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Tag: Floods

  • Hurricane Helene’s death toll tops 130

    Hurricane Helene’s death toll tops 130

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    ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Widespread devastation left behind by Hurricane Helene came to light Monday across the South, revealing a wasteland of splintered houses, crushed cargo containers and mud-covered highways in one of the worst storms in U.S. history. The death toll topped 130.

    A crisis was unfolding in western North Carolina, where residents stranded by washed-out roads and by a lack of power and cellular service lined up for fresh water and a chance to message loved ones days after the storm that they were alive.

    At least 133 deaths in six Southeastern states have been attributed to the storm that inflicted damage from Florida’s Gulf Coast to the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia.

    The toll steadily rose as emergency workers reached areas isolated by collapsed roads, failing infrastructure and widespread flooding. During a briefing Monday, White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall suggested as many as 600 people hadn’t been accounted for as of Monday afternoon, saying some might be dead.

    President Joe Biden said he will travel to North Carolina on Wednesday to meet with officials and take an aerial tour of Asheville.

    He said earlier that the federal government would be with affected residents in the nation’s southeast “as long as it takes.”

    Government officials and aid groups worked to deliver supplies by air, truck and even mule to the hard-hit tourism hub of Asheville and its surrounding mountain towns. At least 40 people died in the county that includes Asheville.

    The destruction and desperation were overwhelming. A flattened cargo container sat atop a bridge crossing a river with muddy brown water. A mass of debris, including overturned pontoon boats and splintered wooden docks and tree trunks covered the surface of Lake Lure, a picturesque spot tucked between the mountains outside Asheville.

    A woman cradled her child while people around her gathered on a hillside where they found cellphone service, many sending a simple text: “I’m OK.”

    The North Carolina death toll included one horrific story after another of people who were trapped by floodwaters in their homes and vehicles or were killed by falling trees. A courthouse security officer died after being submerged inside his truck. A couple and a 6-year-old boy waiting to be rescued on a rooftop drowned when part of their home collapsed.

    Rescuers did manage to save dozens, including an infant and two others stuck on the top of a car in Atlanta. More than 50 hospital patients and staff in Tennessee were plucked by helicopter from the hospital rooftop in a daring rescue operation.

    How some of the worst-hit areas are coping

    Several main routes into Asheville were washed away or blocked by mudslides, including a 4-mile section of Interstate 40, and the city’s water system was severely damaged, forcing residents to scoop creek water into buckets so they could flush toilets.

    People shared food and water and comforted one another in one neighborhood where a wall of water ripped away all of the trees, leaving a muddy mess nearby. “That’s the blessing so far in this,” Sommerville Johnston said outside her home, which has been without power since Friday.

    She planned on treating the neighborhood to venison stew from her powerless freezer before it goes bad. “Just bring your bowl and spoon,” she said.

    Others waited in a line for more than a block at Mountain Valley Water, a water seller, to fill up milk jugs and whatever other containers they could find.

    Derek Farmer, who brought three gallon-sized apple juice containers, said he had been prepared for the storm but now was nervous after three days without water. “I just didn’t know how bad it was going to be,” Farmer said.

    Officials warned that rebuilding would be lengthy and difficult. Helene roared ashore in northern Florida late Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane and quickly moved through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee. The storm upended life throughout the Southeast, where deaths were also reported in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia.

    Federal Emergency Management Agency officials said Monday that shelters were housing more than 1,000 people.

    North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper took an aerial tour of the Asheville area and later met with workers distributing meals.

    “This has been an unprecedented storm that has hit western North Carolina,” he said afterward. “It’s requiring an unprecedented response.”

    Officials implored travelers from coming into the region to keep the roads clear for emergency vehicles. More than 50 search teams spread throughout the region in search of stranded people.

    Waiting for help and searching for a signal in North Carolina

    Several dozen people gathered on high ground in Asheville, where they found one of the city’s hottest commodities — a cell signal.

    “Is this day three or day four?” Colleen Burnet asked. “It’s all been a blur.”

    The storm unleashed the worst flooding in a century in North Carolina. Rainfall estimates in some areas topped more than 2 feet since Wednesday.

    Ten federal search and rescue teams were on the ground and another nine were on their way, while trucks and cargo planes were arriving with food and water, FEMA said. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell surveyed damage with Cooper Monday.

    Volunteers were showing up, too. Mike Toberer decided to bring a dozen of his mules to deliver food, water and diapers to hard-to-reach mountainous areas.

    “We’ll take our chainsaws, and we’ll push those mules through,” he said, noting that each one can carry about 200 pounds of supplies.

    Why western North Carolina was hit so hard

    Western North Carolina suffered relatively more devastation because that’s where the remnants of Helene encountered the higher elevations and cooler air of the Appalachian Mountains, causing even more rain to fall.

    Asheville and many surrounding mountain towns were built in valleys, leaving them especially vulnerable to devastating rain and flooding. Plus, the ground already was saturated before Helene arrived, said Christiaan Patterson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

    “By the time Helene came into the Carolinas, we already had that rain on top of more rain,” Patterson said.

    Climate change has exacerbated conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful cyclones, sometimes within hours.

    Destruction from Florida to Virginia

    Along Florida’s Gulf Coast, several feet of water swamped the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, forcing workers to move two manatees and sea turtles. All of the animals were safe but much of the aquarium’s vital equipment was damaged or destroyed, said James Powell, the aquarium’s executive director.

    Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said the storm “literally spared no one.” Most people in and around Augusta, a city of about 200,000 near the South Carolina border, were still without power Monday.

    With at least 30 killed in South Carolina, Helene was the deadliest tropical cyclone to hit the state since Hurricane Hugo made landfall north of Charleston in 1989, killing 35 people.

     

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    By JEFFREY COLLINS – Associated Press

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  • Dozens dead and millions without power after Helene’s deadly march across southeastern US

    Dozens dead and millions without power after Helene’s deadly march across southeastern US

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    PERRY, Fla. — PERRY, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Helene caused dozens of deaths and billions of dollars of destruction across a wide swath of the southeastern U.S. as it raced through, and more than 3 million customers went into the weekend without any power and for some a continued threat of floods.

    Helene blew ashore in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday packing winds of 140 mph (225 kph) and then quickly moved through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee, uprooting trees, splintering homes and sending creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams.

    Western North Carolina was essentially cut off because or landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads. There were hundreds of water rescues, none more dramatic than in rural Unicoi County in East Tennessee, where dozens of patients and staff were plucked by helicopter from the roof of a hospital that was surrounded by water from a flooded river.

    The storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, was expected to hover over the Tennessee Valley on Saturday and Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said. Several flood and flash flood warnings remained in effect in parts of the southern and central Appalachians, while high wind warnings also covered parts of Tennessee and Ohio.

    Among the at least 44 people killed in the storm were three firefighters, a woman and her 1-month-old twins, and an 89-year-old woman whose house was struck by a falling tree. According to an Associated Press tally, the deaths occurred in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

    In North Carolina, a lake featured in the movie “Dirty Dancing” overtopped a dam and surrounding neighborhoods were evacuated, although there were no immediate concerns it would fail. People also were evacuated from Newport, Tennessee, a city of about 7,000 people, amid concerns about a dam near there, although officials later said the structure had not failed.

    Tornadoes hit some areas, including one in Nash County, North Carolina, that critically injured four people.

    Atlanta received a record 11.12 inches (28.24 centimeters) of rain in 48 hours, the most the city has seen in a two-day period since record keeping began in 1878, Georgia’s Office of the State Climatologist said on the social platform X. Some neighborhoods were so badly flooded that only car roofs could be seen poking above the water.

    Moody’s Analytics said it expects $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage.

    Climate change has exacerbated conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful cyclones sometimes in a matter of hours.

    Florida’s Big Bend is a part of the state where salt marshes and pine flatwoods stretch into the horizon, and where the condo developments and strip malls that have carved up so much of the state’s coastlines are largely absent.

    It’s a place where Susan Sauls Hartway and her 4-year-old Chihuahua mix Lucy could afford to live within walking distance of the beach on her salary as a housekeeper.

    At least, until her house was carried away by Helene.

    Friday afternoon, Hartway wandered around her street near Ezell Beach, searching for where the storm may have deposited her home.

    “It’s gone. I don’t know where it’s at. I can’t find it,” she said of her house.

    Born and raised in rural Taylor County, Hartway said there is nowhere in the world she would rather be, even after Helene. But she’s watched as wealthier residents from out of state have bought up second homes here. She wonders how many of them will sell out — and what will happen to the locals who have nowhere else to go.

    “There’s so many people down here, they don’t have any place to go now. This was all they had,” she said.

    The community has taken direct hits from three hurricanes since August 2023.

    All five who died in one Florida county were in neighborhoods where residents were told to evacuate, said Bob Gualtieri, the sheriff in Pinellas County in the St. Petersburg area. Some who stayed ended up having to hide in their attics to escape the rising water. He said the death toll could rise as crews go door-to-door in flooded areas.

    More deaths were reported in Georgia and the Carolinas, including two South Carolina firefighters and a Georgia firefighter who died when trees struck their trucks. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin reported at least one death in his state.

    When the water hit knee-level in Kera O’Neil’s home in Hudson, Florida, she knew it was time to escape.

    “There’s a moment where you are thinking, ‘If this water rises above the level of the stove, we are not going to have not much room to breathe,’” she said, recalling how she and her sister waded through chest-deep water with one cat in a plastic carrier and another in a cardboard box.

    President Joe Biden said he was praying for survivors, and the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency headed to the area. The agency deployed more than 1,500 workers, and they helped with 400 rescues by late Friday morning.

    Officials urged people who were trapped to call for rescuers and not tread floodwaters, warning they can be dangerous due to live wires, sewage, sharp objects and other debris.

    In Georgia, an electrical utility group warned of “catastrophic” damage to utility infrastructure, with more than 100 high voltage transmission lines damaged. And officials in South Carolina, where more than 40% of customers were without power, said crews had to cut their way through debris just to determine what was still standing in some places.

    The hurricane came ashore near the mouth of the Aucilla River, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) northwest of where Hurricane Idalia hit last year at nearly the same ferocity. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the damage from Helene appears to be greater than the combined effects of Idalia and Hurricane Debby in August.

    The destruction extended far beyond Florida.

    A mudslide in the Appalachian Mountains washed out part of an interstate highway at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line.

    Another slide hit homes in North Carolina and occupants had to wait more than four hours to be rescued, said Ryan Cole, the emergency services assistant director in Buncombe County. His 911 center received more than 3,300 calls in eight hours Friday.

    “This is something that we’re going to be dealing with for many days and weeks to come,” Cole said.

    Forecasters warned of flooding in North Carolina that could be worse than anything seen in the past century. The Connecticut Army National Guard sent a helicopter to help.

    Helene was the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures.

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    Payne reported from Tallahassee, Florida, and Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri. Associated Press journalists Seth Borenstein in New York; Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Russ Bynum in Valdosta, Georgia; Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Andrea Rodríguez in Havana; Mark Stevenson and María Verza in Mexico City; and Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, contributed.

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  • Central Europe braces for heavy rains and flooding forecast over the weekend

    Central Europe braces for heavy rains and flooding forecast over the weekend

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    PRAGUE (AP) — Central European nations braced on Friday for severe flooding forecast to hit the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, Germany, Slovakia and Hungary over the weekend.

    Czech authorities erected metal barriers or protective walls from sandbags, while water was released from dams to make space in reservoirs. Residents have been warned to get ready for possible evacuations.

    Some public events planned for the weekend have been cancelled at the request of authorities, including soccer matches in the top two leagues.

    “We have to be ready for the worst case scenarios,” Prime Minister Petr Fiala said after a meeting of his government’s central crisis committee. “A tough weekend is ahead of us.”

    Meteorologists say a low pressure system from northern Italy was predicted to dump much rainfall in most parts of the Czech Republic, or Czechia, including the capital and border regions with Austria and Germany in the south, and Poland in the north.

    Central Europeans are especially wary because some experts have compared the weekend forecast to devastating floods in 1997 in the region, referred to by some as the flood of the century.

    Over 100 people were killed in the floods 27 years ago, including 50 in the eastern Czech Republic where large sections of land was inundated.

    The biggest rainfall was predicted in the eastern half of the country, particularly in the Jeseniky mountains. The second largest city of Brno, located in eastern Czech Republic, is among places that have not had flooding protection work completed, unlike Prague.

    Czechs were asked not to go to parks and woods as high winds of up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) per hour were forecast.

    In Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk traveled on Friday to the southwestern Polish city of Wrocław where floods are forecast. Authorities appealed to residents to stock up on food and to prepare for power outages by charging power banks.

    Tusk, meeting with firefighters and other emergency officials, said the forecasts were “not excessively alarming.”

    “There is no reason to panic, but there is a reason to be fully mobilized,” he stressed.

    The German Weather Service warned of heavy precipitation across swaths of the country, including the Alps, where heavy snowfall and strong winds are expected at higher altitudes.

    The Alpine nation of Austria is also getting ready for heavy rains, and a massive cold front that is expected to bring snow to higher elevations.

    The weather change arrived following a hot start to September in the region. Scientists have recorded Earth’s hottest summer on record, breaking a record set just one year ago.

    A hotter atmosphere, driven by human-caused climate change, can lead to more intense rainfall.

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    Associated Press writer Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, Poland, contributed to this report.

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  • Cambodia hopes a new canal will boost trade. But it risks harming the Mekong that feeds millions

    Cambodia hopes a new canal will boost trade. But it risks harming the Mekong that feeds millions

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    PREK TAKEO, Cambodia — The Mekong River is a lifeline for millions in the six countries it traverses on its way from its headwaters to the sea, sustaining the world’s largest inland fishery and abundant rice paddies on Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.

    Cambodia’s plan to build a massive canal linking the Mekong to a port on on its own coast on the Gulf of Thailand is raising alarm that the project could devastate the river’s natural flood systems, worsening droughts and depriving farmers on the delta of the nutrient-rich silt that has made Vietnam the world’s third-largest rice exporter.

    Cambodia hopes that the $1.7 billion Funan Techo canal, being built with Chinese help, will support its ambition to export directly from factories along the Mekong without relying on Vietnam, connecting the capital Phnom Penh with Kep province on Cambodia’s southern coast.

    At an Aug. 5 groundbreaking ceremony, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet said the canal will be built “no matter what the cost.” By reducing costs of shipping to Cambodia’s only deep-sea port, at Sihanoukville, the canal will promote, “national prestige, the territorial integrity and the development of Cambodia,” he said.

    Along with those promises comes peril. Here is a closer look.

    The Mekong River flows from China through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. It supports a fishery that accounts for 15% of the global inland catch, worth over $11 billion annually, according to the nonprofit World Wildlife Fund. Flooding during the wet season makes the Mekong Delta one of the world’s most productive farm regions.

    The river already has been disrupted by dams built upstream in Laos and China that restrict the amount of water flowing downstream, while rising seas are gnawing away at the southern edges of the climate-vulnerable Mekong Delta.

    Brian Eyler, director of the Washington-based Stimson Center’s Southeast Asia Program, warns that high embankments along the 100-meter (328 feet)-wide, 5.4-meter (17.7 feet)-deep canal will prevent silt-laden floodwater from flowing downstream to Vietnam. That could worsen drought in Vietnam’s rice bowl and Cambodia’s floodplains, an area stretching over roughly 1,300-square kilometers (501 square miles).

    A drier Mekong Delta is a concern for Vietnam’s agricultural sector, which powers 12% of its economy. The southwestern provinces of An Giang and Kien Giang would likely be most impacted. The delta’s latticework of rivers crisscrossing green fields is vital for Vietnam’s own plans of growing “high quality, low emission rice” on 1 million hectares of farmland by 2030. The aim is to cut earth-warming greenhouse gases, lower production costs and increase farmers’ profits.

    Water from the river is “essential” not just for Vietnam’s more than 100 million people but also for global food security, said Nguyen Van Nhut, director of rice export company Hoang Minh Nhat.

    Vietnam’s exports of 8.3 million metric tons (9.1 U.S. tons) of rice in 2023 accounted for 15% of global exports. Most was grown in the Mekong Delta. The amount of silt being deposited by the river has already dropped and further disruptions will worsen salinity in the area, hurting farming, Nhat said.

    “This will be a major concern for the agriculture sector of the Mekong delta,” he said.

    Cambodia says the canal is a “tributary project” that will connect to the Bassac River near Phnom Penh. President Hun Sen claimed on social media platform X that this means there would be “no impact on the flow of the Mekong River.”

    But blueprints show the canal will connect to the Mekong’s mainstream and in any case the Bassac consists entirely of water from the Mekong, Eyler said.

    Cambodian authorities are downplaying the potential environmental impacts of the project. “This is their logic-defying basis for justifying no impact to the Mekong River,” he said.

    A document submitted in August 2023 to the Mekong River Commission — an organization formed for cooperation on issues regarding the Mekong — does not mention using water from the canal for irrigation, though Cambodia has since said it plans to do so. The Stimson Center added it was “logical” that irrigation would be needed during dry months, but that would require negotiating an agreement with the other Mekong countries.

    The Mekong River Commission told The Associated Press all major projects on the Mekong River “should be assessed for their potential transboundary impacts.” It said it was providing technical support to “increase transparency and cooperation among concerned countries.”

    Sun Chanthol, the Cambodian deputy prime minister who oversees the project, didn’t respond to a request for comments.

    Cambodia has rejected criticism of the canal, which is widely seen as an effort by the country’s ruling elite to curry support for Prime Minister Hun Manet, who succeeded his father Hun Sen, who led Cambodia for 38 years.

    The canal is to be built jointly by Chinese state-owned construction giant China Road and Bridge Corporation and Cambodian companies. But it is enveloped in nationalistic rhetoric. The canal would provide Cambodia a “nose to breathe through” by reducing its dependence on Vietnam, Hun Sen has said.

    Vietnam has avoided openly criticizing its neighbor, instead communicating its concerns quietly. Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said at a press conference in May that Hanoi had asked Cambodia to share information and assess the environmental impacts of the project to “ensure the harmony of interests” of Mekong countries.

    Many Cambodians remain suspicious of Vietnam’s intentions, believing it may want to annex Cambodian territory. Given the contentious past between the two countries, bigger and richer Vietnam is taking care not to appear to be impinging on Cambodian sovereignty, said Nguyen Khac Giang, an analyst at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

    “Although in Vietnam, there are big concerns,” he said.

    Lost in Cambodia’s nationalistic rhetoric are the concerns of people like Sok Koeun, 57, who may lose her home.

    The tin-roofed cottage where she has lived with her family since 1980 is right where the canal is due to be built. The river provides her with fish to feed her family when she struggles to get by selling sugarcane juice and recycling plastic cans.

    No one has been in touch, she says, to answer her mounting questions: Will she get compensated? Will she get land? Or cash? Where will they go?

    “I only learned about it (the canal) just now,” she said.

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    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Deadly flooding in Central Europe made twice as likely by climate change

    Deadly flooding in Central Europe made twice as likely by climate change

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    WASHINGTON — Human-caused climate change doubled the likelihood and intensified the heavy rains that led to devastating flooding in Central Europe earlier this month, a new flash study found.

    Torrential rain in mid-September from Storm Boris pummeled a large part of central Europe, including Romania, Poland, Czechia, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Germany, and caused widespread damage. The floods killed 24 people, damaged bridges, submerged cars, left towns without power and in need of significant infrastructure repairs.

    The severe four-day rainfall was “by far” the heaviest ever recorded in Central Europe and twice as likely because of warming from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, World Weather Attribution, a collection of scientists that run rapid climate attribution studies, said Wednesday from Europe. Climate change also made the rains between 7% and 20% more intense, the study found.

    “Yet again, these floods highlight the devastating results of fossil fuel-driven warming,” said Joyce Kimutai, the study’s lead author and a climate researcher at Imperial College, London.

    To test the influence of human-caused climate change, the team of scientists analyzed weather data and used climate models to compare how such events have changed since cooler preindustrial times to today. Such models simulate a world without the current 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming since preindustrial times, and see how likely a rainfall event that severe would be in such a world.

    The study analyzed four-day rainfall events, focusing on the countries that felt severe impacts.

    Though the rapid study hasn’t been peer-reviewed, it follows scientifically accepted techniques.

    “In any climate, you would expect to occasionally see records broken,” said Friederike Otto, an Imperial College, London, climate scientist who coordinates the attribution study team. But, “to see records being broken by such large margins, that is really the fingerprint of climate change. And that is only something that we see in a warming world.”

    Some of the most severe impacts were felt in the Polish-Czech border region and Austria, mainly in urban areas along major rivers. The study noted that the death toll from this month’s flooding was considerably lower than during catastrophic floods in the region in 1997 and 2002. Still, infrastructure and emergency management systems were overwhelmed in many cases and will require billions of euros to fix.

    Last week, European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen pledged billions of euros in aid for countries that suffered damage to infrastructure and housing from the floods.

    The World Weather Attribution study also warned that in a world with even more warming — specifically 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since preindustrial times, the likelihood of ferocious four-day storms would grow by 50% compared to current levels. Such storms would grow in intensity, too, the authors found.

    The heavy rainfall across Central Europe was caused by what’s known as a “Vb depression” that forms when cold polar air flows from the north over the Alps and meets warm air from Southern Europe. The study’s authors found no observable change in the number of similar Vb depressions since the 1950s.

    The World Weather Attribution group launched in 2015 largely due to frustration that it took so long to determine whether climate change was behind an extreme weather event. Studies like theirs, within attribution science, use real-world weather observations and computer modeling to determine the likelihood of a particular happening before and after climate change, and whether global warming affected its intensity.

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    Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Lebanese doctor races to save the eyes of those hurt by exploding tech devices

    Lebanese doctor races to save the eyes of those hurt by exploding tech devices

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    BEIRUT — For almost a week, ophthalmologist Elias Jaradeh has worked around the clock, trying to keep up with the flood of patients whose eyes were injured when pagers and walkie-talkies exploded en masse across Lebanon.

    He has lost track of how many eye operations he has performed in multiple hospitals, surviving on two hours of sleep before starting on the next operation. He has managed to save some patients’ sight, but many will never see again.

    “There is no doubt that what happened was extremely tragic, when you see this overwhelming number of people with eye injures arriving at the same time to the hospital, most of them young men, but also children and young women,” he told The Associated Press at a Beirut hospital this past week, struggling to hold back tears.

    Lebanese hospitals and medics were inundated after thousands of hand-held devices belonging to the Hezbollah militant group detonated simultaneously on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, killing at least 39 people. Around 3,000 more were wounded, some with life-altering disabilities. Israel is widely believed to have been behind the attack, although it has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

    Although the explosions appear to have targeted Hezbollah fighters, many of the victims were civilians. And many of those hurt in the attack suffered injuries to their hands, face and eyes because the devices received messages just before they detonated, so they were looking at the devices as they exploded.

    Authorities have not said how many people lost their eyes.

    Veteran and hardened Lebanese eye doctors who have dealt with the aftermath of multiple wars, civil unrest and explosions, said they have never seen anything like it.

    Jaradeh, who is also a lawmaker representing south Lebanon as a reformist, said most of the patients sent to his hospital, which specializes in ophthalmology, were young people who had significant damage to one or both eyes. He said he found plastic and metal shrapnel inside some of their eyes.

    Four years ago, a powerful blast tore through Beirut’s port, killing more than 200 people and wounding more than 6,000. That explosion, caused by the detonation of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrates that had been stored unsafely at a port warehouse, blew out windows and doors for miles around and sent cascades of glass shards pouring onto the streets, leading to horrific injuries.

    Jaradeh also treated people hurt in the port explosion, but his experience with those wounded by the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies has been so much more intense because of the sheer volume of people with eye injuries.

    “Containing the shock after the Beirut port blast was, I believe, 48 hours while we haven’t reached the period of containing the shock now,” Jaradeh said.

    Jaradeh said he found it hard to dissociate his job as a doctor from his emotions in the operating theater.

    “No matter what they taught you (in medical school) about distancing yourself, I think in a situation like this, it is very hard when you see the sheer numbers of wounded. This is linked to a war on Lebanon and war on humanity,” Jaradeh said.

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  • Vietnam typhoon death toll rises to 233 as more bodies found

    Vietnam typhoon death toll rises to 233 as more bodies found

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    HANOI, Vietnam — The death toll in the aftermath of a typhoon in Vietnam climbed to 233 on Friday as rescue workers recovered more bodies from areas hit by landslides and flash floods, state media reported.

    Flood waters from the swollen Red River in the capital, Hanoi, were beginning to recede, but many neighborhoods remained inundated and farther north experts were predicting it could still be days before any relief is in sight.

    Typhoon Yagi made landfall Saturday, starting a week of heavy rains that have triggered flash floods and landslides, particularly in Vietnam’s mountainous north.

    Across Vietnam, 103 people are still listed as missing and more than 800 have been injured.

    In A Lac village on the outskirts of Hanoi, Nguyen Thi Loan returned to the home that she’d hastily fled on Monday as the floodwaters rose.

    Much of the village was still under water, and as she surveyed the damage, she wondered how she and others would manage.

    “The flood has made our lives so difficult,” she said. “Our rice crop has been destroyed and at home the electrical appliances like the washing machine, TV and fridge are under water.”

    Most fatalities have come in the province of Lao Cai, where a flash flood swept away the entire hamlet of Lang Nu on Tuesday. Eight villagers turned up safe on Friday morning, telling others that they had left before the deluge, state-run VNExpress newspaper reported, but 48 others from Lang Nu have been found dead, and another 39 remain missing.

    Roads to Lang Nu have been badly damaged, making it impossible to bring in heavy equipment to aid in the rescue effort.

    Some 500 personnel with sniffer dogs are on hand, and in a visit to the scene on Thursday, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh promised they would not relent in their search for those still missing.

    “Their families are in agony,” Chinh said.

    Coffins were stacked near the disaster site in preparation for the worst, and villager Tran Thi Ngan mourned at a makeshift altar for family members she had lost.

    “It’s a disaster,” she told VTV news. “That’s the fate we have to accept.”

    In Cao Bang, another northern province bordering China, 21 bodies had been recovered by Friday, four days after a landslide pushed a bus, a car and several motorcycles into a small river, swollen with floodwaters. Ten more people remain missing.

    Experts say storms like Typhoon Yagi are getting stronger due to climate change, as warmer ocean waters provide more energy to fuel them, leading to higher winds and heavier rainfall.

    The effects of the typhoon, the strongest to hit Vietnam in decades, were also being felt across the region, with flooding and landslides in northern Thailand, Laos and northeastern Myanmar.

    In Thailand, 10 deaths have been reported due to flooding or landslides, and Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra flew to the north on Friday to visit affected people in the border town of Mae Sai. Thailand’s Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation warned of a continuing risk of flash floods in multiple areas through Wednesday, as new rain was expected to increase the Mekong River’s levels further.

    International aid has been flowing into Vietnam in the aftermath of Yagi, with Australia already delivering humanitarian supplies as part of $2 million in assistance.

    South Korea has also pledged $2 million in humanitarian aid, and the U.S. Embassy said Friday it would provide $1 million in support through the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.

    “With more heavy rain forecast in the coming days, USAID’s disaster experts continue to monitor humanitarian needs in close coordination with local emergency authorities and partners on the ground,” the embassy said in a statement. “USAID humanitarian experts on the ground are participating in ongoing assessments to ensure U.S. assistance rapidly reaches populations in need.”

    The typhoon and ensuing heavy rains have damaged factories in northern provinces like Haiphong, home to electric car company VinFast, Apple parts suppliers and other electronic manufacturers, which could affect international supply chains, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a research note.

    “Though 95 percent of businesses operating in Haiphong were expected to resume some activity on September 10, repair efforts will likely lower output for the next weeks and months,” CSIS said.

    ___

    Rising reported from Bangkok. Associated Press writer Jintamas Saksornchai in Bangkok contributed to this report.

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  • At least 24 dead in Vietnam after Typhoon Yagi triggered landslides, floods

    At least 24 dead in Vietnam after Typhoon Yagi triggered landslides, floods

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    Among the victims were a newborn baby and a one-year-old boy who were killed in a landslide in the mountains of northwestern Vietnam.

    At least 24 people have been killed and 299 injured in Vietnam amid landslides and floods triggered by Typhoon Yagi.

    The typhoon was Asia’s most powerful storm this year and made landfall on Vietnam’s northeastern coast on Saturday, after causing havoc in China and the Philippines.

    Among the victims were six people, including a newborn baby and a one-year-old boy, who were killed in a landslide in the Hoang Lien Son mountains of northwestern Vietnam.

    Their bodies were discovered on Sunday, a local official told the AFP news agency.

    Other victims included a family of four who were killed after heavy rain caused a hillside to collapse onto a house in mountainous Hoa Binh province in northern Vietnam, state media reported.

    The Vietnamese government said the storm disrupted power supplies and telecommunications in several parts of the country, mostly in Quang Ninh and Hai Phong in the northeast.

    The weather agency on Monday warned of more floods and landslides, noting that rainfall had ranged between 208mm and 433mm (8.2 inches to 17 inches) in several parts of the region over the past 24 hours.

    “Floods and landslides are damaging the environment and threatening people’s lives,” the National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting said in a report.

    Yagi weakened to a tropical depression on Sunday, but several areas of the port city of Hai Phong were under half a metre (1.6 feet) of water and there was no electricity.

    At Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site about 70km (43 miles) up the coast from the city, the disaster management authority said 30 vessels sank after being pounded by strong wind and waves.

    The typhoon also damaged nearly 3,300 houses, and more than 120,000 hectares (296,500 acres) of crops in the north of the country, the authority said.

    Before arriving in Vietnam, Yagi tore through southern China and the Philippines, killing at least 24 people and injuring dozens of others.

    Typhoons in the region are now forming closer to the coast, intensifying more rapidly, and staying over land for longer due to climate change, according to a study published in July.

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  • Wild week of US weather includes heat wave, tropical storm, landslide, flash flood and snow

    Wild week of US weather includes heat wave, tropical storm, landslide, flash flood and snow

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    FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn. — It’s been a wild week of weather in many parts of the United States, from heat waves to snowstorms to flash floods.

    Here’s a look at some of the weather events:

    Millions of people in the Midwest have been enduring dangerous heat and humidity.

    An emergency medicine physician treating Minnesota State Fair-goers for heat illnesses saw firefighters cut rings off two people’s swollen fingers Monday in hot weather that combined with humidity made it feel well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.7 degrees Celsius).

    Soaring late summer temperatures also prompted some Midwestern schools to let out early or cancel sports practices. The National Weather Service issued heat warnings or advisories across Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Oklahoma. Several cities including Chicago opened cooling centers.

    Forecasters said Tuesday also will be scorching hot for areas of the Midwest before the heat wave shifts to the south and east.

    An unusually cold storm on the mountain peaks along the West Coast late last week brought a hint of winter in August. The system dropped out of the Gulf of Alaska, down through the Pacific Northwest and into California. Mount Rainier, southeast of Seattle, got a high-elevation dusting, as did central Oregon’s Mt. Bachelor resort.

    Mount Shasta, the Cascade Range volcano that rises to 14,163 feet (4,317 meters) above far northern California, wore a white blanket after the storm clouds passed. The mountain’s Helen Lake, which sits at 10,400 feet (3,170 meters) received about half a foot of snow (15 centimeters), and there were greater amounts at higher elevations, according to the U.S. Forest Service’s Shasta Ranger Station.

    Three tropical cyclones swirled over the Pacific Ocean on Monday, including Tropical Storm Hone, which brought heavy rain to Hawaii, Hurricane Gilma, which was gaining strength, and Tropical Storm Hector which was churning westward, far off the coast of southern tip of Baja California.

    The biggest impacts from Tropical Storm Hone (pronounced hoe-NEH) were rainfall and flash floods that resulted in road closures, downed power lines and damaged trees in some areas of the Big Island, said William Ahue, a forecaster at the Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu. No injuries or major damage had been reported, authorities said.

    A landslide that cut a path down a steep, thickly forested hillside crashed into several homes in Ketchikan, Alaska, in the latest such disaster to strike the mountainous region. Sunday’s slide killed one person and injured three others and prompted the mandatory evacuation of nearby homes in the city, a popular cruise ship stop along the famed Inside Passage in the southeastern Alaska panhandle.

    The slide area remained unstable Monday, and authorities said that state and local geologists were arriving to assess the area for potential secondary slides. Last November, six people — including a family of five — were killed when a landslide destroyed two homes in Wrangell, north of Ketchikan.

    The body of an Arizona woman who disappeared in Grand Canyon National Park after a flash flood was recovered Sunday, park rangers said. The body of Chenoa Nickerson, 33, was discovered by a group rafting down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, the park said in a statement.

    Nickerson was hiking along Havasu Creek about a half-mile (800 meters) from where it meets up with the Colorado River when the flash flood struck. Nickerson’s husband was among the more than 100 people safely evacuated.

    The flood trapped several hikers in the area above and below Beaver Falls, one of a series of usually blue-green waterfalls that draw tourists from around the world to the Havasupai Tribe’s reservation. The area is prone to flooding that turns its iconic waterfalls chocolate brown.

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  • Authorities recover body of Arizona woman who went missing in Grand Canyon after flash flood

    Authorities recover body of Arizona woman who went missing in Grand Canyon after flash flood

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    SUPAI, Ariz. — The body of an Arizona woman who went missing in the Grand Canyon National Park after a flash flood days earlier was recovered Sunday, park rangers said.

    The body of Chenoa Nickerson, 33, from the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert, Arizona, was discovered by a group rafting down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon around 11:30 a.m. Sunday, the park said in a statement.

    Rangers recovered Nickerson’s body, which was transported to the rim by helicopter and transferred to the Coconino County Medical Examiner’s office.

    In a statement issued Sunday, her family thanked searchers and supporters and asked for privacy.

    “We regret to inform you that our sweet Chenoa has been found deceased. Our hearts are heavy with grief,” the statement said. “Chenoa’s light will forever be a part of all of us, and we will ensure that her spirit continues to shine brightly. Her memory will never fade, and we will honor her by carrying forward the joy and love she brought into all of our lives.”

    National Park Service officials said Nickerson was swept into Havasu Creek above the Colorado River confluence around 1:30 p.m. Thursday. She wasn’t wearing a life jacket.

    Nickerson was hiking along Havasu Creek about a half-mile (800 meters) from where it meets up with the Colorado River when the flash flood struck.

    Nickerson’s husband was among the more than 100 people safely evacuated.

    The flood trapped several hikers in the area above and below Beaver Falls, one of a series of usually blue-green waterfalls that draw tourists from around the world to the Havasupai Tribe’s reservation. The area is prone to flooding that turns its iconic waterfalls chocolate brown.

    Other hikers made it to the village, about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from the campground, where they awaited helicopter rides out.

    Gov. Katie Hobbs activated the Arizona National Guard, including Blackhawk helicopters, to help evacuate hikers from the village.

    Guard officials said an estimated 104 tribal members and tourists near Havasupai Falls have been evacuated since Thursday after floodwaters left them stranded.

    The Havasupai Tribe’s reservation is one of the most remote in the continental U.S., accessible only by foot, mule or helicopter.

    Helicopter evacuations began after bridges were washed away and rescuers fanned out amid a series of towering waterfalls.

    The medical examiner’s office and park service are investigating her death.

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  • Tropical Storm Debby is expected to send flooding to the Southeast. Here’s how much rain could fall

    Tropical Storm Debby is expected to send flooding to the Southeast. Here’s how much rain could fall

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    Northern Florida, the coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina and parts of North Carolina are bracing for severe rain and catastrophic flooding this week as the Debby storm system moves up and east.

    Debby made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane on the Big Bend coast of Florida early Monday, first hitting the small community of Steinhatchee. It damaged homes and businesses, sent floodwaters rising, caused sweeping power outages across the state and Georgia and led to several fatalities. Debby was downgraded to a tropical storm midday Monday.

    But experts say the worst is yet to come as the storm system is expected to stall over the Southeast region.

    Forecasters say the system could pummel the Southeast with widespread areas of up to 20 inches (51 centimeters) of rain and some totaling up to 30 inches (76 centimeters).

    That would be a record-setting rainfall, shattering the record from a tropical system in 2018’s Hurricane Florence. More than 23 inches (58 centimeters) of rain was recorded in South Carolina after that storm hit the Carolinas.

    Although Debby was classified as a Category 1, “It really is worthy of a Category 3 or 4 rating, if you want to talk about rainfall impacts,” said Jeff Masters, founder of Weather Underground, now with Yale Climate Connections. “That’s going to cause a lot of damage.”

    Northern Florida as well as low-lying areas including Savannah, Georgia, and Hilton Head Island and Charleston, South Carolina, are expected to see the most severe flooding. North Carolina could also be impacted.

    Officials in Savannah warned the area could see a month’s worth of rain in four days if the system stalls. There were also flooding concerns for Tybee Island, Georgia’s largest public beach 18 miles (28.97 kilometers) east of Savannah. On top of any torrential downpours that Debby dishes out, the island could get even wetter from 2 to 4 feet of storm surge, according to the National Hurricane Center.

    “We don’t know how much rain is going to fall. But we have to prepare for the worst,” Hilton Head Island Mayor Alan Perry said on a video posted to Facebook. “If that happens, we will see an event we have never seen on Hilton Head before.”

    Meanwhile, Charleston County Interim Emergency Director Ben Webster called Debby a “historic and potentially unprecedented event” three times in a 90-second briefing Monday morning.

    Few places in South Carolina are as susceptible to flooding as Charleston. Much of the city and surrounding areas founded in 1670 were built on land created by using fill dirt and other debris. Rising sea levels cause a number of minor flooding events even without a storm and like many coastal cities, Charleston can’t drain well.

    The city doesn’t expect a massive amount of flooding from the ocean, but the storm is still dangerous. Heavy rain can back up into the city, also causing flooding.

    Some hurricanes make landfall and move quickly, experts say, while others slow substantially.

    “Really what happened, and why the storm has stalled, is because there’s basically high pressure areas to the west of the storm and to the northeast, and that’s kind of pinned the storm,” said Phil Klotzbach, senior research scientist at Colorado State University’s Department of Atmospheric Science. “With a hurricane you always have wind problems, but when you have a storm moving at 3 to 5 miles an hour, it’s going to be over any specific location for a very long period of time, so flash flooding and just tremendous rainfall totals are going to be very likely.”

    Experts say the warming atmosphere plays a role in the severity of storm surges such as Debby.

    Warming water in the northeast Gulf of Mexico is increasing Hurricane Debby’s heavy rains, as more moisture evaporates from the waters, Masters said. Some research says climate change can impact the forward motion of hurricanes, he added, making them go slower.

    “It’s something we’ve been seeing more of lately,” Masters said.

    The worst of the rain is expected during the first half of the week, but it could last through Saturday, forecasters said.

    ___

    St. John reported from Detroit. Jeffrey Collins contributed from Columbia, South Carolina. Russ Bynum contributed from Savannah, Georgia.

    ___

    Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate solutions reporter. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.

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  • Tropical Storm Debby hits Florida with floods

    Tropical Storm Debby hits Florida with floods

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    HORSESHOE BEACH, Fla. — Tropical Storm Debby slammed Florida on Monday with torrential rain and high winds, contributing to at least four deaths in the state and causing flooding before turning menacingly toward the Eastern Seaboard’s low-lying regions and threatened to flood some of America’s most historic Southern cities.

    Record-setting rain was expected to cause flash flooding, with up to 30 inches possible in some areas, the National Hurricane Center said. Up to 18 inches was forecast in central and north Florida. A flash flood emergency was issued into Monday evening for the Lake City area, where up to a foot rain had fallen and more was expected.

    The potential for high water also threatened Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned that just because the storm was moving into Georgia, it didn’t mean the state wouldn’t continue to see threats as waterways north of the border fill up and flow south.

    “It is a very saturating, wet storm,” he said during an afternoon briefing at the state’s emergency operations center. “When they crest and the water that’s going to come down from Georgia, it’s just something that we’re going to be on alert for not just throughout today, but for the next week.”

    Debby made landfall along the Gulf Coast of Florida early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane. It since has weakened to a tropical storm and is moving slowly, covering roads with water and contributing to at least five deaths.

    A truck driver died on Interstate 75 in the Tampa area after he lost control of his tractor trailer, which flipped over a concrete wall and dangled over the edge before the cab dropped into the water below. Sheriff’s office divers located the driver, a 64-year-old man from Mississippi, in the cab 40 feet below the surface, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

    A 13-year-old boy died Monday morning after a tree fell on a mobile home southwest of Gainesville, according to the Levy County Sheriff’s Office.

    And in Dixie County, just east of where the storm made landfall, a 38-year-old woman and a 12-year-old boy died in a car crash on wet roads Sunday night. The Florida Highway Patrol said a 14-year-old boy who was a passenger was hospitalized with serious injuries.

    In southern Georgia, a 19-year-old man died Monday afternoon when a large tree fell onto a porch at a home in Moultrie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

    Nearly 200,000 customers remained without power in Florida and Georgia on Monday afternoon, down from a peak of more than 350,000, according to PowerOutage.us and Georgia Electric Membership Corp.

    DeSantis said some 17,000 workers were restoring electricity. He warned residents in affected areas to stay off the roads until conditions are safe.

    Airports were also affected. More than 1,600 flights had been canceled nationwide, many of them to and from Florida airports, according to FlightAware.com.

    Sarasota, Florida, a beach city popular with tourists, was one of the hardest hit by flooding.

    “Essentially we’ve had twice the amount of the rain that was predicted for us to have,” said Sarasota County Fire Chief David Rathbun in a social media update.

    Local leaders in Savannah, Georgia, said flooding could happen in areas that don’t usually get high water if Debby stalls out over the city. With winds and rainfall expected to worsen overnight, authorities issued a curfew from 10 p.m. Monday until 6 a.m. Tuesday.

    “This type of rain hovering over us, coming with the intensity that they tell us it is coming, it’s going to catch a whole lot of people by surprise,” said Chatham County Chairman Chester Ellis.

    In South Carolina, Charleston County Interim Emergency Director Ben Webster called Debby a “historic and potentially unprecedented event” three times in a 90-second briefing Monday morning.

    The city of Charleston has an emergency plan in place that includes sandbags for residents, opening parking garages so residents can park their cars above floodwaters and an online mapping system that shows which roads are closed due to flooding. Officials announced a curfew for the city starting at 11 p.m. as some of the heaviest rain is expected to fall overnight.

    North Carolina is also under a state of emergency after Gov. Roy Cooper declared it in an executive order signed Monday. Several areas along the state’s coastline are prone to flooding, such as Wilmington and the Outer Banks, according to the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program.

    North Carolina and South Carolina have dealt with three catastrophic floods from tropical systems in the past nine years, all causing more than $1 billion in damage.

    In 2015, rainfall fed by moisture as Hurricane Joaquin passed well offshore caused massive flooding. In 2016, flooding from Hurricane Matthew caused 24 deaths in the two states and rivers set record crests. Those records were broken in 2018 with Hurricane Florence, which set rainfall records in both Carolinas, flooded many of the same places and was responsible for 42 deaths in North Carolina and nine in South Carolina.

    President Joe Biden was briefed on Debby’s progress while at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, the White House said. Biden approved a request from South Carolina’s governor for an emergency declaration, following his earlier approval of a similar request from Florida. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he has asked Biden to issue a preemptive federal emergency declaration to speed the flow of federal aid to the state.

    Vice President Kamala Harris has postponed a scheduled trip to Georgia. Harris’ campaign said her stop planned in Savannah, Georgia, on Thursday, was being put off due to the storm.

    Debby made landfall near Steinhatchee, a tiny community in northern Florida of less than 1,000 residents. It’s not far from where Hurricane Idalia made landfall less than a year ago as a Category 3 storm.

    Sue Chewning lives in Steinhatchee and weathered both storms. In her nearly 73 years of living in the area, she said she doesn’t recall any direct hits from a hurricane — until this one-two punch from Idalia and Debby.

    “Some people may say, ‘I can’t take this anymore’. But I think for the most part … it’s a close-knit community and most of the local people, they’re going to stay, dig down, help each other,” Chewning said.

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    By JEFF MARTIN and CHRISTOPHER O’MEARA – Associated Press

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  • Torrential rains have claimed more than 150 lives in China in the past 2 months

    Torrential rains have claimed more than 150 lives in China in the past 2 months

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    BEIJING — Landslides and flooding have killed more than 150 people around China in the past two months as torrential rainstorms batter the region.

    In the latest disaster, a flood and mudslide in a mountainous Tibetan area in Sichuan province on Saturday left eight people dead with 19 others still unaccounted for, state media said.

    The early morning disaster destroyed homes and killed at least six people in the village of Ridi, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Two more people died and eight are missing there after a bridge between two tunnels collapsed and four vehicles plummeted.

    China is in the middle of its peak flood season, which runs from mid-July to mid-August, and Chinese policymakers have repeatedly warned that the government needs to step up disaster preparations as severe weather becomes more common.

    An annual government report on climate said last month that historical data shows the frequency of both extreme precipitation and heat has risen in China, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

    A heat warning was in effect Monday in parts of eastern China, where temperatures were expected to top 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in several cities including Nanjing, and 37 C (98 F) in nearby Shanghai on the coast.

    There have been a series of deadly rainstorms since June.

    Days of intense rain from the aftermath of Typhoon Gaemi, which weakened to a tropical storm after making landfall in China about 10 days ago, killed at least 48 people in Hunan province and left 35 others missing last week.

    Authorities said Friday that the death toll from an earlier storm in July that knocked out a section of a bridge in Shaanxi province in the middle of the night had risen to 38 people, with another 24 still missing. At least 25 cars fell into a raging river that washed some of them far downstream.

    In mid-June, at least 47 died from flooding and mudslides after extremely heavy rain in Guangzhou province. Six more people died in neighboring Fujian province.

    Intense rains have also taken hundreds of lives elsewhere in Asia this summer, including devastating landslides that killed more than 200 people in south India last week.

    The remnants of Typhoon Gaemi also drenched northeastern China and North Korea, overflowing the Yalu River that divides them and inundating cities, towns and farmland.

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  • Tropical Storm Debby barrels toward Florida

    Tropical Storm Debby barrels toward Florida

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    TAMPA, Fla. — Tropical Storm Debby was strengthening rapidly Sunday and was expected to become a hurricane as it churned through the Gulf of Mexico toward Florida, bringing heavy bands of rain to that state and with it the threat of devastating floods to the southeast Atlantic coast later in the week.

    The storm was likely to become a strong Category 1 hurricane before making landfall Monday in the Big Bend region of Florida or the Florida Panhandle, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

    “Right now, we are trying secure everything from floating away,” said Sheryl Horne, whose family owns the Shell Island Fish Camp along the Wakulla River in St. Marks, Florida, where some customers moved their boats inland. The Big Bend region was hit last year by Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall as a category 3 hurricane.

    “I am used to storms and I’m used to cleaning up after storms,” Horne said.

    Debby was expected to move eastward over northern Florida and then stall over the coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina, thrashing the region with potential record-setting rains totaling up to 30 inches beginning Tuesday. Officials also warned of life-threatening storm surge along Florida’s Gulf Coast, with 6 to 10 feet of inundation expected Monday between the Ochlockonee and Suwannee rivers.

    “There’s some really amazing rainfall totals being forecast and amazing in a bad way,” Michael Brennan, director of the hurricane center, said at a briefing. “That would be record-breaking rainfall associated with a tropical cyclone for both the states of Georgia and South Carolina if we got up to the 30 inch level.”

    Flooding impacts could last through Friday and are expected to be especially severe in low-lying areas near the coast, including Savannah, Georgia; Hilton Head, South Carolina; and Charleston, South Carolina. North Carolina officials were monitoring the storm’s progress.

    Officials in Savannah said the area could see a month’s worth of rain in four days if the system stalls over the region.

    “This is going to a significant storm. The word historic cannot be underscored here,” Savannah Mayor Van. R. Johnson said during a press conference.

    The hurricane center said in a 5 p.m. update that Debby was located about 120 miles west of Tampa, Florida, with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph. The storm was moving north at 12 mph.

    Debby’s outer bands grazed the west coast of Florida, flooding streets and bringing power outages. Sarasota County officials said most roadways on Siesta Key, a barrier island off the coast of Sarasota, were under water. The hurricane center had predicted the system would strengthen as it curved off the southwest Florida coast, where the water has been extremely warm.

    At a briefing Sunday afternoon, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned that the storm could lead to “really, really significant flooding that will happen in North Central Florida.”

    He said it would follow a similar track to Hurricane Idalia but would “be much wetter. We are going to see much more inundation.”

    Debby is the fourth named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season after Tropical Storm Alberto, Hurricane Beryl and Tropical Storm Chris, all of which formed in June.

    A hurricane warning was issued for parts of the Big Bend and the Florida Panhandle, while tropical storm warnings were posted for Florida’s West Coast, the southern Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas. A tropical storm watch extended farther west into the Panhandle.

    Tropical storms and hurricanes can trigger river flooding and overwhelm drainage systems and canals. Forecasters warned of 6 to 12 inches of rain and up to 18 inches in isolated areas of Florida.

    Flat Florida is prone to flooding even on sunny days, and the storm was predicted to bring a surge of 2 to 4 feet along most of the Gulf Coast, including Tampa Bay, with a storm tide of up to 7 feet north of there in the sparsely populated Big Bend region.

    Forecasters warned of “a danger of life-threatening storm surge inundation” in a region that includes Hernando Beach, Crystal River, Steinhatchee and Cedar Key. Officials in Citrus and Levy counties ordered a mandatory evacuation of coastal areas, while those in Hernando, Manatee, Pasco and Taylor counties called for voluntary evacuations. Shelters opened in those and some other counties.

    Citrus County Sheriff Mike Prendergast estimated 21,000 people live in his county’s evacuation zone.

    Residents in Steinhatchee, Florida, which flooded during Hurricane Idalia, spent Sunday moving items to higher ground.

    “I’ve been here 29 years. This isn’t the first time I’ve done it. Do you get used to it? No,” Mark Reblin said as he moved items out of the liquor store he owns.

    Employees of Savannah Canoe and Kayak in Georgia said they were busy tying down their watercrafts, laying sandbags, and raising equipment off the ground. Mayme Bouy, the store manager, said she wasn’t too concerned about the forecast calling for a potential historic rain event.

    “But we do have some high tides this week so if the rain is happening around then, that could be bad,” Bouy added. “I’d rather play it safe than sorry.”

    Gov. DeSantis declared a state of emergency for 61 of Florida’s 67 counties, with the National Guard activating 3,000 guard members. Utility crews from in and out of state were ready to restore power after the storm, he said in a post on X. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster made their own emergency declarations.

    In Tampa alone, officials gave out more than 30,000 sandbags to barricade against flooding.

    “We’ve got our stormwater drains cleared out. We’ve got our generators all checked and full. We’re doing everything that we need to be prepared to face a tropical storm,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said.

    Emergency managers in New England and New York were already monitoring the path of the storm for the possibility of remnants striking their states. States including New York and Vermont have been hit by heavy rain and thunderstorms in recent weeks and were still coping with flooding and saturated ground.

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    By KIMBERLY CHANDLER and CHRISTOPHER O’MEARA – Associated Press

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  • North Korean leader accuses South Korea of a smear campaign over floods and hints at rejecting aid

    North Korean leader accuses South Korea of a smear campaign over floods and hints at rejecting aid

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    SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un accused South Korea’s “rubbish” media of tarnishing the North’s image by allegedly exaggerating the death tolls from recent floods that hit the country’s northwest region, and hinted that he would refuse Seoul’s offer for aid.

    Kim made the comments Friday during a visit to an air force helicopter unit, where he praised the troops for helping rescue people from the floods, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Saturday.

    During the visit, Kim denied claims by South Korean media that 1,000 to 1,500 North Koreans would have died from the floods and that multiple helicopters might have crashed during the emergency response. He described the reports as a “vicious smear campaign” by the South.

    Kim labeled South Korea as an unchangeable enemy and stressed that the North will never sacrifice its national defense to improve disaster recovery or people’s standards of living — hinting that Pyongyang would reject Seoul’s aid offer.

    South Korea’s government offered Thursday to send aid supplies to address the “humanitarian challenges” facing North Korean residents in flood-affected areas near the country’s border with China.

    It was widely expected that North Korea would reject the offer. Animosity between the war-divided rivals is at its highest in years over the North’s growing nuclear ambitions and the South’s expansion of combined military exercises with the United States and Japan to counter the North’s threats.

    The North had also rejected South Korea’s offers for help while battling a COVID-19 outbreak in 2022.

    North Korean state media reports said recent heavy rains left 4,100 houses, 7,410 acres of agricultural fields and numerous other public buildings, structures, roads and railways flooded in the northwestern city of Sinuiju and the neighboring town of Uiju.

    State media has not provided information on deaths, but Kim was quoted blaming public officials who had neglected disaster prevention, causing “the casualty that cannot be allowed.”

    During his visit to the helicopter unit, Kim said it was a miracle that no casualties were reported in the Sinuiju area and credited the air force personnel for pulling off successful rescue missions.

    Kim also said that one helicopter made an emergency landing during a rescue mission but that all pilots were safe, in what appeared to be a denial of South Korean media claims about multiple helicopter crashes.

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  • Hope fades for more survivors of landslide in India’s Kerala state

    Hope fades for more survivors of landslide in India’s Kerala state

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    NewsFeed

    Heavy flooding in the Wayanad district of India’s southern state of Kerala set off a landslide that killed at least 194 people. Continual rain is hampering rescue efforts.

    Published On 1 Aug 2024

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  • Texas coastal residents told to expect power outages, flooding as Beryl moves closer to landfall

    Texas coastal residents told to expect power outages, flooding as Beryl moves closer to landfall

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    MATAGORDA, Texas — Texas officials are telling coastal residents to expect power outages and floodings as Beryl was forecast to regain hurricane strength before making landfall early Monday.

    The outer bands of Beryl began lashing communities along the Texas shoreline on Sunday, bringing rain and intensifying winds. The storm was projected to make landfall around the coastal town of Matagorda, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) south of Houston, but officials warned that the path could still change.

    Nim Kidd, the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said residents along the coast should expect power outages as Beryl comes ashore.

    Much of Texas’ shoreline was under a hurricane warning and officials in several coastal counties urged tourists along the beach for the Fourth of the July holiday to leave.

    The earliest storm to develop into a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic, Beryl caused at least 11 deaths as it passed through the Caribbean on its way to Texas. The storm ripped off doors, windows and roofs with devastating winds and storm surge fueled by the Atlantic’s record warmth.

    “We’re seeing the outer bands of Beryl approach the Texas coast now and the weather should be going downhill especially this afternoon and evening,” Eric Blake, a senior hurricane specialist with the National Hurricane Center, said Sunday morning. “People should definitely be in their safe space by nightfall and we’re expecting the hurricane to make landfall somewhere in the middle Texas coast overnight.”

    Beryl would be the 10th hurricane to hit Texas in July since 1851 and the fourth in the last 25 years, according to Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach.

    Three times in its one week of life, Beryl has gained 35 mph in wind speed in 24 hours or less, the official weather service definition of rapid intensification.

    Beryl’s explosive growth into an unprecedented early whopper of a storm shows the literal hot water of the Atlantic and Caribbean, and what the Atlantic hurricane belt can expect for the rest of the storm season, experts said.

    Texas officials warned people along the entire coastline to prepare for possible flooding, heavy rain and wind. The hurricane warning extended from Baffin Bay, south of Corpus Christi, to Sargent, south of Houston.

    Beryl lurked as another potential heavy rain event for Houston, where storms in recent months have knocked out power across the nation’s fourth-largest city and flooded neighborhoods. A flash flood watch was in effect for a wide swath of the Texas coast, where forecasters expected Beryl to dump as much as 10 inches of rain in some areas.

    Potential storm surges between 4 and 6 feet above ground level were forecast around Matagorda. The warnings extended to the same coastal areas where Hurricane Harvey came ashore in 2017 as a Category 4 hurricane, which was far more powerful than Beryl’s expected intensity by the time the storm reaches landfall.

    In Port Lavaca, Jimmy May was boarding up his business Jimmy Hayes Electric on Sunday to protect the glass, “in case we get a little bit too much wind, too much trash blowing,” he said. He said he wasn’t concerned about the forecasted high winds or possible storm surge in town but people in lower-lying areas “need to get out of there.”

    Those looking to catch a flight out of the area could find that option more difficult as Beryl closes in on the Texas coast. While the majority of flights from Houston’s two major commercial airports were leaving on time as of midday Sunday, more than 65 flights had been delayed and another four canceled, according to FlightAware data.

    In Corpus Christi, officials asked visitors to cut their trips short and return home early if possible. Residents were advised to secure homes by boarding up windows if necessary and using sandbags to guard against possible flooding.

    Traffic was nonstop for the past three days at an Ace Hardware in the city as customers bought tarps, rope, duct tape, sandbags and generators, employee Elizabeth Landry said Saturday.

    “They’re just worried about the wind, the rain,” she said. “They’re wanting to prepare just in case.”

    Ben Koutsoumbaris, general manager of Island Market on Corpus Christi’s Padre Island, said there has been “definitely a lot of buzz about the incoming storm,” with customers stocking up on food and drinks, particularly meat and beer.

    The White House said Sunday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had sent emergency responders, search-and-rescue teams, bottled water, and other resources along the coast.

    Some coastal cities called for voluntary evacuations in low-lying areas that are prone to flooding, banned beach camping and urged tourists traveling on the Fourth of July holiday weekend to move recreational vehicles from coastal parks. In Refugio County, north of Corpus Christi, officials issued a mandatory evacuation order for its 6,700 residents.

    Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is acting governor while Gov. Greg Abbott is traveling in Taiwan, issued a preemptive disaster declaration for 121 counties.

    Beryl earlier this week battered Mexico as a Category 2 hurricane, toppling trees but causing no injuries or deaths before weakening to a tropical storm as it moved across the Yucatan Peninsula.

    Before hitting Mexico, Beryl wrought destruction in Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Barbados. Three people were reported dead in Grenada, three in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, three in Venezuela and two in Jamaica.

    ___

    Lozano reported from Houston. Associated Press writer Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska, and radio reporter Julie Walker in New York contributed.

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  • Kenya’s dramatic flooding sweeps away a central part of the economy: Its farms

    Kenya’s dramatic flooding sweeps away a central part of the economy: Its farms

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    MACHAKOS, Kenya — With dismay, Martha Waema and her husband surveyed their farm that was submerged by weeks of relentless rainfall across Kenya. Water levels would rise to shoulder height after only a night of heavy downpour.

    The couple had expected a return of 200,000 shillings ($1,500) from their three acres after investing 80,000 shillings ($613) in maize, peas, cabbages, tomatoes and kale. But their hopes have been uprooted and destroyed.

    “I have been farming for 38 years, but I have never encountered losses of this magnitude,” said the 62-year-old mother of 10.

    Their financial security and optimism have been shaken by what Kenya’s government has called “a clear manifestation of the erratic weather patterns caused by climate change.”

    The rains that started in mid-March have posed immediate dangers and left others to come. They have killed nearly 300 people, left dams at historically high levels and led the government to order residents to evacuate flood-prone areas — and bulldoze the homes of those who don’t.

    Now a food security crisis lies ahead, along with even higher prices in a country whose president had sought to make agriculture an even greater engine of the economy.

    Kenya’s government says the flooding has destroyed crops on more than 168,000 acres (67,987 hectares) of land, or less than 1% of Kenya’s agricultural land.

    As farmers count their losses — a total yet unknown — the deluge has exposed what opposition politicians call Kenya’s ill preparedness for climate change and related disasters and the need for sustainable land management and better weather forecasting.

    Waema now digs trenches in an effort to protect what’s left of the farm on a plain in the farthest outskirts of the capital, Nairobi, in Machakos County.

    Not everyone is grieving, including farmers who prepared for climate shocks.

    About 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Waema’s farm, 65-year-old farmer James Tobiko Tipis and his 16-acre farm have escaped the flooding in Olokirikirai. He said he had been proactive in the area that’s prone to landslides by terracing crops.

    “We used to lose topsoil and whatever we were planting,” he said.

    Experts said more Kenyan farmers must protect their farms against soil erosion that likely will be worsened by further climate shocks.

    Jane Kirui, an agricultural officer in Narok County, emphasized the importance of terracing and other measures such as cover crops that will allow water to be absorbed.

    In Kenya’s rural areas, experts say efforts to conserve water resources remain inadequate despite the current plentiful rainfall.

    At Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, professor John Gathenya recommended practices such as diversifying crops and emphasizing the soil’s natural water retention capacity.

    “The soil remains the biggest reservoir for water,” he said, asserting that using it wisely requires much less of an investment than large infrastructure projects such as dams. But soil needs to be protected with practices that include limiting the deforestation that has exposed parts of Kenyan land to severe runoff.

    “We are opening land in new fragile environments where we need to be even more careful the way we farm,” Gathenya said. “In our pursuit for more and more food, we are pressing into the more fragile areas but not with the same intensity of soil conservation that we had 50 years back.”

    ___

    The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Lightning strike blamed for wildfire that killed 2 people in New Mexico, damaged 1,400 structures

    Lightning strike blamed for wildfire that killed 2 people in New Mexico, damaged 1,400 structures

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    RUIDOSO, N.M. — A lightning strike caused the larger of two wildfires that has killed at least two people and destroyed or damaged more than 1,400 structures in New Mexico, authorities said Wednesday.

    The South Fork Fire was first reported June 17 on the Mescalero Apache Reservation and forced the evacuation of the Village of Ruidoso.

    The wildfire now is 87% contained after burning more than 27 square miles. Parts of the village have been evacuated again because of recent flash floods.

    The fire was investigated by eight agencies including the FBI, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

    The fire’s point of origin plus evidence and data supported the cause being a lightning strike, investigators said.

    Meanwhile, authorities said the cause of the nearby Salt Fire remains under investigation. It has burned more than 12 square miles and was 84% contained as of Wednesday.

    The FBI is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for starting that wildfire.

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  • Doctors treat thousands of heatstroke victims in southern Pakistan as temperatures soar

    Doctors treat thousands of heatstroke victims in southern Pakistan as temperatures soar

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    KARACHI, Pakistan — A days-long intense heat wave has disrupted normal life in Pakistan, especially in its largest city, Karachi, where doctors treated thousands of victims of heatstroke at various hospitals, health officials said Tuesday.

    Several people fell unconscious in the city and some of them later died, local media said.

    Temperatures soared as high as 47 degrees Celsius (117 degrees Fahrenheit) in Sindh province on Tuesday. Authorities in Karachi, the provincial capital, are urging people to stay indoors, hydrate, and avoid unnecessary travel.

    Weather forecasters say the heat wave, which began in May, will subside next week.

    According to local media, the days-long heat wave also killed more than two dozen people in Karachi, but no government spokesman was available to confirm the number of heatstroke-related deaths.

    On Tuesday, Faisal Edhi, the head of the Edhi Foundation, which runs the country’s largest ambulance service, said they received dozens of bodies of heatstroke victims in Karachi the previous day.

    Imran Sarwar Sheikh, the head of the emergency ward at the state-run Civil Hospital in Karachi, told The Associated Press that they treated 120 victims of heatstroke the previous day. Eight of those patients later died, he said.

    On Monday, more than 1,500 victims of heatstroke were treated at other hospitals in the city, according to local media.

    Sardar Sarfaraz, the chief meteorologist in Karachi, said temperatures will continue to rise this week across Pakistan. “Today, the weather is dry. In such conditions, the temperature starts rising,” he said.

    Pakistan’s climate is warming much faster than the global average, with a potential rise of 1.3 to 4.9 degrees Celsius (2.3 to 8.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by the 2090s over the 1986–2005 baseline, according to a World Bank expert panel on climate change.

    The country, which is one of the most vulnerable in the world to climate change, also faces the risk of heavier monsoon rains, in part because of its immense northern glaciers, which are now melting as temperatures rise. Warmer air can hold more moisture, intensifying the monsoon.

    This year’s monsoon will start in July, causing flash floods, according to a statement released by Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority. The warning from the agency comes less than two weeks after a top U.N. official said an estimated 200,000 people in Pakistan could be affected by the upcoming monsoon season.

    However, officials say this year’s rains would not be as heavy as those in 2022 when devastating floods killed 1,739 people, destroyed 2 million homes, and covered as much as one-third of the country at one point.

    The 2022 floods caused more than $30 billion in damage to Pakistan’s already cash-strapped economy.

    Pakistan says despite contributing less than 1% to carbon emissions worldwide, it is bearing the brunt of global climate disasters.

    The ongoing heat in recent months also had a large impact on agriculture, damaging crops and reducing yields, as well as on education, with school vacations having to be extended and schools closed in several countries, affecting thousands of students.

    Climate experts say extreme heat in South Asia during the pre-monsoon season is becoming more frequent. The study found that extreme temperatures are now about 0.85 degrees Celsius (1.5 Fahrenheit) hotter in the region because of climate change, and this year Pakistan witnessed above-normal rains and heat.

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