#Flood risk in several states from torrential rains

[agentmarymargaretskitz]

A Great Big Phech-niverse Chapter 3

(Post-S3, Phee isn't a fan of storms with some subtle gross fluff)

AO3

Lightning flashed through the window, followed by a thunderous crack. Tech flinched slightly at the volume, but continued to scroll through the text on his datapad. Storms rarely had an effect on Tech. He had grown up on a planet of water and a near constant forecast of rain. The days where the rain abetted had always been ones he and his brothers had relished. When the sun was out and they weren’t in a training room, Hunter would lead them up to the roof to embrace the pleasant weather. Sometimes, nostalgia compelled Tech to look back at the first recording he ever took of the sun shining down on the Tipoca City and re-embrace the memories of how it felt.

Pabu didn’t experience storms with nearly the same frequency as Kamino, but was currently in the start of its own rainy season. Being an island, the locals took full advantage of the freshwater collection the storms offered. However, flooding was also a risk for some areas of the island and preparations had been undertaken. Tech himself had aided in setting up sandbags for some houses in Lower Pabu earlier that day while Phee had ensured the artifacts in the Archium weren’t at risk for water damage.

Another flash of lightning came and went. The thunder was louder this time. Phee suddenly shouted out from the bedroom. Upon hearing it, Tech cast the datapad to the couch and pulled himself up. She’d elected to take a nap earlier while he pursued studies on child development in preparation for the upcoming life changes. When he’d last checked on her half an hour ago, she was sound asleep.

“Phee?” he called out, his prosthetic foot catching on the rug. The clone stumbled before righting himself and hurrying towards their bedroom. “Phee?”

When he made it, he found the liberator of ancient wonders on the bed, blankets clawed in her grip. Her eyes were shut tightly and her mouth pressed in a thin line.

“Phee?” Tech called, stepping over to the bed. “Is everything okay?”

She heaved a sigh and opened her eyes. “I’m fine. We’re fine. The damn storm just woke me up.”

“It has been a more aggressive one than was predicted,” Tech stated, taking a seat on the edge of the mattress close to her feet. “And I know you are not a fan of storms when they become extremely intense.”

“Yeah,” grumbled Phee, looking less than pleased with herself. “And that thunder scared the pee outta me.”

Tech nodded in understanding. While he wanted to offer the explanation for why that had likely happened, he doubted it would do much to elevate her apparent frustration with herself. “Then it’s fortunate that we did our laundry recently.”

“Oh yeah,” she agreed, scooting off the bed and towards their dresser. “I never like staying on Pabu during storm season.”

Again, Tech nodded. Last year, when they’d first gone through the stretch of rainy months together, Phee had been on edge the entire time. It took a week of torrential rain and hail before she finally disclosed why she rarely stayed on Pabu during times like this. Tech, used to aiding Hunter through episodes of overstimulation during severe storms as cadets, had adopted some techniques to help Phee center herself and keep herself in the present opposed to drowning in the past. Just like she did with him when the nightmares of Eriadu reared their ugly head. In all, it had brought them closer together in their relationship and helped them grow.

“We’ll get your ship repaired soon,” he promised as she changed her clothes. “The new part should be coming on the next supply transport with Echo. Once it’s in, we can go somewhere for an adventure.”

“At least while we still can,” Phee murmured, crawling back to the bed and leaning against the headboard. “Not that I don’t want this new adventure, but-”

“We will still have adventures,” Tech climbed onto the bed to place himself next to her. “Except we’ll be more cautious when we are parents.”

Thunder shook the room. The rain hammered down on the roof.  Tech watched Phee clench her fists and shuffled closer to her. “Phee?”

“Tech.”

“You are on Pabu in our domicile,” he reminded her, placing his palm under her hand. “You are safe. The house is strong.”

“I’m on Pabu,” she said. “I’m at home. We’re both safe. Our house is strong.”

He guided her hand up to her collarbone. She began tapping her finger against it steadily. Tech let her lean against him as she did this. After a few minutes, her hand fell away and her breathing went from forced to natural.

“Maybe I should start joining Crosshair for his beach meditations,” she chuckled light-heartedly, but there was a serious note in her voice. 

“If it will help, then perhaps so,” Tech agreed. “I know you don’t like when that pain comes up for you again. Whatever helps you, I will support you as you support me.”

She hummed against him. “It helps having you close too.”

“Then I will stay for as long as you need.”

[mariacallous]

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is now forecasting a moderate-to-strong El Niño season to continue through February 2024. The forecast itself mostly piques the interests of meteorologists, oceanographers, fishers, and the global network of food commodity traders and crop insurers whose fortunes live and die in the technical arcana of the weather report.

But this forecast has vast implications: Even a typical El Niño can reduce harvests for important crops, increase the disease burden, hammer developing and middle-income countries’ economic prospects, increase armed conflict risk in the tropics, and fuel maritime conflict and territorial ambitions in the East and South China Seas.

Some of these challenges—such as civil wars and maritime conflict in the South China Sea—would manifest as immediate, hurricane-like clear and present dangers. But many would not. Like climate change, perhaps the greater danger lays in the accumulation of thousands of small cracks in the global food, public health, and other systems that are the bedrock of life.

Most of these hazards will hit hardest in countries that are ill-equipped for the economic and political fallout. They add urgency to easing developing and middle-income countries’ debt burdens and building more resilience into the global food system. For the United States, they highlight the need to adopt a more comprehensive strategy for defining national security threats and government responses to them.

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a cyclic pattern of warming and cooling in the waters of the east-central Pacific Ocean. ENSO oscillates between cool (La Niña) and warm (El Niño) phases at intervals averaging five to seven years. Climate change is giving ENSO a “push,” making the swings back and forth deeper and potentially longer lasting. The currently forming El Niño follows a rare “triple dip” La Niña that ended in June lasted nearly three years—the longest in over 50 years.

But what happens in the east-central Pacific doesn’t stay there. As Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Josh Willis has said, “When the Pacific speaks, the whole world listens.” ENSO is the single most important driver of year-to-year variation in global climate. ENSO’s teleconnections—links between weather phenomena separated by vast distances—shape weather across the southern United States, Africa, Latin America, and closer to “home” in Southeast Asia and Oceania. They cause or strengthen droughts as well as extreme rainfall events and affect temperature and humidity levels over much of the world.

Both El Niños and La Niñas cause weather-related hazards. The crushing three-year drought that’s been devastating the Horn of Africa since October 2020? It’s partly a result of that triple-dip La Niña. South America’s severe drought, gripping many of the world’s most significant grain exporters? ENSO’s effect is there, too. Ditto for drought in the U.S. south and southwest. The transition to an El Niño will likely bring some relief to these areas, though that “relief” has come to the Horn in the form of torrential rains and flooding that burst the banks of the Juba and Shabelle rivers and forced 300,000 Ethiopians and Somalis from their homes. This whipsawing between extremes is the “push” climate change is providing.

But more broadly, the effects aren’t symmetrical. Shifting from La Niña to El Niño conditions doesn’t just redistribute good and bad weather around the globe. El Niños come with much more downside risks to global food supplies, public health, economic recovery in the global south, as well as to peace and stability – in the Global South where its impacts are most acute, but also in East Asia.

Let’s start with food. Though global food prices are down a bit from record highs following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, they are still among the highest prices seen in the last 60 years. And these prices don’t yet fully reflect the effect of Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative and attacks on Ukrainian export infrastructure, both of which further weaponize Russia’s role in food markets and have led prices to begin creeping back up at a time when more than 250 million people are experiencing acute food insecurity.

Some qualified good news: In the past, El Niños haven’t caused global food prices to spike, with price effects being relatively modest. A multinational team of scientists found both El Niños and La Niñas suppress global yields for maize, rice, and wheat, with the effects of El Niño particularly strong for maize. On average, El Niños slightly reduce global food supply, though the effects are typically modest and can be offset by planting more acreage to offset lower productivity.

But at the country or regional level, as in western and southern Africa, the effects can be quite strong, sending local prices higher and increasing rural unemployment. El Niño effects for food production aren’t confined to land, either. The warming of the West-Central Pacific suppresses catches for important fisheries like the Peruvian anchoveta—the world’s most productive fishery—and in heavily fished areas like the East and South China Seas.

The effects of weather-related crop failures on food markets operate on two levels. First, they constrict actual supply in a market where demand is both constantly growing and price-inelastic: The prevailing price doesn’t change biological necessities. Second, they shape current expectations about future production and thus hedging behavior. Expecting a bad harvest, buyers with the means and the foresight—like China—may begin stockpiling grains in anticipation of failed harvests or potential market disruptions.

In the past, these activities have only had modest effects on prices. Yet this time may be different. These hedging strategies are now being implemented in the context of rising economic nationalism in which governments—especially authoritarian ones—are resorting to export bans to address concerns about domestic food shortages and explicitly weaponizing food trade; that is, they are occurring in markets that are more risky than in the recent past. This could be bad news for a global food security picture already hammered by the Ukraine war and the lingering effects of coronavirus-related supply chain disruptions.

Speaking of the coronavirus: A strong El Niño could increase the infectious disease burden. Analyzing the strong El Niño of 2014 to 2015, researchers found increases in cases of plague in Colorado and New Mexico, cholera in Tanzania, and dengue fever in Brazil and Southeast Asia. In the U.S. southwest and Tanzania, the culprit was wetter-than-normal conditions that increased the abundance of plague-carrying fleas and overwhelmed drainage and sanitation systems, causing drinking water to become contaminated with cholera. In Brazil and Southeast Asia, higher temperatures and droughts had a more complicated impact: Bereft of standing water in the natural environment, mosquitos penetrated further and in larger numbers into urban areas with open water sources, then matured more rapidly—and developed more voracious appetites, thus infecting more people.

At the macro scale, the economic losses from El Niños can be significant. Failed crops are foregone income that drive up demand for imports. Burst riverbanks and dams must be repaired and often come with considerable damage to infrastructure such as roads and electricity grids, which are critical for the normal functioning of the economy.

But that’s just a fraction of the story. A recent article in Science by Christopher Callahan and Justin Mankin attributes massive economic losses to the persistent negative effects of El Niños on growth, estimating total global losses of $5.7 trillion from the 1997 to 1998 El Niño.

That’s an enormous number. But it’s not as if the world lost nearly a sixth of total economic output in 1998 (world GDP was roughly $31.5 trillion at the time). Many of those effects emerged in the years after the event due to the compounding effects of forgone growth investment—the same reason money saved now is worth more than money saved later—and the high costs of building back after associated natural disasters such as floods and mudslides. And because we never “see” foregone growth due to lack of investment or diversion of resources from building new schools to repairing roads, we don’t typically think of these losses when counting up the economic consequences of natural disasters. It’s an example of how many of the costs of climate-related events are almost imperceptible in the moment but add up to real (and large) numbers.

The estimates reported in the Science article are orders of magnitude above previous ones of El Niño–associated economic losses. While some economists have questioned the astounding size of these estimates, even losses in parts of Africa and countries where the historic relationship between El Niños and GDP growth is strongest—such as Peru, Ghana, and Indonesia—could still wind up being in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

El Niño’s effects for economic growth and food supplies help us understand one of its other consequences: elevated risk of civil conflict. Over a decade ago, Solomon Hsiang, Kyle Meng, and Mark Cane found that civil conflicts—armed conflicts between rebels and governments—were more than twice as likely to break out during El Niños relative to La Niñas in world regions whose local climate is affected by ENSO teleconnections, with conflict outbreaks clustering between July and November. In doing so, their study was the first to link climate at the global scale with armed conflict, a topic that is now the subject of exhaustive study and discussion.

When studying climate impacts on conflict, researchers almost never find a smoking gun. To date, no rebel leader has cited El Niño as their rallying cause. Rather, what researchers find is that climatic factors “load the dice,” making conflict marginally likelier to occur. Again, the impact is hard to detect in any given conflict but emerges from analyzing hundreds if not thousands of conflict events over time.

El Niño’s adverse consequences for fisheries also increase the risk of militarized conflict on the seas. Of particular concern are its effects in the East and South China Seas, where the impact on fish populations is strong, fishing pressure is high, and the regions’ major fishing nations—China, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan among them—have tense security relationships in the best of times. While it’s extremely unlikely a Taiwan invasion would begin over a fisheries dispute, these types of militarized conflicts are one of the few scenarios in international affairs where the coast guards and navies of rival countries may come into conflict over the actions of third parties—such as fishing vessels crossing disputed maritime boundaries—that they do not command or control.

Facing these potential outcomes, what can be done? Countries with strong ENSO teleconnections—which are mostly developing and middle-income—need resources and budgetary space to address problems such as rising food import bills, disaster preparedness and relief, and adequate provisioning for their security forces.

For this reason, creditor countries—especially China and those in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development—need to address the large debt overhangs many of these countries accumulated during the coronavirus pandemic. Ghana’s $3 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund is a signal that creditor countries, including China, can work together to address these challenges.

Consistent with the increasing role armed forces are playing in disaster response and relief, countries such as the United States may be called upon to provide more emergency services that leverage their considerable airlift capacity and ability to move medical supplies and emergency food aid in difficult circumstances.

Stepping back from immediate responses, a bigger picture take-home point emerges for the U.S. government. The evidence of strong, adverse health, economic, and security consequences has made clear that the conventional approaches to defining national security interests and threats are lacking. Climate impacts—El Niños among them—are security impacts, but identifying and responding to them shouldn’t be the exclusive domain of national security and intelligence agencies like the Department of Defense and National Security Council. The Biden administration has done more to mainstream climate security than any of its predecessors—but there is far more work to be done.

[newstfionline]

Sunday, August 6, 2023

Vermont’s flood-wracked capital city ponders a rebuild (AP) A beloved bookstore in Vermont’s small capital city moved across the street to a new spot farther from the Winooski River after an ice jam sent river water into the store in 1992. A nearby office supply and gift store did the same in 2011 because it liked a different space that came with a bonus: it was higher and farther from the river. But their moves to higher ground weren’t enough to save them from flooding after torrential rains in July caused what some saw as the state’s worst natural disaster since a 1927 flood that killed dozens of people and caused widespread destruction. Some communities suffered more severe flood damage this year than when Tropical Storm Irene ravaged the small, mountainous state in 2011. Now the mostly gutted shops, restaurants and businesses that lend downtown Montpelier its charm are considering where and how to rebuild in an era when extreme weather is occurring more often.

Thousands overwhelm New York’s Union Square for streamer giveaway, tossing chairs and pounding cars (AP) A crowd of thousands that packed Manhattan’s Union Square for a popular livestreamer’s hyped giveaway got out of hand Friday afternoon, with some clambering on vehicles, hurling chairs and throwing punches, leaving police struggling to rein in the chaos. Aerial TV news footage showed a surging, tightly packed crowd running through the streets, scaling structures in the park and snarling traffic. Shouting teenagers swung objects at car windows, threw paint cans and set off fire extinguishers. Some people climbed on a moving vehicle, falling off as it sped away. Others pounded on or climbed atop city buses. By 5:30 p.m., police officers in growing numbers had regained control of much of the area, but small skirmishes were still breaking out, with young people knocking over barricades and throwing bottles and even a flowerpot at officers. Officers arrested 65 people, including 30 juveniles.

Lake Titicaca drying up as heat wave turns winter upside down (Reuters) The parched shoreline and shrinking depths of Lake Titicaca are prompting growing alarm that an ago-old way of life around South America’s largest lake is slipping away as a brutal heat wave wreaks havoc on the southern hemisphere’s winter. Like many places suffering deadly consequences of climate change, the sprawling freshwater lake nestled in the Andes mountains on Bolivia’s border with Peru now features a water level approaching an all-time low. Titicaca is only 30 cm (1 foot) away from reaching its record low of 1996 due to severe drought, said Lucia Walper, an official with Bolivia’s hydrology and meteorology service. Farmers in the adjacent Huarina community are desperate for help. Historic drought in South America has also slammed neighboring Argentina’s crucial farm sector, prompting the International Monetary Fund to forecast a 2.5% economic contraction this year as a result.

Mediterranean fires offer lessons—and warnings—for Europe (Washington Post) As the Mediterranean’s summer heat waves grow fiercer, so too do its ravenous wildfires. They killed 34 people in Algeria last month. In Greece, 19,000 were forced to evacuate. Italian firefighters tackled 1,400 fires in just three days last week. In Tunisia, where temperatures soared to 120 degrees, families are picking up the pieces after scores of homes and farmlands were engulfed by flames. Responses differed in each country. Some relied on a domestic firefighting plane fleet; others called for help. Wealthier nations had more elaborate evacuation and response plans than their poorer counterparts in North Africa. For experts, though, it all pointed to a frightening new reality: Wildfires are getting too severe, too frequent and persistent, and raging over too vast an area to contain without robust prevention measures. And the risk is spreading. “Southern Europe—Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy—they struggle with wildfire; but as global warming continues, we’re talking about wildfires in the forests of Germany, Austria, Slovenia,” said Craig Clements, director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at San José State University. “It’s happening here. Europe knows it’s going to happen. They’re preparing for it.”

Russia’s war with Ukraine has generated its own fog (AP) On the battlefields of Ukraine, the fog of war plagues soldiers. And far from the fighting, a related and just as disorienting miasma afflicts those who seek to understand what’s happening in the vast war. Disinformation, misinformation and absent information all cloud civilians’ understanding. Officials from each side denounce devious plots being prepared by the enemy, which never materialize. They claim victories that can’t be confirmed—and stay quiet about defeats. None of this is unique to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Any nation at war bends the truth—to boost morale on the home front, to rally support from its allies, to try to persuade its detractors to change their stance. But Europe’s largest land war in decades—and the biggest one since the dawn of the digital age—is taking place in a superheated information space. And modern communications technology, theoretically a force for improving public knowledge, tends to multiply the confusion because deceptions and falsehoods reach audiences instantly.

Earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria still need our help (Global Christian Relief) In the early morning hours of Feb. 6, 2023, residents of Turkey and northern Syria were awakened by rumbling. In Turkey alone, the magnitude 7.8 and 7.7 earthquakes killed more than 50,000 people and injured more than 100,000 others. At least 15 million people in all and 4 million buildings were affected. In Syria, nearly 8,500 were killed, including 2,000 children. More than 5 million people were left homeless, and more than half of Syria’s entire population was impacted. While those of us living in the West were briefly concerned with this tragedy, our attention has waned over the six months since. A war in Ukraine, protests across Iran, saber-rattling from North Korea, deadly heat waves across the continental United States and numerous other stories have captured our collective gaze. Yet the needs of those affected by the earthquakes remain great. In Turkey, an estimated 4 million children still require humanitarian assistance. More than 1.5 million people are still living in tents or temporary shelters, some without access to potable water. Many families are trying to survive in cramped, overcrowded conditions with as many as 20 living in a single tent, and countless children are struggling to cope with the mental anguish caused by the quake.

Pakistani police arrest former Prime Minister Imran Khan (AP) Pakistani police on Saturday arrested former Prime Minister Khan at his home in the eastern city of Lahore. It’s the second time the popular opposition leader has been detained this year. Earlier Saturday, a court convicted him in an asset concealment case, handing down a prison sentence that could see him barred from politics. The Islamabad court issued the arrest warrant after convicting Khan, with police in Lahore moving quickly to take him from his home to the Pakistani capital. It’s a fresh blow to Khan’s bid to return to power. Since his ouster from power in a no-confidence vote in the parliament in April 2022, Khan has been slapped with more than 150 legal cases, including several on charges of corruption, terrorism and inciting people to violence over deadly protests in May that saw his followers attack government and military property across the country.

Flooded rivers, trapped residents test China’s disaster response (Reuters) From coping with dangerously swollen rivers to helping residents trapped in waterlogged cities, China’s disaster-response systems are being put to the test after one of the strongest storms in years brought record rainfall that could take weeks to recede. Typhoon Doksuri battered northern China this week with extreme rain, breaking Beijing’s 140-year rainfall record and dumping volumes of rain that normally fall in a whole year in the populous province of Hebei. As the last of Doksuri’s rain drift into China’s northeastern border provinces, a region the size of Britain is grappling with the aftermath and the urgent tasks of safely discharging overflowing water from reservoirs and rescuing tens of thousands of people trapped in their homes. As of Thursday, more than 1.2 million people in Hebei had been taken to safety. The volume of rain that fell in the province exceeded the storage capacity of its large and medium-sized reservoirs by more than two-fold, state media said.

Thousands of teens to evacuate from World Scout Jamboree amid heat wave (Washington Post) Members of the American, British and Singaporean contingents attending the World Scout Jamboree in Buan, South Korea, are preparing to pack up their tents and move out, as a heat wave caused hundreds of injuries and threatened to cut short the quadrennial international event. The moves come as hot weather and humid conditions have pushed hundreds at the event to seek medical help. Close to 1,500 people received treatment for insect bites, skin rashes and heat injuries on Friday, the event organizers said. At the opening ceremony days earlier, 139 people suffered heat injuries, headaches and abdominal pain, the event’s organizers said. The World Jamboree gathers tens of thousands of teens aged 14 to 18, plus adults, from Scout associations worldwide every four years.

Fighting has plunged Sudan into a humanitarian catastrophe, senior UN officials say (AP) The conflict in Sudan has left 24 million people—half the country’s population—in need of food and other assistance, but only 2.5 million have received aid because of vicious fighting and a lack of funding, two senior U.N. officials said Friday. Eden Worsornu, director of operations for the U.N. humanitarian agency, and Ted Chaiban, deputy executive director of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, who just returned from Sudan, painted a dire picture of devastation and upheaval in Sudan, with no peace talks in sight. Worsornu said hotspots, such as the capital of Khartoum and the southern Kordofan and western Darfur regions, “have been shattered by relentless violence.” Nearly 4 million people have fled the fighting, facing scorching heat up to 48 degrees Celsius (118 F), and threats of attacks, sexual violence and death, she said.

Niger’s Coup Leaders Sever Ties With France, as Detained President Pleads for Help (NYT) Niger’s coup leaders on Thursday said that they had severed military ties with France, their country’s former colonial ruler, throwing into uncertainty the future of 1,500 French troops based there, in a region of West Africa plagued with coups and Islamist insurgencies. The leaders of the coup also dismissed Niger’s ambassadors to France and the United States, another military partner, as well as the ambassadors to Togo and Nigeria, an essential trade partner. In an extraordinary move, the elected president of Niger, who has been locked up in the presidential palace by his own guards for ten days, wrote an opinion column published in The Washington Post calling on the United States and other allies to help restore constitutional order. “I write this as a hostage,” President Mohamed Bazoum said in his opinion essay, published on Thursday evening. “Niger is under attack from a military junta that is trying to overthrow our democracy.” He warned that attacks from jihadist groups could increase and that Russia could expand its influence in the region if the coup leaders remain in power.

Typhoons flooded her wedding. She waded down the aisle anyway (Washington Post) It is a walk most brides never forget. But for one bride in particular, her journey down the aisle toward her future husband was particularly memorable on Sunday. It involved wading through water in a flooded church in the Philippines, as deadly typhoons unleashed heavy rainfall and wreaked havoc across the country. Footage taken inside the Barasoain Church in the city of Malolos, Bulacan province, shows Dianne Victoriano gliding down the flooded aisle, her white dress and long veil submerged in ankle-deep water. Guests surrounding her hitched up their own dresses. Some wore gum boots. Others paired flip-flops with their rolled-up trousers. Despite the venue being flooded after heavy rain swamped Bulacan province, the bride could be seen beaming as she walked through the water clutching a bouquet of pink and white roses. As some commentators on social media put it: “for wetter, for worse.”

[weather-usa]

Hurricane Francine tears through Louisiana, unleashing powerful winds and torrential rains, leaving 400,000 without power.

New Orleans recorded wind gusts of 78 and 76 mph as Hurricane Francine's eyewall swept through the city on Wednesday evening. Dulac reported a gust of 97 mph, while Eugene Island experienced a gust of 105 mph. Although Francine has since weakened to a tropical storm, its impacts are expected to continue through the end of the week.

Hurricane Francine struck the Louisiana coast on Wednesday, unleashing destructive 100 mph winds and a dangerous storm surge that left hundreds of thousands without power across the Southeast. The storm dumped several inches of rain, triggering a rare Flash Flood Emergency.

Climate and Average Weather Year Round in 76063-Mansfield-TX:

https://www.behance.net/gallery/201826183/Weather-Forecast-For-76063-Mansfield-TX

Francine's eye made landfall at 5 p.m. CT in Terrebonne Parish, bringing hurricane-force gusts to the southern part of the state, including areas near Baton Rouge.

New Orleans recorded wind gusts of 78 and 76 mph as Hurricane Francine's eyewall passed through the city on Wednesday evening. Dulac experienced a gust of 97 mph, while Eugene Island saw a gust of 105 mph.

Though Francine has since been downgraded to a tropical storm, its dangerous and potentially life-threatening effects are expected to persist well inland.

Power outages continued to rise throughout Wednesday and into Thursday morning, with nearly 400,000 outages reported in Louisiana and about 17,000 in Mississippi, according to poweroutage.us.

A Flash Flood Emergency was declared for parts of the New Orleans metro area, where 0.50 inches of rain fell in just 9 minutes and 4.5 inches accumulated within three hours. Life-threatening flooding remained a concern as rain persisted.

As water levels rose, emergency services began receiving calls for help from individuals trapped with no means of escape.

According to Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre, more than two dozen people, including young children, required rescue from the flooding.

The sheriff's office reported that deputies responded to calls from residents trapped in housing units in Thibodaux due to rising floodwaters from the heavy rain.

All residents were safely evacuated, with most being taken to emergency shelters.

Additionally, Francine's conditions posed a risk of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, with these threats expected to continue into Friday morning.

Weather Forecast For 29204 - Columbia SC:

Francine disrupts travel in New Orleans as emergency responders remain on standby.

Travel in the region has been significantly affected, with airlines canceling flights to and from Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport through Thursday morning. Some parishes, including Cameron Parish, which experienced flooding before landfall, have imposed mandatory curfews from Wednesday afternoon until sunrise on Thursday.

In response to Francine's impact, President Joe Biden has approved an emergency declaration for Louisiana.

"After declaring a state of emergency, it has become clear that the severity of this storm exceeds the capabilities of state and local governments to effectively respond," said Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry. "Federal assistance is crucial to save lives and protect property."

Where is Francine headed next?

According to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), Francine is projected to gradually turn north, moving its center across southeastern Louisiana and southwestern and central Mississippi on Thursday.

While the center of the storm is expected to track well inland, its effects could extend hundreds of miles outward.

Weather alerts, including wind advisories, Flood Watches, and other hazardous weather warnings, have been issued as far north as southern Missouri and as far east as Tennessee as the remnants of the cyclone move through the South.

See more:

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-96768

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-96769

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-96770

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-96771

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-96772

Since 2000, Francine marks the eighth hurricane to make landfall in Louisiana. FOX Weather Correspondent Robert Ray has reported on most of these landfalls.

“These people are tough as nails,” Ray remarked from Houma, Louisiana, on Wednesday.

Francine, which became a hurricane on September 10, arrived at the peak of the 2024 hurricane season when named storms are most likely to impact the Atlantic Basin. As Francine moves north and eventually dissipates, the NHC is also monitoring several other systems in the Atlantic.

Francine was the third hurricane to make landfall in the continental U.S. during the 2024 season. Hurricane Beryl struck Matagorda, Texas, on July 8 as a Category 1 storm. Approximately a month later, Hurricane Debby intensified into a Category 1 hurricane before making landfall near Steinhatchee, Florida, on August 5.

[restomain]

Navigating the Ripples: Strategies for Water Damage Restoration in Weston

Introduction: Weston's Oasis Confronts Water Challenges

Weston, nestled in the heart of South Florida, epitomizes suburban tranquility with its manicured landscapes and family-friendly neighborhoods. However, this idyllic setting is not immune to the challenges posed by water damage. Whether from sudden storms, plumbing mishaps, or unforeseen accidents, water damage can disrupt the harmony of Weston homes. This comprehensive guide serves as a beacon for Weston residents, providing strategies for navigating the ripples of water damage restoration and preserving the serenity of this suburban oasis.

Understanding Water Damage Dynamics: Decoding the Causes

Water damage can manifest in various ways, each with its unique set of challenges. Understanding the dynamics of water damage and decoding its diverse causes are fundamental steps in formulating an effective restoration plan. Whether it's a burst pipe, roof leakage, or flooding from torrential rains, identifying the root causes empowers homeowners to address the origin of water intrusion, laying the groundwork for a targeted and successful restoration process.

Rapid Response and Initial Mitigation: Stemming the Tide

The immediacy of response is pivotal in mitigating water damage's impact and preventing further deterioration. A swift reaction involves extracting standing water, drying affected areas, and removing damaged materials. These initial mitigation steps not only stem the tide of damage but also establish the foundation for an efficient and thorough restoration process. Proactive measures at this stage play a crucial role in preventing secondary issues such as mold growth and structural compromises.

Assessment and Damage Classification: Gauging the Extent of Impact

Once immediate threats are mitigated, a comprehensive assessment of the damage becomes paramount. Water damage ranges from surface-level issues to severe structural compromises, and a meticulous evaluation determines the extent of restoration required. Classifying the damage based on categories such as clean water, gray water, and black water provides insights into potential health risks and guides the restoration team in adopting suitable safety measures. This detailed assessment forms the basis for crafting a tailored and effective restoration plan.

Mold Remediation: Confronting the Silent Intruder

Weston's subtropical climate creates an environment conducive to mold growth, often accompanying water damage. Mold can start proliferating within 24 to 48 hours, posing health risks and complicating the restoration process. A dedicated phase of restoration involves mold remediation, including thorough inspection, containment, removal, and preventive measures. Effectively addressing mold is crucial not only for the health of occupants but also for the overall success of the restoration, ensuring a safer and healthier indoor environment.

Restoration Techniques and Equipment: Crafting a Comprehensive Solution

Restoring a property after water damage demands a multifaceted approach, integrating various restoration techniques and advanced equipment. Beyond addressing visible damage, restoration may involve structural repairs, content restoration, and rebuilding compromised areas. State-of-the-art equipment, including air movers, dehumidifiers, and moisture detection tools, enhances the efficiency and precision of the restoration process. Employing a combination of techniques and equipment ensures a thorough restoration that brings properties in Weston back to pre-damage conditions.

Insurance Navigation: Partnering for a Smooth Recovery

Navigating the complexities of insurance claims is a critical aspect of water damage restoration. Understanding the insurance process, documenting the damage comprehensively, and promptly reporting incidents are essential for a smooth claims process. Collaborating with professionals experienced in insurance navigation ensures that residents receive fair compensation and a swift resolution. A seamless interaction with insurance providers becomes crucial in alleviating financial burdens associated with water damage restoration.

Preventive Measures: Fortifying Against Future Intrusions

As the restoration process unfolds, implementing preventive measures becomes paramount to fortify against future water-related challenges. Regular inspections, prompt addressing of maintenance issues, and fortifying vulnerable areas contribute to a resilient defense. Installing preventive measures such as sump pumps, reinforcing roofing structures, and upgrading plumbing systems can mitigate the risk of water damage. A combination of restoration efforts and vigilant preventive actions enhances the overall resilience of properties in Weston.

Community Resilience: A Collective Approach to Calm Waters

In times of water damage, community resilience plays a vital role in uniting residents against adversity. Local emergency services, community organizations, and support networks provide assistance and guidance during the restoration process. Sharing experiences and knowledge within the community enhances collective resilience, turning challenges into opportunities for growth. In Weston, a united community becomes an invaluable asset in navigating water-related crises and emerging stronger together.

Conclusion: Navigating Weston's Waters with Resilience

In conclusion, navigating the ripples of water damage restoration in Weston is a journey that demands resilience and strategic planning. From understanding the causes of water damage to swift response, thorough assessment, and comprehensive restoration efforts, each step contributes to preserving the serenity of this suburban oasis. Mold remediation, insurance navigation, preventive measures, and community resilience collectively form the foundation for a successful restoration.

By embracing the strategies outlined in this guide, residents of Weston can navigate the waters of water damage with confidence, ensuring their suburban oasis remains a haven of calm amidst the manicured landscapes of South Florida. The goal is not only to restore properties but to fortify them against future challenges, sustaining Weston's tranquility for generations to come.

[creatiview]

A massive storm unleashed high winds and torrential rains across California on Thursday, threatening much of the state with flash flooding and mudslides after leaving a child dead and tens of thousands without power overnight. The “atmospheric river” – an airborne current of dense moisture flowing from the ocean – was expected to persist, drenching much of California with heavy rains at a rate of 1 inch per hour, the National Weather Service said, with dangerous, gale-force gusts forecast throughout the day. Overnight, a child younger than 2 years old was killed when a tree fell on his home in Occidental, a community of about 1,100 people 65 miles north of San Francisco, local media reported. Authorities did not provide more specific information about the victim. More than 180,000 homes and businesses were without power early on Thursday, according to data by Poweroutage.us after high winds downed power lines and trees across the state overnight. Crews in San Francisco spent the night cleaning up debris from felled trees that blocked roadways, while state officials urged Californians to avoid travel during the storm. The heavy downpours prompted officials in Sonoma County to issue evacuation warnings to residents living along the Russian River, which was expected to crest late on Thursday and again on Sunday. Evacuation warnings were also in place in coastal communities such as Santa Cruz. Authorities warned the heavy downpours would likely unleash flash floods and mudslides, especially in areas where the ground remained saturated from rains that soaked northern California days earlier. Fire-ravaged hill slopes were also particularly vulnerable to slides. Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on Wednesday to support the state’s winter weather hazards response, and activated California’s flood operations center. The governor’s Office of Emergency Services said it had staged crews in several northern counties likely to be hardest hit by flooding, and where previous wildfires have stripped hillsides of vegetation, leaving them at high risk of mudslides.

[maqsoodyamani]

طوفانی بارش سے متعدد ریاستوں میں سیلاب کا خطرہ

طوفانی بارش سے متعدد ریاستوں میں سیلاب کا خطرہ

طوفانی بارش سے متعدد ریاستوں میں سیلاب کا خطرہ نئی دہلی،22جولائی ( آئی این ایس انڈیا ) ملک کی کچھ ریاستوں میں مسلسل بارش اور سیلاب کی وجہ سے حالات مزید خراب ہو گئے ہیں۔ پنجاب کے پٹیالہ میں شدید بارش کے بعد مکان کی چھت گرنے سے دو خواتین سمیت چار افراد ہلاک ہو گئے۔ موہالی کے سرکاری اسکول میں بارش کا پانی بھر گیا، جس کے باعث بچوں کو چھٹی دے دی گئی۔گجرات کے سورت میں مسلسل بارش کی وجہ سے یہاں کا سب…

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Floods Trigger Deadly Landslides in Brazil

Torrential rain pummelled Northeastern Brazil, causing catastrophic landslides. Authorities in the Pernambuco state have confirmed that 106 people are dead and at least eight people are still unaccounted for, CBS and AFP reported. Thousands of people have been displaced by the flooding and landslides as well.

The rain began last week and the landslides struck by Friday, damaging homes in favelas across the cities of Recife and Jaboatao dos Guararapes, the Guardian reports. Homes in favelas are often belong to impoverished communities and tend to be built into hillsides, making them prone to damage from natural disasters and extreme weather.

Photos of the disaster zones throughout Brazil show collapsed walls, mud-caked walls, and people trudging through what look like thick layers of brown sludge. The debris and heavy mud is making rescue efforts more difficult, and time is running out to find more people alive in some of the ruins.

This disaster is just one of several landslides that have occurred in the country this year. In February, intense rain followed by flooding in Petrópolis, a Southeast municipality in Brazil, triggered a massive landslide, Yale Climate Connections reported. More than 230 people were confirmed dead as a result of that disaster

The climate crisis has changed precipitation in many parts of the world, causing more intense and more frequent rainfall. This means more downpours, more flooding, and more potential landslides are going to strike in communities across Brazil and elsewhere that are often not prepared for these disasters.

Sadly, the affected areas are still at risk for more landslides this week.

Continue reading and see more pictures.

[underthewingsofthblackeagle]

          At least nine people have died in parts of western Germany amid heavy rains and flooding, local police said on Thursday. Some 70 people were missing, many of them after the collapse of six houses in Germany’s western state of Rhineland-Palatinate following hours of torrential rain. About 25 more buildings in the Schuld region were at the risk of caving in, local police said. Heavy rains lashed western Germany on Wednesday, causing massive property damage and prompting mass evacuations. Several motorways were closed. Rhineland-Palatinate’s Vulkaneifel district was forced to declare a state of emergency as several areas were not accessible due to the torrential rain. "The situation is very serious, we have many flooded roads and villages that are no longer accessible," District Administrator Julia Gieseking said from the town of Daun late Wednesday. She said the state of emergency would allow the military to join relief efforts. The German Army sent over 230 soldiers and heavy machinery to help clear streets affected by flooding.

[chaoticgremlinwholikescheese]

I made a list this year of bad things to happen in 2020. Here it is: TW: Death, corona, all around bad stuff.

Kobe Bryant and daughter died

Australia was on FIRE, like the whole thing

Australia flooded

CORONAVIRUS

Quarantine

FREAKING LOCUSTS IN AFRICA, LIKE TRILLIONS OF THEM

Millions of cicadas emerging after 17 years underground

WW3 almost happened, remember that?

Government said UFOs are real

Largest piece of known space debris finally crashed

Predicting a record breaking hurricane season

Economic crash in the US, like a giant crash

Trump is president. Has been for 4 years, but it needs to be said

People are protesting lockdown, getting corona

Trump got impeached, but not removed from office

MuRdEr HoRnEtS in the US LIKE MURDER HORNETS, REALLY?

Operation Pridefall

protests due to police brutality (#JusticeforGeorgeFloyd)

Zombie fires in the Arctic, Alaska, and maybe Siberia (underground fires)

The last normal day we had before quarantine was FRIDAY THE 13TH

Anonymous came back. That happened

Yellowstone might erupt

Three new monster asteroids headed towards earth in June

Biggest oil spill in Russian History happened in Russia

Crazy wildfires in Arizona

Mysterious deep space radio signals sent to earth every 157 days. Aliens?

UK has cannibalistic rats coming up through the toilets

Trump’s new logo is the Nazi logo

Kanye said he was running for president. We have no more standards

Brain eating amoeba found in the US

There's a beaver invasion in the arctic making global warming worse

There are now flying snakes

New data revealed hidden flood risks across America

New virus with pandemic potential found in China

THERE ARE METH ALLIGATORS ON THE LOOSE IN ALABAMA

Alcoholic monkey want on a rampage, killed one man and left 250 injured

Massive saharan dust cloud is heading towards US

Largest cyber attack in history hit all US mobile phone operators

Mosquitoes with West Nile Virus found in Fresno

Scientists found apocalyptic bird flu that could wipe out ½ of humanity

US, UK, and Canada say Russia is hacking Covid vaccine trials

Millions of people in China left homeless by severe torrential rains/floods

CA’s chances of experiencing the worst earthquake on the San Andreas fault have tripled in the last year, so we’re all gonna die in an earthquake

Squirrel in Jefferson county tested positive for bubonic plague

There’s now increased super lice because of corona

China claims unknown pneumonia deadlier than corona is spreading in Kazakhstan, like one pandemic wasn’t enough

Tik Tok almost got banned

There was a giant Tik Tok glitch and everyone FREAKED OUT

Bubonic plague is back in Mongolia

50 mile wide swarm of flying ants appeared

NASA warns about asteroid bigger than London Eye heading close to earth

Weird mystery seeds from China being mailed around the U.S.

Salmonella outbreak caused by onions in 43 states

Chadwick Boseman died

A bunch of pedophiles and gross people exposed on Tik Tok

A lightning strike killed 10 children playing soccer in Uganda

GIANT FIRES IN CA

Literally the sky is orange and it's raining ash

Ice caps melting

They found two 60ft long snakes

Sex hungry giant spiders are invading peoples homes

Man commited suicide live on tik tok and it spread

Sudan is having massive flooding

Britain is under attack from millions of drunk and angry german wasps

Tiger loose in Tennessee. Not from a zoo

Pilot spotted a guy flying in the sky with a jetpack (twice)

For some reason poison ivy is getting bigger and more poisonous

Super gonorrhea on the rise

More muslims killed in China camps than in Holocaust

More corona deaths than ww 1 or 2

[friedrag]

Landslides and Triggers

Landslides and triggers 

There are many types of natural disasters all over the world. From volcanic eruption to severe storms, though not everyone of those are treated equally, and not every type of disaster is seen in all parts of the world. Some natural disasters can trigger another, like how earthquakes can trigger a volcanic eruption. Landslides, which plague South America, are usually this type which needs a trigger in order for it to occur which allows it to be easily ignored so It can cause a disaster later. The purpose of this blog is to understand the capabilities a landslide might impose and how it can be triggered or how landslides could trigger other natural disasters. 

Where you see them occur.

There are many factors that are required for a landslide to occur, Firstly topography, which is landslides, doesn't typically occur  in the Great Plains in the United States, a landslide needs to be in hills, mountains, cliffs; Basically a change in topography, which is not created equal across the world. South America is a place full of topography, from the hillious place of northern South America to the Andes Mountains in the south. Because of this, many towns and cities are built around hills and mountains, like Vargas, Venezuela (and my grandmother's old house) (Veblen et al, 2015). Though those mountains and hills won’t break apart by itself. Landslides are concentrated in the tropics, dependent on other natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes and other potential triggers like mining. Though landslides on average have small global death tolls compared to other natural disasters, around 600 per year compared to earthquakes 10,000 per year, it has potential to be extremely deadly (Alexander, 2018).

A global map describing where landslides occur between 2004 to 2016. 

Petley. D., Mapping global landslides. AGU,   Available from https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2018/08/28/mapping-global-landslides/ 

  What can trigger a landslide.

How do other factors like water or earthquakes cause landslides? Earthquakes are more obvious due to their nature; they shake the ground which cause the earth, soil and rocks to move around, making mountains and hills easy to rip apart. Though the process involving water is more complex. When it comes to it, it is due to large amounts of precipitation, a luxury that South America possess (Vera, 2006) either a large amount of water flooding allowing water to sip and slip through the cracks allowing easy distortion of the earth or hard hitting water through cyclones or torrential rain, both of which are common in South America, though it is not a simple cause and effect scenario, other factors like elevation affect the severity and outcomes (Crosta, 2008).

Why it matters, and examples.

Because of climate change natural disasters as a whole have been dramatically increasing with the global yearly average death toll to be around 250,000 per year, 95% of which are located in third world countries (Alexander, 2018) The 600 deaths in landslides may seem insignificant compared to the total, but that is because they are rarer in nature and it requires pre existing rock, which after an incident may not be possible (or much less likely) in the same place again. Another thing that makes it differ from other disasters is that unlike storms, they usually occur without warning, giving people little time to prepare. For example in 1987 in columbia a landslide occurred that was considered small, though because of its fast appearance 217 people died and 80 homes were destroyed because of an oil well pierced through the rock; Or in Ecuador at the same year where due to the combination of a heavy period of rain and 2 earthquakes near a hillious area northeast of ecuador caused a chain reaction of a landslide, which caused flooding, which caused an oil pipeline destroyed causing wastage, the results was 1 billion dollars (of US dollars unchanged for inflation) and an estimated 1000 death (Schuster, 2002)

A worst case event.

Though the reason this took such interest in me is because how damaging it could really be. In december of 1999 heavy torrential rain caused the mountain behind a city in Vargas, Venezuela to collapse and destroy most of the city, synergizing with the rain causing a flood around the city. It is reported that about 30,000 people died in the incident, called the Vargas tragedy.  8000 residential buildings along with 700 apartment buildings were destroyed. (Wieczorek, 2001) Though this shows a worse case scenario on how deadly landslides can be, people are the ones that can determine that depending on where they choose to live, and because of that it is widely ignored in South America. 

The aftermath of the vargas tragedy 

Risk Management at the Latin American Observatory - Scientific Figure on ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Aerial-view-of-Caraballeda-Vargas-state-Venezuela-after-mudslides-and-debris-flows_fig8_231814643

It is important to know where you are building and the difficulties it presents, though this is mainly to talk about landslides, you should also prepare for all the natural disasters the area can pose and how that can chain to other natural disasters. The reason Vargas was so deadly besides the suddenness is due to the fact that they build so close to a mountain, and a chainball effect occurred, rain causing a landslide, causing a deadly flood. It is not a large problem in the United States, but many people while looking for new homes and places to live look for the types of hazards that could cause damage to their residence, and alongside floods, heavy rain, and storms should look at the surrounding area to see if landslides could become a potential hazard

Work cited

Alexander, D. (2018). Natural disasters. Routledge.

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=wnt0DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT11&dq=natural+disasters&ots=oxueoTsFcJ&sig=sjyuAvm43-tLhlg5hY2BrSQZRj8#v=onepage&q=natural%20disasters&f=false

Crosta, G. B., & Frattini, P. (2008). Rainfall‐induced landslides and debris flows. Hydrological Processes: An International Journal, 22(4), 473-477.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/hyp.6885?casa_token=MBbiBFAJjG4AAAAA:Ww3ECtwnmNyHSYuan4tLewwvrwa7gYE7Go_2lMeaxqlXMO4y-pK7O cyL9e-lOHh68hm6TqARvzLy8

Carrssel D., Risk Management at the Latin American Observatory - Scientific Figure on ResearchGate. Available from: 

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Aerial-view-of-Caraballeda-Vargas-state-Venezuela-after-mudslides-and-debris-flows_fig8_231814643

Petley. D., Mapping global landslides. AGU,   Available from 

https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2018/08/28/mapping-global-landslides/

Schuster, R. L., Salcedo, D. A., & Valenzuela, L. (2002). Overview of catastrophic landslides of South America in the twentieth century. Catastrophic landslides: effects, occurrence, and mechanisms, 15, 1-33.

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=OCWRomvHGVAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=landslides+in+south+america&ots=mCyKDferdW&sig=9P2b2rXaTIcLwfTHIM4H23OnpdE#v=onepage&q=landslides%20in%20south%20america&f=false

Veblen, T. T., Young, K. R., & Orme, A. R. (Eds.). (2015). The physical geography of South America. Oxford University Press.

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=0Q-MY4-nlwwC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=geography+of+south+america&ots=7ZbU3nyGL_&sig=jzGNTASDyYJT8fOioXk6M4FKMfc#v=onepage&q=geography%20of%20south%20america&f=false 

Vera, C., Silvestri, G., Liebmann, B., & González, P. (2006). Climate change scenarios for seasonal precipitation in South America from IPCC‐AR4 models. Geophysical research letters, 33(13). 

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2006GL025759 

Wieczorek, G. F., Larsen, M. C., Eaton, L. S., Morgan, B. A., & Blair, J. L. (2001). Debris-flow and flooding hazards associated with the December 1999 storm in coastal Venezuela and strategies for mitigation (No. 2001-144).

https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0144/

[mariacallous]

The record-breaking floods that left one-third of Pakistan under water have also submerged its already sinking balance sheet. The government estimates it needs more than $40 billion to rebuild from the torrential, deadly rains that began in June and killed over 1,700 people. But while international aid has begun to trickle in, the global north has no plans to freeze Pakistan’s billions of dollars in debt obligations.

Pakistan owes $22 billion in foreign debt payments over the next year to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China, the World Bank, and other public lenders. Pakistan has contributed less than 0.5 percent of historic emissions yet is among the top 10 countries most affected by climate change, according to Germanwatch’s Climate Risk Index, seen with the country’s severely worsened weather disasters like the recent floods. That’s led many citizens of the former British colony to feel echoes of historic injustice as the world’s top emitters—which are also their creditors—refuse to put debt cancellation on the agenda.

A growing chorus of Pakistani public figures, including influential former Senate chairman Mian Raza Rabbani, are demanding the world waive Pakistan’s debt as a form of direct climate reparations. The government, however, has been cautious. “We’re not asking about reparations,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif recently said, pushing back on calls made by his own climate minister. Pakistan’s new finance minister, Ishaq Dar, has said Pakistan will try to avoid asking Paris Club lending nations for help.

But if Pakistan demands a restructuring or erasure of the debt it owes to wealthy emitters—such as the United States, European Union, and China—on the grounds of climate justice, many experts believe it could set a standard for other vulnerable global south countries seeking relief in an overheating, unequal world. Lower-income countries spend five times more paying debt than they do on climate mitigation and adaptation, the Jubilee Debt Campaign found last year, and extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more severe.

“We’re in new territory,” said Ahmad Rafay Alam, an environmental lawyer and activist in Lahore, Pakistan. “There’s a 100-kilometer lake in a province in Punjab. The water has no place to drain. There’s no way any country can adapt out of that.”

Pakistan will lead the rotating G-77 coalition of developing countries at next month’s United Nations climate change conference (COP27) in Egypt, where it could insist on discussing loss and damage payments from climate change-caused destruction. “This is clearly loss and damage territory. This isn’t a debate,” Alam added. But the government still has “no clear vision” of what debt write-offs would look like, he said.

Creditors are mostly uninterested in the case for relief. The United States and China recently rolled over some debt, but U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has told Pakistan it should seek further relief from Beijing, to whom it owes $14.6 billion. The IMF, which holds its annual meetings this week, announced a $1.17 billion bailout package in August, but it has ignored calls to unlock $650 billion in special drawing rights—international reserve assets—or agree to wider debt freezes. The same goes for the World Bank, whose leader made headlines last month by refusing to acknowledge that fossil fuels are warming the planet.

“We have tried everything,” said Malik Amin Aslam, who served as climate minister under former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Pakistan planted billions of trees, proposed initiatives like nature performance bonds, and tried working with the World Bank on lending based on climate policy, but of those efforts, “none of them has really matured,” he said. “The climate crisis has totally matured.”

Still, the United States has forcefully opposed accords establishing loss-and-damage mechanisms, and the European Union won’t back a climate damage fund at COP27. Aslam said as climate minister, Pakistan “always found a closed door” when discussing loss and damage with developed nations. In the wake of the floods, world leaders like U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres have made convincing pleas for help. “But that’s where it ends, unfortunately,” Aslam said. “What Pakistan needs is solutions, and it needs them urgently.”

“The response has been totally predictable,” said Patrick Bigger, research director at the Climate and Community Project and co-author of a report that advocates debt justice as a form of climate reparations. When Sri Lanka defaulted last year and Ecuador and Zambia before that, its creditors forced them to get IMF emergency funding and cut public spending, leaving them with slimmer budgets to alleviate poverty and combat droughts and flash floods. With Pakistan, they’re “following the same playbook,” Bigger said.

Before Pakistan’s floods, the idea of debt forgiveness for climate change has mostly been kicked around in left-wing circles, evolving from debt resistance by socialist governments in Cuba and Bolivia. That might be changing. “It’s interesting that reparations is [an idea] that’s resonating in Pakistan,” Bigger said, and the expanding discourse around them could add “growing momentum” to more maximalist approaches toward canceling debt.

Bigger argues there’s a real economic argument for wiping out debt—and there are existing models that are successful. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, which began in 1996, wiped out more than $70 billion in debt held by 37 developing countries, allowing them to spend more on poverty reduction. That program had “genuinely positive social and fiscal impacts” on participating countries, Bigger said, though it didn’t “alleviate the structural dimensions that create indebtedness in the first place”—and now, the climate crisis has saddled even more countries with massive adaptation costs.

There are other methods. The IMF could automatically suspend debt payments of countries that suffer climate disasters, Bigger said. Global lenders can attach climate-related conditions to debt relief, which prevents corrupt politicians from pilfering money meant for mitigation projects. And Paris Club lenders have used debt swaps to save failing economies, such as when lenders allowed struggling Latin American countries to convert their bank loans to bonds. “Maybe these sort-of sophisticated debt-swapping tools can be used,” Alam said. “I don’t think a global superpower like the United States needs a nuclear country to go destitute.”

Asking Pakistan to seek help from Beijing could also be dangerous. Washington’s ties to Islamabad have eroded in the past decade, leaving its reputation among Pakistanis in tatters. Playing hardball with debt repayment would only push Pakistan and other global south nations closer to China and Russia, harming Washington’s security goals and creating room for insurgent anti-West populists and Islamist movements.

Khan, Pakistan’s populist former prime minister, is deeply skeptical of global lending institutions and could leverage public anger to fuel his ongoing bid to retake power. And while China’s lending “has been problematic,” Bigger said, they were “much better actors” than most Western governments and private lenders in considering debt suspension.

At last week’s IMF meeting, global leaders blamed China for slowing relief in countries struggling to repay their debts, but as long as they’re forced to pay billions of dollars to the nations whose emissions caused their floods, many Pakistanis are not fond of either power. “I can shoot myself in the foot, or I can cut my pinky finger off,” Alam said.

And refusing to forgive the debt of Pakistan contributes directly to the suffering of millions of people, who face food and water shortages and a growing health emergency, said Ishak Soomro, a journalist and research associate who’s been on the ground in the affected areas of Pakistan’s Sindh province.

Many villages have no potable water, Soomro said, and more people are beginning to contract waterborne diseases. Millions of people are still living on roadsides, without shelter, as winter approaches. Schools are being taught out of tents. “We’re paying debt with dollars,” he said. “And we don’t have any dollars to rebuild our country.”

[newstfionline]

Sunday, September 15, 2024

The disaster our cities are not prepared for (Washington Post) For days, residents of Houston struggled to survive as temperatures rose. They shared generators, filled buckets and bathtubs with ice, packed air conditioned hotels and emergency rooms. The most vulnerable struggled to get the care they needed. Many died. But in some ways, Houston was narrowly spared. Temperatures rose to the high 90s, but only for a couple of days. If the heat had stayed, the human toll could have been far worse. Experts warn this type of catastrophe—a combined power outage with a heat wave—is a scenario that cities and states are unprepared for. “I don’t think it’s likely—I think it’s an absolute certainty,” said Brian Stone, a professor and director of the Urban Climate Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “I think it’s an absolute certainty that we will have an extreme heat wave and an extended blackout in the United States.” The Washington Post analyzed the risks of a prolonged, citywide blackout coinciding with a more severe heat wave. The results show that such a heat wave could kill between 600 and 1,500 people in the Houston metro area over five days. With the power grid working normally, the same heat wave would lead to around 50 deaths.

Mexico’s president asks Sinaloa cartel to act ‘responsibly’ as violence escalates in the north (AP) Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Friday asked the warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel to act “responsibly” so no one else gets killed, after a week of escalating violence nearly paralyzed the Sinaloa state capital, Culiacan. Asked by a journalist if he trusted that the cartels would heed his call, López Obrador answered bluntly: “The president of Mexico is always listened to.” “Even by criminals?” pressed the journalist. “By everyone, more so if one has moral authority,” responded the president. The president, who leaves office on Sept. 30, has repeatedly refused to confront cartels, laying out various justifications for his “hugs, not bullets” strategy offering opportunities to youths so they won’t join cartels. The latest clashes in Culiacan are the latest example of the violence that continues to plague Mexico, where cartels employ increasingly sophisticated forms of warfare including roadside bombs or IEDs, trenches, home-made armored vehicles and bomb-dropping drones.

Seeking affordable housing in tourist hotspots (Reuters) Two European tourist and expat hot spots are trying different approaches to make housing affordable for their citizens. Greece will offer tax breaks to homeowners who convert their rentals to long term from short. Portugal is simply creating more supply by budgeting more than $2 billion to build 33,000 homes by the end of the decade.

Prague on high flood alert as central Europe faces torrential rain (AP) Prague was putting up flood defences in the city’s historic centre on Friday after Czech forecasters expanded a warning for extreme rainfall to areas of the country including the capital, which suffered catastrophic flooding more than 20 years ago. Heavy rain has pounded mostly eastern parts of the Czech Republic since Thursday, and the most affected areas may see more than a third of annual rainfall over four days by Sunday. Similar weather has been forecast around central Europe, including southern Germany and parts of Austria, Poland, and Slovakia over the coming days. “Data shows we are facing uneasy days,” Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala told a televised briefing after a crisis committee meeting, adding that in some places water levels may exceed flooding coming on average once in 100 or more years.

Russia expels six UK diplomats as tensions rise over Ukraine missiles (Reuters) Russia’s FSB security service said on Friday it had revoked the accreditation of six British diplomats in Moscow after accusing them of spying and sabotage work, signalling the Kremlin’s anger at what it sees as London’s vital role in helping Ukraine. Britain described the accusations as “completely baseless”, saying it was a tit-for-tat action after the UK expelled the Russian defence attache and removed diplomatic status from several Russian properties in May. Russia announced the expulsions hours before British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House, a crucial step towards winning the go-ahead for Kyiv to use long-range missiles against targets in Russia.

India’s top court releases New Delhi’s chief minister on bail after 6 months in jail (AP) India’s top court on Friday freed on bail Arvind Kejriwal, a prominent opposition leader and chief minister of New Delhi, who was arrested nearly six months ago ahead of national elections on charges of receiving bribes from a liquor distributor. Kejriwal is the leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, or Common Man’s Party, which governs New Delhi. He is one of India’s most influential politicians of the past decade and a fierce critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Kejriwal was initially arrested in March, weeks before the national elections. He denied the accusations and called them a political conspiracy. Kejriwal’s party is part of a broad alliance of opposition parties called INDIA which was the main challenger to Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in the elections, which concluded in June.

Pope’s Asia Tour Points Toward a Less-Western Church (NYT) Over the last couple of weeks, Pope Francis hoisted himself up on sore legs dozens of times. As he crisscrossed large swaths of the Asia Pacific region, he shuffled from cars to his wheelchair, from the wheelchair to makeshift papal thrones and on and off many planes as hot, tropical winds blew on the tarmac. The trip amounted to the longest and farthest reaching yet for Francis, and at 87, some of his supporters fear it may be one of his last. But that he flew thousands of miles to Asian countries with relatively small Catholic populations, braving oppressive temperatures and high levels of humidity and pollution, underlined Francis’s commitment to building a church with a less Eurocentric future. “The long distance, the fatigue, the challenges,” said Cardinal Michael Czerny, a close aide to Francis. “They are part of the message.” His purpose, he has long made clear, is to emphasize outreach and inclusivity. As he visited remote, tropical villages in Papua New Guinea, he put in practice his pledge to embrace what he calls the church’s “peripheries,” faraway, minority or poorer Catholics.

China raises retirement age (CNBC) China will raise retirement age for the first time since 1978. The country’s top legislative body has approved proposals to “gradually raise” the retirement age from 60 to 63 for men, 55 to 58 for women in white-collar jobs and 50 to 55 for women in blue-collar jobs. The move aims at addressing China’s shrinking population and aging workforce. The policy change will be carried out over 15 years, starting in January 2025. China’s current retirement ages are among the lowest in the world.

Women in Iran are going without hijabs as the 2nd anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death approaches (AP) On the streets of Iranian cities, it’s becoming more common to see a woman passing by without a mandatory headscarf, or hijab, as the second anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini and the mass protests it sparked approaches. There’s no government official or study acknowledging the phenomenon, which began as Iran entered its hot summer months and power cuts in its overburdened electrical system became common. But across social media, videos of people filming neighborhood streets or just talking about a normal day in their life, women and girls can be seen walking past with their long hair out over their shoulders, particularly after sunset. This defiance comes despite what United Nations investigators describe as “expanded repressive measures and policies” by Iran’s theocracy to punish them—though there’s been no recent catalyzing event like Amini’s death to galvanize demonstrators.

Underage, Under Fire (AP) JENIN, West Bank—In the web of battered, sun-baked streets winding up the hillside, bloodshed is as unrelenting as the heat. So it is not hard to see why, when raid sirens and gunfire erupted yet again on a morning in late May, 15-year-old Mahmoud Hamadneh turned his bike down an alley that held out the promise of refuge. “He didn’t do anything. He only had his books and a pencil case,” says Amjad Hamadneh, whose son, a buzz-cut devotee of computer games, was one of two teens killed that morning in the opening minutes of a raid by Israeli forces. More than 150 teens and children 17 or younger have been killed in the West Bank since Hamas’ brutal attack on communities in southern Israel set off the war last October. Most died in nearly daily raids by the Israeli army that Amnesty International says have used disproportionate and unlawful force. At the same time, Israel, which has long jailed Palestinians from the West Bank without charge, has extended that practice to many more teens. After October, food deprivation, overcrowding of cells and other mistreatment escalated sharply, the recently released and advocates say.

The sweet success of banana wine (BBC) A small-scale farmer in northern Malawi, Emily Nkhana used to discard over-ripe bananas or just let them rot, but she has now found a profitable use for them—banana wine. Extreme heat was causing bananas to ripen too quickly, resulting in heavy losses for Ms Nkhana and many other farmers who live in Karonga district. “Then we discovered how to make banana wine,” she tells the BBC, as she peels lemons that would be used to preserve the taste of bananas at the processing plant of Twitule Cooperative Group. For the farmers, it is not just about making wine—but also survival, resilience, and embracing the new possibilities that come with a changing climate. The banana pulp misture is left to ferment for several weeks, transforming the banana pulp into a potent, aromatic wine, containing 13% alcohol—similar to wine made from grapes. “It’s smooth and light, almost like a dessert wine,” says Paul Kamwendo, a local wine enthusiast who has become one of the biggest fans of banana wine in Karonga. “I had no idea one could make wine out of bananas.”

Harvest Moon (Space.com) Look up on September 17! The Harvest Moon, the full moon closest to the fall equinox, will experience a slight lunar eclipse, a foretaste of the ring eclipse of the sun on October 2. The name “Harvest Moon” comes from a time before electricity and agricultural machinery, when farmers relied on the moonlight to harvest crops through the night and work more when their cultivations were the most bountiful.

Studies on pigeon-guided missiles, swimming abilities of dead fish among Ig Nobels winners (AP) A study that explores the feasibility of using pigeons to guide missiles and one that looks at the swimming abilities of dead fish were among the winners Thursday of this year’s Ig Nobels, the prize for comical scientific achievement. Held less than a month before the actual Nobel Prizes are announced, the 34th annual Ig Nobel prize ceremony at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was organized by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine’s website to make people laugh and think. Winners received a transparent box containing historic items related to Murphy’s Law—the theme of the night—and a nearly worthless Zimbabwean $10 trillion bill. Actual Nobel laureates handed the winners their prizes.

[weather-usa]

Incoming Thunderstorms and Heat Wave Could Disrupt Labor Day Weekend Plans

Thunderstorms and a heat wave could disrupt Labor Day weekend plans across the nation, as a record number of travelers hit the road for the unofficial end of summer.

Climate and Average Weather Year Round in 24354 - Marion VA

From Friday to Monday, large portions of the country will face torrential downpours and potential flooding, particularly in the Midwest, Plains, Mid-Atlantic, and Gulf Coast states. Meanwhile, the Northwest is expected to experience a scorching heat wave, with temperatures soaring 10-20 degrees above normal for this time of year.

Beyond the continental U.S., the remnants of former tropical storm Gilma are anticipated to bring heavy rain and winds to Hawaii over the weekend. Meanwhile, tropical disturbances developing in the Atlantic could bring showers and thunderstorms to the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico on Labor Day and into early next week.

Unfavorable weather isn’t the only concern for a pleasant holiday weekend. Bacteria, algae, and other hazards have led to beach closures across the nation, including over 60 in Massachusetts alone.

More than 17 million people are expected to pass through airport security between Thursday, Aug. 29, and Wednesday, Sept. 4, making it potentially the busiest Labor Day travel period on record, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

Storms Set to Kick Off the Holiday Weekend Across Central and Eastern US

On Friday, a wide area of the central and eastern U.S. could experience thunderstorms, spanning from New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana to Michigan, western New York, central Pennsylvania, and the Florida peninsula, according to AccuWeather.

Weather Forecast For 71854-Texarkana-AR:

https://www.behance.net/gallery/201656081/Weather-Forecast-For-71854-Texarkana-AR

This broad region covers 20 states, and while the rain may not be constant, there is still a risk of "potentially severe conditions," AccuWeather reports. Storms forecasted to drench the lower Great Lakes, Mississippi Valley, and southern Plains could bring "thunderstorms and locally heavy rainfall, with some isolated flash flooding possible," according to the weather service.

Another trough could bring stronger winds to the Great Lakes region, prompting the Storm Prediction Center to issue a 2/5 risk level for damaging winds in eastern Michigan.

Intermittent rain could lead to flooding in parts of the Northeast. The threat of severe storms will expand into the Ohio Valley and Northeast on Saturday and Sunday, with "areas of severe weather" expected to impact the Appalachians and the Mid-Atlantic region, according to the weather service.

Major cities at risk for stormy weather include Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, and Arlington, according to the Storm Prediction Center.

"Damaging winds will be the primary threat," the weather service noted. "Additionally, isolated flash flooding remains possible, with the potential for an increased threat if the frontal system slows down."

A cold front sweeping across the Midwest and Plains is expected to bring relief from the intense heat that gripped parts of the Mid-Atlantic this week. In Washington D.C., Wednesday's high reached 101 degrees, breaking the previous record of 99 degrees set in 1948, according to the Capital Weather Gang.

Storms Expected to Hit Gulf Coast States While some areas in the Southeast will see minimal rain this weekend, the Gulf Coast and other parts of the region could face heavy rainfall and potential flooding.

Through the weekend, heavier rain is forecast to drench parts of western Louisiana and the upper Texas Gulf Coast as a low-pressure system lingers in the area. The combination of higher rain rates and repeated storms increases the "potential for scattered flash flooding," according to the weather service. Daily thunderstorms are also expected over the central and southern Florida Peninsula.

On Labor Day, heavy rain is anticipated from Texas to the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida, where localized flash flooding could occur, AccuWeather reports.

Dozens of Massachusetts Beaches Closed Due to Bacteria Levels

More than 60 beaches across Massachusetts are closed due to high bacteria levels and other hazards, including potentially harmful chemicals and rip currents.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) stated that swimming at these closed beaches poses a health risk due to elevated bacteria levels. Potential symptoms of exposure include nausea, vomiting, sore throat, and fever.

The number of closed beaches this year has significantly decreased compared to last year, when over 90 beaches along Massachusetts' Atlantic coast were shut down.

In other regions, officials have advised beachgoers to avoid certain areas due to bacteria concerns.

In Michigan, authorities have warned against visiting five beaches due to "high bacteria levels from an unknown source." In Wisconsin, four beaches in Lake Geneva remain closed due to blue-green algae blooms, which can produce toxins harmful to both humans and animals.

In Florida, the Duval County Health Department has issued a health alert for toxic blue-green algae in the St. Johns River, the state's longest river. The bloom is attributed to excess nutrients, primarily nitrogen, in the water.

Heat Wave to Affect the Northwest Through the Holiday Weekend A late summer heat wave has prompted advisories across the Pacific Northwest, with temperatures expected to soar well above seasonal averages throughout the weekend.

On Friday, afternoon highs in the northern Great Basin and Pacific Northwest are expected to reach the mid-90s, according to AccuWeather. By Saturday, the heat will intensify and spread into the northern Rockies, pushing temperatures into the upper-90s.

See more:

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-30069

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-30070

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-30071

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-30072

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-30073

The weather service office in Spokane, Washington, has issued a heat advisory starting Saturday morning and continuing through Monday night. Central and northeast Oregon, as well as southeast Washington, are expected to experience "hot conditions with temperatures ranging from 95 to 100 degrees," according to the weather service in Pendleton, Oregon.

"Advisories have been issued for much of the northern Great Basin due to an increased risk of heat-related illnesses. It is important to seek shaded areas and stay hydrated throughout this holiday weekend," the weather service cautioned.

[restomain]

When Disaster Strikes: Water Damage Restoration in Coral Springs

Introduction

Coral Springs, Florida, known for its picturesque landscapes and suburban charm, is not immune to the threat of water damage. Situated in the heart of South Florida, this idyllic city faces the same environmental vulnerabilities that many other parts of the state grapple with. Water damage can result from various sources, including hurricanes, heavy rainfall, plumbing failures, and high humidity. In this article, we explore the nuances of water damage restoration in Coral Springs, shedding light on the challenges, specialized techniques, and the importance of preparedness.

Environmental Vulnerabilities in Coral Springs

Coral Springs, like the rest of South Florida, is no stranger to the region's unique environmental challenges. Its coastal location makes it susceptible to tropical storms, hurricanes, and their associated effects, such as torrential rain and storm surges. Additionally, the high humidity levels that prevail in this part of the state create an environment conducive to mold growth, compounding the challenges associated with water damage.

Challenges in Water Damage Restoration

Water damage in Coral Springs can stem from a multitude of sources, ranging from weather-related incidents to plumbing failures. The immediate response to water intrusion is pivotal, but the specific challenges of this region can make the restoration process more complex.

Mold Remediation: High humidity levels in Coral Springs create ideal conditions for mold growth. Mold infestations can pose significant health risks and necessitate specialized remediation techniques. Restoration professionals employ advanced equipment and follow rigorous protocols to ensure thorough mold removal.

Insurance Complexities: Navigating insurance claims for water damage can be intricate. Property owners need to understand the intricacies of their insurance policies, including coverage limits, terms, and claim procedures. Adequate coverage for water damage and flood insurance, where necessary, is essential for a smoother restoration process.

Rapid Response: In the event of a hurricane or severe flooding, the local resources and restoration professionals may be overwhelmed, leading to delays in recovery efforts. This underscores the importance of a timely and efficient response to water damage incidents.

Specialized Restoration Techniques

Addressing water damage in Coral Springs requires specialized restoration techniques. Restoration professionals employ advanced equipment to extract water, dehumidify affected areas, and prevent mold growth. They are also trained to assess the structural integrity of properties and implement measures to prevent further damage.

Preventive Measures and Preparedness

Given the region's susceptibility to water damage, proactive measures play a crucial role in reducing vulnerability:

Regular Maintenance: Routine maintenance of plumbing and drainage systems is essential to prevent water damage. Detecting and addressing leaks and weak points in the infrastructure can save property owners from substantial repair costs.

Hurricane Preparedness: Being prepared for hurricanes and tropical storms is vital. This includes having a hurricane emergency kit, securing windows and doors, and having an evacuation plan in place.

Flood Insurance: Many standard homeowners' insurance policies do not cover flood damage. Property owners in Coral Springs should consider purchasing a separate flood insurance policy to ensure financial protection in the event of flooding.

Elevating Electrical Systems: Elevating electrical systems and essential appliances can help prevent damage in the event of flooding. Elevated systems are less likely to be affected by water intrusion.

Emergency Plan: Having a well-thought-out emergency plan that includes contact information for restoration professionals, insurance providers, and local authorities can be invaluable in a water damage crisis.

Community Support and Resources

Water damage restoration in Coral Springs often necessitates a collaborative effort. Community support, local resources, and professional networks play a pivotal role in expediting the restoration process. Timely coordination among restoration companies, insurance providers, and local authorities is imperative to facilitate a swift and effective restoration of affected properties.

Conclusion

Water damage restoration in Coral Springs is a multifaceted challenge that requires a comprehensive understanding of the region's environmental vulnerabilities, specialized techniques, proactive measures, and community support. Coral Springs, like many parts of South Florida, faces the constant threat of water damage due to its coastal location and high humidity levels.

Acknowledging these challenges and adopting proactive strategies can enable property owners to navigate the complexities of water damage restoration more effectively, minimizing losses, and preserving the structural integrity of their properties. In this beautiful city, the resilience of its community and the collective effort of individuals, local resources, and expert professionals are paramount in addressing water damage and its aftermath. When disaster strikes, the ability to restore Coral Springs to its pristine state is not just about rebuilding structures; it's about safeguarding the well-being and future of this vibrant community.

[a-piece-of-peace]

Is your community prepared?: Community Involvement in Disaster Risk Reduction and Management

As someone living in one of the communities that make up one of the vast metropolises that continue to thrive economically, Quezon City deems urban resilience a vital aspect and social and economic concern in strengthening the city’s resilience. Where families and households are strong enough to withstand calamities and are also able to restore economic activity amidst the myriad of disasters. 

To better visualize the overall purpose of this blog post, I would like to first share the economic and environmental issues the Philippines is currently facing.

Due to the geographic and physical features and location of the country, it is considered to be one most disaster-prone countries in the world. Situated along the western segment of the Pacific Ring of Fire, it lies in one of the most active part of the Earth characterized by an ocean encircling belt of active volcanoes and earthquake generators. Together with twenty-two (22) active volcanoes and six (6) known fault lines, the Philippines also sits astride the typhoon belt. The major part of the country experiences annual torrential rains and thunderstorms from July to October, with about nineteen (19) typhoons entering the country’s area of responsibility in a year with eight (8) to nine (9) of them making landfall on the country’s soil. This does not only make the Philippines vulnerable to flooding, but also vulnerable to climate change.

Sea level rise is one of the best-known climate change’s many dangers. As humanity pollutes the atmosphere with toxic substances that destroys the atmosphere, the planet becomes warmer and warmer. Thus, ice sheets and glaciers melt and warming sea water expands and increases in volume of the world’s oceans. The pollution and continuous onslaught of environmentally-detrimental human activities has become one of the top contributors to this growing concern. Especially in urban areas like Metro Manila, one of the most obvious human activity that sets the ground for environmental degradation is poor waste management. Improper wastes disposal, inefficient waste collection, lack of disposal facilities and the sheer loss of basic human decency and discipline has resulted in becoming one of the greatest threats to country’s environment and public health.

After hearing all these things, what can we do? Well, as of course in true Filipino fashion. We overcome. In our classes in Disaster Risk Reduction Management (DRRM), the term “Resilient”, Filipino or English, is a source of contention and controversy. While resilience is a noble word, it is also subject to scrutiny as to what does it mean to the country’s ability to bring back the sense of normalcy and improving itself. It shouldn’t simply mean smiling whilst standing knee-deep in floods or accepting the fact that our country’s legal justice system will always be something out of a dystopian novel, or even going far back as to think, “well, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” to the state of our transportation system. UNISDR (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction) defines resilience as “the use of recovery, rehabilitation, and reconstruction phases after a disaster to increase ‘resilience’ of nations and communities through integrating DRR measures into the restoration of physical infra and societal systems, and into revitalization of livelihoods, economies, and the environment.” In other words, we learn from the events for us to be “more resilient.” For us to improve. And how can we do that? We start in our most basic unit of society, the family, then to the community.

To take a closer look to the one the communities preparing for such disasters, I went to visit my local barangay, Barangay Bagumbuhay.

Barangay Bagumbuhay’s hall is right along the residential area of Miguel Malvar Street.  Easily accessible by the Light Railway Transit (LRT) System (though it is currently closed for operations) or by jeeps coming from Cubao or Katipunan, going through Aurora boulevard.

Due to the location of the barangay, not a lot of natural hazards were identified. According to PHILVOC’s faultfinder, the barangay is approximately 1.6 km. from the nearest active fault trace, which is the West Valley Fault.  

The barangay also had an advantage of being located right on top of a hill-like landmass, giving it the ability to rule out severe cases of flooding. However, there were still hazards to the community that were present. Namely, Anthropogenic hazards which were the structures and residential areas that were violating building code. Particularly the residential areas that were built atop the creek along F. Castillo Street. The officials fear that if these structures weren’t fixed immediately, they may become a danger to the residents should an offshoot of a disaster happened (e.g. fires). Blocked roads and alleys were also a danger since they served as a blockage to the entry and exit of residents to and from their homes, making it difficult for them to move through. 

The officer in charge of the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management office of  barangay Bagumbuhay, Estiño Martinez, introduced me to the various DRRM plans they had prepared in case the community faced a disaster. There were plans of evacuation locations for the nearby residents as well of those people who need special care and attention. Sr. Martinez provided a list of projects that had already been done and to be done (for 2020) in order to fulfill their duty of reducing the risk of any hazards that pose a threat to the community.

Sr. Martinez accompanied us in viewing the various preparations the had in store. For medical emergencies, for fire accidents, as well as for the aftermath of any disaster.

The multipurpose court to be used as an evacuation center for the community.

A funeral parlor and holding area for the families who are cannot afford the expenses of having a proper burial for their family member.

A Barangay Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Center right behind the hall. This includes the various materials and equipment to be used if in case of an emergency.

The fully-equipped ambulance and fire truck on stand-by 24-7. Sir. Martinez also informed us that the people manning these vehicles were always on site. He told us that they had shiftings in place for these positions as to prevent lacking important personnel if and when needed. 

The barangay council also set forth a clearing operation for the entire Miguel Malvar Street. This was to prevent blockage or traffic for the emergency vehicles going in and out of the barangay hall area. 

When I asked about the issues that the barangay faced in implementing their plans, he told us how sometimes there were residents who refused to take part in an operation they called Ugnayan. This system allowed residents to be informed of the basic and immediate reparations should a disaster ever happen. Seminars and workshops going on in the barangay is also openly given and provided to the residents. Sr. Martinez explained to us how participation of all the individual members of the community is what will ultimately help the community, not just the barangay personnel. The interview was then abruptly cut due to the schedules Sir. Martinez had. 

Though our time was short, he was able to answer all my questions and expound on his answers in a concise manner. I am extremely grateful to Sir Martinez for giving me his time in answering all my questions.

The interview led me to many conclusions about how vital it is for a community to be prepared for such disasters. In case of any disaster or emergency, before any government relief & support reaches or outside help is utilized, it is the Community which has to respond immediately (at the hour). As the Community plays the role of First Responder, it is critical that there is adequate awareness and preparedness at the Community level especially among the most vulnerable set of communities residing in the most vulnerable areas. 

Disaster preparedness provides a platform to organize effective, realistic and coordinated planning, reduces the waste of efforts and increase the overall effectiveness of the individual, household and community members disaster preparedness and response efforts. Disaster preparedness activities that are planned with risk reduction measures can prevent disaster situations and also result in saving maximum lives and livelihoods during any disaster situation, enabling the affected community to easily get back on its feet within a short period of time. Community preparedness can be thought of as the advance capacity of a community to respond to the consequences of an adverse event by having plans in place so that people know what to do and where to go if a warning is issued or a hazard is observed.

What we plan with our families, our community, and in our country helps us consider our emergency response activities in light of existing and new disaster risks that is affecting us and our country. This allows us to design or adjust our activities so that people and communities and in the end, our country to become safer and more disaster-resilient, as well as safeguarding efforts to create and expand enabling conditions for sustainable poverty alleviation and development. This can help strengthen our communities and reduce our vulnerability to the multiple natural disasters heading our way. 

The best way we can do to help our community and our country is to raise awareness. People being informed and equipped with the right knowledge will go a very long way. Just as the saying goes, it is better to know it and not need it than to need it and not know it. 

We as a community must urge our those we have elected to government positions to quickly move in planning and developing projects that will protect the public. We must build resilience in ourselves and also in the systems of our society. We must approach climate change with fear, for what our children’s future will be, and courage and hope, that we can heal what has been done.

To our public officials, they must create and support national policies and strategies allocating the resources of the country to manage the risk threatening it. Everyone must help in pushing for change and improvement in access to quality primary health care even before disaster strikes. 

To our workforce, we must be trained and equipped in planning for all types of emergencies. We need to be able to identify hazards, vulnerabilities, and our own capacities to lessen risks.

To the public, we as collective need to promote risk awareness of emergencies as well as providing health education to the youth. There is so much we can do when we join together for a cause that will protect us and our families. 

True “resilience”, I believe, is not tolerance or ignorance of the system that is broken in the front of adversity. It is the triumphant improvement of ourselves, physically and socially to become better. A better Filipino nation that faces calamities not in a defeatist manner but with a strength of Filipinos coming together.