the area after the initial escape to higher ground. Television footage of the incident showed a car perched on top of a wall, trees being leveled, and roofs being ripped off of houses due to the waste waters that were unleashed from the dams, according to Reuters.

Rescue teams are still looking for trapped survivors.

Guatemalan Mudslide Kills 237; Death Toll Expected to Rise

Recovery after the Guatemalan Mudslide that erased part of  the town of Santa Catarina Pinula last week has uncovered 237 bodies so far from the mountains of mud and debris in the mudslide created from heavy rainfall.

Backhoes continued to remove thousands of tons of dirt from the acres-wide mudflow in the neighborhood of Cambray, on the outskirts of Guatemala City, with very little hope of finding anyone alive.

Officials have reported that many other people are still missing.  

Several hundred people were being housed in shelters run by the local government National Disaster Reduction Commission known as Conred.

The agency has said it issued a number of warnings about the dangers of living on the base of this mountain area. Officials this week declared the area uninhabitable.

Manuel Pocasangre, the communications director for the municipality of Santa Catarina Pinula said state employees in recent years had gone door-to-door to talk to people about the risks of where they lived even in the last year.  

Stating that he had warned Mayor Tono Coro of the municipality of Santa Catarina Pinula that the river was eating away at the base of the steep hill. “What we know is that people were conscious about the risk they were taking,” Pocasangre said Wednesday.  

Maldonado acknowledged there are many neighborhoods like Cambray in and around Guatemala City that are at risk of flooding or mudslides

The country’s prosecutor’s office has announced an investigation of the matter.

Six Missing in Mudslides Created by Tropical Storm Erika

Tropical Storm Erika has devastated the tiny island of Dominica, triggering landslides that have left at least six people missing and hundreds of people without homes.

The Antiqua Weather Service says the storm dumped 9 inches of rain onto the mountainous island late Wednesday and then 6 more inches on Thursday.

About 80 percent of the island is without electricity.  The country’s airport has been closed after flood waters covered cars and at least one small airplane.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) says that the storm is moving west with sustained winds of 50 m.p.h. and is expected to cover Puerto Rico Thursday.  The storm continues to be what forecasters call “poorly organized” and is not expected to strengthen over the next two days.

Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla said that while the storm could cut off power and water service, the storm would also bring much needed rain to the parched nation.

“We’re happy given the dry conditions, but it does highlight the need to be on alert,” he told CBS.

Forecasters say it is still too early to know whether or not the storm will reach Florida with any kind of tropical storm or hurricane strength.

Meanwhile in the Pacific, Tropical Storm Ignacio strengthened into a hurricane.  The storm is moving slowly westward, about 1,100 miles east-southeast of Hilo, Hawaii.

Missing Sisters Found Alive In Wyoming Wilderness

Family and friends of three Wisconsin sisters are praising God after they were found alive after going missing in the Wyoming wilderness.

“They’re tired, cold (and) hungry, but otherwise healthy and happy to be on their way out,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Lori Iverson said.

The sisters, Megan, Erin, and Kelsi Andrews-Sharer, left June 28th for an extended camping trip in Grand Teton National Park and were supposed to return home on Tuesday.  When the ladies didn’t arrive and made no contact with the family, authorities began a search.

The women’s car was found 15 miles south of Jackson.  A ground search began Wednesday with dogs and helicopters.

Thursday morning, a local guide heard of the search and remembered seeing a person wearing a white raincoat in a part of the park that has no trails the previous day.  Local officials say the detailed description given by the guide allowed them to focus their search pattern and the women were found 20 minutes later.

Fish and Wildlife Service officials credited the girls for preparing for unexpected conditions and staying together as being a key to quickly finding and rescuing them.

Over 360 Missing In Chinese Boat Disaster

Disaster teams have recovered 77 bodies from a cruise ship that capsized in the Yangtze River during a storm.  At least 360 other victims of the disaster are still missing.

Authorities say that only 14 people survived the ship’s capsizing on Monday night.  They say some of those survivors jumped from the ship at the start of the storm and were able to swim to shore.  Three survived in an air pocket in the capsized ship until rescuers were able to hear them yelling for help and sent in divers to save them.

Transport Ministry spokesman Xu Chengguang said that the mission has moved from rescue of survivors to recovery of bodies.  The ship is going to be brought upright through steel bars under the ship and two 500 ton cranes.

Xu told reporters despite cutting holes in the ship to try and find survivors, the likelihood of anyone alive is “very slim.”

Xu said righting the vessel “will enable an audit of all the cabins to be carried out as quickly as possible and will be good for searching for the missing in the shortest period of time” and allow them to act to “preserve the dignity of the dead.”

The ship, the Eastern Star, reportedly contained mostly retirees who were viewing the vista along the river.

Government officials had previously cited the ship for safety infractions.  At one point in 2013, it was held from operation because of safety issues according to the maritime bureau.

Canadian Pastor Missing In North Korea

A Canadian pastor is missing in North Korea.

Rev. Hyeon Soo Lim, the head of the 3,000 member Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Toronto, was scheduled to return home from a visit to North Korea one month ago.  No one has heard from the pastor since that time.

“[Lim] left Toronto on Jan. 27 for Seoul, then flew to China and crossed over the northern border of North Korea into the Rajin region,” explained Lisa Pak, official spokesperson for both the family of Rev. Lim and Light Korean Presbyterian, told The Christian Post.  “[He] traveled to the Rajin region to continue support for the on-going ministry of orphanages, nursery and nursing homes.”

Pak said that Rev. Lim had traveled to North Korea many times previously and knew how to deal with the political situation in the region.

The Associated Press noted that the country had just lifted travel restrictions due to Ebola.

“Pak said they are not sure why they haven’t heard from him, but noted North Korea just lifted severe restrictions on foreign travel imposed last year to keep the Ebola virus from crossing its borders,” reported the AP.

“The already isolated country virtually closed its borders to foreigners last October, halting all non-essential visas and requiring those few foreigners allowed in to undergo three weeks of quarantine.”