Disaster Deaths

Over 90 per cent of the global deaths per year linked to air pollution from landscape fires were in low and middle-income countries, including India, according to a study published in The Lancet journal. Other countries with the highest burdens of disease due to landscape fires, including wildfires, were China, Indonesia and those in the sub-Saharan Africa. The findings highlighted geographic and socioeconomic inequalities in how landscape fires affect public health, an international team of researchers, including those from Monash University, Australia, found. Landscape fires occur in natural and built-up settings and can include both forest fires and those caused due to human activities. Most of the resulting deaths are related to the air pollution caused due to such fires, contributing to long-term cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses. The study attributed roughly 0.45 million deaths a year to heart-related conditions and about 0.22 million deaths annually to respiratory ...

Himachal Pradesh received only Rs 433.70 crore as disaster relief from the Centre in 2023 while the state government released Rs 4,495.43 crore to tackle the catastrophe, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu said in the state assembly on Tuesday. Replying to a debate on damage and loss due to monsoon disaster, Sukhu said the state suffered losses amounting Rs 9,000 crore during monsoon in 2023 and that he would again meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and demand compensation for the loss. The debate under Rule 130 (motion to consider policy, situation, statement, report or any other matter) was initiated by Leader of the Opposition Jai Ram Thakur. Under the relief package announced by the state government for relief and rehabilitation, Rs 847.73 crore were released under the heads of national and state disaster relief fund, he said. The CM added that Rs 1,871.75 crore was given by the Finance Department, Rs 1,085 crore by Rural Development department, Rs 146.97 crore by Planning ..

The rescue operation was carried out by teams of the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and District Disaster Rescue Force

Uttar Pradesh was the worst-hit state, recording 52 deaths, followed by Bihar with 37 deaths. Odisha reported 26 deaths and Delhi 25 deaths

Congress' Manish Tewari said the proposed legislation entrusted the rule-making powers upon the Centre and encroaches on the domain of the state governments

In the IAS aspirants' death case, Delhi Police have arrested seven people and the MCD has formed a high-level committee to investigate gross negligence in Old Rajendra Nagar area of Delhi

Sri Lanka closed schools on Monday as heavy rain triggered floods and mudslides in many parts of the island nation, leaving at least 10 people dead and six others missing, officials said. The education ministry announced that the reopening of schools would depend on how the weather develops. Heavy downpours have wreaked havoc in many parts of the country since Sunday, flooding homes, fields and roads, and forcing authorities to cut electricity as a precaution. Six people died after being washed away and drowning in the capital, Colombo, and the remote Rathnapura district on Sunday, according to the disaster management center. Three others died when mounds of earth collapsed on their houses, and one person died when a tree fell on him. Six people have gone missing since Sunday. By Monday, over 5,000 people had been moved to evacuation centers and more than 400 homes had been damaged, the center said in a statement. Navy and army troops have been deployed to rescue victims and provi

Seventeen people are dead and seven reported missing in a landslide triggered by Cyclone Remal at stone quarry in Mizoram

Updates on Cyclone Remal: At least seven people died in Bangladesh, and millions were left without power. Services begin to resume as reports of the cyclone weakening emerge

The landslide crashed through Yambali village in the country's north at around 3 a.m. on Friday while most of the community slept

Australia prepared on Monday to send aircraft and other equipment to help at the site of a deadly landslide in Papua New Guinea as overnight rains in the South Pacific nation's mountainous interior raised fears that the tons of rubble that buried hundreds of villagers could become dangerously unstable. Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said his officials have been talking with their Papua New Guinea counterparts since Friday, when a mountainside collapsed on Yambali village in Enga province, which the United Nations estimates killed 670 people. The remains of only six people had been recovered so far. The exact nature of the support that we do provide will play out over the coming days, Marles told Australian Broadcasting Corp. We've got obviously airlift capacity to get people there. There may be other equipment that we can bring to bear in terms of the search and rescue and all of that we are talking through with PNG right now, Marles added. Papua New Guinea is Australia

At least 15 people, including two kids, have died as powerful storms ravaged the states of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas in the central US, destroying homes and plunging thousands into darkness amid rising temperatures over the Memorial Day weekend. Seven fatalities were reported in Cooke County, Texas, near the Oklahoma border, where a tornado Saturday night ripped through a rural area near a mobile home park, officials said. Storms also caused damage in Oklahoma, where guests at an outdoor wedding were injured. "It's just a trail of debris left. The devastation is pretty severe," Cooke County Sheriff Ray Sappington said. The dead included two children, aged 2 and 5, and three members of a family, the sheriff said. A tornado tore apart houses and businesses, flipped mobile homes and knocked down trees and power lines. Areas near the community of Valley View were especially hard-hit. Sappington said 60 to 80 people were injured at a truck stop called the AP Travel Center on Inters

Asia continued to bear the brunt of weather, climate and water-related hazards in 2023, making it the world's most disaster-hit region, according to a new report by the World Meteorological Organization. Floods and storms led to the highest number of reported casualties and economic losses, and the impact of heat waves intensified, said the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) State of the Climate in Asia - 2023 report. According to the report, sea-surface temperatures in the northwest Pacific Ocean hit record highs, and even the Arctic Ocean experienced a marine heat wave. "Many countries in the region experienced their hottest year on record in 2023, along with a barrage of extreme conditions, from droughts and heat waves to floods and storms. Climate change exacerbated the frequency and severity of such events, profoundly impacting societies, economies, and, most importantly, human lives and the environment that we live in," said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. Citing

Colombia's government declared a disaster on Thursday and asked for international help to combat raging wildfires that are expected to worsen in coming days due to warm, dry conditions associated with the El Nio weather phenomenon. Officials raised the number of fires from 25 to 31, and said nine of them were under control. They did not order mandatory evacuations despite some fires burning in the mountains that surround some municipalities. President Gustavo Petro said Chile, the United States, Peru and Canada have already responded to the call for help, without specifying when the assistance will arrive to the South American country. The government also asked for aid from the United Nations and European Union. To the extent that we know that in the coming days and weeks crisis events are going to increase, we want to make sure that we have the physical capacity to address and mitigate them, Petro said. Colombia's Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies repo

At least 47 people were buried in a landslide that struck southwest China's Yunnan province on Monday morning, forcing the evacuation of 500 others in the region. The disaster struck the Liangshui village of Zhaotong city at 5:51 am Beijing time, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Efforts were ongoing to rescue the people trapped under the landslide, official media reported. Over 500 residents were evacuated from the landslide-hit areas as the provincial commission for disaster reduction activated a Level-III emergency response for disaster relief, state-run CCTV reported. More than 200 rescuers, along with 33 firefighting vehicles and 10 loading machines, were mobilised to search for the missing. The buried villagers were from 18 households, rescue officials said. There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries. The cause of the landslide was not immediately known. Local weather forecast said there will be light snow in the town on Tuesday, with the lowest tempera

India experienced extreme weather events almost every day in the first nine months of this year which led to nearly 3,000 deaths, according to a report released on Wednesday. Published by the independent think tank Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the report said the climate-vulnerable country had extreme weather on 86 per cent of days from January to September 2023. The CSE said 2,923 people died, almost two million hectares of crops were ruined, 80,000 homes were destroyed and more than 92,000 animals were killed. But these numbers might be even higher because not all the data is collected, it said. "'India 2023: An assessment of extreme weather events' attempts to build an evidence base on the frequency and expanding geography of extreme weather events in the country. As this assessment clearly shows, what the country has witnessed so far in 2023 is the new 'abnormal' in a warming world," said the CSE director general Sunita Narain. Madhya Pradesh reported the highest .

International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction is marked on October 13 yearly. The day gives a valuable chance to address the progress made in the field of reducing natural disasters

Follow live updates about wildfires that have devastated parts of Maui in Hawaii, killing dozens of people and destroying the historic town of Lahaina. The wildfires are the deadliest in the US in more than a century. The cause was under investigation. Even where the fires have retreated, authorities have warned that toxic byproducts may remain, including in drinking water, after the flames spewed poisonous fumes. 2 VICTIMS OF LAHAINA WILDFIRE IDENTIFIED AS THE DEATH TOLL RISES TO 106 Maui County released the names of two people killed in the wildfire that all but incinerated the historic town of Lahaina Tuesday evening, as the death toll rose to 106. A mobile morgue unit arrived on Tuesday to help Hawaii officials working painstakingly to identify remains, as teams intensified the search for more dead in neighbourhoods reduced to ash. The US Department of Health and Human Services deployed a team of coroners, pathologists and technicians along with exam tables, X-ray units and oth

The death toll in the Indore temple stepwell collapse incident has now increased to 36 and efforts are being made to retrieve the body of another missing person, the police official said on Friday

Rescuers worked to clear rocks and mud from the streets of a north-central city in Venezuela on Tuesday, three days after it was hit by a massive and deadly landslide, and expanded their search for any bodies buried under the sludge. Officials raised the death toll from the slide in Las Tejerias to at least 43 and warned that it could go up further as bodies are found downstream from the hardest-hit neighbourhoods. Crews extended their search perimeter to include that area, along a river located about a mile (2 kilometres) outside the city. At least 56 people were said to be missing, and some local residents have joined in the hunt for them. Magaly Colmenares said she was with a group of firefighters that recovered the body of her grandson Monday from a house swamped by mud. The corpse was taken to a health centre that has been pressed into service as a morgue. He was buried with a man who tried to help him and his 3-month-old sister, Colmenares said. I found my angel, and we have