Moesson 2008

(Novum/AP) - Het dodental als gevolg van het noodweer in het zuidoosten van Bangladesh is op 126 komen te staan, nadat reddingswerkers in de havenstad Chittagong in de nacht van dinsdag op woensdag nog achttien lichamen onder het puin vandaan hadden gehaald. De slachtoffers vielen door aardverschuivingen, bliksem en plotselinge overstromingen. In Chittagong, een stad met vier miljoen inwoners, zijn tot nu toe 115 doden geteld, de meesten van hen in een sloppenwijk in de heuvels van de stad. In drie districten in de omgeving van Chittagong werden in totaal elf mensen dodelijk getroffen door de bliksem.

In het district Comilla bezweek woensdag een oever van de rivier de Gumti door hevige regenval en kwamen tientallen dorpen onder water te staan. Ten minste 75.000 mensen raakten daar door het omringende water van de buitenwereld geïsoleerd.

De hevigste moessonregens in zeven jaar hebben de afgelopen dagen in heel Bangladesh voor veel overlast gezorgd. VN-secretaris-generaal Ban Ki-Moon liet weten dat de Verenigde Naties indien nodig met hulp paraat staan en hij sprak zijn medeleven uit richting de families van de omgekomenen. (nieuws.nl)

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CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh — A torrent of mudslides, flooding and lightning washed away a shantytown crowded with migrant workers in southeastern Bangladesh, killing 105 people and leaving scores unaccounted for, officials and witnesses said.

The worst-hit area was the hilly port city of Chittagong, where large chunks of earth slid off the soaked hillsides, burying dozens of crudely built shacks. Army rescuers pulled at least 21 bodies from the debris Tuesday, city official Nur Sulaiman said. Two other bodies were recovered from a pond, he added.

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More than 50 more people were reported missing in the shantytown, which is located near a military area, he added.

The slum's estimated 700 residents were mostly migrant workers and their families, who lived in clusters of straw-and-bamboo or mud-and-tin shanties built along the slopes or at the bottom of the dirt hills, survivors said.

One survivor, Dulu Mia Munshi, a rickshaw puller, lost five family members, including his wife and two small sons.

"There was a sudden rush of mud and water, and our home was swept away," Munshi told The Associated Press over mobile phone from his hospital bed. Five other neighboring shanties on a slope, with 22 inhabitants, were also washed away.

Munshi and his mother-in-law, who had left their hut minutes before, were the only survivors. Munshi was carried several feet away, and suffered sprained ankles and a fractured waist.

"My sons, aged 8 and 10, slept next to each other," he said, recalling the last time he saw his children.

Munshi had moved to Chittagong from the southern coastal district of Bhola in search of work almost 18 years ago.

Another victim, an 11-year-old-boy who gave his name as Belal only, lost his mother and two sisters.

"My mother asked me get some bricks to stop the rushing water from getting inside our house," Belal told reporters at a military hospital where he was being treated for head and limb injuries. "As soon as I stepped outside, I was carried away by the swirling water -- and a huge chunk of earth buried our house."

The country's interim leader, Fakhruddin Ahmed, on Tuesday visited the worst-hit areas, the United News of Bangladesh news agency said. He went to a military hospital where 47 seriously injured victims were being treated and distributed emergency rations among survivors at an army-run relief shelter nearby.

"Our first task is to rescue, treat and help rehabilitate the affected people," Ahmed told reporters.

At least 67 died across the city Monday, while another four bodies were found overnight, officials said. The lightning strikes killed 11 people in the neighboring districts of Cox's Bazar, Noakhali and Brahmmanbaria, the Food and Disaster Management Ministry said.

Many of the dead were buried by city officials in rows of grave on hillside graveyards that were left dry.

Many areas remained without power or water as supply stations were flooded in the city of 4 million, 135 miles southeast of the capital, Dhaka. Several city roads remained covered in slippery sludge, and the ground floors of many houses were water-logged, residents said.

The rains, which had eased by late Monday, resumed in torrents early Tuesday, flooding afresh parts of Chittagong, the weather bureau and witnesses said. There were no immediate reports of new mudslides.

About 8.4 inches of rain fell in just three hours early Monday, the local weather bureau said.

Authorities moved hundreds of people in vulnerable areas to shelters in concrete school buildings, rescue officials said.

Government and charity agencies distributed food and water to about 1,000 people left homeless by the calamity, the area's government administrator Mukhlesur Rahman said. Emergency workers had managed to rescue more than 50 injured people from the rubble.

Many residents said the rainfall and flooding were among the worst in memory.

Several factories in an industrial belt around the city were also flooded, stopping production and causing extensive damage to machinery. The city's telephone, television and radio networks were also interrupted as transmission stations were flooded.

Heavy monsoon rains -- the highest recorded levels in seven years -- also inundated parts of the capital Dhaka and other regions of the country over the weekend.

Bangladesh, a low-lying delta nation of 144 million people, is buffeted by cyclones and floods that kill hundreds of people every year. A powerful cyclone in 1991 killed 139,000 people along the coast. (FOX)
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Bangladesh blijft wat dat betreft elk jaar enorm in het nieuws lopen he

niet verwonderlijk hoor. ze blijven daar maar bomen kappen. Krijg je dit soort gedoe van.

Floods in China

Spring and summer flooding is not unusual in southern and central China, but the floods of 2007 were unusually widespread and destructive. Initial assessments in Guangdong, the southernmost province in mainland China, gauged the floods there to be the worst in 50 years, reported the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Weeks of heavy rain caused floods and landslides in six southern provinces in June. By June 15, said the Xinhua News Agency, 128 people had died and an additional 24 remained missing as a result of the floods. More than 22 million people and 1.22 million hectares of crops had been affected, Xinhua added.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured the top image of floods around Dongting Hu (Lake) in central China’s Hunan province on June 16, 2007. Though this is not the most severely impacted part of China, flooding is evident around the lake. The lake itself has grown in size since May 20, when Terra MODIS captured the lower image. The rivers that feed the lake are also swollen, the water inky black to dark blue in this false-color image. Both images were made with a combination of infrared and visible light to highlight the presence of water on the ground. In this type of image, clouds are light blue and white, plant-covered land is bright green, and bare earth is tan-pink. The city of Yueyang is the cement-grey area on the northeastern shore of Dongting Lake.

Evacuatie bewoners China wegens overstromingen

PEKING - In China zijn een half miljoen mensen geëvacueerd uit angst voor overstromingen van de rivier de Huai. Het waterpeil van deze rivier zal binnenkort de hoogste stand bereiken sinds ruim vijftig jaar, aldus de staatsmedia donderdag.

De meeste evacués komen uit de arme dorpen in de provincies Anhui, Henan en Jiangsu. De plaatselijke autoriteiten hebben een half miljoen mensen opgetrommeld die de dijken in de gaten moeten houden. Op veel plaatsen dreigen dijkdoorbraken, waardoor grote steden en spoorwegen gevaar lopen.

De afgelopen weken zijn door overstromingen in China als gevolg van zware regenval zeker 130 mensen omgekomen. Deze zomer zijn in totaal al 360 mensen omgekomen en zijn de oogsten verwoest.

Monsoon floods in Myanmar



Myanmar (Burma) regularly floods during the Asian summer monsoon, but June and early July 2007 brought unusually heavy, in some places record-breaking, rainfall. The rain caused floods in central Myanmar that forced thousands of evacuations, said ABC News on July 9. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured the top image of the floods on July 11, 2007. Clouds, bright blue and white in the false-color image, cover much of the country, but widespread flooding is still evident on the ground. Water is black in this type of image, which is made with a combination of infrared and visible light. When loaded with sediment, the water takes a lighter color. The palest blue areas may be either wet ground or extremely muddy water. Plant-covered land is bright green.

Terra MODIS acquired the lower image on June 23, well after the monsoon rains began to fall. The traces of light blue that surround the river in this image may be wetland or early signs of flooding. The floods inundated the capital, Yangon (Rangoon), to the south of the region shown in this image and Bago, a city to the east of this area. These areas are shown in the large image.

Flooding in Eastern India



India’s annual monsoon triggered widespread flooding throughout the country in early July 2007. In West Bengal, ABC News reported, nearly a million people were stranded by flooding. Every major river in the east Indian state was swollen from torrential rain and releases from too-full reservoirs, ABC added. As of July 10, at least 187 people had died and 7 million had been affected by flooding across India, said Reuters.

This image shows extensive flooding in West Bengal (top) and northern Orissa (lower left) as seen by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flying on NASA’s Terra satellite on July 9, 2007. The lower image was taken on May 31, before the monsoon rains started. In this type of image, water is typically black, as seen in the Bay of Bengal. However, the water is heavily tainted with mud in the flooded landscape, so its coloring is light blue. The extensive floods cut between the channels of the Ganges River, which flows into the Bay of Bengal in the center of the image, and extend southwest along the coast. Additional flooding is visible in the large image, which shows a broader area.

Clouds, light blue and white in this combination of infrared and visible light, cover the floods in Bangladesh to the east. In addition to causing floods, the monsoon rains have brought new life to eastern India. The landscape has gone from the tan-pink of bare earth to the bright green that indicates plant cover.

Floods in Central China


Torrential summer rains pounded the Huai River Valley of Central China starting on June 28, 2007, and by July 10, the Huai River was flowing over its banks. River levels were still rising when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image on the morning of July 10. Though clouds (pale blue and white in this false-color image) and haze still hang over the river valley, the swollen waterways of the Huai and its many tributaries are still visible. With no direct outlet to the ocean, the east-flowing river is prone to flooding. The lower image, taken by Aqua MODIS on June 6, 2007, shows the river valley before the rain started. At that time, scores of fires (marked with red) burned in agricultural fields primarily north of the river. The land is charred red-brown where fires have recently burned, and bare or sparsely vegetated land is a lighter shade of pink-tan. Plant-covered land south of the river is bright green.

The tan and green speckled appearance of the land surrounding the river is typical of heavily farmed areas. The Huai River Valley is a densely populated agricultural region spread across three provinces. Flooding in these provinces (Jiangsu, Anhui, and Henan) along with flooding in the Sichuan, Hubei, Chongqing, and Shaanxi Provinces has damaged 2.13 million hectares of farmland and has affected about 28 million people, with nearly 800,000 forced from their homes, 26 missing, and 101 dead as of July 10, reported the Xinhua News Agency. The floods, rains, and mudslides have caused the collapse of more than 75,500 houses and damaged 295,600 more throughout China, said Xinhua.

Unusually heavy summer rains led to widespread flooding across Central China in June and July 2007. On July 18, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured the top image of the flood-swollen Poyang Hu (Lake) in China’s southern Jiangxi Province. The lake is the largest fresh-water lake in China, but its size fluctuates seasonally. During the summer rainy season, the Poyang Lake can be more than 1,000 square kilometers larger than its dry-season extent. By July 18, the lake was certainly much larger than it had been on May 10, when Aqua MODIS acquired the lower image. In these images, made with a combination of infrared and visible light, water is dark blue or black. Sediment lightens the color of the water. The land around the lake is covered in bright green vegetation spotted with silvery gray cities. Bare or sparsely vegetated land is tan, and clouds are white and pale blue.

The annual flooding on Poyang Lake begins with the southern rainy season during the late spring, and culminates during the summer rains along the Yangtze. For most of the year, the lake drains into the Yangtze River through a channel on its northern shore, but during the mid- to late-summer, the Yangtze runs high, and water flows from the Yangtze into Poyang Lake. The top image reveals that this reversal in flow has probably already started. A plume of dusty blue sediment—a sign of flooding—flows into the Poyang Lake from the wide channel that leads to the Yangtze River in the north.

As of July 16, more than 105 million people had been affected by flooding throughout China since mid-June, with 3.6 million evacuated from their homes, said the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). In mid-July, the most severe flooding occurred on the Huai River, north of Poyang Lake. Daily images of Poyang Lake are available from the MODIS Rapid Response System.

Tientallen doden door noodweer China (nieuws.nl)

(Novum/AP) - Noodweer in het oosten van China heeft in de nacht van woensdag op donderdag aan zeker 31 mensen het leven gekost, heeft het staatspersbureau Xinhua gemeld. Acht mensen worden vermist. Daarmee komt het aantal doden dat deze week is gevallen ten gevolge van zware regenval op zeker 79.

De slachtoffers vielen woensdag in Jinan, de hoofdstad van de provincie Shandong. Bijna zesduizend huizen zijn onder water gelopen. Xinhua meldde niet hoe de slachtoffers precies aan hun einde waren gekomen.

In de provicie Anhui, eveneens in het oosten van China, werden donderdag 67 duizend mensen geëvacueerd omdat de rivier Huaihe buiten zijn oevers dreigde te treden. De meesten worden opgevangen in scholen en tenten, aldus Xinhua.

Eerder deze week kwamen zeker 37 personen om en raakten er 14 vermist bij noodweer in de westelijke provincie Sichuan en in de stad Chongqing

Doden door overstromingen op Sulawesi

(Novum/AP) - Door stortregens veroorzaakte overstromingen en aardverschuivingen hebben de afgelopen dagen op het Indonesische eiland Sulawesi aan zeker dertig mensen het leven gekost. Verwacht wordt dat het dodental nog zal stijgen, aangezien afgelegen gebieden nog niet zijn bereikt door reddingswerkers. Tientallen dorpen zijn onder water gelopen.

Overstromingen en aardverschuivingen in het regenseizoen worden volgens milieubeschermers in de hand gewerkt door de voortschrijdende ontbossing. De overheid erkent dit schoorvoetend.

Doden bij overstroming Nepal

(Novum/AP) - In het zuiden van Nepal is een gebied met een half miljoen inwoners overstroomd en volgens de eerste berichten zijn er zeker vier doden gevallen, zo is donderdag bekendgemaakt.

In het gebied, Mahottari, doen zich jaarlijks overstromingen voor, maar dat het helemaal onder water staat is ongebruikelijk. Bewoners van de hoofdstad van Mahottari, Jaleswor, kunnen zich alleen per boot verplaatsen. Ook zeker twaalf andere plaatsen in het zuiden en zuidwesten van Nepal zijn getroffen door overstromingen. Het regent al zeker een week onophoudelijk.

Floods in Central China

Apart from being China’s second-largest fresh-water lake, Dongting Hu is a natural flood basin for the Yangtze River in central China. Every year, between June and September, the shallow lake fills with water when the Yangtze River rises as a result of melting snow at its headwaters and summer rains along its length. This series of images, captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites, shows the lake filling between May and July 2007.

In late May, top, Dongting Lake was nearly dry. A drought the previous year left water levels low. After a rainy June, the lake had grown in three distinct lobes (east, west, and south) as shown in the center image. By July 26, the east and west lobes of Dongting Lake had grown together, and the southern portion of the lake had also filled out. The Yuan and Li Rivers, which feed the lake in the south, were also swollen. Loaded with light-scattering sediment, the water in the rivers is dusty blue, while the clearer or deeper water in the lake is black.

The images were made with infrared and visible light to increase the contrast between water and land. Plant-covered land in this richly vegetated region is bright green. Clouds are pale blue and white. The lower image, from July 26, is blurred by a thin veil of haze. Cities, which are most visible along Dongting Lake’s eastern shore, are gray-brown. The largest city shown in the images is Yueyang in the top right corner.

The floods shown in this image pushed an estimated two billion rats out of their habitat near the lake’s shores. The rats swarmed over farmland and destroyed up to 1.6 million hectares (4 million acres) of crops, said China Daily. Dongting Lake is just one region that experienced severe flooding in the summer of 2007. Unusually heavy summer rains caused widespread flooding throughout central China, particularly in the Huai River basin.