Philippines mulls mass graves after typhoon kills hundreds

An aerial view shows shanties damaged by flash floods brought by Typhoon Washi (Sendong) in Cagayan De Oro city, southern Philippines December 18, 2011. REUTERS/Stringer

Disaster agencies Monday rushed to deliver body bags, food, water, and medicine to crowded evacuation centres in the southern Philippines as officials considered digging mass graves for hundreds killed in weekend flash floods.


The national disaster agency said 533 died and 309 remain missing, while the local Red Cross put the toll at 652 killed and more than 800 missing.

Casualties from the flashfloods exceeded the more than 450 people killed in 2009 when a tropical storm dumped heavy rains on the main Luzon island, inundating nearly the entire capital Manila.

Thai PM pledges flood relief as fight for Bangkok goes on

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra pledged more than US$4 billion (RM12.47 billion) today to help Thailand recover from the worst floods in half a century, as workers slowed the flow of water threatening the commercial heart of the capital, Bangkok.

Evacuation orders have spread to a third of Bangkok’s districts, mostly in the north of the densely populated city of 12 million people, since late October, as floodwater strewn with trash slowly seeps in from northern and northeastern provinces.








Yingluck, a political novice elected this year, said about US$3.9 billion had been set aside for a flood recovery effort, a figure that rises to US$4.2 billion when local government funds are added.

On the streets of Bangkok, few see an end to the slow-moving disaster that began after tropical storm Nock-ten battered Southeast Asia in late July. Since then, at least 529 people have been killed, many electrocuted or drowned, in floods that have affected 63 of Thailand’s 77 provinces.

Some hard-hit regions have started to recover since the end of the August-to-October monsoon season, with only 24 provinces now classified as flooded. But for low-lying Bangkok, the disaster is far from over, as the authorities struggle to keep inner-city neighbourhoods and business districts dry.

“I’m concerned about more water reaching Bangkok and I just want to know when it will recede. It’s rising and it should recede but when will that be?” said Bangkok resident, Nee Jiranantawat, 53.

Others said they feared they may run low on food and other supplies, especially in homes flooded in waist-high water.

Nikom Teo-au, a 56-year-old garage owner, said he was facing difficulty delivering food to his family at his home on a street under up to 1.5 metres of water in Bangkok’s Din Daeng neighbourhood, just 7km from the main Silom business district where buildings are ringed with sand bags.

Yingluck, a 46-year-old former businesswoman and sister of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, said the money would ease the suffering of victims and repair damaged infrastructure.

She spoke at a special session of parliament called to debate the flooding and her management of the crisis a day after announcing she had pulled out of a weekend summit of Asia-Pacific leaders in Hawaii to concentrate on relief work.

ECONOMIC TOLL

The toll on Thailand’s economy and hundreds of global manufacturers who rely on its low-cost factories keeps rising.

The central bank has slashed its economic growth forecast for this year to 2.6 per cent from 4.1 per cent, citing the repercussions of floods which forced seven big industrial estates to close in central provinces in October.

The economic impact will be even worse if Bangkok, which accounts for 41 per cent of gross domestic product, is overrun.

Workers and soldiers are trying to hold the line at the city’s Bang Sue canal, pushing water into the Chao Phraya river and stopping it from overflowing to the south. Reporters in the area said they had mostly achieved this so far.

Even so, with each week, the water has slowly drawn closer to the business district and the Ratchaprasong intersection, whose swanky shopping malls and five-star hotels were closed for weeks by political protests in April-May last year.

The major north-south Ratchadaphisek and Viphavadi-Rangsit roads were flooded in the vicinity of the Bang Sue canal. A reporter said the area was under 60cm of dark, foul-smelling water in places, with trash on the surface.

Chatuchak market, whose 11,000 stalls are a draw for tourists and residents alike, opened last weekend but was now submerged, with vendors’ carts and tables washed away and stray dogs taking refuge on the rooftops, the reporter said.

Barefoot soldiers were ushering people from the elevated Skytrain – still working across the capital, like the MRT underground railway – onto buses crammed with passengers.

In the east of the capital, floodwater still threatened two big industrial estates, Bang Chan with 93 factories including Nestle SA and Lat Krabang with 254 including Unilever Pcl and Honda Motor Co .

“The water level situation in Beung Kratiem on the north side of Bang Chan Industrial Estate is still a concern. Even with the water pumps there, water keeps rising,” said Thanes Weerasiri, secretary-general of the Engineering Institute of Thailand.

“The water level has risen by 3cm from yesterday,” he said, adding that efforts to divert the water into a major canal nearby had been stepped up. Channel 3 television said water had got into one factory compound.

However, the situation inside the Lat Krabang Industrial Estate was still normal.

The estates are about 10km north of Bangkok’s main Suvarnabhumi airport, which is functioning normally inside a reinforced dike at least 3 metres high.

The Chao Phraya river snaking through Bangkok has another phase of high tides from Thursday to Monday and riverside communities are braced for floods, especially on the relatively dry east bank, although a navy official said the river should not reach the record high levels seen at the end of October.

Thursday sees the Loy Krathong festival, when Thais like to float offerings of food, flowers and candles on rivers and lakes, a symbolic pushing away of bad feelings and bad luck.

But Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra has cancelled a big event on the fast-flowing river scheduled for Thursday and urged people not to float their offerings in flooded areas. They would add to the tonnes of rubbish lying in sodden piles in the streets, he said, and the candles were a fire hazard.

As Floods Drag on in Thailand, Displaced Grow Restless

As Floods Drag on in Thailand, Displaced Grow Restless Ron Corben | Bangkok In Thailand, local aid groups are calling on authorities to better manage and support local communities that are struggling to cope after spending weeks under ...

Thai flood frustration grows, Cabinet eyes recovery

Airplanes are reflected in flood waters in Bangkok’s domestic Don Muang airport at dawn on November 1, 2011. Nearly 400 people have been killed in months of floods that have disrupted the lives of more than 2 million. Don Muang, used by budget airlines for domestic flights and by private planes, has been closed since Oct. 25.


Anger mounted among victims of Thailand’s catastrophic floods today as water flooded new neighbourhoods as it made its way to sea and the government plotted a recovery aimed at securing the long-term confidence of investors.

The floods began in July and have devastated large parts of the central Chao Phraya river basin, killed nearly 400 people and disrupted the lives of more than 2 million.

Inner Bangkok, protected by a network of dikes and sandbag walls, survived peak tides on the weekend and remains mostly dry.




But large volumes of water are sliding across the land to the north, east and west of the city, diverted by the city centre’s defences into new suburbs as it recedes in others.

In one northeastern city neighbourhood angry residents have been demanding the opening of a sluice gate to let water out of their flooded community.

Residents jostled with police yesterday and Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra ordered that the gate be opened by one metre (three feet).

But city authorities have warned that the flow through the sluice gate could move via a canal into large parts of the city which are now dry, including an industrial estate.

“We are opposed to it but the government has ordered the BMA to open the gate, so more water will come,” said Bangkok Metropolitan Authority (BMA) spokesman Jate Sopitpongstorn.

“It could reach the Bang Chan industrial estate. We have to see the consequences,” he told Reuters.

Yingluck’s government and the Bangkok authority represent opposing factions in Thailand’s strife-plagued politics.

The disaster has been the first big test for the government of Yingluck, a political novice who took over this year after an election that many Thais hoped would heal deep divisions.

Saving Bangkok from a ruinous flood would be an important victory. The city’s 12 million people account for 41 per cent of Thailand’s gross domestic product.

MISERY

But prolonged misery in outlying areas and heavily flooded provinces to the north would take the gloss off that victory, especially given a perception that those areas have been sacrificed to save the centre of the capital.

To the north of Bangkok, Pathum Thani and Ayutthaya provinces have been largely inundated for weeks, along with seven industrial estates that have sprung up over the last two decades on what used to be the central plain’s rice fields.

Yingluck, holding a Cabinet meeting today to work out a recovery plan, said the previous day it should take three months to rehabilitate the estates.

Thailand is the second-largest exporter of computer hard drives and global prices are rising because of a flood-related shortage of major components used in personal computers.

Thailand is also Southeast Asia’s main auto-parts maker and Japan’s Honda Motor Co said car production could be difficult in the second half of its business year ending in March. Its Ayutthaya plant has suspended work indefinitely.

Yingluck said she had assured Japanese investors of steps to prevent a repeat of disaster from the annual rainy season.

The Cabinet is discussing a recovery plan that Energy Minister Pichai Naripthaphan said would cost up to 900 billion baht (RM89.88 billion), including 800 billion baht for an overhaul of the water-management system and 100 billion for the rehabilitation of industrial estates.

The Bank of Thailand has nearly halved its projection of economic growth this year to 2.6 per cent from July’s 4.1 per cent estimate, and said the economy — Southeast Asia’s second largest — would shrink by 1.9 per cent in the December quarter from the previous three months due to the floods.

The floods submerged four million acres (1.6 million ha), an area roughly the size of Kuwait, and destroyed 25 per cent of the main rice crop in the world’s largest rice exporter.

The deluge was caused in part by unusually heavy monsoon rain falling on a low-lying region, but the weather has been largely clear for a week as the cooler dry season begins.

Deadly Thai floods close factories, threaten Bangkok

Nearly 200 factories, including one run by Japanese car maker Honda Motor Co Ltd , closed in the central Thai province of Ayutthaya because of flooding, which could threaten Bangkok this week, officials said today.

About 261 people have died since late July in flood-related incidents, the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said. Some 2.3 million people have been affected in the worst flooding to hit parts of Thailand in 50 years, mainly in the centre, north and northeast.

The Rojana estate in Ayutthaya province, run by Rojana Industrial Park Pcl , was flooded after a wall of sandbags failed to hold back water overnight.




“All 198 factories at Rojana have to be closed because the water is about 5.1 metres high,” Industry Minister Wannarat Channukul told Reuters.

A Honda spokeswoman said it had moved about 3,000 assembled cars from the estate to other areas. Hana Microelectronics Pcl has also had to close its plant in Ayutthaya.

On Thursday the Centre for Economic and Business Forecasting, part of the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, cut its forecast for gross domestic product (GDP) growth this year to 3.6 per cent from 4.4 per cent because of the floods.

It put the impact of the flooding at between 1.0 and 1.3 percentage points of GDP and said its new growth forecast would have been lower but for recent strength in exports.

The commerce ministry said on Friday it had slashed its forecast for the main rice crop, which farmers are just starting to bring in, to 21 million tonnes from 25 million because of the flooding.

Thailand is the world’s biggest rice exporter. The crop damage will add to the pressure on export prices, already being forced up by the high buying price set under a government intervention scheme aimed at helping poor farmers.

Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra said in a statement the authorities were preparing an evacuation plan to move people from affected areas if floods hit the capital, much of which is just two metres above sea level.

Some riverside areas have already suffered minor flooding but the level of the Chao Phraya River could rise sharply from October 15-18 when a large amount of water will reach the area from the north, where dams are close to overflowing, at a time of high sea tides.

The government was trying to accelerate the drainage of water from the Chao Phraya into the sea before the high tide.

Other Southeast Asian countries have suffered serious flooding in recent weeks because of heavy monsoon rains combined with tropical storms.

The death toll from two strong typhoons that cut across the north of the Philippines’ main island and left behind widespread flooding had risen to 101 as of today, the national disaster agency said.

At least 167 people had died in Cambodia by late last week and 15 in Vietnam.

Australia floods cover area size of France/Germany

Clash of nature: A boat fighting for attention with a street light post in Bundaberg, today December 31, 2010.

Fishing could be fun for Jim Casey and wife Lesley from their house in Chinchilla, Queensland, December 28, 2010, were the consequences not so potentially devastating.

Flood waters rose across Australia’s northeast today, covering an area bigger than France and Germany combined, inundating 22 towns and stranding 200,000 people, and closing one of the country’s major sugar export ports.

Flooding has already shut major coal mines in Queensland state and its biggest coal export port, forcing a long list of miners such as Anglo American and Rio Tinto to slow or halt operations.

The worst flooding in about 50 years has been caused by a La Nina weather pattern that has resulted in torrential rain over the past two weeks across northeast Australia.

“This disaster is a long way from over,” Queensland state premier Anna Bligh told reporters today.

“We now have 22 towns or cities that are either substantially flooded or isolated. That represents some 200,000 people spanning an area that’s bigger than the size of France and Germany combined.”

Prime Minister Julia Gillard toured the flood-hit sugar city of Bundaberg, which closed its port today after flood debris was washed downstream into shipping channels and damaged navigation beacons.

“This is a natural disaster across Queensland,” said Gillard in announcing a A$1 million (RM3.1 million) government contribution to a flood aid appeal that now totals A$6 million.

Shipments of sugar from Australia, one the world’s leading exporters of the sweetener, have been disrupted because of the closure of Bundaberg’s port. The port normally ships about 400,000 tonnes of raw sugar a year, with three 30,000-tonne vessels due to arrive in the next few days.



“If the port is closed for only a few days it won’t be a big issue but any extended delay would cause some concern,” said Brian Mahoney, an executive with Marybrough Sugar Factory Ltd, which ships through Bundaberg.

The inland sea that now stretches across Queensland is dotted with the roofs of flooded homes, islands of dry ground crowded with stranded livestock, and small boats ferrying people and emergency supplies.

Bundaberg resident Sandy Kiddle hugged Gillard as she told of the heartbreak of seeing her house flooded.

“It was just a sea of water and I thought the beach would never come to our house,” Kiddle told Gillard from the evacuation centre she now calls home.

Australia has recorded its wettest spring on record, said the nation’s weather bureau, causing six major river systems in Queensland state to flood. Several rivers in New South Wales state have also caused flood damaging the nation’s wheat crop.

Possibly as much as half the Australian wheat crop or about 10 million tonnes has been downgraded to less than milling quality because of rain damage, tightening global supplies and contributing to prices for the grain rising about 45 per cent this year, the biggest surge since 2007.

The floods have also pushed coking coal and thermal prices sharply higher, and tight markets are keeping a close eye on further disruptions. Queensland’s ports have an annual coal export capacity of 225 million tonnes.

Australia is the world’s biggest exporter of coking coal used to make steel, and accounts for about two-thirds of global trade. It is also the second-biggest exporter of thermal coal used for power generation.

Emergency authorities in Queensland said the flooding was not expected to reach a peak in some areas until Sunday, and would not recede for at least a week.

Authorities are warning of rising health risks from floodwaters in Queensland, along with the danger of crocodiles and snakes in flooded homes.

Mexico No confirm Death yet in Giant Mudslide

Pounded by incessant rain, a hillside in the state of Oaxaca collapsed onto a village early Tuesday, burying houses in mud and stones and possibly trapping hundreds of people as they slept, state authorities said.

Scores of people killed after heavy rain triggers landslides across Central and South America

Eleven people are missing after a massive landslide buried 300 homes in a remote area of southwestern Mexico.

Rescuers initially feared that hundreds of people could have been buried alive as they slept in their beds in Santa Maria de Tlahuitoltepec.

But officials are speculating that four people may now have been killed, based on a calculation of how many houses were on the slope when the landslide occurred.
Governor Ulises Ruiz said: 'So far no one is confirmed dead, only 11 missing who we hope... will be found.'

Desperate search: Rescue workers dig through mounds of mud and rock in Santa Maria Tlauiltoltepec, Mexico, after a massive landslide buried hundreds of homes

Devastation: A swathe has been cut out of the hillside near the town after mud and rock gave way yesterday morning

Scores of state police and firefighters have been digging with picks, shovels and a bulldozer in a mound of mud and stones that swept down the hillside yesterday morning.

Continued rain forced them to call off the search for eight missing children and three adults due to the threat of more landslides.

The force of the slide dragged houses some 1,300ft down the hill, along with cars, livestock and power lines.

Donato Vargas, an official in the town, said: 'We have been using a backhoe but there is a lot of mud.

'We can't even see the homes, we can't hear the shouts, we can't hear anything.

'We were left without electricity, without telephone and we couldn't help them. There was no way to move the mud.'

President Felipe Calderon reported on his Twitter account yesterday that soldiers had reached the town on foot and that there was a lot of damage, but 'perhaps not of the magnitude initially reported'.

It is the latest in a spate of landslides triggered by heavy rain from Tropical Storm Matthew, which has hit parts of Central America and the north of South America.

Another person has been killed in a mudslide in Villa Hidalgo, in the same Mexican state and 30 were killed on Monday in a landslide in Colombia.
The storm, along with the remnants of Hurricane Karl, have also caused deadly floods in southern Mexico and Honduras.

Fifteen deaths in Mexico have been blamed on flood waters caused by both storms and four people, including a child, drowned in swollen rivers in Honduras.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos visited the scene of the landslide which hit his country between the towns of Giraldo and Canasgordas, northwest of Bogota.

Rescue teams have employed sniffer dogs to search tons of earth.

Witnesses described hearing a roar as the first rocks swept over a road and flattened houses.

Heavy rain has also triggered flooding in Colombia which has led to the deaths of 74 people.

Disaster: Eleven people are missing after the wall of mud buried homes as the residents slept inside

Deluge: A rescue worker uses a zip-line to cross a swollen river in the Mexican town. Heavy rain has also caused widespread flooding

Damage: A bridge has been snapped in two in Tlacolula, Mexico, after heavy rains triggered by Hurricane Karl and Tropical Storm Matthew battered the region

Search: Rescuers dig through the remains of a destroyed house in Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec

Survivors: Rescuers search for victims of a landslide in Giraldo, Colombia, which killed 30 people on Monday

Help: Teams used sniffer dogs to highlight the position of people buried underneath the mud which was also triggered by heavy rain

Disaster: A man surveys the damage after a landslide in Caracas, Venezuela, also triggered by the heavy rain