Tag Archives: rescue

Avalanche destroys Italian hotel, up to 30 feared dead under snow

An aerial view shows Hotel Rigopiano in Farindola, central Italy, hit by an avalanche, in this January 19, 2017 handout picture provided by Italy's firefighters.

By Roberto Mignucci

PENNE, Italy (Reuters) – A huge avalanche swallowed up a luxury mountain hotel in central Italy after a series of strong earthquakes rocked the area, burying up to 30 people under tonnes of snow and debris, officials said on Thursday.

Italian media said three bodies had been retrieved from the site. Rescue workers declined to comment on the reports, but said they had yet to find any sign of life.

The gabled peaks of parts of the roof and a row of windows were the only sections of the four-storey Hotel Rigopiano still visible after the wall of snow smashed into the four-star spa resort early on Wednesday evening.

Local authorities said about 30 people had been in the building at the time, including two children, but more than 20 hours later, only a couple of survivors had been found — two men who had been outside when the disaster struck.

“The hotel is almost completely destroyed. We’ve called out but we’ve heard no replies, no voices,” said Antonio Crocetta, a member of the Alpine Rescue squad who was on the scene.

A photo taken from a video shows the snow inside the Hotel Rigopiano in Farindola, central Italy, hit by an avalanche, in this January 19, 2017 handout picture provided by Italy's Finance Police.

A photo taken from a video shows the snow inside the Hotel Rigopiano in Farindola, central Italy, hit by an avalanche, in this January 19, 2017 handout picture provided by Italy’s Finance Police. Guardia Di Finanza/Handout via REUTERS

“We’re digging and looking for people,” he told Reuters by phone from the isolated location in the Gran Sasso mountain range in the central Abruzzo region.

Rescue workers entered what appeared to be a lobby decorated with oil paintings and plants, where a landslide had torn through a wall, television footage showed.

Mattresses and furniture were spotted dozens of metres (yards) away, local media reported, and sniffer dogs were brought to the area to help locate possible survivors.

“I am alive because I went to get something from my car,” one of the two survivors, Giampiero Parete, told medical staff.

Italian media said he had been on holiday with his wife and two children, who were all still missing.

SNOW DRIFTS

Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni called for national unity, saying Italy was caught in an “unprecedented vice” of earthquakes and heavy snows simultaneously.

The rescue operation was hampered by metres of snow which has fallen on the Gran Sasso in recent days. Drifts made snow as deep as five metres (16 feet) in some places and snow ploughs struggled to cut a path up winding mountain roads.

The first rescuers only managed to arrive at 4.30 a.m. (0330 GMT) after having to ski through a blizzard to reach the site. After dawn broke, emergency services sent in helicopters.

Firefighters arrive near Hotel Rigopiano, hit by an avalanche, in Farindola, central Italy, in this January 19, 2017 handout picture provided by Italy's firefighters.

Firefighters arrive near Hotel Rigopiano, hit by an avalanche, in Farindola, central Italy, in this January 19, 2017 handout picture provided by Italy’s firefighters. Vigili del Fuoco/Handout via REUTERS

A base camp for rescue workers was set up in the town of Penne, some 10 km (6 miles) away, where ambulances waited.

The avalanche shunted the 43-room hotel, which is 1,200 metres (4,000 ft) above sea level, some 10 metres (30 ft) down the hill, according to media reports.

The disaster struck just hours after four earthquakes with a magnitude of above 5.0 hit central Italy, sparking fears about possible avalanches.

Italian media said guests at the hotel had checked out and were waiting for a snow plough to arrive to open up the road and let them down the mountain. However, the avalanche struck before they had been able to leave.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella, Valentina Consiglio and Steve Scherer; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Gareth Jones)

Indonesian quake toll passes 100 as rescuers struggle

Rescue workers searching for victims after quake

By Biyan Syahputri and Darren Whiteside

PIDIE JAYA, Indonesia (Reuters) – Indonesian medical teams struggled on Thursday to treat scores of people injured in a 6.5 magnitude earthquake a day after more than 100 people were killed in the worst disaster to hit the province since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The quake toppled hundreds of buildings and left thousands of people homeless. The province of Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra island, has declared a two-week state of emergency.

“All the victims were crushed in collapsed buildings,”said Sutopo Nugroho, a spokesman for the national disaster management agency.

Rescuers in Aceh’s Pidie Jaya regency focused their search on a market complex, which suffered more damage than other parts of the town of 140,000.

The quake flattened most of the Pasar Meureudu market building, which housed dozens of shops, and rescue teams used excavators and their bare hands to pull out 23 bodies.

Victims included a bridegroom and guests due to attend a wedding party when half the complex collapsed.

“It is so sad for our family, we had prepared everything,” said Rajiati, the mother of the bride. Both she and her daughter survived.

Nugroho said many buildings in the area withstood the quake but those that collapsed were probably not built in accordance with regulations.

Experts also blamed poor construction.

“Initial information shows that single storey houses without reinforced internal brick or masonry walls have been damaged severely or collapsed,” said Behzad Fatahi, a geological expert at the University of Technology in Sydney.

Indonesia’s disaster agency said 102 people had been killed, with more than 700 injured.

The quake was the biggest disaster to hit the province since a Dec. 26, 2004, quake and tsunami, which killed more than 120,000 people in Aceh. In all, the 2004 tsunami killed 226,000 people along Indian Ocean shorelines.

The 2004 disaster centered on its western coast near provincial capital Banda Aceh. Wednesday’s quake hit the east coast, about 170 km (105 miles) from Banda Aceh.

Television images showed some patients being treated in tents in car parks because hospitals were full. But rescue officials said aid and heavy machinery was arriving.

The Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) handed out food, water and blankets, and helped provide shelter.

“Many patients are being treated in disaster tents and we’re starting to get doctors coming in from other areas so that is a help,” Arifin Hadi, PMI’s head of disaster management, said by telephone.

Indonesia sits on the so-called Pacific ring of fire and more than half of its 250 million people live in quake-prone areas, according to the disaster agency.

(Additional reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor and Fergus Jensen in JAKARTA; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)

India train crash raises concerns of underinvestment as toll hits 142

Rescue workers search for survivors at the site of a train derailment in Pukhrayan, south of Kanpur city, India

By Jitendra Prakash and Rupam Jain

PUKHRAYAN, India/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Indian rescuers on Monday called off a search of the mangled carriages of a derailed train after pulling more bodies from the wreckage, taking to at least 142 the number of passengers killed in the disaster.

Sunday’s derailment in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh was India’s deadliest train tragedy since 2010 and has renewed concern about poor safety on the state-run network, a lifeline for millions that has suffered from chronic underinvestment.

Rescue teams worked through the night with cranes and cutters to disentangle the train before police halted the search of the 14 carriages that derailed in the early hours, while most passengers slept.

“The rescue operations are over. We don’t expect to find any more bodies,” said Zaki Ahmed, the police inspector general in the city of Kanpur, about 65 km (40 miles) from Pukhrayan, the crash site.

The crash came during India’s busy wedding season and media said blood-stained bags of saris and wedding cards carried by at least one wedding party on board were scattered beside the wreckage.

The derailment injured more than 200 people, at least 58 of them seriously, officials said, as relatives thronged hospitals in a search for survivors.

A railways spokesman said the train carried 1,000 people traveling on reservations, but 700 more were estimated to have squeezed into the unreserved carriages.

AGING BADLY

The largely colonial-era railway system, the world’s fourth largest, carries about 23 million people daily, but is saturated and aging badly. Average speeds top just 50 kph (30 mph) and train accidents are common.

The crash is a stark reminder of the obstacles facing Prime Minister Narendra Modi in delivering on his promise to turn the railways into a more efficient, safer network befitting India’s economic power.

Modi this year pledged record levels of investment and has announced a new high-speed line funded by Japan, but the main network has made little progress on upgrading tracks or signaling equipment.

He has also shied away from raising highly subsidized fares that leave the railways with next to nothing for investment – by some analyst estimates, they need 20 trillion rupees ($293.34 billion) of investment by 2020.

Modi on Sunday held a political rally about 210 km (130 miles) from the crash site in Uttar Pradesh, which heads to the polls early next year in an election his Bharatiya Janata Party is vying to win.

Politician Mayawati, who uses only one name, and is one of Modi’s biggest rivals in the state, said the government should have “invested in mending tracks instead of spending billions and trillions of rupees on bullet trains”, media reported.

Authorities are looking into the possibility a fractured track caused the train to roll off the rails on its journey between the central Indian city of Indore and the eastern city of Patna.

Sunday’s crash is India’s worst rail tragedy since the collision of a passenger and a goods train in 2010, which the government blamed on sabotage by Maoist rebels.

In 2005, a train was crushed by a rock and another plunged into a river, each disaster killing more than 100 people. In what was probably India’s worst rail disaster, a train fell into a river in the eastern state of Bihar of 1981, killing an estimated 500 to 800 people.

(Reporting by Rupam Jain and Jitendra Prakash; additional reporting by Krishna N. Das; Writing by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Nick Macfie and Clarence Fernandez)

Hundreds stranded in North Carolina floods after Hurricane Matthew

An aerial view shows flood waters after Hurricane Matthew in Lumberton, North Carolina

By Jonathan Drake

LUMBERTON, N.C. (Reuters) – Hundreds of people were rescued by boat and helicopter as floodwaters inundated North Carolina towns on Monday in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, and officials warned that life-threatening flooding from swollen rivers would continue for days.

Matthew, the most powerful Atlantic storm since 2007, was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone on Sunday.

The hurricane killed around 1,000 people in Haiti and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday some Haitian towns and villages had just about been “wiped off the map.”

In the United States, the number of fatalities rose to at least 23, with nearly half in North Carolina.

North Carolina’s skies were clear on Monday after the state received as much as 18 inches (39 cm) of rain from Matthew over the weekend, but raging rivers and breached levees posed major problems.

“This storm is not over in North Carolina,” Governor Pat McCrory told reporters in Fayetteville. “It’s going to be a long, tough journey.”

Eleven people have died in the state, officials said. With rivers rising, the governor said he expected deaths to increase.

The flooding prompted President Barack Obama to declare a state of emergency in North Carolina on Monday, making federal funding available to affected individuals in 10 counties hit by the storm, the White House said in a statement.

Some 2,000 residents were stuck in their homes and on rooftops in Lumberton, off the Lumber River, after the city flooded suddenly on Monday morning, McCrory said. Air and water rescues would continue throughout the day, he said.

Many of the homes and businesses in Lumberton were flooded with several feet of water on Monday afternoon and residents were seen paddling about the town in small skiffs.

Major flooding was expected this week in central and eastern towns along the Lumber, Cape Fear, Neuse and Tar rivers. The National Weather Service said the Neuse River would crest on Friday night and forecast “disastrous flooding.”

Emergency officials in North Carolina’s Lenoir County issued a mandatory evacuation order on Monday afternoon for residents and businesses along the Neuse River.

“IT BREAKS YOUR HEART”

Many coastal and inland communities remained under water from storm surge or overrun rivers and creeks.

McCrory told reporters that he had met an elderly woman at a shelter on Monday who lost everything to floods.

“She’s sitting in a school cafeteria at this point in time crying and wondering what her life is going to be all about,” he said. “It breaks your heart.”

In neighboring South Carolina, Governor Nikki Haley warned that waterways were quickly reaching capacity around the state.

“What might not be flooded today could be flooded tomorrow,” Haley told a news conference.

She said there had been at least three storm-related deaths, including one in which a person in a vehicle was swept away by floodwaters.

Warnings were also issued over downed power lines. An 89-year-old man was killed in Florida on Monday after touching a downed line, officials said.

About 715,000 homes and businesses were without power on Monday night in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina and Virginia.

A federal judge on Monday granted a request from Florida’s Democratic Party to extend the state’s voter registration deadline by one more day, through Wednesday, because of the hurricane. Republican Governor Rick Scott had rejected demands from Democrats to extend the deadline.

A hurricane watch was issued for Bermuda, which could be threatened by another tropical system, Nicole, that is expected to reach the Atlantic island later this week, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

(Additional reporting by Letitia Stein in Tampa, Florida and Gene Cherry in Raleigh, N.C.; Writing by Timothy Mclaughlin and Laila Kearney; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Tom Brown and Paul Tait)

Italy rescues 3,000 migrants from Mediterranean as arrivals surge

A Red Cross member carries a child as migrants disembark from the Italian Navy vessel Sfinge in the Sicilian harbour of Pozzallo, southern Italy

ROME (Reuters) – Some 3000 migrants were saved in the Strait of Sicily in 30 separate rescue missions on Tuesday, the Italian coastguard said, bringing the total to almost 10,000 in two days and marking a sharp acceleration in refugee arrivals in Italy.

The migrants were packed on board dozens of boats, many of them rubber dinghies that become dangerously unstable in high seas. No details were immediately available on their nationalities.

A woman disembarks from the Italian Navy vessel Sfinge in the Sicilian harbour of Pozzallo, southern Italy,

A woman disembarks from the Italian Navy vessel Sfinge in the Sicilian harbour of Pozzallo, southern Italy, August 31, 2016. REUTERS/ Antonio Parrinello

Data from the International Organization for Migration released on Friday said around 105,000 migrants had reached Italy by boat in 2016, many of them setting sail from Libya. An estimated 2,726 men, women and children have died over the same period trying to make the journey.
Favorable weather conditions this week have seen an increase in boats setting sail. Some 1,100 migrants were picked up on Sunday and 6,500 on Monday, in one of the largest influxes of refugees in a single day so far this year.

Italy has been on the front line of Europe’s migrant crisis for three years, and more than 400,000 have successfully made the voyage to Italy from North Africa since the beginning of 2014, fleeing violence and poverty.

(Reporting by Gavin Jones; Editing by Alison Williams)

Boat migrant rescues surge as calm seas return to Mediterranean

Rescue worker greeting migrant child on the boat

By Darrin Zamit Lupi

ABOARD THE TOPAZ RESPONDER (Reuters) – Ships manned by humanitarian organizations, the Italian navy and coast guard helped rescue about 4,500 boat migrants on Thursday as calm seas returned to the Mediterranean, prompting a surge in departures from North Africa.

Rescue operations were continuing, an Italian coast guard spokesman said. The corpse of a woman was taken from a large rubber boat, and the migrants were collected from a total of about 40 different vessels, he said.

The Topaz Responder, a ship run by the Malta-based humanitarian group Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), said earlier in the day that around two dozen migrant boats had been spotted in the sea about 20 nautical miles from the Libyan port city of Sabratha.

Libya’s navy intercepted about 1,000 migrants on board eight rubber boats off Sabratha on Thursday morning, spokesman Ayoub Qassem said. He said the migrants were from Arab as well as sub-Saharan African countries.

“The mass movement is probably the result of week-long, unfavorable weather conditions” that have come to an end, MOAS said on Twitter.

The Topaz Responder picked up 382 sub-Saharan African migrants from three different large rubber boats. The Bourbon Argos, a ship run by humanitarian group Doctors without Borders, plucked 1,139 migrants from 10 boats, and two other humanitarian vessels picked up 156 more.

The Italian navy said it had rescued 515 from two dinghies, German humanitarian group Sea-Watch said it had 100 on board, and the Italian coast guard, which coordinates rescue operations, said it had deployed several boats.

An agreement between Turkey and the EU to stop migrant departures for the Greek islands has reduced boat arrivals by 98 percent during the first five months of the year from the same period of 2015, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.

But arrivals in Italy continue at about the same clip as last year, and the deadly central Mediterranean route has already claimed 2,438 lives, IOM said.

Italy has been on the front line of Europe’s worst immigration crisis since World War Two and now in its third year. More than 320,000 boat migrants came to Italy from North Africa in 2014-15.

As of Wednesday, 56,328 boat migrants had been brought to Italy in 2016, a 5.5 percent decrease on the same period of last year, according to the Interior Ministry.

Nigerians, Eritreans and Gambians were the top three migrant nationalities this year, the ministry said, and more than 125,000 are now living in Italian shelters.

(Reporting by Darrin Zammit Lupi on the Topaz Responder migrant rescue ship, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, and Ahmed Elumami in Tripoli; Writing by Steve Scherer; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Cynthia Osterman)

Want to save migrants in the Mediterranean? There’s an app for that

Migrants are seen on a partially submerged boat before to be rescued by Spanish fregate Reina Sofia

By Magdalena Mis

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A smartphone application that allows users to scan the Mediterranean for boats in distress is being tested by a migrant rescue service, which hopes that crowdsourced information will help it save more people.

The I SEA App, available on iTunes, divides a satellite image of the sea route migrants are taking into millions of small plots which are, in turn, assigned to registered users.

Each user then monitors their plot through the app and can send an alert to the Malta-based Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) and the authorities if they spot potential trouble.

After receiving an alert, the authorities analyze the image and launch a rescue mission if necessary.

“The idea is that with more people getting interested you can cover bigger areas of the sea,” Ian Ruggier, MOAS head of operations, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“It allows people to see that they are contributing towards saving lives. (The success) will depend on the popularity of the app,” he said by phone from Malta.

Migrants hoping to reach Italy from Libya pay hundreds of dollars to traffickers for a place in a boat. The vessels are often flimsy and ill-equipped for the journey across the Mediterranean.

The crossing is far more dangerous than that between Turkey and Greece, which was the busiest sea route until a deal to curb flows between the European Union and Turkey came into force in March.

So far this year more than 40,000 migrants have arrived in Italy after crossing the central Mediterranean, many fleeing poverty, repression and conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 2,000 have died trying to make the crossing.

Launched in 2014, MOAS is the first privately funded migrant rescue service. It is already using drones in its rescue missions in the Mediterranean.

According to its website, MOAS rescued nearly 12,000 people in the first two years of becoming operational.

(Reporting by Magdalena Mis; Editing by Katie Nguyen; Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

More storms for hard hit Houston, 5 dead

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Scores of schools were closed and cleanup was underway in Houston on Tuesday, a day after record rains hits the fourth most populous U.S. city, causing floods that left five dead and led to more than 1,000 water rescues.

The National Weather Service has put a flash flood watch in effect for large parts of the Houston area and into southwestern Louisiana on Tuesday. As much as 18 inches (45 cm) fell in some areas of Harris County, which contains Houston, and the weather service said heaviest daily rain records were set on Monday at the two main airports in the city.

More storms have been forecast for already saturated parts of Texas on Tuesday. About 9,000 customers were without power in the Houston area on Tuesday morning, a sharp decrease from more than 100,000 a day earlier, CenterPoint Energy said.

Flood waters that blocked roads to downtown and other main areas of the city have largely receded, with officials saying most people should be able to make it back to work.

“The city is back to normal operations but be careful driving in. Now we plan to help people recover from the flooding waters,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a tweet.

As of 8 a.m. CDT (1300 GMT), there were more than 100 flight cancellations on Tuesday at Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport, according to tracking service FlightAware.com. More than 1,000 flights were canceled at major Texas airports on Monday due to the storms.

Rains in other parts of the state were expected to cause rivers to crest later in the week, bringing floods to downstream areas, the weather service said.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Erwin Seba Editing by W Simon)

Nigerian Troops Rescue over 300 People from Boko Haram

Nigerian forces have claimed to have rescued 338 people held by Boko Haram Islamists. Those rescued are mainly women and children

“The rescued persons which comprised eight males, 138 females and 192 children, have since been evacuated,” said military spokesman Sani Usman to Reuters, adding that 30 suspected militants had been killed..

It was not made clear if any of the 236 schoolgirls kidnapped last year in northeastern Chibok were among those rescued.

In May, President Muhammadu Buhari, came to power in Nigeria on a pledge to crush Boko Haram. He has given his military commanders until the end of December to defeat the group, whose insurgency has killed at least 17,000 people and forced more than 2.5 million to flee their homes since 2009.

The Boco’s remaining stronghold, the vast Sambisa forest reserve, has become hard to penetrate due to widespread landmines laid by the militant group.
In the last few months the military has ramped up its offensive into the Sambisa and surrounding areas with air strikes and an increase in ground troops.
The freed hostages have been moved to a camp for displaced persons in Mubi in nearby Adamawa state.

South Carolina Suffers and Braces for More Flooding

The Rivers are rising to historic levels as dams break with others at the brink.  The death toll has risen to 17 in the Carolinas with no end in site to the massive flooding as most of the waterways have not reached their crest.   

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley says state wildlife officials have made at least 600 rescues during the flooding that has ravaged the state.

She says the central area of the state is recovering as the waters recede, but officials are keeping a close eye on the southeastern part of the state.

She added 62 dams across the state are being monitored and 13 had already failed.

More than 400,000 state residents were under a “boil water advisory” affecting about 16 water systems, said Jim Beasley, a spokesman for the S.C. Emergency Response Team.

The damage in South Carolina is still being assessed and numbers are up in the air regarding how many have lost homes and their businesses.  Costs in recovery are being estimated at close to a billion and will not be truly known until the flooding recedes.