South Asia floods: Mumbai building collapses as monsoon rains wreak havoc

At least 21 people are dead and more than a dozen others trapped after monsoon downpours caused a building to collapse in Mumbai.

The four-storey residential building gave way on Thursday morning in the densely populated area of Bhendi Bazaar, after roads were turned into rivers in India’s financial capital. The city has been struggling to cope with some of the heaviest rainfall in more than 15 years.

Rescue workers, police and residents helped pull 13 people out of the rubble and were looking for those buried beneath. Authorities have advised people living in an adjacent building to evacuate after it developed cracks following the collapse.

The death toll could have been much worse, officials said, because the building, which houses a nursery school, collapsed half an hour before children were due to arrive at 9am.

Thousands more buildings that are more than 100 years old are at risk of collapse due in part to foundations being weakened by flood waters.

Across the region more than 1,200 people are feared to have died and 40 million are estimated to have been affected by flooding in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.

Vast swaths of land are underwater in the eastern part of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where more than 100 people have reportedly died, 3,097 villages are submerged and almost 3 million villagers have been affected by flooding, according to officials. Army personnel have joined rescuers to evacuate people from the area.

The storm reached Pakistan on Thursday, lashing the port city of Karachi, where at least 14 people have died, and streets have been submerged by water. The country’s meteorological department forecast that the rains would continue for three days in various parts of Sindh province, where authorities closed schools as a precaution.

Up to 97mm (3.8in) of rain has been recorded in some areas of Karachi, filling the streets with muddy water, sewage and rubbish.

Among the dead was an eight-year-old boy who was crushed when a building belonging to the Federal Investigation Agency collapsed. Most of the dead were electrocuted, leading the city’s energy provider, K-Electric, to cut power to certain areas.

“Some feeders have been switched off in view of safety concerns in areas with waterlogging, and restoration work will be expedited in affected areas as soon as standing water is wiped out,” Sadia Dada, the director of marketing and communication for K-Electric, told Dawn newspaper.

About 6,000 villagers are threatened with flooding after the rains breached the Thado dam on the Malir river. The army has been called in to help with evacuation, and has also provided Karachi’s city administration with water extraction pumps.

Windstorms and rain are also expected in the Balochistan and Punjab provinces. The meteorological department said rains were also expected in the capital, Islamabad, and in Pakistan’s portion of Kashmir.

One third of Bangladesh was believed to be underwater and the UN described the situation in Nepal, where 150 people have died, as the worst flooding in a decade.

The floods have also destroyed or damaged 18,000 schools in the south Asia region, meaning that about 1.8 million children cannot go to classes, Save the Children said on Thursday.

The charity said hundreds of thousands of children could fall permanently out of the school system if education was not prioritised in relief efforts.

“We haven’t seen flooding on this scale in years and it’s putting the long-term education of an enormous number of children at great risk. From our experience, the importance of education is often undervalued in humanitarian crises and we simply cannot let this happen again. We cannot go backwards,” said Rafay Hussain, Save the Children’s general manager in the eastern Indian state of Bihar.

“We know that the longer children are out of school following a disaster like this the less likely it is that they’ll ever return. That’s why it’s so important that education is properly funded in this response, to get children back to the classroom as soon as it’s safe to do so and to safeguard their futures.”

Floods have caused devastation in many parts of India. Unprecedented rainfall in Assam in the north-east has killed more than 150 people. About 600 villages are still underwater even though the torrential rain began earlier this month.

Rhinos in Assam’s Kaziranga nature reserve had to flee to higher ground. “We get flooding every year but I have never seen anything quite like this in my life,” Ashok Baruah, a farmer, told journalists.

In Bihar, the death toll has reached 514, with people still living in makeshift huts days after the flooding started. However, the flood waters, which turned fields into lakes, appear to be receding.

In Mumbai, the rain forced nurses and doctors at the busiest hospital in the city to wade through wards knee-high in filthy water to move patients to the first floor. Outside the King Edward memorial hospital, a man going to visit his wife who was due to have a caesarean had to wade through flooded streets to reach her. Children swam or paddled down the streets lying on planks of wood.

Flood victims in the city included a doctor who fell down a manhole and another who died after being trapped in his car while waiting for the water to recede. Others living in the low-lying areas most affected by the flooding were swept away into the sea or died when walls collapsed.

As train services ground to a halt, hundreds of thousands of commuters were stranded, unable to go home.

TV commentators voiced the anger of those caught in the chaos. The TV personality Suhel Seth lashed out at the “scoundrels, rogues, villains, rascals, incompetents and useless fools” in the municipal authority for not being better prepared for the annual monsoon flooding.

The deluge brought back memories of the 2005 floods that killed more than 500 people in the city.

“Why does nothing change? Why are we left to fend for ourselves when they had weather forecasts warning them of extremely heavy rainfall?” asked the author and columnist Shobhaa De.

31 August 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/31/south-asia-floods-fears-death-toll-rise-india-pakistan-mumbai-building-collapses

At Least 950 Killed In South Asia’s Annual Monsoon Floods

Devastating floods triggered by seasonal monsoon rains have killed more than 950 people and affected close to 40 million across northern India, southern Nepal and northern Bangladesh, officials said.

The rains have led to wide-scale flooding in a broad arc stretching across the Himalayan foothills in the three countries, causing landslides, damaging roads and electric towers and washing away tens of thousands of homes and crops.

Bangladesh, the death toll climbed to 132 while some 7.5 million people have been affected in this year’s floods, according to the Disaster Management Ministry.

Crops on more than 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) of land have been washed away while another 600,000 hectares (1,482,600 acres) have been damaged, posing a serious threat to food production, the ministry said.

The U.N. World Food Program said that Bangladesh was at risk of “devastating hunger” after major floods that destroyed crops, homes and livelihoods of people across many impoverished areas in a delta nation of 160 million people.

“Many flood survivors have lost everything: their homes, their possessions, their crops,” Christa Rader, WFP’s Bangladesh country director, said in a statement. “People need food right now, and the full impact on longer-term food security threatens to be devastating.”

In neighboring, the northern Indian states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam in the remote northeast are the worst hit, accounting for 680 deaths, most of them from drowning, snake bites or landslides.

South Asia’s monsoon rains run from June to September.

Disaster management authorities in Bihar said the state’s death toll of 367 could go up further as floodwaters recede and bodies are recovered from submerged houses.

Army soldiers and volunteers have evacuated around 770,000 people from inundated areas. Of these, some 425,000 were living in 1,360 relief camps set up in school and government buildings, said Avinash Kumar, a Bihar state official.

In neighboring Uttar Pradesh, the state government said around 2.3 million people in 25 districts have been affected by the floods when at least three major rivers overflowed their banks, entering fields and homes.

An Uttar Pradesh government spokesman blamed the unprecedented flooding on the release of water from dams in upstream Nepal.

“Rains have been intense but the release of water from Nepal has aggravated the situation,” said Manish Sharma.

Army troops have been helping to evacuate people marooned on rooftops or trees, while air force helicopters dropped packets of food, drinking water and medicines to those camping on higher ground, mostly along highways.

Meanwhile, the state administration was bracing for the threat of infections as floodwaters recede. Health workers have begun sending supplies of mosquito repellent, bleaching powder and water purification tablets to the worst-hit areas, said health official Badri Vishal.

In the eastern state of West Bengal, the top elected official, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, said 152 people had died and 15 million had been affected by floods in the past few weeks.

Another 71 people were killed in Assam as rivers breached their banks and entered low-lying villages. At the renowned Kaziranga National Park, officials said around 300 animals, including around two dozen rhinos and a Royal Bengal tiger, have been killed after floodwaters submerged nearly 80 percent of the wildlife park.

Nepal’s Home Ministry spokesman Ram Krishna Subedi said floodwaters were receding and rivers were returning to normal.

The death toll from the floods in Nepal stood at 146, with about 30 missing.

27 August 2017

http://energybangla.com/at-least-950-killed-in-south-asias-annual-monsoon-floods/

Meet Prakash, man who conducts last rites of unclaimed bodies with respect

The long and short story when a person dies is that he or she is given a proper last rite. But imagine the grief of the family which could not find or identify the bodies of the beloved ones who had died.

Their dilemma is while unable to accept the on the loss, they have an added emotional stress on whether the last rite must have taken place — according to their traditional practices or not — in the event that the body is disposed of as unidentified.

Enter 64-year-old legal consultant Prakash Gidwani — the man who collects unclaimed bodies and ensures that they get a decent funeral irrespective of the religion the dead person might have followed.

Gidwani, a member of the disaster managment cell of BMC, collects the unclaimed bodies from various hospitals in Mumbai.

He has been doing this yeoman service for since the last 34 years. Gidwani said he has performed funerals of over 1,000 bodies so far.

With the help of his associates, Gidwani also pulls out bodies — mostly decomposed — found near the sea shore and informs the local police station as well as the fire brigade.

“I have been doing this social work since 1980. We recover bodies that generally get washed away in sea. Most of such bodies are highly decomposed. After following certain legal procedures, like registration of accidental death case at the police station concerned, we wait till establishment of his/her identity. The unclaimed bodies are generally kept at mortuaries for 15 days. Meantime, we try to find out if any missing complaint has been registered in any police station. Eventually, when we don’t get any lead to establish its identity we conduct its funeral with due respect,” said Gidwani.

He said the BMC provides only 300 kg bundle of firewood for funeral of a body. Gidwani has though some disillusionment in his work. He said mortuary vans overcharged while ferrying decomposed bodies to hospital.

“They demand Rs. 12,000 to take a decomposed body found near the sea shore because of its stench. So we have arranged one vehicle for the purpose,” he said.

Further, the duty officer of a police station gets Rs. 1,500 to conduct the final rites of an unclaimed body. But the procedure to get Rs. 1,500 reimbursed is so lengthy that most of the officers contact Gidwani to shrug off their responsibilities.

Nonetheless, Versova-resident Gidwani feels peace and blissful in cremating the unclaimed bodies with dignity.

“In this fast pace world where modernisation is at the centre, most families have become nuclear and senior citizen parents feel neglected. Such parents leave home in distress either to commit suicide or search shelter in old-age homes. We too take care of such parents by providing them better medical assistance before reuniting them with their children,” Gidwani said.

Gidwani further said to show respect to victims of the 26/11 Mumbai blast, he provided shrouds (kafan) to wrap the bodies before their funeral.

27 August 2017

http://www.freepressjournal.in/mumbai/meet-prakash-man-who-conducts-last-rites-of-unclaimed-bodies-with-respect/1127589

Two Deadly Boat Accidents Leave 39 Dead in Brazil

Two boat accidents in less than a week in the North-Northeastern region of Brazil left more than 39 people dead and dozens of missing, according to Brazilian authorities. Officials say they will continue to search for victims in both accidents, one in Para state and another in Bahia.

Rescue workers continue to look for five people who are believed to have been on the boat which sank in the Xingu River in the Amazon region of Para state on Tuesday. Officials say they recovered another eleven bodies on Thursday, making the total number of dead 21.

The ship ran into trouble in a region known as Ponte Grande do Xingu. The vessel left the city of Santarém for Vitoria do Xingu with over fifty people on board. According to officials the ship’s captain did not have authorization to carry passengers in his vessel.

According to survivors a waterspout appeared out of nowhere tipping the boat to one side, “The boat started to crack and everyone went to the bottom,” survivor Bruno Costa, 29, told G1 news. According to Costa, a tarp placed on the boat to protect the passengers from the rain made it more difficult for more people to jump from the boat when it began to sink.

“The tarp prevented many people from leaving. I managed to rescue a two-year-old child, but I did not have a life vest, and neither did the child,” concluded Costa.

The second accident occurred in the busy Todos os Santos Bay, in Bahia’s capital Salvador on Thursday morning, with eighteen confirmed deaths as of Thursday afternoon.

The boat was carrying more than 100 passengers when it ran into trouble trying to cross from Mar Grande, in the tourist enclave of Itaparica island, to Salvador.

Brazil’s President, Michel Temer, issued a statement on Thursday mourning the deaths and making available the resources of the federal government “in the search and support for survivors” as well as in determining the causes and culprits of both accidents.

“Measures to determine the causes of accidents and punish those responsible are being taken at all three levels of government, said the note released by the President’s Communication Secretariat.

25 August 2017

http://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/rio-politics/two-deadly-boat-accidents-leave-39-dead-in-brazil/

US says some remains of sailors found on USS John McCain after collision

Navy divers searching a flooded compartment of the USS John S. McCain found remains of some of the 10 sailors missing in a collision between the warship and an oil tanker, the U.S. Pacific Fleet commander said Tuesday as he promised a full investigation.

Adm. Scott Swift also said at a news conference in Singapore, where the McCain is now docked, that Malaysian officials had found one body, but it had yet to be identified and it was unknown whether it was a crew member.

The collision before dawn on Monday near Singapore tore a gaping hole in the McCain’s left rear hull and flooded adjacent compartments including crew berths and machinery and communication rooms. Five sailors were injured.

“The divers were able to locate some remains in those sealed compartments during their search today,” Swift said, adding that it was “premature to say how many and what the status of recovery of those bodies is.”

“We will continue the search and rescue operations until the probability of discovering sailors is exhausted,” Swift said.

He would not say where in the destroyer the bodies were found.

It was the second major collision in two months involving the Pacific-based 7th Fleet, and the Navy has ordered a broad investigation into its performance and readiness. Seven sailors died in June when the USS Fitzgerald and a container ship collided in waters off Japan. There were two lesser-known incidents in the first half of the year. In January, the USS Antietam guided missile cruiser ran aground near Yokosuka base, the home port of the 7th Fleet, and in May another cruiser, the USS Lake Champlain from the Navy’s 3rd Fleet, had a minor collision with a South Korean fishing boat.

“While each of these four incidents is unique, they cannot be viewed in isolation,” Swift said.

He said the Navy would conduct an investigation “to find out if there is a common cause ... and if so, how do we solve that.”

He said he had heard some reports speculating that the Navy could have been a victim of a cyberattack. “We’ve seen no indications of that as yet, but ... we are not taking any consideration off the table,” he said.

Earlier Tuesday, the 7th Fleet said the sea search by aircraft and ships from the U.S., Singapore and Malaysian navies would continue east of Singapore where the McCain and the tanker collided.

Megan Partlow of Ohio, who said her fiance was on board the McCain, told The Associated Press in a Facebook message that they last communicated on Sunday and she was losing hope of seeing him again.

“My last text to him was ‘be safe,’ which is the same way we end every conversation. I’m just ready for answers,” she said. The identities of the missing have not been disclosed but Partlow said her fiance’s parents were in touch with the Navy’s family assistance center.



April Brandon of Michigan said her son, Ken Smith, 22, is among the missing sailors. Brandon told Detroit-area TV stations that she was visited by two officers Monday at her home. Illinois U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis says the mother of McCain crew member Logan Palmer says he is missing. Davis says Palmer comes from a “patriotic family” in the Decatur, Illinois, area.

Navy Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, on Monday ordered a pause in 7th Fleet operations for the next few days to allow commanders to get together with leaders, sailors and command officials and identify any immediate steps that need to be taken to ensure safety.

A broader U.S. Navy review will look at the 7th Fleet’s performance, including personnel, navigation capabilities, maintenance, equipment, surface warfare training, munitions, certifications and how sailors move through their careers. Richardson said the review will be conducted with the help of the Navy’s office of the inspector general, the safety center and private companies that make equipment used by sailors.

“Make no mistake,” Swift said Tuesday, “our sailors on these ships are doing critical work at sea. And for more than 70 years, the U.S. Navy has helped guarantee the security and stability of the western Pacific. ... We owe it to the sailors that man the 7th Fleet and their families to answer the questions that flow from the uncertainty of what happened, how could it happen, and what can be done to prevent such occurrences in the future.”

Swift also lauded the crew for righting the listing ship quickly as they tended to the injured. He said sailors set up watertight boundaries and shored up the ship’s internal structure, and were able to begin evacuating sailors by helicopter within an hour or two of the collision.

He said it was “quite extraordinary” for the McCain to be “up and running as an operational ship almost immediately after the collision.”

The McCain had been heading to Singapore on a routine port visit after conducting a sensitive freedom-of-navigation operation last week by sailing near one of China’s man-made islands in the South China Sea.

China, Washington’s main rival for influence in the Asia-Pacific, seized on the McCain collision to accuse the Navy of endangering maritime navigation in the region. This year’s string of accidents shows the U.S. Navy “is becoming a dangerous obstacle in Asian waters,” the official China Daily newspaper said in its online edition.

The McCain and the Alnic MC oil tanker collided about 4.5 nautical miles (8.3 kilometers) from Malaysia’s coast at the start of a designated sea lane for ships sailing into the busy Singapore Strait.

There was no immediate explanation for the collision. Singapore, at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, is one of the world’s busiest ports and a U.S. ally, with its naval base regularly visited by American warships.

The Singapore government said no crew were injured on the Liberian-flagged Alnic, which sustained damage to a compartment at the starboard, or right, side at the front of the ship some 7 meters (23 feet) above its waterline. The ship had a partial load of fuel oil, according to the Greek owner of the tanker, Stealth Maritime Corp. S.A., but no apparent spill.

Several safety violations were recorded for the oil tanker at its last port inspection in July, one fire safety deficiency and two safety-of-navigation problems. The official database for ports in Asia doesn’t go into details and the problems apparently were not serious enough for the tanker to be detained.

23 August 2017

https://www.apnews.com/acbdd603933f40c7b7d7540cb644e8cf

Landfill collapse kills eight in Guinea as family homes are buried by garbage

At least eight people, including two children, have died in Guinea after a rubbish dump site collapsed on houses due to heavy rains.

Dozens were also injured in the incident, which occurred on the outskirts of the capital Conarky on Tuesday ( 22 August).

The landslide submerged houses in the Dar Es Salam neighbourhood after an overnight deluge.

The bodies of the victims were taken to the local morgue. The death toll is expected to increase.

"The rubbish fell onto three homes," senior police official Boubacar Kasse, the police commissioner for Conakry, told AFP.

"There are still many people buried, and we have to do everything possible to save them. We have to get diggers in. Access to the area is very difficult," he continued.

Rescue teams are looking for survivors.

"Currently rescue operations are under way," the government said in a statement quoted by Reuters. "On this sad occasion, the government addresses its deepest condolences to the victims' families."

Dar Es Salam resident Yamoussa Soumah said: "I saw the mountain of garbage collapse on other people's houses. People were trapped. My wife and I heard the mud begin falling on our roof. We were able to escape, but we've lost everything."

Similar incidents have occurred in several countries across Africa in recent months.

Some of these countries are among the continent's poorest nations. They are vulnerable to heavy rainfalls and prone to national disasters due to a lack of urban drainage, and the fact that many houses – mostly ramshackle – are built on slopes.

At least 200 people were killed in a landslide in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) earlier in August. The incident occurred in the Tora village, situated along Lake Albert. The local governor called for the help of the international community to step up search and rescue operations.

"There are many people submerged whom we were unable to save," Pacifique Keta, the vice governor of Ituri province, told Reuters on 18 August. "The rescue is very complicated because there are mountains everywhere, which makes it very difficult to have access."

Around 500 people died in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown after torrential rains caused flooding and a massive mudslide on 14 August, leaving hundreds of survivors homeless.

The Red Cross said at least 600 people are still missing and search-and-rescue operations are ongoing.

Health workers warned of an impending health crisis as corpses had been left in the out in the street before mass burials took place.

What has been labelled as one of Africa's worst natural disasters of recent years took place months after at least 72 people were killed when a rubbish dump collapsed in Ethiopia.

The disaster at the Koshe Garbage Landfill, on the outskirts of the capital Addis Ababa, occurred on 12 March and destroyed makeshift houses at the site.

23 August 2017

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/landfill-collapse-kills-eight-guinea-family-homes-are-buried-by-garbage-1636279

After the mudslides: Sierra Leone's body collectors

After Sierra Leone's deadly mudslides, the race is on to retrieve the body parts of the victims before disease sets in.

Freetown, Sierra Leone - A group of young men wearing protective suits and face masks pace the riverbanks looking for body parts.

One of them removes his mask and starts to chant, "if you smell something bad then tell us, if you smell something bad then tell us…."

Somebody upstream calls and the team rushes forwards, rolling out a body bag as they do so.

A man is standing on the riverbank pointing to a ball of branches, mud and plastic. He gestures that there is a bad smell.

The body collectors wade through the water and start searching under the rubble. After five minutes one of them pulls out a foot; mangled, white and rotting. They drop it into the body bag.

This group of volunteer body collectors, all of whom are young men from neighbouring communities, has been working for seven days to gather the remains of those killed by a deadly mudslide in Sierra Leone on Monday, August 14.

So far, 499 bodies have been unearthed. More than 600 people remain missing. Those who know the affected communities estimate that the real number of victims could be well over 1,000.

"The problem," says body collector Mohamed Jalloh, "is that many of the bodies were torn up by boulders and trees."

After weeks of heavy rain, the side of Sugar Loaf Mountain collapsed, crushing the settlement below called Regent.

The mudslide sent a torrent of water, mud and rocks tumbling down the valley and swept away houses in two other communities; Kaningo and Kumayama.

Some of the people living higher up the riverbanks were able to escape their flooded houses by climbing onto their roofs. But those on the lower flats had no chance.

With body parts still strewn around the riverbanks a week after the disaster, there is a high risk of diseases, including cholera and typhoid, spreading.

The Ministry of Health has issued a statement urging the public to "drink only water collected from a safe source" and to "wash all fruits and vegetables well with clean water before eating". They say that this will help to reduce outbreaks of water borne diseases.



In Regent, volunteer body collector Aruna Momoh says they are still unearthing body parts. "There are still people buried," he says. "We have managed to get the ones in shallow ground out, but there are more deep down."

He has been at the site every day since the disaster. "I live nearby and rushed here on the morning of the mudslide. It happened around 5:45am. By the time I reached there were government ambulances and NGOs. Machinery didn’t arrive until Tuesday. By Thursday the place started to stink, the smell of rotting flesh was everywhere," he says.

Fesellie Marah, a young man from Kumayama, says that ambulances and stretchers didn't reach his community until Monday afternoon. "All we had were gloves and some lappas [sheets of colourful material]. We were pulling masses of bodies out of the rubble and piling them up in the front room of a broken house," he says.

"We'd use the lappas to collect body parts - feet, legs, hands … once they were full, we would tie them up and put it in the same room as the bodies. In the afternoon government ambulances and The Red Cross came and collected the corpses."

He remembers how families were crowding the bodies, crying and screaming. Some were trying to identify their family members, but it was almost impossible because of the condition the bodies were in. Many were crushed, and they were all covered in mud.

Marah says he saw a boy being swept down the river, screaming and holding on to a floating fridge. "We couldn't reach him, but we were all shouting encouragement, telling him to hold on tight. Further downstream he caught on to a palm tree and managed to climb out. He survived."

In Kaningo, Mohamed Jalloh and his friends are still working to collect bodies. Jalloh works as a night guard in an NGO's compound. Since the mudslide, he has been working his regular job at night and collecting bodies by day.

"Since Monday I have hardly slept," he says. "Each day I finish work at 6:30am and come here by 7. Then I sleep for just two hours in the late afternoon. I have so much sympathy for my brothers and sisters who were killed. I want to help reduce the health risk by collecting all the body parts. If we sit down and do nothing, then more people will die from diseases."

Although Jalloh and his colleagues have worked hard to try and collect all the corpses from the wreckage, there are still decaying body parts strewn around, one week on. Furth

er down the river, a group of boys is watching a dog eat something beside a pile of muddy branches and plastic. A sharp, sickly smell hangs in the air. The dog is chewing on a piece of human flesh.

"There are bodies under there," says one of the boys, pointing to the rubble. "But we can't get to them, the dogs went in and started pulling out bits of bodies."

An old man arrives, groans in disgust and throws a stone towards the dog. It runs away, dropping the muddy flesh on the ground.

23 August 2017

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/08/mudslides-sierra-leone-body-collectors-170822072518926.html