brad brace

Relief workers reported the first signs of disease among survivors of a devastating earthquake and tsunami in the Solomon Islands, while aftershocks hampered efforts to get aid to survivors running low on food and water.

Some children in makeshift camps that have sprung up in hills behind towns hit by the disaster have diarrhea, the Red Cross said, as threats such as malaria, dysentery and cholera loomed.

Survivors terrified by the more than 50 jolts that have struck the region since the magnitude 8.1 quake — including several registering 6 or stronger — were too scared to come down from high-ground refuges, officials said, adding to difficulties assessing the number of victims and getting aid to survivors.

“There’s no water to wash, no water to drink,” said Esther Zekele, who fled with her husband and five children to the hills behind Munda as the sea surged through the town. About 40 other families were also huddled at their makeshift camp.

They ventured back home shortly, hoping to replenish their half-eaten bag of rice, but took to the hills again when they heard a rumor another wave was coming.

Now the families are just waiting, wondering why help hasn’t come, Zekele said.

Solomon’s deputy police commissioner, Peter Marshall, said the aftershocks had pushed some survivors even deeper into the hills.

“People are in a panic because of the continuous tremors,” said Rex Tara, a disaster management specialist with British-based aid agency Oxfam.

At least 28 people were killed, and authorities were checking unconfirmed reports of further deaths, including six people buried in a quake-triggered landslide on Simbo island, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s office said.

Marshall said that while the death toll may continue to rise, aerial surveillance flights over the past two days had revealed “no evidence of mass deaths.”

Authorities had no firm figure for the missing

Red Cross official Nancy Jolo said her agency had handed out all the emergency supplies it had stored in Gizo, the main town in the disaster zone, and was waiting for new supplies from a New Zealand military transport plane that landed in Munda.

“The priority need right now is for water,” Jolo told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. “What we are experiencing right now in some of the campsites is children starting to experience diarrhea.”

Six doctors and 15 nurses from Honiara were among aid workers who arrived at Gizo, where plans to reopen the airport the same day didn’t pan out and the wharf remained badly damaged.

Many of the 5,600 left homeless were scrounging for basic supplies under buildings knocked down by the quake and sludge deposited by the tsunami.

One police patrol boat arrived in Gizo after traveling 10 hours from the capital, Honiara, with tents, tarps, food and water. A second supply boat left Honiara, but two others were delayed because provisions could not be found to fill them, chief government spokesman Alfred Maesulia said.

“It’s very difficult to get the materials needed because Honiara only has very small shops,” he said.

A New Zealand military transport plane unloaded a shipment of tarps, water and rations at Munda.

“We have not reached people as soon as we could … because of the widespread nature of this particular disaster,” said Fred Fakarii, chairman of the National Disaster Management Council.

Many canoes and other boats were sunk or washed away by the tsunami and fuel was contaminated with sea water, adding to the aid delivery woes, Western Province Premier Alex Lokopio said.

Fakarii said officials had asked for two mobile hospitals from Australia and New Zealand. Hospitals at Gizo and Munda were wrecked by the disaster, he said.

The quake, which struck 6 miles under the sea about 25 miles from Gizo, set off alarms from Tokyo to Hawaii, testing procedures put in place after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that left 230,000 dead or missing in a dozen countries.

Gizo’s proximity to the epicenter meant the destructive waves — up to 16 feet high — hit before an alarm could be sounded, rekindling debate about whether the multimillion-dollar warning systems installed after the 2004 tsunami are worth the cost.

No significant tsunami was later reported anywhere outside the Solomons, which are comprised of more than 200 islands with a population of about 552,000 people.

Tsunami Facts: How They Form, Warning Signs, and Safety Tips

• A tsunami is a series of great sea waves caused by an underwater earthquake, landslide, or volcanic eruption. More rarely, a tsunami can be generated by a giant meteor impact with the ocean.

Scientists have found traces of an asteroid-collision event that they say would have created a giant tsunami that swept around the Earth several times, inundating everything except the tallest mountains 3.5 billion years ago. The coastline of the continents was changed drastically and almost all life on land was exterminated.

• Tsunami (pronounced soo-NAH-mee) is a Japanese word. Tsunamis are fairly common in Japan, and many thousands of Japanese have been killed by them in recent centuries.

• An earthquake generates a tsunami if it is of sufficient force and there is violent movement of the earth to cause substantial and sudden displacement of a massive amount of water.

• A tsunami is not a single wave but a series of waves, also known as a wave train. The first wave in a tsunami is not necessarily the most destructive. Tsunamis are not tidal waves.

• Tsunami waves can be very long (as much as 60 miles, or 100 kilometers) and be as far as one hour apart. They are able to cross entire oceans without great loss of energy. The Indian Ocean tsunami traveled as much as 3,000 miles (nearly 5,000 kilometers) to Africa, arriving with sufficient force to kill people and destroy property.

Scientists say that a great earthquake of magnitude 9 struck the Pacific Northwest in 1700 and created a tsunami that caused flooding and damage on the Pacific coast of Japan.

As Fast as a Commercial Jet

• Where the ocean is deep, tsunamis can travel unnoticed on the surface at speeds up to 500 miles an hour (800 kilometers an hour), crossing an ocean in a day or less. Scientists are able to calculate arrival times of tsunamis in different parts of the world based on their knowledge of water depths, distances, and when the event that generated them occurred.

• A tsunami may be less than a foot (30 centimeters) in height on the surface of the open ocean, which is why they are not noticed by sailors. But the powerful shock wave of energy travels rapidly through the ocean as fast as a commercial jet. Once a tsunami reaches shallow water near the coast, it is slowed down. The top of the wave moves faster than the bottom, causing the sea to rise dramatically.

• Geological features such as reefs, bays, river entrances, and undersea formations may dissipate the energy of a tsunami. In some places a tsunami may cause the sea to rise vertically only a few inches or feet. In other places tsunamis have been known to surge vertically as high as 100 feet (30 meters). Most tsunamis cause the sea to rise no more than 10 feet (3 meters).

The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 caused waves as high as 30 feet (9 meters) in some places, according to news reports. In other places witnesses described a rapid surging of the ocean.

Flooding can extend inland by a thousand feet (300 meters) or more. The enormous energy of a tsunami can lift giant boulders, flip vehicles, and demolish houses. Knowledge of the history of tsunamis in your area is a good indicator of what is likely to happen in a future tsunami event.

• Tsunamis do not necessarily make their final approach to land as a series of giant breaking waves. They may be more like a very rapidly rising tide. This may be accompanied by much underwater turbulence, sucking people under and tossing heavy objects around. Entire beaches have been stripped away by tsunamis.

Many witnesses have said a tsunami sounds like a freight train.

• The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami could rank as the most devastating on record. More than 200,000 people lost their lives, many of them washed out to sea.

The most damaging tsunami on record before 2004 was the one that killed an estimated 40,000 people in 1782 following an earthquake in the South China Sea. In 1883 some 36,500 people were killed by tsunamis in the South Java Sea, following the eruption of Indonesia’s Krakatoa volcano. In northern Chile more than 25,000 people were killed by a tsunami in 1868.

• The Pacific is by far the most active tsunami zone, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). But tsunamis have been generated in other bodies of water, including the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas, and the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. North Atlantic tsunamis included the tsunami associated with the 1775 Lisbon earthquake that killed as many as 60,000 people in Portugal, Spain, and North Africa. This quake caused a tsunami as high as 23 feet (7 meters) in the Caribbean.

• The Caribbean has been hit by 37 verified tsunamis since 1498. Some were generated locally and others were the result of events far away, such as the earthquake near Portugal. The combined death toll from these Caribbean tsunamis is about 9,500.

• Large tsunami waves were generated in the Marmara Sea in Turkey after the Izmit earthquake of 1999.

Warning Signs

• An earthquake is a natural tsunami warning. If you feel a strong quake do not stay in a place where you are exposed to a tsunami. If you hear of an earthquake be aware of the possibility of a tsunami and listen to the radio or television for additional information. Remember that an earthquake can trigger killer waves thousands of miles across the ocean many hours after the event generated a tsunami.

• Witnesses have reported that an approaching tsunami is sometimes preceded by a noticeable fall or rise in the water level. If you see the ocean receding unusually rapidly or far it’s a good sign that a big wave is on its way. Go to high ground immediately.

Many people were killed by the Indian Ocean tsunami because they went down to the beach to view the retreating ocean exposing the seafloor. Experts believe that a receding ocean may give people as much as five minutes’ warning to evacuate the area.

• Remember that a tsunami is a series of waves and that the first wave may not be the most dangerous. The danger from a tsunami can last for several hours after the arrival of the first wave. A tsunami wave train may come as a series of surges that are five minutes to an hour apart. The cycle may be marked by a repeated retreat and advance of the ocean. Stay out of danger until you hear it is safe.

Survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami reported that the sea surged out as fast and as powerfully as it came ashore. Many people were seen being swept out to sea when the ocean retreated.

• A tsunami surge may be small at one point of the shore and large at another point a short distance away. Do not assume that because there is minimal sign of a tsunami in one place it will be like that everywhere else.

• Tsunamis can travel up rivers and streams that lead to the ocean. Stay away from rivers and streams that lead to the ocean as you would stay away from the beach and ocean if there is a tsunami.

• It’s always a good idea to keep a store of emergency supplies that include sufficient medications, water, and other essentials sufficient for at least 72 hours. Tsunami, earthquake, hurricane—an emergency can develop with little or no warning.

Advice for Sailors

• NOAA advises that since tsunami wave activity is imperceptible in the open ocean, vessels should not return to port if they are at sea and a tsunami warning has been issued for the area. Tsunamis can cause rapid changes in water level and unpredictable, dangerous currents in harbors and ports. Boat owners may want to take their vessels out to sea if there is time and if the sailors are allowed to do so by port authorities. People should not stay on their boats moored in harbors. Tsunamis often destroy boats and leave them wrecked above the normal waterline.

• Heightened awareness of the potential for a tsunami to inundate the U.S. western coastline has caused NOAA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Federal Emergency Management Administration to initiate a program to predict tsunamis more accurately. As a tsunami traverses the ocean, a network of sensitive recorders on the sea floor measures pressure changes in the overhead water, sending the information to sensors on buoys, which in turn relay the data to satellites for immediate transmission to warning centers.

• The Tsunami Warning System (TWS) in the Pacific, composed of 26 member countries, monitors seismological and tidal stations throughout the Pacific region. The system evaluates potentially tsunami-causing earthquakes and issues tsunami warnings. An international warning system for tsunamis in the Indian Ocean was launched in June 2006.

• Use your common sense. If you feel or hear of a strong earthquake do not wait for an official tsunami warning. Tell your family and friends to join you in leaving for high ground.

“Every year, we have to increase the heights of the embankments, and the amount of water-logging is growing. It has led to more homeless people, more social conflict and more quarrels between neighbours.”

Bangladesh: a voice for the vulnerable

Regional initiatives, global strategies

We found Fajila and Sirajul tending tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables, but they were in no ordinary garden. This one had no soil; their plants were growing out of what looked like balls of dung, and the bed they were growing them in was a 12-metre-long, 1.2-metre-wide plot of tangled water hyacinths floating on land that is flooded most of the year. Fajila and Sirajul were waist deep in water, practising hydroponic farming.

These weren’t ordinary people, either. Until a few months ago, they were landless peasants from Deara, a village in the coastal area of southern Bangladesh, one of the poorest and most vulnerable places on earth. People there face regular environmental hazards, including cyclones, floods, water-logged land, silting rivers, arsenic in the drinking water, river erosion and the intrusion of salt water. But now they have to cope with climate change, too. Their imaginative use of hyacinths as new “land” to grow crops is part of a concerted attempt by the governments of Bangladesh and the United Kingdom to prepare vulnerable communities for present and future disaster.

No one doubts that climate change is happening in Bangladesh. Government meteorologists report 10%-increased intensity and frequency in cyclones hitting the country, and in the last three years there have been two of the largest storms ever recorded. Peasant farmers report increased rainfall and chaotic seasons, and everyone says it is warmer.

“We are learning about climate change,” says Anawarul Islam, chair of the Deara district of about 2,500 people. “We are experiencing more rainfall every year. The water level in the sea is definitely rising. Every year, we have to increase the heights of the embankments, and the amount of water-logging is growing. It has led to more homeless people, more social conflict and more quarrels between neighbours. There is more poverty and less food security.”

“It’s far warmer now,” says Selina, from the fishing village of Jelepara. “We do not feel cold in the rainy season. We used to need blankets, but now we don’t. Last year, there were heavy rains even in summer. There is extreme uncertainty of weather. It makes it very hard to farm. We cannot plan. We have to be more reactive. The storms are increasing and the tides now come right up to our houses.”

About 160 kilometres away, Julian Francis, a UK development worker with communities living in the chars — the large islands that form in all of Bangladesh’s vast rivers — is seeing river erosion increasing, almost certainly because of greater flows of water. Recently, in torrential monsoon rains, he went out on the mighty Jamuna river. “I visited an area of Kulkandi where four villages with 571 families have been eroded,” he says. “People said the river had come about 1,200 feet [365 metres] inland last year and another 1,000 feet [about 300 metres] this year.”

“Last year,” he added, “528 grants were made to families in one district by the Chars Livelihood Project. But since April this year, 518 grants have been made, and there is now a waiting list of more than 300. I was told the river had not been seen in such a furious state since 1988. [It seems] a new island char had formed in the middle of the river and this has caused the river to change its course … and this is the cause of the increased river erosion.”

Climate change may not be directly responsible for Bangladesh’s water-logged land, the intrusion of salt water or its river erosion, but it is turning a bad situation into a potential catastrophe, driving people such as Fajila and Sirajul to absolute poverty. Cyclone Sidr, one of the most powerful storms ever to have hit Bangladesh, made three million people homeless last November. Meanwhile, food-price inflation has left four million extra people in absolute poverty this year, according to a World Bank official in August.

“There has to be preparation for climate change,” says Raja Debashish Roy, a government environment official. “We are experiencing many changes; some are coming very quickly and others will over years. There is a rise in salinity, more intense tidal waves, floods, droughts and cyclones. We are getting too much water in the rainy season and too little in the dry season. All this has implications for food security. We have to be coping with all these problems, some simultaneously.”

Roy was in London on September 10 for the UK-Bangladesh Climate Change Conference, at which Bangladesh made public its strategy to cope with climate change over the next 10 years. Britain will commit £75 million (US$135 million) to a new international fund for the country to adapt, and Bangladesh itself will contribute US$50 million a year. Other countries and global institutions, including Denmark and the World Bank, also are expected to chip in.

This is the first attempt by any major least developed country (LDC) to methodically address the threat of climate change, and is expected to become a model for others as more global money becomes available after a post-Kyoto agreement is in place.

“Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country in the world in terms of the scale of the impacts expected,” says Islam Faisal, climate-change advisor in Bangladesh for the UK Department for International Development (DfID). “It is the first to develop a strategy and an action plan. The money is not enough in itself to cover the costs of adaptation, but it should kick-start the process and allow the [Bangladeshi] government to access global money.”

That is where Fajila and Sirajul come in. Their hydroponic garden, developed under a DfID-funded disaster-management plan, includes raising houses about one metre above the present high-water line, introducing salt-tolerant crops, encouraging crab and duck farming, and rainwater harvesting.

“More than 70 [adaptation] initiatives have been identified,” says Mamunur Rashid, director of the Bangladeshi government’s disaster management programme.

One of the most successful is an education programme. A local non-governmental organisation, Shushilan, employs a full-time theatre troupe to travel to festivals and villages, informing people about climate change and how to adapt to it. Another sends volunteers to communities, with educational “flip charts”.

The initiatives are popular. “Growing food like this is labour intensive, but we don’t need fertiliser or pesticides, and the food quality is better than food grown in soil,” says Fajila. “At the start, we were very unsure whether it would work, but now we think we can live on what we grow.”

Rashid says: “What was a scientific debate has become a practical one about development. Without actions like this, Bangladesh would be plunged deeper into extreme poverty. It’s about climate change, but also about poverty reduction. It doesn’t need new ideas to adapt to climate change so much as developing what is already there. Climate change comes on top of multiple hazards and difficulties. It could tip people over the edge or, if countries respond, it could help them.”

Roy is optimistic, too. He says: “Bangladesh has always had floods, cyclones and disasters. People are used to dealing with such changes. We have a history of dealing with challenges. We are mentally equipped for climate change, but we do need support to prepare for it.”

At least 600,000 people have been stranded in Bangladesh in serious flooding.

The army has been called in to help people trapped by the floods.

Much of the country is under water as a result of the monsoon rains, which have caused the rivers to breach their banks.

The worst-hit areas are the districts of Sirajaganj and Bogra, where 14,000 people have sought shelter in relief centres.

The neighbouring Indian state of Bihar has also been affected by flooding, which has been caused by the monsoon rains of the past weeks.

So far nearly 100 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands made homeless.

The situation is really now quite alarming for the pastoralist community, especially where I come from, explains Jane Naini Meriwas, a Yaaku from Kenya (Africa). Traditionally, we say that in this season it is rain, in this other season it is dry. So the community makes plans. As my community is nomadic, we move with the livestock. If it will be a very long dry spell, then we use a traditional set-up where we select places where animals can graze, and other places that we will protect. And then other times, we will move. So when it is dry, people migrate. However, if you cross from your own district to this other district, there are already people there. We border with the Samburu, Borana and Bantu. The people here do agriculture. Also we border with other settlers. The lands that are actually left to graze have become really limited. In 2000, we really experienced a lot of drought. For a whole year there was no rain. It was terrible. The drought forced the community to migrate. It was so alarming that the government had to open the very big Park Mount Kenya where they gave the pastoralists permission to take their animals. But to move to Mount Kenya, you have to walk 100 km along a fenced road. The animals are weak and because it’s fenced, they don’t have water or grass. So thousands of animals died along the road. You can find many carcasses when you go to Mount Kenya. Since 2001 the rain pattern has now changed completely. When the rain pattern changes, there is no way to prepare the community.

In my own part of the country, the winters are clearly not as cold as they used to be. Nor is there as much snow, reports Doug Kiel, an Oneida Indian from Wisconsin, USA (North America). Wisconsin’s 15,000 lakes are a tremendously important natural resource and we usually fish them year-round, even after they freeze over in the winter. But the winters are getting warmer, and in recent years this has not always been possible. When I was a child, the lakes froze over in December and did not thaw until nearly April. Now, the lakes do not freeze until much later into the winter - if at all - and the ice is often dangerously thin. And now when the lakes do freeze, they don’t stay frozen. The water is getting warmer during the summer months as well, and this threatens the walleye and trout, two of our most important cold-water fish species.

Before the fifties, we used to depend on the knowledge of our old folks, observes Iteli Tiatia from Samoa (South Pacific). These old people know what wind is blowing just by feeling the wind or looking up at the tree tops. They have names for winds from any direction, like the TO’ELAU, LA’I, LA’ILUA, TUA’OLOA and many others. But wind patterns have dramatically changed, the direction but also the timing. For example, the old folks know in which months hurricanes are possible: Late January, February and March were the worst months; November and December used to be the best. But Hurricane Valerie, one of the most destructive in Samoa, was in December 1991. Moreover, in the past, a hurricane used to come in one direction and eventually fade out once you hear strong lightning and loud thunder. That’s when these old folks would say in Samoan “Ua taliligia le matagi - the hurricane is being shaken”. However for Hurricane Valerie in 1991, it did not end till it covered the four directions and it did not end despite strong lightning and heavy thunder while at its most destructive power.

The first contact has been made with people living on a remote island battered by a South Pacific cyclone which struck the Solomons group last weekend.

A New Zealand cameraman who arrived on Tikopia island by helicopter on Friday said all the island’s inhabitants appear to have survived.

“The whole way there I thought I would see hundreds of dead and festering bodies, but instead we were just overwhelmed with people running toward the plane,” cameraman Geoff Mackley told The Australian newspaper.

Mr Mackley’s report is yet to be independently confirmed, but a boat carrying relief supplies is expected to arrive at Tikopia at first light on Sunday.

There had been fears that many of the island’s population - estimated at between 1,000 and 2,000 - had perished when Cyclone Zoe hit the South Pacific last Sunday.

No information has been received from Anuta since the cyclone knocked out its radio communications.

Cyclone Zoe was one of the most powerful ever to hit the region, producing winds of up to 360 kph (225 mph).

Mr Mackley was the first to raise fears of disaster when he flew over Tikopia on 1 January, saying it would be a “miracle” if a huge number of deaths had been avoided.

But when he landed on the remote island on Friday, he said he was greeted by people rushing towards him with tales of survival.

“Every single person was alive and there they were, standing in front of me,” he said.

The islanders had apparently sheltered in mountain caves, following a centuries-old practice used by their ancestors during cyclones.

But while the death toll appears to be less than feared, the devastation caused by the cyclone is immense, Mr Mackley said.

“It looks like Hiroshima,” he told The Australian. “Whole villages have been inundated by the sea.”

The villagers told Mr Mackley how their homes and crops had been completely destroyed by waves of up to 10 metres high, and said they would need food aid for another three years.

Supplies of fresh water have also been contaminated by salt water and are only available at low tide, Mr Mackley said.

The true extent of the damage will be assessed when the first rescue boat finally reaches Tikopia and Anuta later on Saturday.

Australia and New Zealand, the two wealthiest nations in the region, have been criticised for delays in assessing the damage.

Both governments have said the sheer isolation of the two islands has hampered rescue efforts.

“How can you decide to parachute supplies in if you don’t have an assessment of what’s required,” an Australian government official said on Friday.

The two islands are part of the impoverished Solomon Islands, an archipelago 2,250 km (1,400 miles) northeast of Sydney, Australia.

Burma’s government said today that at least 15,000 people are dead and 30,000 missing after Tropical Cyclone Nargis hit the country on Saturday. The storm, which struck the capital Yangon and the rice-growing Irrawaddy delta, triggered a tidal wave killing thousands and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. The country’s isolated military junta have allowed in aid agencies to help distribute vital supplies. The UN is discussing how to supply more aid…

Myanmar Holds Election Amid Stench of Death
Ruling Junta Keeps Political Process Going Despite Scores of Dead and Dying

In Myanmar’s Irrawaddy delta, old men lie under crushed tin roofs, flies covering their faces. Nobody has come to help them exactly one week after Cyclone Nagris arrived. Dead bodies litter the sides of rivers, bloated from neglect. The stench of death overwhelms towns.

But 70 miles to the north, in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, two young women smile and dance on state television, a glitzy promotional campaign for a referendum that proceeded today despite the 1.5 million to 2 million Burmese who have no water, food or shelter.

“Let’s go vote … with sincere thoughts for happy days,” the dancers sing, neglecting to mention the fact that for more than 12 million Burmese conditions are so bad the vote could not proceed where they live.

Myanmar’s ruling generals today appeared more interested in promoting the vote that will entrench their rule than they were in the hundreds of thousands of their people who are drinking coconut milk because they have no clean water, who are sleeping under the stars because they have no homes, who haven’t had electricity since the storm hit.

The United Nations today increased its estimates of the number of dead and the number of people who urgently need aid, saying that anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 people have died from the storm. “And that’s not counting any future casualties,” Richard Horsey, the spokesman for the UN’s humanitarian affairs office in Bangkok, said.

“It’s a major disaster, and relief is not getting there fast enough,” Horsey said. Fewer than 500,000 people have received aid, less than a third of the number who need it, he said.

“It’s a race against time,” Horsey said. “There is a huge risk that diarrheal disease, cholera and so on could start to spread, because there is a lack of clean drinking water, a lack of sanitation facilities. This could be a huge problem and it could lead to a second phase which could be as deadly as the cyclone.”

And yet the generals who run Myanmar spent the day posing for cameras, handing out boxes of aid stamped with their names on it and promoting a “yes” vote in the referendum.

Burmese citizens live in fear of a police state, and most of those brave enough to speak to reporters said they had voted yes, meaning they had voted to allot one out of every four parliamentary seats to the military, allow the president to hand over all power to the military in a state of emergency and ban Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who leads the country’s pro-democracy movement, from public office.

“I voted yes. It was what I was asked to do,” 57-year-old U Kyaing said in Hlegu, 30 miles from Yangon.

Aye Aye Mar, a 36-year-old homemaker, was asked by a reporter if she thought anyone would vote no. Her eyes darted around to see if anyone was watching, and then she whispered, “One vote of ‘No’ will not make a difference.”

Then she raised her voice: “I’m saying ‘Yes’ to the constitution.”

There are some signs that aid into the country is slowly increasing.

The United Nations launched its first emergency appeal for the cyclone’s survivors, asking for $187 million.

The International Committee of the Red Cross sent its first shipment into Myanmar, an aid flight with 31 tons of pumps, generators, water tanks and medicine.

And today, the U.N.’s refugee agency delivered its first supplies into the country, via a border crossing in Mae Sot, Thailand. Two trucks full of mostly tents and some relief supplies will take almost a week to get to Rangon, the U.N. said today.

But there are still thousands of aid workers who have not been given visas to enter the country. The Myanmar government has suggested international organizations deliver aid without accompanying workers. But aid groups point out that the devastation is too vast for a government to handle.

TV images taken at the Yangon airport show workers hand-carrying relief supplies off of the few planes that have been allowed to land, a process far too slow for the Burmese in desperate need.

“The country, the areas which were struck by the cyclone, should get the foreign aid,” one villager said in English, his voice rising in anger.

“The aid workers in the country are saying this is just overwhelming,” Horsey said. “The scale of this in comparison to what people are able to do is just overwhelming.”

It is overwhelming local aid workers in towns such as Myaung Mya, where 10,000 survivors have arrived since the storm hit. They sleep next to each other on bare floors, no fires to keep the mosquitoes away.

“How many more days are we going to be able to feed them? People here can barely afford to feed themselves,” one local businessman said.

Shopkeepers are closing before dusk, fearing looters.

“These people have nothing left to lose,” the businessman said. “Maybe they will just go for it.”

More than 10 million people in parts of Thailand’s rice bowl region have been hit by drought, the government said Monday, causing further concerns as prices of the staple grain soar.

Thailand’s Disaster Prevention and Mitigation department reported that 55 of the kingdom’s 76 provinces were struggling with drought, mostly in the central, north and northeastern regions.

More than 151,000 rai (60,000 acres) of farmland has been affected, they said in a statement, including half of the key central rice growing provinces.

Vichien Phantodee, a member of the Thai Farmers Association, said rice farmers have been trying to exploit soaring prices and an increased global demand for the grain.

“Farmers want to plant more rice because the price is so good,” Vichien told AFP. “But the drought does affect rice production, particularly for farmland outside the irrigation areas.”

The first rice harvest of the year in Thailand, the world’s biggest rice exporter, traditionally ends in late March or early April. Farmers then let the fields recover, before planting a second harvest in May.

But as export and domestic rice prices hit record highs, many farmers are trying to plant a third crop or move their second harvest forward to take advantage of the boom.

The benchmark Thai variety, Pathumthani fragrant rice, was priced on April 9 at 956 dollars per tonne for export, up about 50 percent from a month earlier, the Thai Rice Exporters Association said in its price survey.

Three thousand islanders in Papua New Guinea are making preparations to
become the world’s first “climate refugees” and evacuate their home in the
Carteret islands. The UN’s Human Rights Council says the islands are being
eroded by sea waters that are rising due to global warming. Its report
predicts that people will have to abandon the islands over the next few
years and resettle on nearby Bougainville island. The document comes as
delegates from up to 190 nations meet in Bangkok today for UN climate
change talks.

Asian countries curb exports to avoid shortfalls as ‘perfect storm’ nearly doubles price in three months.

Knee-deep in muddy water, her face smeared with sandalwood paste and a broad-brimmed hat for protection against the broiling sun, Samniang Ketia grins broadly at her good fortune to be in the rice growing business as she replants shoots for the next harvest two months off.

The 37-year-old, who leases a small plot of land in Samblong, central Thailand, knows the price of rice has rocketed - in some cases nearly doubling in three months - and that she is about to reap the benefit when she sells what her family does not eat.

But the price rises have a downside and spawned a new phenomenon: rice rustling. One night, one of Samniang’s neighbour’s fields was stripped as it was about to be harvested. Local police have now banned harvesting machines from the roads at night while on the northern plains farmers are camping in their fields, shotguns at the ready.

“I’ve never heard of it happening before, that people have stolen rice,” said Lung Choop, 68, who grows rice on his smallholding. “But it’s happening now because rice is so expensive. I guess I’ll have to guard my own distant fields when they’re ready.”

Across Asia the suddenly stratospheric rice prices have prompted countries to ban exports amid fears that shortages could provoke food riots.

While prices of wheat, corn and other agricultural commodities have surged since the end of 2006, partly because of extra demand for biofuels to offset rising oil prices, rice held fairly steady.

However, prices for the staple food of about 2.5 billion Asian people rocketed two months ago. Thai rice, the global benchmark, which was quoted at just below $400 (£200) a tonne in January rose to $760 (£380) last week.

Aware that shortages of such a vital staple could spell trouble at home, Asian governments have moved to ensure their people get enough to eat at a price they could afford, an insurance policy which has in turn raised prices further.

Late last week, Cambodia banned all exports for two months to ensure “food security”, following the lead of Egypt, a major exporter. Vietnam, which ships 5m tonnes abroad each year, on Friday declared a 20% cut in exports.

India started the ball rolling late last year. With dwindling stocks, the large exporter introduced curbs that effectively banned exports, around 4m tonnes. Pakistan and China also introduced curbs.

Hopes that India would re-enter the market within the next few months were dashed on Thursday when it raised the minimum price for exports from $650 a tonne to $1,000, effectively maintaining the ban, which was escaped only by the foreign currency-earning premium basmati.

The Philippines is potentially among the biggest losers - with 91 million people, it cannot feed itself. After its farmers warned of a looming shortfall Manila’s fast-food outlets offered to serve “half portions” of rice to conserve stocks. The Philippines’ president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, has also pleaded with Vietnam to guarantee 1.5m tonnes of rice this year.

While Indonesians took to the streets of the capital, Jakarta, in protest at rising prices even Thailand, the world’s largest exporter, is bracing itself.

The country produces 30m tonnes of rice a year, and aims to export 8.5m tonnes. Last year 9.5m tonnes was sold abroad and more may be exported this year, prompting ministers to consider curbs. “A rice shortage in the local market is very likely,” said Prasert Kosalwit, director general of the Thai government’s rice department.

Rice shortfalls were reported in southern Thailand as traders from the northern rice belt bought up stocks at inflated prices.

With global rice stocks at their lowest level since 1976, analysts expect price rises to continue until the end of next year. Some analysts predict it could hit $1,000 (£500) a tonne before farmers, spurred by the high prices, plant more crops and increase supplies.

Demand outstripped supply by nearly 2m tonnes last year. The predicted shortfall this year is more than 3m tonnes on the 424m tonnes required.

Across Asia, with its vast and growing population, there is little if any extra land to bring into production, and it may take several years for any “supply response” to materialise.

Growing urbanisation over the longer term in countries such as China and India is cited as a key factor in the shortfall, where the increasingly affluent middle classes demand more meat and dairy products, with land turned over to growing feed for livestock.

Rising wealth in Africa has also become a factor. Oil-rich Nigeria is now the largest importer in Africa, a continent which takes the lion’s share of Thai exports, about 40%. Asia soaks up 35%.

Severe weather across Asia has also damaged production. Record icy temperatures were recorded in China and Vietnam, the latter of which also suffered a pest outbreak. Bangladesh endured a devastating cyclone while Australia suffered a prolonged drought.

“It’s been described as a ‘perfect storm’ of factors that have pushed prices to their highest levels since the 1970s,” said Adam Barclay, of the International Rice Research Institute.

The World Food Programme is also alarmed. The extra cost of feeding the 28 million “poorest of the poor” spread across 14 Asian countries will cost $160m a year and it has asked three dozen donor governments for the cash, part of a $500m global appeal to offset rising food prices.

“The real danger with rising rice prices is that the ‘working poor’ will simply be pushed into the category of ‘poor’ who will look to us to feed them,” said Paul Risley, spokesman for WFP Asia. “There are hundreds of millions living at, or just below, the poverty line of $1-a-day, spending 70% of their day-labour wages on food.

“If food costs double they’ve no opportunity to increase their earnings and no alternative but to reduce what they and their families eat.”

GENEVA - Climate change could erode the human rights of people living in small island states, coastal areas and parts of the world subjected to drought and floods, the U.N. Human Rights Council said on Friday.

In its first consideration of the issue, the 47-member forum endorsed a resolution stressing that global warming threatens the livelihoods and welfare of many of the world’s most vulnerable people.

The proposal from the Maldives, Comoros, Tuvalu, Micronesia and other countries called for “a detailed analytical study of the relationship between climate change and human rights”, to be conducted by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, headed by Louise Arbour.

“Until now, the global discourse on climate change has tended to focus on the physical or natural impacts of climate change,” the Maldives’ ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Abdul Ghafoor Mohamed, told the session.

“The immediate and far-reaching impact of the phenomenon on human beings around the world has been largely neglected,” he said. “It is time to redress this imbalance by highlighting the human face of climate change.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has made the fight against climate change one of his top priorities, and encouraged all U.N. agencies to incorporate it into their work.

Experts say global warming could cause rising sea levels and intense storms, droughts and floods which would restrict access to housing, food and clean water for millions of people.

The Human Rights Council, which wraps up its latest four-week session in Geneva on Friday, also agreed to appoint an independent expert to assess countries’ human rights obligations linked to safe drinking water and sanitation.

Under the resolution introduced by Germany and Spain, that expert will clarify what can be done to stop discrimination in their provision.

“This issue is very important for quite a large number of people,” Doru Romulus Costea, Romania’s ambassador who serves as council president, told a news briefing.

Russia voiced concern that the council’s foray into water and sanitation issues may unduly stretch its agenda and complicate its work, and Canadian diplomat Sarah Geh stressed that setting up the post did not create a human right to water.

U.N. member countries have set a goal of halving the proportion of people who lack access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation services — such as toilets — by 2015.

The European Union is facing a dramatic influx of “eco-immigrants”—those who leave nations that are suffering drought, food shortages and other effects of climate change, to illegally find work in Europe—says a report by the EU’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.

To prepare for increased immigration, the document suggests boosting the EU’s military in response to the “serious security risks” thought to soon arise due to climate change. The report estimates “there will be millions of environmental migrants by 2020.”

“Europe must expect substantially increased migratory pressure,” the report states. “Populations that already suffer from poor health conditions, unemployment or social exclusion are rendered vulnerable to the effects of climate change, which could amplify or trigger migration within and between nations.”

The document also raises concern that more frequent drought, low crop yields, and flooding could lead to increased unrest in the Middle East and Africa.

Individual nations have already been battling the problem of illegal immigration—especially Spain.

Using canoes, small boats and inflatable mattresses, migrants from North Africa attempt a treacherous 12-day journey to reach the Spanish-controlled Canary Islands. Others try to reach Spain’s enclave on the Strait of Gibraltar, Ceuta, or navigate the Strait to reach the Spanish coast.

In 2006, over 31,000 Africans reached the Canary Islands and an estimated 6,000 disappeared or died, according to a UN report (NY Times). However, it is nearly impossible to determine total deaths, because the number who attempt the voyage is unknown.

Waters along the northwest African coast have been dramatically overfished, leaving families that have fished for generations unable to support themselves. Many sell all their belongings and board canoes to Spain—hoping to find work and new lives.
A Spanish human rights group reported that in 2007 there were 921 confirmed deaths among those attempting to illegally enter Spain. Since the beginning of 2008, nearly 2,100 have arrived on the Spanish coastline, mainly from North Africa (El Mundo).

For a second year in a row, the United States has escaped a severe hurricane hit, pushing memories of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans another notch into the past.

But for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, the 2007 hurricane season ending on Friday has hardly been benign.

“No, not at all. The consequences for the poor have been very high,” said Judy Dacruz, a representative in Haiti of the International Organization for Migration.

The 14 tropical storms that formed in the Atlantic this season killed more than 200 people in Martinique, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua and Mexico and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to often impoverished and vulnerable communities throughout the region.

U.S. experts and media have labeled initial predictions the six-month season would be busier than normal “a bust” because only one weak hurricane struck the United States — a far cry from 2005 when a record 28 storms formed, 15 of which strengthened into hurricanes, including Katrina.

The 14 storms beat the long-term average of 10 per season while the number of hurricanes, five — or six if you count Tropical Storm Karen which most weather experts expect will be posthumously upgraded — is about normal.

Yet most of the storms were perplexingly short-lived, lasting on average just 2.4 days, the lowest ratio since 1977, according to a noted hurricane season forecasting team at Colorado State University.

“Our 2007 seasonal hurricane forecast was not particularly successful. We anticipated an above-average season, and the season had activity at approximately average levels,” Philip Klotzbach, Bill Gray and other CSU forecasters said in an end-of-season report on Tuesday. The CSU team had predicted there would be 17 storms this year.

DIFFERENT VIEW

In the Caribbean and Central America, though, few were breathing sighs of relief.

In the Mexican town of Mahahual on the Yucatan Peninsula, Hurricane Dean destroyed a cruise ship pier which had been a key source of income. “Windows, doors, electrical systems — except for the basic structure of the hotel, everything was destroyed by Dean,” said Rodolfo Romero, owner of the boutique Hotel Arenas.

Dean, which became a maximum-strength Category 5 hurricane, killed at least 27 people as it roared through the Caribbean in August and struck the peninsula.

Hurricane Felix in September also became a Category 5 storm on the five-step scale of hurricane intensity, killing 102 and leaving another 133 missing in Nicaragua, according to the Pan-American Health Organization.

Dean and Felix were the first two Atlantic hurricanes since records began in 1851 to make landfall in the same season as Category 5 storms.

The last storm of the season, Noel, soaked the Dominican Republic and Haiti, killing more than 150 people as rivers broke their banks and surged through towns.

“It’s been very busy, especially in Central America but also in the Caribbean,” said Tim Callaghan, a senior official with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Latin America and the Caribbean. “We have provided disaster assistance to Dominica, Belize, St. Lucia, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico.”

Even when no actual storm was swirling somewhere, unusually heavy rainfall characterized the wet season, washing away roads in Jamaica and flooding sugar fields in Cuba.

A rain-swollen river burst its banks at the end of October in Mexico, leaving four-fifths of Tabasco state under water and 800,000 homeless.

“The hurricane season was more intense this year on a regional level as there were states of alert in every country,” said Walter Wintzer, director of the Guatemala-based CEPREDENAC center for disaster prevention in Central America.

TAFALBARI, Bangladesh - International donors pledged hundreds of millions of dollars Wednesday to rebuild Bangladesh’s cyclone-ravaged coast, but help wasn’t coming fast enough for thousands of homeless survivors who fought over meager rice handouts.

The government said it had promises of $390 million in international aid, much of it a $250 million pledge from the World Bank. But relief officials were struggling to get desperately needed rice, drinking water and tents to people in remote villages wrecked by the storm.

In Tafalbari, a dusty collection of crushed tin huts and flooded fields, fistfights erupted in a crowd of villagers who had spent fruitless hours waiting for food outside a relief center.

Several thousand people surrounded the small aid station set up by a local humanitarian group. Workers had to shut the gates against the tide, admitting just a few people at a time.

“I didn’t have enough food before the storm hit. We have hardly eaten at all since the storm,” said one frustrated villager, Juddistir Chandar Das, 45, who lost the home he shared with his wife and three children.

In the nearby village of Purba Saralia, relief officials used clubs to fend off a crush of hungry people pleading for rice.

“I’ve been waiting since dawn. I have nothing to eat and my children are hungry,” said Kabir Howlader, 25, one of thousands who gathered at a fire station that had been converted into a relief center.

Officials at the center said the government had provided only enough rice to feed 1,200 registered residents, but there were far more than that outside the gates.

Abdul Bashar, 62, was not on the government list and would likely not get any rice. “I have nothing to eat; I will have to beg to Allah,” he said.

With most wells of safe drinking water ruined by the cyclone, the need for clean drinking water was becoming critical to ward off deadly waterborne diseases.

“We are concerned about diarrhea,” said Renata Dessallien, the top U.N. official in Bangladesh. “There is no question this will be a problem.”

Health workers were distributing water purification tablets to people as they handed out bottled water, said Mohammad Abdul Baset, a government health official in the town of Barisal.

The storm, which tore along Bangladesh’s southwestern coast Nov. 15, destroyed 458,804 houses and damaged 665,529 more, affecting some 4 million, the government said.

For those awaiting help, the World Bank’s announcement of a huge aid package couldn’t be more urgent.

“Of course Bangladesh is still in the rescue and relief phase, but as it moves into recovery over the next few days, our commitment is a signal to government of the scale of what we can offer if needed,” said Xian Zhu, the World Bank’s director in Bangladesh.

The $250 million will support immediate needs like food, medical care and small loans to fishermen and farmers. But it is also meant for longer-term projects such as building emergency shelters and improving infrastructure, the statement said.

Earlier in the day, the European Union announced $9.6 million in aid. The American Red Cross said it would provide $1.2 million to help get clean water to people and build emergency shelters.

“The problem is that aid workers need hours to reach these remote areas. Poor communications are also hampering our work,” said Anwarul Huq, a spokesman for the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, the country’s largest nonprofit development organization.

In many places, aid workers had to clear fallen trees and debris to get to survivors, Huq said, adding that rescue work also was hampered by a shortage of boats.

The official death toll stood at 3,167, said Lt. Col. Main Ullah Chowdhury, a spokesman for the army, which is coordinating relief and rescue work. The Disaster Management Ministry said 1,724 more people were missing and 28,188 people had been injured.

Local media reports said more than 4,000 people might have been killed. The Bangladesh Red Crescent Society has suggested the final figure could be around 10,000.

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Aid workers struggled Friday to help hundreds of thousands of survivors of a cyclone that blasted Bangladesh with 150 mph winds, killing a reported 1,100 people, savaging coastal towns, and leaving millions without power in the deadliest such storm in more than a decade.

Rescuers — some even employing the brute force of elephants — contended with roads that were washed out or blocked by wind-blown debris to try to get water and food to people stranded by flooding from Tropical Cyclone Sidr.
The damage to livelihood, housing and crops from Sidr will be “extremely severe,” said John Holmes, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, adding that the world body was making millions of dollars in aid available to Bangladesh.

The winds wreaked havoc on the country’s electricity and telephone lines, affecting even areas that were spared a direct hit, and leaving the full picture of the death and destruction unclear.

By late Friday, about 24 hours after the cyclone roared ashore, officials were still struggling to get reports from many of the worst-hit districts.

Dhaka, the capital city of this poor, desperately crowded nation of 150 million people, remained without power. Winds uprooted trees and sent billboards flying through the air, said Ashraful Zaman, an official at the main emergency control room.

The government’s most recent announcement put the death toll at 242, but officials in the Dhaka control room had little up-to-date information. Dalil Uddin of the Ministry of Disaster Management said the official toll would go much higher.

The United News of Bangladesh news agency, which has reporters deployed across the devastated region, said the count from each affected district left an overall death toll of at least 1,100.

Holmes said his U.N. agency believes that more than 20,000 houses have been damaged in the hardest-hit districts, and that the death toll is expected to climb beyond the government’s figures.

About 150 fishing trawlers were unaccounted for, he said.

Hasanul Amin, assistant director of the cyclone preparedness program sponsored by the government and the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, said about a dozen teams had been deployed to the worst-hit areas in the country’s southwest.

But it was slow going. In the village of Sharankhola, some people waited for hours to get dry biscuits and rice, according to Bishnu Prasad, a United News of Bangladesh reporter on the scene.

“We have lost everything,” a farmer, Moshararf Hossain, told Prasad. “We have nowhere to go.”

The cyclone swept in from the Bay of Bengal and roared across the southwestern coast late Thursday with driving rain and high waves, leveling thousands of flimsy huts and destroying crops and fish farms in 15 coastal districts, officials and witnesses said.

Sidr spawned a 4-foot-high storm surge that swept through low-lying areas and some offshore islands, leaving them under water, said Nahid Sultana, an official of the Ministry of Food and Disaster Management.

At least 650,000 coastal villagers had fled to shelters where they were given emergency rations, said senior government official Ali Imam Majumder in Dhaka.

Volunteers from international aid agencies, including the U.N. World Food Program, Save the Children and the U.S.-based Christian aid group World Vision, have joined the relief effort.

World Vision is putting together seven-day relief packages for families that will include rice, oil, sugar, salt, candles and blankets, according to Vince Edwards, the agency’s Bangladesh director.

The World Food Program was sending rations for up to 400,000, Holmes added.

Edwards said debris from the storm has blocked roads and rivers, making it difficult to reach all the areas that had been hit.

“There has been lot of damage to houses made of mud and bamboo, and about 60 to 80 percent of the trees have been uprooted,” Edwards said.

An elephant was pressed into service to help clear a road in Barishal, 75 miles south of Dhaka, pushing a stranded bus and moving a toppled tree.

By Friday night, work had resumed at the country’s two main seaports — Chittagong and Mongla — as well at Chittagong and Dhaka airports, authorities said.

The storm spared India’s eastern coast. Weather officials had forecast only heavy rain and flooding in West Bengal and Orissa states.

Bangladesh is prone to seasonal cyclones and floods that cause huge losses of life and property. In 1970, between 300,000 and 500,000 people were killed by a cyclone, and some 140,000 died in 1991. Dozens of other cyclones have taken more than 60,000 lives since 1960.

The most recent deadly storm was a tornado that leveled 80 villages in northern Bangladesh in 1996, killing 621 people.

After the 1991 cyclone, foreign donors and Bangladeshi government agencies began building emergency shelters — concrete boxes raised on pillars, each able to hold anywhere from a few hundred to 3,000 people.

More than 2,000 shelters have since been built.

Cyclone death toll rises to 1,723

The number of people killed by the cyclone, Sidr, that tore through the country on Thursday has run into 1,723, according to armed forces division.

Death toll exceeds 2,000

A massive search and rescue operation went ahead in southern Bangladesh Saturday, revealing decaying bodies tossed by a devastating cyclone that left at least 2,185 people dead and hundreds missing. More than 5,000 people were injured in the worst-affected coastal belt, rescuers said as thousands of soldiers and civilian volunteers went into action.

At least 300 more bodies were located of people killed in Friday’s cyclone which triggered mudslides and flash floods.

Most deaths occurred in the Patuakhali-Barisal zone and offshore islands where nearly 450 people, including children, were found dead, said a spokesperson of the national flood warning and control centre.

Rescue teams have now reached most of cyclone-hit Bangladesh where the
death toll now stands at 2,400. It is thought that around one million
families have been affected by Cyclone Sidr which struck on Thursday.
There are fears the final toll could be much higher. The storm is believed
to have destroyed rice harvests in many areas, as well as the shrimp farms
and other crops. Cyclone Sidr is the most destructive storm to hit
Bangladesh in more than a decade.

Three million people affected, over 270,000 houses destroyed, the need is enormous.

Oxfam today launches a Bangladesh Cyclone appeal, calling on the British public to donate £2m for the cyclone stricken area.

The appeal comes as the scale of devastation and necessary relief effort becomes apparent. Hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis are returning to their homes to find complete ruin - an estimated 273,000 homes have been lost, crops are damaged and there are increasing water and sanitation concerns.

“The scale of this disaster is enormous,” says Heather Blackwell, head of Oxfam in Bangladesh. “Up to three million people are affected. We are seeing families who have lost everything. The British public are incredibly generous and we urgently need their support to help us save and rebuild people’s lives.”

Oxfam has been working with local partners since Cyclone Sidr struck on Thursday, with teams in the worst-hit southern districts of Daerhat, Pirojpur, Barguna and Patuakhali assessing and providing urgent relief such as sanitation and food and water. The money raised will be used to continue to provide immediate relief to over 80,000 people - essential sanitation, food and water, shelter, well and latrine cleaning, and debris clearing, as well as helping people get back on their feet.

One of the world’s poorest countries, Bangladesh has already faced huge damage from severe floods in July.

“People here are resilient,” says Blackwell. “However the scale is such that it will take months for people to be able to return to their normal lives. With an estimated 75 per cent of crops in the Southern region destroyed, this disaster will require a long-term relief effort. Oxfam will be here working with our partners in months to come.”

Oxfam is concerned that with an increase in global warming, natural disasters such as the one that has hit Bangladesh are becoming more frequent.

“We have seen an unprecedented number of disasters this year and we have seen time and time again that the world’s poorest people are being hit the hardest. The public have responded generously this year. We need them to dig deep again as we scale up our crucial work here.”

DHAKA, Nov. 20 — The death toll from cyclone which hit Bangladesh last Thursday night reached 3,447 at 11 a.m. Tuesday, according to the Bangladesh Army disaster management wing.

The number of injured stood at 3,322 and the missing numbered 1,063, private news agency bdnews24 reported quoting the army report.

Meanwhile, the death toll by the Food and Disaster Management Ministry stood at 2,819 till 1 p.m. Tuesday.

An official of the Ministry said, as the army rescue operation has reached more isolated areas and received more information, their figure over the death caused by the cyclone is higher.

The armed forces have reached 90 percent of the affected areas with rescue and relief mission till Monday, and the helicopters covered most of the remote places.

So far, the armed forces have reached 100 percent of affected sub-districts level and 70 percent of village level.

The terrible cyclone hit more than 20 out of the country’s 64 districts, affecting over 3 million people of 900,000 families, leaving nearly 300,000 homeless.

The deadly cyclone Sidr was one of the fiercest cyclones that had hit the region of Bangladesh in the 131 years between 1876 and 2007.

Bangladesh government Monday made international request to assist the cyclone victims and post-cyclone rehabilitation.

So far, the donor countries and agencies have pledged emergency aid of 140 million U.S. dollars.

• • • Relief Reaches All Bangladesh Cyclone-Hit Areas, Donors Pledge Hundreds of Millions in Aid

Relief workers in Bangladesh say they have reached the last remaining pockets of the country devastated by last week’s cyclone that killed some 3,500 people and displaced millions others.

The military is flying helicopters and cargo planes to deliver badly needed food, medicine, tents and clean water.

Relief officials say many victims have lost everything and will need months to recover. They also warned the death toll could climb significantly after all the victims in isolated areas are accounted for.

The World Bank offered up to $250 million to help the nation recover from the deadly storm, while the United Nations said it had authorized almost $9 million in aid.

The director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, Henrietta Fore is in Dhaka to offer more than $2 million in aid.

Two U.S. naval ships, U.S.S. Essex and The Kearsarge carrying some 30 helicopters are scheduled to arrive in the Bay of Bengal by the end of the week to help distribute 35 tons of emergency aid.

The Australian government pledged $3 million toward emergency relief, while the European Union more than $9.5 million.

Cyclone Sidr is the worst natural disaster in Bangladesh since 1991, when a cyclone and storm surge killed around 143,000 people.

The head of Bangladesh’s emergency government, Fakhruddin Ahmed, said the country was facing a national crisis and called on Bangladeshi citizens to help those in need.

KHUN SAMUT CHIN, Thailand — At Bangkok’s watery gates, Buddhist monks cling to a shrinking spit of land around their temple as they wage war against the relentlessly rising sea.

During the monsoons at high tide, waves hurdle the breakwater of concrete pillars and the inner rock wall around the temple on a promontory in the Gulf of Thailand. Jutting above the water line just ahead are remnants of a village that already has slipped beneath the sea.

Experts say these waters, aided by sinking land, threaten to submerge Thailand’s sprawling capital of more than 10 million people within this century. Bangkok is one of 13 of the world’s largest 20 cities at risk of being swamped as sea levels rise in coming decades, according to warnings at the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change held here.

The city, built on clay rather than bedrock, has been sinking as much as 4 inches annually as its teeming population and factories pump some 2.5 million cubic tons of cheaply priced water, legally and illegally, out of its aquifers. This compacts the layers of clay and causes the land to sink.

Everyone — the government, scientists and environmental groups — agrees Bangkok is headed for trouble, but there is some debate about when.

Once known as the “Venice of the East,” Bangkok was founded 225 years ago on a swampy floodplain along the Chao Phraya River. But beginning in the 1950s, on the advice of international development agencies, most of the canals were filled in to make roads and combat malaria. This fractured the natural drainage system that had helped control Bangkok’s annual monsoon season flooding.

Smith Dharmasaroja, chair of the government’s Committee of National Disaster Warning Administration, urges that work start now on a dike system of more than 60 miles — protective walls about 16 feet high, punctured by water gates and with roads on top, not unlike the dikes long used in low-lying Netherlands to ward off the sea. The dikes would run on both banks of the Chao Phraya River and then fork to the right and left at the mouth of the river.

Oceanographer Anond Snidvongs, a leading scientist in the field, says other options must also be explored, including water-diversion channels, more upcountry dams and the “monkey cheeks” idea of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The king, among the first to alert Bangkokians about the yearly flooding, has suggested diverting off-flow from the surges into reservoirs, the “cheeks,” for later release into the gulf.

As authorities ponder, communities like Khun Samut Chin, 12 miles from downtown Bangkok, are taking action.

The five monks at the temple and surrounding villagers are building the barriers from locally collected donations and planting mangrove trees to halt shoreline erosion.

The odds are against them. About half a mile of shoreline has already been lost over the past three decades, in large part due to the destruction of once-vast mangrove forests. The abbot, Somnuk Attipanyo, says about one-third of the village’s original population was forced to move.

Endangered cities

Cities around the world are facing the danger of rising seas and other disasters related to climate change. Thirty-three cities are predicted to have at least 8 million people by 2015. According to studies by the United Nations and others, these 18 are among those considered to be highly vulnerable:

City Country

Dhaka Bangladesh
Buenos Aires Argentina
Rio de Janeiro Brazil
Shanghai, Tianjin China
Alexandria, Cairo Egypt
Mumbai, Calcutta India
Jakarta Indonesia
Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe Japan
Lagos Nigeria
Karachi Pakistan
Bangkok Thailand
New York, Los Angeles U.S.

Torrential downpours caused “Rio Grande de Matagalpa” river to grow 9 metres and overflow the town damaging infrastructure and ruining crops throughout the area. That forced Pres. Ortega to declare a state of disaster.

President Daniel Ortega declared a state of disaster after days of incessant rains in Nicaragua left at least nine people dead and thousands homeless in the Nicaraguan department of Matagalpa.

“We are declaring a state of disaster and not a state of emergency,” he said, adding “a state of emergency limits the rights of the citizens and here we are not limiting any right to any citizen.”

The torrential downpours caused the “Rio Grande de Matagalpa” river to grow some nine metres and overflow into the town damaging infrastructure and ruining crops throughout the area.

The strong currents have caused vehicles to overturn on the roads and dragged makeshift homes, cars and household appliances into the river.

The situation has still caught many residents off guard, and rescue teams have been working constantly in order to help the local inhabitants.

“Nobody was prepared, some of us were coming back from work and suddenly we realised the river had overflowed and it began creating havoc,” a local resident told Nicaraguan television.

Rio Grande de Matagalpa which borders the city by the same name, has some of the strongest currents in the area.

Ortega meanwhile met in Managua with a Venezuelan delegation in Nicaragua to help assess the damages in Matapalga and other districts of the country affected by the floods which destroyed several neighbourhoods and toppled bridges.

The Nicaraguan president asked his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez for help in dealing with the situation.

Chavez said a team had been sent to Nicaragua to help his delegation assess the overall damages.

Heavy rains meanwhile continued to fall throughout the country, including the capital.

The city’s mayor Dionisio Marenci said that if it continued to rain, floods could force the closing down of the Sandino international airport.

The recent damages caused by the constant rains throughout the region have affected thousands of Nicaraguans who were still trying to recuperate from the damage caused by Hurricane Felix last month.

Dhaka – Shawwal 06, 1428/ October 17, 2007 – At least 100 people were feared drowned after an overcrowded ferry capsized in southern Bangladesh yesterday, officials said.
Witnesses said more than 100 people, many holidaymakers, were trapped in the sunken vessel. The ferry with about 250 people on board was caught in a tropical storm in Shariatpur district, nearly 85 km south of the capital Dhaka, officials said. Meanwhile, a powerful rainstorm also killed at least 18 people in mudslides and house collapses and injured 100, officials said yesterday. A woman and her two children were among those killed in a mudslide at Betbunia in the southeast.
Weather officials said nearly 225 mm of rain fell overnight in Chittagong port city, severing road links with the Chittagong Hill Tracts further to the southeast. The storm originating in the Bay of Bengal made landfall around Monday midnight, a weather official said, adding more rains were forecast across the country over the next couple of days. At least 20 fishing boats were reported missing at sea, police said. Streets in Chittagong were under knee-deep water, forcing authorities to shut down offices and schools, a resident said by telephone from the city. Normal life was also disrupted at Cox’s Bazar, the country’s main tourist resort, following the rainstorm.

Torrential rains, floods kill 20 in Central America
Thousands flee homes as fresh floods hit Bangladesh
Floods kill at least 31 in Haiti
N.Korea floods left 600 people dead or missing
Dozens killed in worst Vietnam floods in decades

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, Oct 14 - Emergency officials across Central America worked to clean up towns inundated by recent deadly floods and landslides, and braced for more bad weather on Sunday.

At least 20 people were killed and thousands evacuated across Central America after days of torrential rain sparked landslides and flooding.

The same weather system that killed 23 people in a Haitian village on Friday triggered a landslide that buried 14 people under mud and debris in Costa Rica.

Red Cross workers had been digging through the debris since Thursday, when about 2.5 acres (1 hectare) of land on a steep slope gave way and fell on the small town of Atenas, about 20 miles (30 km) west of the Costa Rican capital.

“We found the last body this afternoon,” Red Cross spokesman Federico Castillo said on Sunday.

Heavy rains put emergency services on high alert across the region as rivers burst their banks and sodden hillsides collapsed, blocking roads across the region, which is prone to killer storms and flooding.

Forecasters warned the weather could worsen Sunday evening.

“There is some potential for this system to become a tropical depression later today or tonight,” said the Miami-based U.S. National Hurricane Center.

In Honduras, three children and their mother drowned on Saturday when an overloaded boat evacuating them capsized in a flooded river, rescue workers said.

Mudslides cut off thousands of villagers in poor rural regions of the coffee exporting nation. No damage to crops was reported.

El Salvador was also hit, with two men swept away by strong currents in two rivers swollen by the rains. Civil protection officials said about 500 people were evacuated because of the risk of rivers overflowing.

In Nicaragua, at least 4,000 people were evacuated when a banana growing region was put on red alert because of the flood risk. At least 10,000 people were considered at risk in Nicaragua.

Emergency service workers rushed villagers from their homes near the Casita volcano, the site of a devastating mudslide that killed close to 2,000 in 1998’s Hurricane Mitch.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, was worst hit.

The loss of life in Cabaret, nestled in mountains about 19 miles (30 km) north of capital Port-au-Prince, brought the toll from floods and mudslides across much of Haiti over the last two weeks to at least 31, civil protection officials said.

What was done
Polk et al. analyzed environmental changes on Belize’s Vaca Plateau via “vegetation reconstruction using δ13C values of fulvic acids extracted from cave sediments,” which provide “a proxy record of Maya alteration of the environment through agricultural practices,” in conjunction with “speleothem carbon and oxygen isotope data from another nearby cave in the study area” that “provide information regarding climate variability.”

What was learned
Starting at approximately AD 500, according to the three US researchers, increasingly more negative δ13C values in the sediment record indicate “the declining practice of agriculture,” which they say is “characteristic of a C3-dominated environment receiving little contribution from the isotopically heavier C4 agricultural plants.” This inference makes sense, because (1) the period of initial agricultural decline coincides with the well-known Maya Hiatus of AD 530 to 650, which was driven by an increasing “lack of available water resources needed to sustain agriculture,” and (2) the study area “would likely have been among the first sites to be affected by aridity due to its naturally well-drained upland terrain, causing a shift away from agricultural land use that preceded [that of] many other lowland areas.”

In line with this scenario, it is not at all surprising Polk et al. report that as early as AD 800 their δ13C values indicate the Vaca Plateau “was no longer used for agriculture, coinciding with the Terminal Classic Collapse” of the Maya, which Hodell et al. (2007) identify as occurring, in total, between AD 750 and 1050. These latter figures thus indicate that the Ix Chel archaeological site on the Vaca Plateau was, indeed, one of the very first sites to say goodbye to the Maya people, as the recurring and intensifying droughts of the Medieval Warm Period gradually squeezed the life out of the Maya’s waning culture.

What it means
The results of the study of Polk et al. are just another example of the devastating human consequences of the catastrophic droughts that plagued many parts of North, Central and northern tropical South America during the globe-girdling Medieval Warm Period; but as such, they constitute yet another important testament to the reality of the Medieval Warm Period and its “globe-girdling” nature.

CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh — Hundreds of thousands of people in southern Bangladesh fled their homes in panic fearing a tsunami after a major earthquake off Indonesia, officials said on Wednesday.

Local officials said some 600,000 people rushed from coastal regions of the disaster-prone country following a government tsunami warning.

Police with loud-hailers raised the alarm after the 8.4-magnitude earthquake hundreds of miles (kilometres) south in the Indian Ocean.

“Around half-a-million have left their homes. They’ve taken shelter in schools, colleges, cyclone shelters and relatives’ houses,” said Chittagong district administrator Ashraf Shamim.

“There’s a panic but we’re using loudspeakers to ask people to take shelter in safe places.”

An urgent government warning that a tsunami could hit after midnight was repeated frequently by both state and private television and radio stations. It was finally cancelled at 1:30 am Thursday (1930 GMT).

Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and India also issued tsunami alerts but cancelled them hours earlier as the threat of giant waves receded.

“We started using loud-hailers at 8:00 pm (1400 GMT) after the government’s order,” said Mahbubur Rahman, police chief of the southern island of Sandweep.

“So far some 70,000 people have been evacuated to cyclone shelters, colleges, schools and government administrative buildings.

“They have left their homes and are huddled together at the centers.”

The US Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued an alert for the entire Indian Ocean area including Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and the Maldives — all affected by the devastating December 2004 Asian tsunami.

But the centre said later that the danger had passed.

Bangladesh, a frequent victim of flooding and ferry disasters, escaped the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami which killed 220,000 people in a dozen countries after another massive earthquake off Indonesia’s Sumatra island.

But officials, unwilling to take chances, opened disaster control rooms in the capital and the districts to coordinate the evacuation after Wednesday’s quake.

“The district administrations in the coastal areas have been ordered to open temporary shelters so that people can stay the night there,” said government press spokesman Mahbub Kabir.

Tens of thousands were ordered to take shelter in the southern district of Cox’s Bazar, while ships were ordered to stay close to harbour in Chittagong, home of the country’s largest port.

“It’s massive work. But we are going to take all the people to safe places,” said Chittagong official Shamim.