Friday 5 April 2013

Nigeria: 36 killed as luxury bus, petrol tanker collide long Benin-Ore road


At least 36 persons were reportedly burnt to death Friday in a road accident that occurred at about 1.30 pm in Ugbogui village, near Ofusu, the boundary town between Edo and Ondo state.

An eye witness account disclosed that the accident which took place the Benin- Ore dual carriage way involved three vehicles which included a trailer loaded with cement and belonging to the Dangote Group, a luxury bus said to be owned by the Young Shall Grow Motors and a petrol tanker loaded with fuel.

An official of the FRSC who spoke on condition of anonymity who confirmed the incident at press time said that three of the passengers were rescued luxury bus that was said to be carrying a full load of passengers just as he added that the bodies of the victims had littered the scene.

According to the eye witness, victims of the accident included drivers and motor-boys of both trailer and the tanker including 30 passengers in the luxurious bus.

Four people from the tanker died as well as two children who were at a nearby mechanic workshop.

Mr Agwu said the fire which erupted from the accident quickly "spread to a nearby mechanic workshop where eight other vehicles got burnt. A nearby local market also got burnt".

The highway links Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos with eastern and southern states of the country.

The cause of the multiple accidents it was gathered, was attributed to the trailer which had a flat tire, hit the tanker which also in the process hit the luxurious bus that subsequently burst into flames.

It was gathered that the accident had caused heavy traffic along the ever busy highway which forced vehicles to divert into feeder roads along the express road.

Nigeria has one of the worst road accident records in Africa, with poor roads, badly maintained vehicles and reckless driving killing thousands every year.

Eighteen people were killed and nine others seriously injured Wednesday when their bus veered off its lane and collided with another bus along a highway linking the capital Abuja to the central city of Lokoja, officials said.

Friday 5 April 2013

http://www.codewit.com/nigeria-news/7148-nigeria-60-killed-as-luxury-bus-petrol-tanker-collide-long-benin-ore-road

http://www.key103.co.uk/news/uk-and-world/20130405-nigeria-petrol-tanker-explodes-killing-36/

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Wahine disaster remembered 45 years on


There was no need for the band to play on as the Wahine was sinking – the passengers were already singing There’s a Hole in my Bucket.

As it entered Wellington Harbour in a ferocious storm 45 years ago, on the morning of April 10, 1968, the Lyttelton to Wellington ferry’s radar became useless and a massive wave hit the ship. It was pushed side-on towards Barrett Reef.

Thirty minutes later Captain Gordon Robertson, attempting to steer it from trouble, ordered the ship full astern, washing it on to the reef.

The Wahine ground along the jagged rocks, causing extensive damage to its workings. Water started flooding in.

From that moment, an inquiry later found, ‘‘she was a doomed ship’’.

It would be almost seven hours before the ‘‘abandon ship’’ order was given to the 734 passengers and crew, of whom 51 were to lose their lives that day. Two others subsequently died.

With ludicrous gaiety in the brunt of one of the most ferocious storms in Wellington’s history, someone started a ‘‘sing-song’’, survivor Kay McCormick wrote in her diary after the tragedy.

Grimly prophetic tunes such as There’s a Hole in my Bucket and We Shall Not Be Moved, with the line ‘‘we’re on our way to Heaven’’, were ringing out as 14-metre waves tore through the harbour heads. Just after 1.25pm, these words came over the PA system: ‘‘We are abandoning ship. Would all passengers proceed to the starboard side of B Deck. The starboard side is the right-hand side facing the front of the ship.’’ Ms McCormick never heard the announcement, but it was clear what was going on. ‘‘I had seen the sea that morning and just didn’t believe we would stand a chance on a raft in those waves. But [friend and fellow student nurse] Anne said she was staying with the crowd, so I said I would stay with her. ‘‘I remember an old Maori lady standing on the deck, giving up her beautiful rich singing voice to the sound of the wind and rain. A young man climbed onto the rail to jump overboard and swim and was stopped by loud screams. He turned around like he had just been woken up. ‘‘Standing waiting in the corridor, with a tight grip on the rail to stay standing, I remember trying to persuade myself I might be going to die. But it was so impossible – to be happening in the middle of Wellington Harbour, and to be happening to me – that I just could not believe it.’’ From the moment she woke that day, she thought she would die. ‘‘The sea was just so terrible,’’ she said this week. TWO STORMS COLLIDE National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research meteorology principal scientist Mike Revell said the storm, now known as the Wahine Storm, formed when tropical cyclone Gisele arrived from Norfolk Island at the same time as an upper-level trough approached from the west. Neither system in itself was extreme but their combination was. ‘‘Each one sort of fed of the other.’’ The average wind at the airport at 3am was southerly 18kmh; by 6am it was about 110kmh and stayed that way until about midday. Official readings put gusts at the peak of the storm at 200kmh, and less reliable ones at 250kmh. Either way, they were the highest gusts recorded in Wellington. Visibility dropped from 1km to 200m in the hour before 7am as already massive waves peaked in the shallow water at the harbour heads. It was into this chaotic scene of water and waves that Ms McCormick, then 19, jumped with the first mate. She was one of the last off the ferry, and on to a raft getting ‘‘colder and colder’’, until a tug arrived.

‘‘A rope was thrown out. I caught it and we were hauled in. The waves were washing up deck height on the tug and all the men on board were standing around the deck, inside the rail. We were safe.

‘‘‘Darling,’ I heard – and a big laughing bearded man picked me up in his arms and put me down on the tug deck. I waited until Anne was lifted on board too and then we went inside - into such warmth.’’

Elsewhere, passengers were making dry land. Others were plucked from the water by boats. Some were greeted by locals at Seatoun with flasks of tea and blankets.

Each year, survivors still gather on April 10 in Wellington.

‘‘We all say, it’s a day we would never want repeated but we would never want it taken out of our lives,’’ Ms McCormick says.

Bill Spring doesn’t usually make it south from Auckland for the reunion. This year, he will.

With his mate Brian Goldsmith, he was at the top deck and saw the reef coming. ‘‘You could see the rock out the window, you could almost touch it.’’

The ship hit with a ‘‘clunk’’. It stayed there getting ground against the rocks in the pounding waves. If it had not floated off, pushed by a turn in the wind, Mr Spring is clear: ‘‘Nobody would have survived.’’

During the six hours and 39 minutes that followed, crew told passengers they would be docking soon.

Passengers were still making plans for the day – ones that didn’t involve facing death in Wellington Harbour.

Looking for a lifejacket, Mr Spring went to the crew quarters, where a local radio station announced the ship would dock within an hour.

‘‘The crew were going, ‘Boo, what a load of crap.’ They knew the boat was sinking.’’

When the order to abandon was given, the Wahine was listing heavily, meaning none of the lifeboats on the higher, port side could be lowered.

Mr Spring and others clambered towards the stern, hanging on to the handrail. ‘‘You could almost walk along the side of the ship.’’

There was a small patch of calm water in the ship’s lee, a 20m jump away.

Some were breaking legs and arms as they jumped. For others, the poorly designed lifejackets were forced up by the water, snapping their necks.

The fact that Mr Spring forgot to tie his jacket ‘‘probably saved my life’’, he said.

‘‘You saw some terrible sights and heard some terrible things. I heard, jumping in the water, a young girl starting to scream and when she stopped screaming she died.’’

Mr Spring spent three hours in the water, floating across the harbour then out towards the heads. There were bodies all over.

‘‘It’s nightmarish, I thought I was going to die. You couldn’t see anything.’’

He and his mate were plucked to safety near the jagged rocks of Pencarrow by a tug, already packed with 50 people.

A woman who had lost her child was on board. ‘‘She was literally pulling out her own hair.’’

DOCUMENTING DISASTER

Ian Mackley, Evening Post photographer, was at Seatoun beach when lifeboats started being lowered to the water. One photo, now famous, catches the ship listing heavily as packed lifeboats escape in a heavy swell.

As he finished work, Mr Mackley decided to detour past the coast around from Eastbourne. ‘‘Police were lined up along the edge of the harbour [looking for bodies]. It was an horrific sight.’

The ship remained on the reef for four years, a clearly visible reminder from the beach at Seatoun, before scrap cutters removed it.

Weather expert Erick Brenstrum said there were several mistakes that night and morning that led to the disaster.

His belief is backed by master mariners who took part in an official inquiry into the case. They agreed to sign the decision, which cleared Captain Robertson, only if their concerns were noted in an appendix, Mr Brenstrum said.

It was clear as the Wahine left Lyttelton that the storm warning it had received was for a 10 to 20-year event. The ship was not expected to be sailing into the worst of it, but had little margin for error.

Off the Marlborough coast, with the captain asleep, the crew continued on despite having trouble steering in the large waves.

The ship was already near the harbour heads when the captain woke, and it was very late to attempt a successful turn away.

Following normal practice, the ship was cut to half speed, meaning it was travelling at the same speed as the waves, rendering steering useless.

Then, between the ship first being hit by a large wave shortly after 6am and and hitting the reef half an hour later, engine tapes – a ship’s equivalent of a black box – show the captain had it facing back out of the harbour then seemingly attempting to steer it back in.

It seems he turned the ship to face Breaker Bay. It is likely the crew realised they were looking at the lights of the homes on land and thrust the ship into reverse, back on to Barrett Reef.

Ms McCormick still gets nightmares about that day. She recently cancelled a ferry crossing to Picton.

‘‘I couldn’t face travelling at this time of the year.’’

Friday 5 April 2013

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/8516445/Wahine-disaster-remembered-45-years-on

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Philippines recorded most disaster-related deaths in the world in 2012


The Philippines had the greatest number of disaster-related deaths in 2012, with 2,360 fatalities, according to a report in the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) newsletter.

Around 1,901 of these deaths were caused by Typhoon Pablo (international name: Bopha). Debarati Guha-Sapir, CRED director, said in the report that Pablo was the strongest tropical cyclone on record that hit Mindanao, having also affected at least six million people. Pablo was also responsible for $2.6 billion worth of property damage.

For 2012, the Brussels-based CRED recorded about 310 natural disasters globally, which claimed about 9,930 lives and affected over 106 million others. These disasters resulted to $238 billion in economic damages.

“There were no mega-disasters in 2012 in terms of human impact,” said the CRED report. It also pointed out that the number of deaths in 2012 much lower than the 10-year average (from 2002 to 2011) of 106,809 deaths per year.

Broken down into continents, Asia was once again the most affected by natural disasters, both in terms of occurrence, persons killed and persons affected.

Meanwhile, about 63 percent of economic losses occurred in the Americas. Hurricane Sandy, which had hit the Eastern seaboard of the United States in October, cost the US about $50 billion. Meanwhile, a drought that affected 62 percent of the United States incurred a $20-billion economic loss.

“Though the majority of economic damages from natural disasters in 2012 came from developed nations, the impact of disasters on less-developed economies should not be overlooked,” CRED stressed.

As an example, the report cited the damage the damages caused by Cyclone Evan on Samoa, which represented almost 20% of the country’s GDP. Also Pakistan lost the equivalent of 1.7% of GDP because of floods.

Friday 5 April 2013

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/302460/news/nation/phl-recorded-most-disaster-related-deaths-in-the-world-in-2012

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Cote d’Ivoire exhumes bodies from post-election violence mass graves


Ivory Coast has begun exhuming dozens of mass graves containing bodies from the country’s 2010-2011 post-election violence. At a ceremony in Abidjan’s Yopougon district on Thursday, officials said the process would provide closure to families and help bring perpetrators of crimes to justice.

A government census has identified 57 graves for exhumation in the commercial capital of Abidjan, and many of those are believed to contain multiple bodies. A national census of mass graves has yet to be conducted, but officials have said the exhumation effort will eventually extend throughout the country.

An Ivorian Red Cross worker photographs an area claimed to be a mass grave on May 4, 2011 during a mission to collect corpses in Yopougon, a district to the west of Abidjan.An Ivorian Red Cross worker photographs an area claimed to be a mass grave on May 4, 2011 during a mission to collect corpses in Yopougon, a district to the west of Abidjan.

The violence in Ivory Coast was triggered by former President Laurent Gbagbo’s refusal to step down after losing the November 2010 presidential runoff vote to his rival, current President Alassane Ouattara. More than 3,000 people died in five months of fighting, according to the United Nations.

On Thursday, Justice Minister Gnenema Coulibaly presided over a ceremony at the site of the first grave to be exhumed. The grave is located on the grounds of a mosque in Yopougon, and contains the bodies of four men who were killed in an attack on the mosque in April 2011.

We have identified 57 mass graves in Abidjan, 36 of which are in Yopougon,” said Coulibaly Gnenema, Minister of Justice, at the ceremony launching the exhumation in Yopougon, a neighbourhood of the country’s commercial capital.

“The authorities have exhumed four bodies from the first mass grave near a mosque,” he said, adding that “the operation is expected to continue over the next few months as part of a government investigation”.

Youpougon is one of the city’s most densely populated areas and largely remained loyal to ousted President Laurent Gbagbo during the post-election conflict.

Battles between armed forces backing President Alassane Ouattara and Mr. Gbagbo supporters took place there.

Some 3,000 people died in the chaos that followed Mr. Gbagbo’s refusal to concede defeat to Ouattara. The ousted president is in custody at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

A decision is due on whether there is enough evidence to try him on four counts of crimes against humanity.

Rights group, Human Rights Watch (HRW), said that president Ouattara has failed to deliver on his promise to bring to justice all those responsible for the violence.

“President Ouattara’s expressed support for impartial justice rings urging more concrete action to bring justice for victims of crimes committed by pro-government forces,” said Param-Preet Singh, a senior analyst with HRW.

The organization has called on the ICC to “investigate crimes committed by those on the Ouattara side, and based on evidence, to seek arrest warrants.”

Coulibaly said exhumations of hastily dug graves were an important part of moving on from the conflict.

“Two years after this tragedy, many bodies remain at rest in public spaces, including places of worship,” he said. “It’s absolutely necessary to proceed with exhumations to allow families to grieve, and to permit judicial investigations to find the truth.”

Coulibaly said that 36 of the 57 graves identified for exhumation were located in the Yopougon district, a part of the city where fighters loyal to both Gbagbo and Ouattara allegedly committed killings on a large scale, according to reports from journalists, rights groups and the U.N.

Issiaka Diaby, president of the Collective of Victims in Ivory Coast, said it was difficult for residents of the district to embrace reconciliation when their dead relatives had not been properly laid to rest.

“The exhumation of these bodies is a very good thing, because it was not easy for the parents to come to this mosque and pray when their relatives were buried just outside,” he said. “And when you think about cases where bodies were buried in houses and other places, the exhumation process will reduce the suffering of their parents and also reduce the desire for revenge.”

The ceremony on Thursday included prayers led by Muslim and Christian leaders, as well as a moment of silence for victims of the fighting.

Friday 5 April 2013

http://www.voanews.com/content/ivory-coast-exhuming-dozens-of-mass-graves/1635002.html

http://premiumtimesng.com/news/foreign/128271-cote-divoire-exhumes-bodies-from-post-election-violence-mass-graves.html

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Genocide Memorial Centre to Be Constructed in Tanzania


The governments of Rwanda and Tanzania are currently in talks on the possibility of constructing a Genocide memorial site in the latter's Ngara district to accommodate the remains of victims of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi that were discovered in Tanzania.

Speaking to The New Times, the executive secretary of the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide, Jean De Dieu Mucyo said plans are in the final phase to have the memorial site built.

"The talks between the two countries are about the ownership of the land where this memorial site will be located. As soon as the countries agree, the construction will begin," said Mucyo.

Martin Muhoza, the in-charge of conservation and exhibition at CNLG said that, CNLG officials visited the place, made a report and handed it over to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Currently, there are remains of 917 Genocide victims buried in Ngara District of Tanzania.

In 2009, CNLG was tipped by someone that there were Genocide remains buried in Tanzania. Since then, several trips were made by officials to Tanzania and indeed found that some remains that floated on Kagera River in 1994 were buried there.

During the Genocide, victims were dumped in the Akagera and Nyabarongo rivers-both tributaries of Lake Victoria-and were washed down and landed at different shores of East Africa's biggest lake.

It is reported that Everready Nkya, a Tanzanian national, took up the initiative of burying the bodies in 1994 in Ngara, located three kilometers away from the Rusumo border that divides Rwanda and Tanzania.

The bodies were buried in a mass grave but not accorded a decent burial; an issue the Genocide commission says is being considered by both Rwandan and Tanzanian authorities.

The discovery in Tanzania follows several others that were made in Uganda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Uganda leads in numbers with remains of over 10,000 victims buried there in parts of the country's Mpigi, Masaka and Rakai districts.

Friday 5 April 2013

http://allafrica.com/stories/201304050045.html

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Memorial service held for Tibet landslide victims


A memorial ceremony was held for the victims in the March 29 landslide in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region on Thursday, as rescuers continued their search for the remaining missing amid snowy weather.

A monument, which is made of grey granite and about two meters high, was erected on an open land of Serbo Village, some six to seven kilometers from the site of the landslide which buried 83 mine workers in Maizhokunggar County, about 68 km from regional capital Lhasa.

Meters behind the monument was a long black banner hanging high with both Chinese and Tibetan characters in white color, reading "deeply mourning" the dead in the disaster.

Chen Quanguo, Communist Party chief of Tibet and other top regional officials, stood in silent tribute, made bows and offered chrysanthemum flowers at the monument.

"Take care" and "live on for a good life," Chen told more than 10 relatives while shaking hands with each of them.

Thursday marked the seventh day of the landslide, which occurred on the early morning of March 29 when an estimated 2 million cubic meters of mud, rocks and debris swept through workers' camps of the Jiama Copper Polymetallic Mine. The mine is run by Tibet Huatailong Mining Development Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of the country's largest gold producer, China National Gold Group Corporation.

According to Chinese tradition, the seventh day after the death of a person is an important memorial occasion for his or her relatives.

China's Tomb-Sweeping Day, also known as the Qingming Festival, also fell on Thursday this year. On this day, family members tend to the graves of their loved ones by leaving food and liquor at their burial sites, as well as by burning fake money as a form of offering.

Several hundred people, including rescuers and local people, were present at the ceremony. Looking sad, they lined up to offer flowers or hada, a strip of raw silk and linen for good blessing, in front of the monument.

"I have many words I want to say to my mother," said tearful Yan Zhanbing, a young man whose mother Huang Tianxiu was among the 83 miners.

Yan is a native of Wuji County, north China's Hebei Province. He said his father will arrive in Lhasa on Friday.

As of Wednesday afternoon, rescuers had pulled 66 bodies out of the debris. Seventeen others remain buried.

The names, genders and registered permanent addresses of all 83 victims were released by the rescue headquarters on Wednesday. Of the 83, only four were females,including Yan's mother. They were mainly from northeastern Jilin Province, northwestern Shaanxi Province, southwestern Sichuan and Guizhou provinces.

Chinese leaders ordered all-out rescue efforts after the accident. Several thousand people have joined the rescue efforts, despite the bitterly cold weather, an altitude of 4,600 meters above sea level and threats of further landslides.

The identification of the retrieved bodies is under way. The cause of the landslide is still being investigated.

Friday 5 April 2013

http://www.china.org.cn/china/2013-04/05/content_28451368.htm

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Dozens killed as illegal building collapses in India


At least 32 people were killed and 69 injured when a building under construction in a town near Mumbai collapsed Thursday evening in an all-too-common case of illegal and shoddy construction ending in disaster.

Rescuers continued Friday to pull bodies from the rubble in Thane. The dead included 11 children and 9 women, according to media reports, as well as at least a dozen men, some of them construction workers.

Construction workers and their families often live in crude shacks at construction sites, exposing women and children to significant risks.

“Illegal construction is a major problem in the Thane area,” said Sandeep Malvi, public relations officer of Thane Municipal Corporation. “Each time we demolish a building, someone builds again. We demolish it, and they build.”

The price of land in many Indian cities has grown so high that contractors routinely build on public property – sometimes after bribing public officials. If enough buildings are built in a particular area and enough time passes, these makeshift settlements become politically impossible to demolish.

The collapsed building in Thane was built on protected forest land, according to Mr. Malvi. And because of the uncertainty surrounding the fate of such buildings, the quality of the construction is often very poor.

More than 20 people remained missing and three floors of the building were still to be searched, said RS Rajesh, an official with the National Disaster Response Force who was at the scene.

"All the three floors are sandwiched ... so it's is very difficult for us," he said, adding that rescuers were continuing to pull survivors from the wreckage.

At least four floors of the building had been completed and were occupied. Workers had finished three more floors and were adding an eighth floor when it collapsed, police inspector Digamber Jangale said. Some of the dead were construction workers staying in the building as they worked on it, he added.

Police with rescue dogs were searching the building, which appeared to have buckled and collapsed upon itself. Rescuers and nearby residents stood on the remains of the roof trying to get to the people trapped inside. Mr Raghuvanshi said rescue workers had saved 15 people from the wreckage.

The building did not have the necessary clearances from local authorities, he said.

“Because these buildings come up so quickly, the quality is always very bad,” Mr. Malvi said.

The police said it was not immediately clear what had caused the structure to collapse.Vivek Prakash/Reuters The police said it was not immediately clear what had caused the structure to collapse.

Local police officials have filed murder charges against the builders, who have yet to be found.

Building collapses aren’t unusual in India because of unsafe and illegal constructions tacked onto structures. In 2010, a five-story tenement collapsed in New Delhi, killing at least 64 people, mostly migrant workers.

A government study, published in 1998, noted that, ”The number of unsafe buildings is increasing every day.”

The problem is not a lack of construction standards, just an indifference to them, the study concluded.

But even high-quality construction projects defy contracting norms that are enforced in places like the United States. For instance, New Delhi bans large cement trucks from entering much of the city during the day. The result is that concrete for even very large homes is often made in a batch process on site, which can result in substandard buildings with significant structural flaws.

Indian cities are being flooded with migrants from rural areas for which few cities are providing any kind of planning or infrastructure. The result is vast slums and illegal construction. A recent survey found that more than 17 percent of Indian households live in slums that are considered unlivable by the Indian government. In greater Mumbai, the share of people living in such slums is 41 percent.

When such a large share of the population lives in such destitute circumstances, illegal construction — even with its inherent risks — becomes a welcome alternative for millions of people.

Friday 5 April 2013

http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/mumbai-building-collapse-kills-at-least-30/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/dozens-killed-as-illegal-building-collapses-in-india-8561045.html

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Argentinian rescuers search for bodies after devastating floods


Argentinian police and soldiers searched house to house, in creeks and culverts and even in trees for bodies on Thursday after floods killed at least 57 people in the province and city of Buenos Aires.

As torrential rains stopped and the waters receded, the crisis shifted to guaranteeing public health and safety in La Plata, the provincial capital of Buenos Aires province with a population of nearly 1 million people. Safe drinking water was in short supply, and more than a quarter of a million people were without power, although authorities said most would get their lights back on overnight.

Many people barely escaped with their lives after seeing everything they owned disappear under water reeking with sewage and fuel that rose nearly two metres (6ft) high inside some homes. The wreckage was overwhelming: piles of broken furniture, overturned cars, ruined food and other debris.

Their frustration was uncontainable as politicians arrived making promises. The president, Cristina Fernรกndez de Kirchner, the governor Daniel Scioli, the social welfare minister Alicia Kirchner and the mayors of Buenos Aires and La Plata were all booed when they tried to talk to victims. Many yelled: "Go away," and: "You came too late."

"I understand you, I understand you're angry," Kirchner said before she and the governor fled in their motorcade from an angry crowd.

"There is no water, there is no electricity. We have nothing," said Nelly Cerrado, who was looking for donated clothing at a local school. "Terrible, terrible what we are going through. And no one comes. No one. Because here, it is neighbours who have to do everything."

The nearby Ensenada refinery, Argentina's largest, remained offline after flooding caused a fire that took hours to extinguish in the middle of the rainstorm, the state-run YPF oil company said. YPF said it would take 36 more hours just to drain excess water from the damaged refinery, and at least another seven days before the refinery could renew operations. The company also said it was putting into place an emergency plan to guarantee gasoline supplies, and would invest $800m to replace a damaged coking unit where the flood had caused a fire with a newer, higher-capacity unit.

Scioli said the death toll had risen to 51 people in and around La Plata following six deaths in the national capital from flooding two days earlier. But he said nearly all of the missing had been accounted for.

The victims included a member of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo human rights group, Lucila Ahumada de Inama, who was found under about 1.7 metres of water inside her home. She died without having found her grandson, born in captivity after her pregnant daughter-in-law was kidnapped by Argentina's dictatorship in 1977.

Some flooded residents were being lauded as heroes. Alejandro Fernรกndez, a 44-year-old policeman who was off-duty when the rains started, pulled out his rubber boat and shuttled about 100 neighbours to higher ground. His neighbour, Dr Jose Alberto Avelar, turned his home into a clinic, treating dozens for hypothermia.

Fernรกndez "won't say it because he's too humble, but what he did was incredible", Avelar said. "His action got everyone else helping as well."

A store and an elementary school were looted, but police and troops were helping residents guard neighbourhoods to prevent more crimes. In addition to 750 provincial police officers, the national government sent in army, coast guard, police and social welfare workers.

Mobile hospitals were activated after two major hospitals were flooded, and government workers were handing out donated water, canned food and clothing. The provincial health minister Alejandro Collia said hepatitis shots were being given at 33 evacuation centres, and that spraying would kill mosquitoes that spread dengue fever.

"The humanitarian question comes first. The material questions will be resolved in time," said Scioli, who promised subsidies, loans and tax exemptions for the victims.

Scioli also thanked Pope Francis for sending a message of support. The governor said: "This has to give us all the strength to accompany these families."

Argentina's weather service had warned of severe thunderstorms, but nothing like the rainfall that fell this week.

More than 400mm drenched La Plata in just a few hours late on Tuesday and early on Wednesday – more than has ever been recorded there for the entire month of April.

In both Buenos Aires and La Plata, sewage and storm drain systems were overwhelmed, and low-lying neighbourhoods looked something like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, with all but the upper parts of houses under water.

And in both cities, politicians sought to fix blame on their rivals as residents complained that the government in general was ill-prepared and providing insufficient help.

It didn't help that the mayors of both cities were on holiday in Brazil when disaster struck.

The Buenos Aires mayor, Mauricio Macri, said the president needed to foster expensive public works projects to cope with storms that will become more frequent because of climate change.

The La Plata mayor, Pablo Bruera, meanwhile, arrived home to an additional, self-inflicted disaster: while he was in Brazil, a tweet sent from his official Twitter account falsely claimed he had been "checking on evacuation centres since last night". The tweet even included an old picture of Bruera handing out bottled water.

Bruera told reporters on Thursday that he would not resign over the false claim, and that he had instead fired the people responsible for what he called a "mistake by my communications team".

Friday 5 April 2013

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/05/argentinian-rescuers-search-bodies-floods

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