Tag Archives: typhoon

Typhoon brings Historic Rain to China

China Flood

Important Takeaways:

  • Biblical flooding in Beijing after heaviest rain in 140 years
  • Torrents of water gushed through streets in China as moisture from former Typhoon Doksuri triggered catastrophic flooding over the weekend and into the start of August.
  • Doksuri made landfall last Friday in the Chinese province of Fujian, located roughly 1,000 miles (1,609 km) south of Beijing, and lost wind intensity over the weekend as it pushed inland. However, the tropical moisture fueled extreme rain across the country for days.
  • More than 800,000 people were forced to relocate in and around Beijing after nearly 30 inches of rain triggered some of the worst flooding in the city’s history.
  • At least 26 people have died due to the flooding. The death toll may continue to climb as officials assess the damage and as floodwaters gradually recede.

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Guam hit directly by Massive Typhoon, most without power

Typhoon Mawar

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:

  • Typhoon Mawar Live Updates: Most Of Guam Loses Power As Storm Strikes Island Directly
  • Guam is in the dark as Typhoon Mawar struck its more than 150,000 American citizens directly Wednesday night local time.
  • It was scary and there were times when it felt like the house was moving every time the wind hits us, and it is definitely not a good feeling,” Joseph Taitano,
  • Taitano said he knows many trees and power lines are down, but the full scope of the damage won’t be clear until it’s daylight again there.
  • Nurse Details Scene at Guam Memorial Hospital
  • “We have all been here for 2 days now sleeping here and working. We can’t even see outside because the doors have been blown in and we can’t get close. But the hospital is flooding everywhere, ceiling is falling down. The flooding is sparking electrical outlets and causing smoke and fires. The wind is so strong and loud it is shaking the entire building so bad,”
  • National Weather Service forecasters in Guam warned that the island was going to be severely impacted by the force of Typhoon Mawar.
  • “The landscape is going to look different,” Ken Kleeschulte, a lead meteorologist with the NWS in Guam, told the Associated Press.
  • “The buildings will still be there, for the most part,” he added as a nod to the fortified building codes on the island in recent decades that have made newer structures more likely to survive powerful typhoons.
  • The Guam Power Authority said in a Facebook post that only 1,000 of about 52,000 customers on the island had power Wednesday afternoon, and conditions were too dangerous for crews to get out and fix the outages.
  • the National Weather Service had issued an extreme wind warning, signifying sustained winds of at least 115 mph were expected.

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Death toll from powerful typhoon in Philippines climbs to 12

By Karen Lema and Enrico Dela Cruz

MANILA (Reuters) – The death toll from a typhoon that slammed into the Philippines rose to 12 on Friday, and its president feared it could climb further as authorities assess the devastation caused by one of the strongest tropical storms to hit the country this year.

President Rodrigo Duterte said he would visit battered central and southern areas on Saturday to see the extent of damage, as the government tried to figure out how much it could raise for the disaster response.

Duterte said COVID-19 spending had already depleted this year’s budget.

“I’m not so much worried about damage to structures,” Duterte said in a televised briefing with disaster officials.

“My fear is if many people died. I am as eager as you to go there to see for myself,” he told Ricardo Jalad, undersecretary at the disaster agency.

Jalad said the death toll was preliminary and he was awaiting information from provincial units before a complete damage assessment could be made.

Most of the reported deaths were due to fallen trees and drowning.

Typhoon Rai, which saw winds of up to 195 km (121 miles) per hour before making landfall on Thursday, displaced more than 300,000 people, damaged homes and toppled power and communication lines, complicating the disaster response.

Rai at one point intensified into a category 5 storm, the highest classification, but later weakened and was due to exit the Philippines by Saturday. The country sees on average 20 typhoons a year.

“It is not expected to cause massive damage compared to typhoons of the same strength previously,” said Casiano Monilla, assistant secretary at the Office of the Civil Defense.

However, Bohol provincial governor Arthur Yap appealed for help as flooding hampered rescue efforts.

“Families are trapped on rooftops now,” he told DZBB radio.

The typhoon, the 15th to strike the archipelago this year, saw dozens of flights cancelled and paralyzed operations at several ports, leaving about 4,000 people stranded.

Authorities also postponed a mass vaccination drive in most regions.

(Reporting by Karen Lema and Enrico Dela Cruz; Editing by Ed Davies, Martin Petty and Michael Perry)

Pandemic hampers Philippines mass evacuation as typhoon hits

By Karen Lema

MANILA (Reuters) – The coronavirus pandemic is complicating Philippine efforts to move hundreds of thousands of people into evacuation centers where social distancing is hard to enforce as a strong typhoon pummeled through its eastern provinces.

Typhoon Vongfong, the first to hit the country this year, intensified after slamming into the eastern Philippines on Thursday afternoon, packing winds of 155 kilometers per hour (kph) and gusts of up to 255 kph (158 miles per hour), the state weather bureau said in a bulletin.

Provincial and city governments, many of which are already strapped for resources due to the outbreak, are grappling with logistical and space issues, with an estimated 200,000 people needed to be moved from their homes in coastal and mountainous areas because of fears of flooding and landslides.

“This is really a nightmare for us here,” Ben Evardone, governor of the Eastern Samar province, told CNN Philippines. “Our problem right now is where to squeeze our people, while making sure they practice social distancing”.

With an average of 20 typhoons every year hitting the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands, the challenges faced by stretched-thin local governments offer a grim preview of disaster response in the time of COVID-19.

The typhoon was forecast to move northwestward and hit Luzon, the country’s largest island that includes the capital Manila, which remains on lockdown.

Images shared on social media showed the powerful typhoon bringing intense rain and violent winds in areas along its path, toppling trees, knocking out power and destroying homes.

In the town of Buhi in the province of Camarines Sur, hundreds of evacuees were given face masks before they were allowed in the evacuation centers.

Mark Anthony Nazarrea, a public information officer at Buhi, said the local government turned two more schools into temporary shelters to enable better social distancing.

There were no reported cases of the new coronavirus in Buhi, Nazarrea said, but “we want to minimize the risk”.

Classrooms that used to accommodate eight families during disasters are now housing only one to two families, he said.

The novel coronavirus has killed 790 people in the Philippines since the first local transmission was recorded in March, and infected close to 12,000.

(Additional reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Mark Potter)

Death toll in Philippine typhoon rises to 10 as storm moves off

MANILA (Reuters) – The death toll from a typhoon that hit provinces south of the Philippine capital rose to 10, disaster agencies said on Wednesday, pointing to precautions and compulsory evacuations as key in preventing more casualties.

Typhoon Kammuri, the 20th to enter the Philippines this year, hit land on Monday night, prompting forced evacuation of thousands of residents and cancellation of hundreds of flights. It also disrupted the schedule for some events in the Southeast Asian Games, which the Philippines is hosting until Dec. 11.

Five people died in the central Bicol region, including three who drowned, a local disaster agency said in a report. Five more were killed in a region south of the capital.

Around 345,000 people are still in evacuation centers, awaiting authorities’ clearance for them to return home, disaster agency spokesman Mark Timbal told broadcaster ANC.

“The storm left the usual damage of major storms such as fallen trees, ruined roofs of houses and some government facilities,” Timbal said. Officials said forced evacuations and preparations prevented greater loss of life.

Sustained winds of Kammuri weakened to 100 kilometers per hour (67 miles per hour), with gusts of up to 125 kph (78 mph) as it heads toward the South China Sea. It is set to leave the Philippines on Wednesday night, the state weather bureau said.

An average of 20 typhoons annually hit the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands.

(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales and Karen Lema. Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

Rescuers search waist-high muddy waters for missing people in typhoon-hit Japan

By Kwiyeon Ha and Kyung Hoon Kim

NAGANO, Japan (Reuters) – Rescue workers waded through muddy, waist-high waters on Monday searching for missing people after one of the worst typhoons to hit Japan in recent history, while rain fell again in some affected areas, stoking fears of further flooding.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said vast areas had been struck by the storm and called for urgent support to those affected.

At least 56 people were killed in the typhoon, which left vast sections of towns in central and eastern Japan under water, with another 15 missing and 211 injured, public broadcaster NHK said.

Tens of thousands of rescue workers and a fleet of helicopters fanned out in the affected areas, officials said.

“There still are many residents who have yet to be accounted for. Our people in uniform are working day and night in search and rescue operations,” Abe told an emergency meeting of ministers.

“Damage has been made in an extremely wide range of areas, and more than 30,000 people are still being forced to remain in the state of evacuation. It is our urgent task to offer meticulous support to those who have been affected.”

Typhoon Hagibis, which means “speed” in the Philippine language Tagalog, made landfall on Japan’s main island of Honshu on Saturday and headed out to sea early on Sunday.

Groups of rescuers wearing goggles and snorkels looked for survivors while making their way in waist-high water in Nagano, central Japan, where the Chikuma River inundated swathes of land. A middle-aged man in Nagano, asked about the situation around his house, told NHK: “It’s just like a lake.”

Yoshinobu Tsuchiya, 69, returned on Monday morning to his home in Nagano city, near where the Chikuma had breached its banks, to find that his first floor had been flooded and that the garden he tended had turned to brown mud.

“So this is what it’s come to,” Tsuchiya sighed to the Nikkei newspaper. “I can’t even imagine when we’ll finish cleaning up. I’m sick of this flood.”

A neighbour in his 60s told the newspaper: “This is just like a tsunami. This is hopeless.”

At a second emergency meeting on Monday, Abe urged ministers to do their utmost to help evacuees return to normal life as soon as possible.

More than 110,000 police officers, firefighters, soldiers and coastguard personnel, as well as some 100 helicopters, were mobilised for Monday’s rescue operations, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said.

Heavy rain was forecast for Monday night in some parts of central and eastern Japan, where soil is already loosened by record-breaking downpours from the typhoon, prompting Suga to urge residents to keep their guard up.

“Rain is expected in affected areas today. Because of the rain we have seen so far, levels of water are high in some rivers and soil is loose in some areas,” Suga said. “Please remain on your guard for landslides and river overflows.”

A Nagano city official said there were some showers by early afternoon, although they were not heavy.

Some parts of Japan saw about one third of their average annual precipitation just over the weekend, causing 37 rivers to break their banks, NHK said.

More than 77,000 households were still without power by mid-afternoon on Monday, a national holiday, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said. That was down from 262,000 households as of midday on Sunday.

Also, about 136,000 households were without running water as of Monday morning, Suga said.

In Fukushima, north of the capital, Tokyo Electric Power Co <9501.T> reported nine cases of irregular readings from sensors monitoring water over the weekend at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was crippled by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

But a Tokyo Electric official said on Monday eight of the irregular readings were triggered by rainwater, and the other one by a malfunction of a monitor, and that there was no leakage of contaminated water.

(Reporting by Kyung Hoon Kim, Kwiyeon Ha; Writing by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.S. Pacific islands brace for long recovery after ‘catastrophic’ typhoon

A downed power line sits on a damaged building after Super Typhoon Yutu hit Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, U.S., October 25, 2018 in this image taken from social media. Brad Ruszala via REUTE

(Reuters) – Authorities in the Northern Mariana Islands called for urgent supplies and equipment on Friday and were preparing for weeks without power after being hit by their most powerful typhoon in half a century, killing one woman and causing widespread destruction.

Super Typhoon Yutu, a category five storm, struck the U.S. Western Pacific territory overnight on Wednesday, pulling down hundreds of electricity poles, damaging homes and commercial properties and the international airport on Saipan, located about 6,000 km (3,700 miles) west of Hawaii.

A damaged structure is seen at Saipan International Airport after Super Typhoon Yutu hit the Northern Mariana Islands, U.S., October 25, 2018 in this image taken from social media. Brad Ruszala via REUTERS

A damaged structure is seen at Saipan International Airport after Super Typhoon Yutu hit the Northern Mariana Islands, U.S., October 25, 2018 in this image taken from social media. Brad Ruszala via REUTERS

On the island of Tinian, which took a direct hit from Yutu, the mayor asked for tools, machetes and chainsaws to help clear debris and urged residents to be patient and conserve fuel, food and water as emergency supplies had yet to arrive.

“Please be calm, help is on its way,” mayor Joey Patrick San Nicolas said in a Facebook Live video.

“Our stores are not opening, restaurants have been destroyed and we are left with what we have in our refrigerators in our homes. We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of emergency of military aircraft.”

With winds of about 270 kph (168 mph), Yutu was the strongest typhoon seen in the archipelago of 52,000 people since 1968, according to governor Ralph Torres.

He said a long recovery period was ahead and he was pressing the central government for a major disaster to be declared and approved by U.S. President Donald Trump, so the Marianas could receive federal disaster assistance.

Torres said a 44-year-old woman in Saipan had been killed while sheltering in an abandoned building that collapsed.

“This is an unfortunate incident,” he said, adding that authorities were focusing on saving and preserving lives.

“Our first responders remain vigilant and (are) working around the clock.”

U.S. health secretary, Alex Azar, declared a public health emergency for the islands on Thursday to boost access to medical care after what he described as a “catastrophic” storm.

Water pipes were damaged and all flights to Saipan’s airport halted. Images on social media showed some buildings near the airport leveled by the storm, beneath them crushed vehicles and debris scattered over large areas.

Some 200-300 power poles had been toppled, and 400-500 were leaning. Authorities requested at least 700 replacements and transformers and said restoring power to pump water was top priority.

Yutu was traveling at 20 kph on Friday, with winds of 180 kph and gusts 220 kph and headed toward the northern Philippines, where the state weather agency said it could make landfall early on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Martin Petty in Manila; Editing by Michael Perry)

Japan braces as typhoon charts course for main island

Super typhoon Trami is seen from the International Space Station as it moves in the direction of Japan, September 25, 2018 in this image obtained from social media on September 26, 2018. ESA/NASA-A.Gerst/via REUTERS

By Elaine Lies

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan braced for high winds and heavy rain as a typhoon roared north on Friday, enveloping outlying islands in high seas before taking aim at the rest of the nation and raking across its biggest main island at the weekend.

Typhoon Trami, rated category 2 by Tropical Storm Risk, with category 5 the highest, is the latest storm to threaten Japan in a year filled with more than the usual number of disasters, including punishing heat, heavy rains, and landslides.

Less than a month ago, a typhoon flooded Kansai International airport near Osaka, leaving thousands of tourists stranded.

Outlying islands in the Okinawan chain, some 1,000 km southwest of Tokyo, were being pounded by heavy seas and strong winds, just two days before an Okinawan gubernatorial election, forcing some areas to hold voting early. The central government set up an emergency office to deal with the storm.

Trami was about 300 km (186 miles) southeast of Miyako island, with winds gusting as high as 216 kilometers an hour (134 mph).

Churning north across Okinawa on Saturday, Trami is then predicted to rake across the islands of Kyushu and the main island of Honshu on Sunday, a path similar to that taken by typhoon Jebi early in September.

Though the Japanese capital of Tokyo is set for heavy rain, current predictions show it avoiding a direct hit.

Jebi, the most powerful storm to hit Japan in 25 years, brought some of the highest tides since a 1961 typhoon and flooded Kansai airport near Osaka, taking it out of service for days.

Seventeen people died in the storm, whose high winds sent trees crashing to the ground and cars scudding across parking lots.

Even for a nation accustomed to disasters, this year has been hard for Japan, starting with a volcanic eruption in January that rained rocks down on a ski resort, killing one.

July brought record-breaking heat that killed at least 80 people and sent over 20,000 to the hospital for treatment, along with torrential rains in western Japan that set off floods and landslides, killing more than 200.

Just two days after Jebi hit in September, the northernmost main island of Hokkaido was rocked by an earthquake that set off landslides, knocked out power throughout the island and killed at least 44 people.

(Editing by Nick Macfie)

Japan begins clean-up after typhoon kills 11; major airport closed

Vehicles damaged by Typhoon Jebi are seen in Kobe, western Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo September 5, 2018. Kyodo/via REUTERS

By Kaori Kaneko

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan began on Wednesday to clean up after a powerful typhoon killed 11 people, injured hundreds and stranded thousands at a flooded airport, though when the airport in an industrial and tourist hub might reopen was not clear.

Typhoon Jebi, or “swallow” in Korean, was briefly a super typhoon and was the most powerful storm to hit Japan in 25 years. It came after months of heavy rain, landslides, floods and record-breaking heat that killed hundreds of people this summer.

Passengers stranded at Kansai International Airport due to powerful typhoon Jebi queue outside the airport as they wait for the arrival of a special bus service to transport them out of the area, in Izumisato, western Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo September 5, 2018. Kyodo/via REUTERS

Passengers stranded at Kansai International Airport due to powerful typhoon Jebi queue outside the airport as they wait for the arrival of a special bus service to transport them out of the area, in Izumisato, western Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo September 5, 2018. Kyodo/via REUTERS

About 3,000 tourists were stuck overnight at Kansai Airport in western Japan, an important hub for companies exporting semiconductors built on reclaimed land on a bay near Osaka and connected to the mainland by a bridge that was damaged when a tanker slammed into it during the storm.

But by afternoon many people had been rescued by bus or ferried by ship from the airport, where puddles still stood on the main runway after it was inundated on Tuesday.

“More than anything else, I really want to take a bath,” one woman told NHK public television.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Wednesday afternoon about 470 people were injured. It was uncertain when the airport would reopen and some roads and train lines in the affected areas were still closed, he said.

But the number of households without power had been roughly halved to 530,000.

“The government will continue to do everything possible to tackle these issues with utmost urgency,” Suga told a news conference earlier.

A bridge connecting Kansai airport, damaged by crashing with a 2,591-tonne tanker, which is sent by strong wind caused by Typhoon Jebi, is seen in Izumisano, western Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo September 5, 2018. Kyodo/via REUTERS

A bridge connecting Kansai airport, damaged by crashing with a 2,591-tonne tanker, which is sent by strong wind caused by Typhoon Jebi, is seen in Izumisano, western Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo September 5, 2018. Kyodo/via REUTERS

Japan’s JXTG Nippon Oil Energy Corp shut at least one refining units at its 135,000 barrels-per-day Sakai refinery in Osaka due to typhoon damage to part of the cooling tower, the trade ministry said.

Many chip plants operate in the Kansai region. Toshiba Memory, the world’s second-largest maker of flash memory chips, was monitoring developments closely and may need to ship products from other airports if Kansai remains closed, a spokeswoman said.

She said the company was not expecting a major impact because its plant in Yokkaichi in central Japan had not been affected by the typhoon.

It could take several days to a week to reopen Kansai airport depending on the damage, the Yomiuri newspaper quoted an unidentified person in the airline industry as saying.

Winds that in many places gusted to the highest ever recorded in Japan, according to the Japanese Meteorological Agency, left a swathe of damage, with fruit and vegetables, many about to be harvested, hit especially hard.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was criticized in July for an initially slow response to devastating floods that month, posted updates on the rescue efforts at Kansai.

Jebi’s course brought it close to parts of western Japan hit by rains and flooding in July that killed more than 200 people, but most of the damage this time appeared to be from the wind.

(Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori, Makiko Yamazaki, Chang-Ran Kim, Kiyoshi Takenaka and Elaine Lies; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)

Tepco’s ‘ice wall’ fails to freeze Fukushima’s toxic water buildup

By Aaron Sheldrick and Malcolm Foster

OKUMA, Japan (Reuters) – A costly “ice wall” is failing to keep groundwater from seeping into the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, data from operator Tokyo Electric Power Co shows, preventing it from removing radioactive melted fuel at the site seven years after the disaster.

When the ice wall was announced in 2013, Tepco assured skeptics that it would limit the flow of groundwater into the plant’s basements, where it mixes with highly radioactive debris from the site’s reactors, to “nearly nothing.”

However, since the ice wall became fully operational at the end of August, an average of 141 metric tonnes a day of water has seeped into the reactor and turbine areas, more than the average of 132 metric tonnes a day during the prior nine months, a Reuters analysis of the Tepco data showed.

The groundwater seepage has delayed Tepco’s clean-up at the site and may undermine the entire decommissioning process for the plant, which was battered by a tsunami seven years ago this Sunday. Waves knocked out power and triggered meltdowns at three of the site’s six reactors that spewed radiation, forcing 160,000 residents to flee, many of whom have not returned to this once-fertile coast.

Though called an ice wall, Tepco has attempted to create something more like a frozen soil barrier.

Using 34.5 billion yen ($324 million) in public funds, Tepco sunk about 1,500 tubes filled with brine to a depth of 30 meters (100 feet) in a 1.5-kilometre (1-mile) perimeter around four of the plant’s reactors. It then cools the brine to minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit).

The aim is to freeze the soil into a solid mass that blocks groundwater flowing from the hills west of the plant to the coast.

However, the continuing seepage has created vast amounts of toxic water that Tepco must pump out, decontaminate and store in tanks at Fukushima that now number 1,000, holding 1 million tonnes. It says it will run out of space by early 2021.

“I believe the ice wall was ‘oversold’ in that it would solve all the release and storage concerns,” said Dale Klein, the former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the head of an external committee advising Tepco on safety issues.

“The hydrology of the Fukushima site is very complicated and thus the exact water flow is hard to predict,” he said, “especially during heavy rains.”

TYPHOON

The water inflows often fluctuate with rainfall. The dry month of January averaged 83 tons a day, Tepco data showed.

But when a typhoon struck during the last week of October, 866 tons a day poured into the reactors.

Overall, Tepco says a combination of drains, pumps and the ice wall has cut water flows by three-quarters, from 490 tons a day during the December 2015 to February 2016 period to an average of 110 tons a day for December 2017 to February 2018.

It is hard to measure exactly how much the ice wall is contributing, Tepco officials say, but based on computer analysis the utility estimates the barrier is reducing water flows by about 95 tonnes a day compared to two years ago, before the barrier was operating.

“Our assessment is that the ice wall has been effective,” said Naohiro Masuda, Tepco’s chief decommissioning officer, adding that rain falling within the ice wall perimeter contributed to surging volumes. “We now believe we have a system in place to manage the water level.”

However, a government-commissioned panel on Wednesday offered a mixed assessment of the ice wall, saying it was partially effective but more steps were needed.

Controlling the groundwater seepage using the ice wall has been central to Japan’s program to show it had the Fukushima decommissioning in hand.

The barrier was announced just days before Tokyo won the bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared that Fukushima was “under control” in his final pitch to the International Olympic Committee.

In addition to the building costs, the ice wall needs an estimated 44 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year to run, enough to power about 15,000 typical Japanese homes.

NO MORE SPACE

Meanwhile, Tepco must decide how to cope with the growing volume of water stored on site.

The purification process removes 62 radioactive elements from the contaminated water but it leaves tritium, a mildly radioactive element that is difficult to separate from water. Not considered harmful in low doses, tritium is released into oceans and rivers by nuclear plants around the world at various national standard levels.

But local residents, particularly fishermen, oppose ocean releases because they fear it will keep consumers from buying Fukushima products. Many countries, including South Korea and China, still have restrictions on produce from Fukushima and neighboring areas.

A government-commissioned task force is examining five options for disposing of the tritium-laced water, including ocean releases, though no decision has been made.

Ken Buesseler, a radiochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the United States, suggests that Tepco should open the tanks to external inspections to see if the water is safe.

“From the public’s viewpoint, I think they’d want a bit of independent confirmation,” Buesseler said. “It’s no harder and a lot cheaper than building an ice wall.”

(Reporting by Malcolm Foster and Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)