Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Category Archives: Natural disasters and extreme weather
White Island/Whakaari volcano exploded in 2019, prompting debate over natural hazard tourism
The landowners of a New Zealand volcano that fatally erupted in 2019 have rejected arguments from the country’s workplace safety regulator that they ultimately managed and controlled activities on the island and bore legal responsibility for whether visitors to it were safe.
When White Island/Whakaari exploded on 9 December 2019, 22 people were killed – 17 of them Australians – with 25 others injured. It prompted renewed debate about controls for natural hazard tourism in New Zealand.
Report finds climate change ‘clearly played a role’ in conditions that led up to Australia’s 2019-2020 fires, which were so extreme, traditional firefighting methods often failed
Last summer’s bushfire disaster was so unusual that traditional firefighting methods, such as hazard reduction burning, failed in some instances, an inquiry into the crisis heard.
The final report of the New South Wales bushfire inquiry, published on Tuesday, said the 2019-20 bushfire season brought fires in forested regions on a scale not seen in recorded history in Australia.
Northern California health officials are telling residents to stay inside, to protect themselves from the poor air quality caused by the wildfire smoke. But for many, that’s not an option.
A vulnerable, essential labor force - the more than 381,000 agriculture workers in California - already disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus pandemic keeps working as others flee and take shelter.
The smoke is thick where farm workers were laboring harvesting strawberries in the Salinas area. Thank you @PocketNihilist for sending us this video documenting the hard work in difficult conditions farm workers do so we can have food on our tables. #WeFeedYoupic.twitter.com/O6r0sVcQOO
Dramatic footage shows the moment a helicopter rescued two stranded firefighters from advancing wildfires in California. 'Had it not been for that helicopter, those firefighters would certainly have perished,' the Sonoma county sheriff, Mark Essick, said. Firefighters have been battling blazes that have destroyed hundreds of homes and forced tens of thousands to flee across the state since 15 August
Tropical Storm Marco was swirling over the Gulf of Mexico early on Sunday, heading for a possible hit on the Louisiana coast as a hurricane, while Tropical Storm Laura knocked utilities out as it battered Hispaniola, following a track forecast to take it to the same part of the US coast – also as a hurricane.
Donald Trump has issued a major disaster declaration as deteriorating weather conditions threaten to spark new wildfires in California, where firefighters have been battling some of the largest wildfires on record for the past week.
Trump’s declaration will release federal assistance for the state, with governor Gavin Newsom saying it will also help people in counties affected by the fires with crisis counselling, housing and other social services.
Experts say they are concerned as two potential hurricanes head north – and coronavirus is complicating matters
Two potential hurricanes are heading towards the northern Caribbean and mainland United States – with a third building in the Atlantic – in apparent confirmation of meteorologists’ predictions that the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season will become one of the worst on record.
Wildfires in California have killed at least six people and forced tens of thousands from their homes, with few signs of reprieve in sight, as firefighting resources strain under the vastness of dozens of infernos raging across the state.
More than 771,000 acres have burned so far, an area greater than the state of Rhode Island, California’s governor Gavin Newsom said at a press conference Friday.
Sticking with the Associated Press, it has spoken to some residents affected by the fires:
Smoke and ash billowing from the fires have fouled the air throughout California’s scenic central coast and in San Francisco. The fires have destroyed at least 175 buildings, including homes, and threatened tens of thousands more.
Tim and Anne Roberts had gone to the beach with their two children on Monday, in order to avoid the smoke at their home in Boulder Creek in Santa Cruz county. They packed a change of clothes, their children’s school supplies and their passports, just in case.
The good news for Brookdale resident Larissa Eisenstein was that her five chickens, Kelly and the Nuggets, had been safely relocated into a stranger’s yard in a neighboring community.
The chicken evacuation came a day after Eisenstein, a Silicon Valley tech worker, was forced to leave them behind during an overnight evacuation. She fled with her cats Mochi and Mini, driving from one hotel to the next only to find they were full before landing in a safe place for some rest.
We are wrapping up the liveblog for the day. Thanks for staying with us.
Santa Cruz county is asking that all visitors and tourists occupying hotels, motels and vacation rentals leave the county immediately to free up space for evacuees.
Extreme floods have hit the Three Gorges dam on the Yangtze River, which recorded the largest inflow of water in its history, prompting officials to promise it could withstand the flows.
Several outlets of the dam have been opened to discharge water, the largest release since its construction. A breach would be embarrassing for China, which took 12 years to build the dam, displacing millions and submerging swaths of land.
Meanwhile, upstream from the dam, officials in the city of Chongqing, Sichuan province, evacuated almost 300,000 residents. Levels along the Yangtze nearby have reached heights not seen since 1981
Officials seek to reassure public after world’s largest hydro-electric dam nears capacity amid heavy floods
Extreme floods have hit China’s Three Gorges dam, which recorded the largest inflow of water in its history, prompting officials to assure the public it would not be breached.
Inflows to the world’s largest hydro-electric dam reached 75m litres of water a second, according to state media. By Thursday morning, 11 outlets of the dam had been opened to discharge 49.2m litres of water a second, the largest release since its construction.
Hundreds of fires are raging across California, forcing tens of thousands of residents – who were already facing blackouts and the coronavirus pandemic – to flee their homes. The flames, sparked by lightning and stoked by a searing heatwave and ferocious winds, have been moving quickly, overwhelming the state’s firefighters and first responders.
“It’s kind of an overwhelming fire siege,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.
Cluster of wildfires in Napa, Sonoma and Solano counties cover an estimated 46,225 acres
Lake fire in southern California has burned more than 21,000 acres
Three wild fires and more than 10,000 acres are currently burning out of control around the San Francisco Bay area, prompting officials to issue evacuation orders for residents living near the blazes.
Gov. Newsom said today that he has asked three states — Arizona, Nevada and Texas — to provide hundreds of fire engines to help contain the flames.
Evacuation Order expanded to include all areas west of County Road 306 west to Mendocino County line. Full length of County from Tehama County line south to Colusa County line. #GlennCounty#AugustComplexpic.twitter.com/AlAizoPraM
Wildfires in northern California have made the air quality in the San Francisco Bay Area the worst in the world.
As fires blaze through eight of the nine counties surrounding San Francisco, smoke is drifting across the region and light ash falls from the sky.
It’s raining ash in California, forcing us to wear a different kind of mask than we wear for the pandemic when we go buy the generator we need for either rolling blackouts or preemptive outages so we can work from home if we haven’t been evacuated or our house hasn't burned down
What it’s like to live in California right now.
My car was JUST washed and all of this is ash from the wildfires surround us. ITS LITERALLY RAINING ASHES!!!! pic.twitter.com/XB4iLaG9l5
Firefighters battle to contain blaze before temperatures rise
Fire in Angeles national forest produces vast plume of smoke
A huge wildfire has prompted evacuations north of Los Angeles, with firefighters hoping to rein in the blaze before temperatures spike later on Thursday.
The Lake fire broke out on Wednesday afternoon in dense forest land in the Lake Hughes area of the Angeles national forest, some 60 miles (97km) north of downtown Los Angeles.
The overarching project of my life has been making myself safe. But what is the point if everyone else is drowning and burning and starving?
This is part of a series of essays by Australian writers responding to the challenges of 2020
I am descended from people who factor a flat tyre into a drive to the airport. I own a personal, portable water filter, just in case. I am someone who patrols her boundaries. I am a list writer, a timetable checker.
The overarching project of my life has been making myself safe. No alarms; no surprises. It has become legend in my family that, at age 11, I ruined a holiday by demanding we move out of our accommodation at the foot of what everyone told me was a dormant volcano, because I thought it was too dangerous. (The volcano did erupt, on my 35th birthday.)
At least eight people dead after storm sparks flash floods on island of Evia
The body of a man missing after a storm sparked flash floods on the Greek island of Evia over the weekend has been recovered, Greece’s coastguard has said, bringing the death toll from the storm to eight.
Rescue crews had been searching for the 72-year-old since Sunday when he was reported missing after flooding swept away cars and sent residents of some villages scrambling to their roofs to await rescue.
SES orders parts of Moruya, Nowra and Captains Flat to evacuate as kayaker in Canberra dies and 400 calls for help come from Sydney and Blue Mountains
Several New South Wales south coast communities were on high alert on Monday morning as river levels continued to rise and towns evacuated.
The body of a kayaker was found in swollen river waters in southern Canberra on Sunday. He became separated from a group on the Murrumbidgee River near Canberra about 2pm on Sunday, after his boat became stuck under a bridge.
India’s commercial capital grinds to a halt after heaviest August rainfall in 47 years causes widespread flooding
The heaviest monsoon downpour in nearly 50 years has brought Mumbai to a standstill, with stranded passengers at railway stations having to be rescued by dinghies from waist-high water.
People who live in areas normally unaffected by the annual monsoon flooding looked out from their high-rise flats at new swirling rivers outside caused by the heaviest single day’s rain recorded in August in 47 years.
Flooding fears as eye of the storm hits the coast with maximum sustained winds of 85mph
Isaias has made landfall in the Carolinas as a category 1 hurricane, bringing with it maximum sustained winds of 85mph (140km/h) and the threat of devastating floods.
The eye of Isaias hit the coast on Monday night near Ocean Isle beach in southern North Carolina, the National Hurricane Center said, hours after being upgraded from a tropical storm.