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major disaster

More than 1,000 homes have been destroyed in Bangladesh as Cyclone Fani hit the Asian country.

At least five people died and 63 were injured.

With more than a million people evacuated to safety, the director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department said “fear of a major disaster is mostly over”.

Cyclone Fani was downgraded to a depression as it swept north-eastwards from India into Bangladesh on May 4, but was still powerful enough to submerge dozens of villages on the low lying coast.

Gusts of up to 43mph were registered.

Image source: Wikipedia

Cyclone Winston Hits Fiji as Category Five Storm

Cyclone Chapala Hits Yemen Mainland with Hurricane-Force Winds

Houses were also destroyed in the Noakhali district, where 30 people were injured and two children killed, one aged 12 and another two years old.

India also moved more than a million people to safety to avoid Cyclone Fani.

A least 16 people were killed by the storm when it hit India on May 3, but officials said the loss of life could have been far worse.

In 1999, a super-cyclone in the Bay of Bengal ravaged the coast of Orissa for 30 hours and killed 10,000 people.

Early cyclone warning systems have since improved, giving authorities more time to evacuate people. The chief minister of Orissa said this was one of the largest evacuations in human history.

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President Barack Obama has declared a major disaster in West Virginia, where the worst floods in more than a century have left at least 24 people dead.

The president ordered federal aid for three of the worst affected counties following a request by Governor Earl Ray Tomblin.

West Virginia residents will now receive grants for temporary housing and repairs.

More than 30,000 homes and businesses are without power.

Heavy rain on June 23 turned rivers and streams into torrents, cutting off several towns.

Photo abc7

Photo abc7

The floods are the worst in a century in some areas and hundreds of people have had to be rescued.

President Barack Obama “ordered federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts in the area affected by severe storms, flooding, landslides and mudslides”, a White House statement said.

Governor Tomblin said the federal help included medical support and housing to Kanawha, Greenbrier and Nicholas counties.

Officials were still assessing the damage in other areas and additional requests for aid could follow, the governor added.

West Virginia received a quarter of its annual rainfall in a single day, the US National Weather Service said.

A storm system dumped up to 10 inches of rain on parts of the state, causing rivers and streams to overflow.

More than 100 homes were destroyed, some of them torn from their foundations and carried away, and an estimated 32,000 residences were still without power.

Teams removed people from upper-floor windows, tops of trees and cars.

According to officials, among those rescued were a 97-year-old woman and a family of five, including an infant.

About 500 people were trapped in a shopping centre as crews scrambled to build a new gravel road to reach them.

Meanwhile, rescue teams continued to try to reach others stranded in devastated areas.

States of emergency have been declared in 44 of the state’s 55 counties, and up to 500 soldiers have been authorized to assist in the rescue operations.

President Barack Obama declared that a “major disaster” exists in New York state following Superstorm Sandy, freeing up federal aid for victims.

The declaration came after the massive storm battered the east coast of the United States, flooding lower Manhattan and leaving a half million people in New York City without power.

Hurricane Sandy swept a wall of churning sea water and driving rain onto a vast swathe of the coastline, flooding the heart of New York and leaving at least 13 dead and millions without power

The huge storm stretched over hundreds of miles and paralyzed several major cities as it brought coastal flooding and hurricane-force winds to the densely-populated East Coast and blizzards to the mountainous interior.

Seawater coursed between the iconic skyscrapers of New York’s financial district in lower Manhattan, flooding subways and road tunnels and shorting out the power grid, plunging more than six million households into darkness.

Further south, the sea surged over vast swathes of the eastern seaboard, turning coastal cities into ghost towns as the high winds grounded airplanes and shut down rail links, public transport and government offices.

The catastrophe completely overshadowed the US election race, forcing a halt to campaigning a week before Americans are due to go to the polls to choose between President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney.

Hurricane Sandy had killed 67 people as it tore through the Caribbean, and reports of more deaths began to arrive after it made landfall at 8:00 p.m. in New Jersey and began to wreak havoc in the United States.

Local officials in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and North Carolina reported 13 dead in storm related incidents, and Toronto police said a Canadian woman was killed by flying debris.

Authorities warned the threat to life and property was “unprecedented” and ordered hundreds of thousands of residents in areas from New England to North Carolina to evacuate their homes and seek shelter.

The National Hurricane Center said wind speeds inside Sandy dropped as the storm became a post-tropical cyclone, but remained hurricane-force at 75 miles per hour (120 km/h) after it made landfall near casino resort Atlantic City.

President Barack Obama declared that a "major disaster" exists in New York state following Superstorm Sandy

President Barack Obama declared that a “major disaster” exists in New York state following Superstorm Sandy

Falling trees tore down power cables, plunging what weather experts said were millions of homes into darkness, while storm warnings cut rail links and marooned tens of thousands of travelers at airports across the region.

A nuclear power plant in New Jersey declared an alert as waters rose.

The Oyster Creek nuclear power plant, just north of Atlantic City, was already on a scheduled outage as Sandy made landfall, and the industry regulator said there was no immediate danger.

The hurricane sent a record storm surge of 13.7 feet (4.15 meters) into lower Manhattan, flooding seven major subway tunnels used by hundreds of thousands of daily commuters and swamping cars in the financial district.

“The New York City subway system is 108 years old, but it has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced last night,” city transport director Joseph Lhota said early Tuesday.

Hours earlier, a power sub-station exploded in a burst of light captured by amateur photographers as a massive blackout left much of Manhattan, and some 500,000 homes across New York City, in darkness.

The flood waters had begun to recede early Tuesday, but the Con Edison power company said it could take a week to completely restore power.

Disaster estimating firm Eqecat forecast that Sandy would affect more than 60 million Americans, a fifth of the population, and cause up to $20 billion in damage.

Refineries closed and major arteries such New York’s Holland Tunnel were shut to traffic. The operator of two major New Jersey nuclear plants said they might have to be closed, threatening half the state’s power supply.

The New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the futures markets in Chicago were closed for Monday and Tuesday, along with federal government offices and the entire Amtrak rail network on the eastern seaboard.

Barack Obama urged Americans to heed local evacuation orders as he stepped off the campaign trail and spent the day in the White House helping to coordinate the response to the disaster.

“The election will take care of itself next week,” Barack Obama said.

“Right now, our number one priority is to make sure that we are saving lives… and that we respond as quickly as possible to get the economy back on track.”

Both the Democratic incumbent and his Republican rival Mitt Romney were keen to display resolute leadership in the face of the storm, given the memory of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Mitt Romney also canceled some appearances.

Former president George W. Bush was widely seen as having bungled the handling of Katrina, which devastated New Orleans. The failure of authorities in the ensuing emergency response tainted the rest of his presidency.

Barack Obama has signed emergency declarations to free up federal disaster funds for New York state, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, the District of Columbia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and West Virginia.

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Russia has decided to have a day of mourning for the victims of the flash floods in southern Krasnodar region.

At least 171 people were killed in the disaster, officials said on Sunday.

President Vladimir Putin has ordered an enquiry into whether people were given enough warning of the disaster. A separate criminal investigation is under way into possible negligence.

Officials deny allegations blaming the ferocity of the floods on the opening of reservoir sluice gates.

The day of mourning and enquiry were called by Vladimir Putin after he toured the affected area in a helicopter on Saturday.

Russia has decided to have a day of mourning for the victims of the flash floods in southern Krasnodar region

Russia has decided to have a day of mourning for the victims of the flash floods in southern Krasnodar region

It was the first major disaster in Russia since Vladimir Putin, 59, returned for a third-term earlier this year, after a four-year term as prime minister.

The flash floods, the worst in living memory in the region, struck in the Krasnodar region on Friday night, after days of torrential rain. People were reportedly given little or no warning.

The rains dumped as much as 28 cm (11 inches) of water overnight, forcing many residents to take refuge in trees or on house roofs.

TV pictures later showed thousands of houses almost completely submerged with people scrambling onto their rooftops to escape the rising waters.

Most of those who died were in and around Krymsk, a town of 57,000 people. But deaths were also reported in the Black Sea resort of Gelendzhik and in the port town of Novorossiysk.

Krasnodar governor Alexander Tkachev said on Sunday that more than 24,000 people had been affected by the floods, according to Russian media reports. The regional authorities say more than 5,000 houses were inundated.

“It’s an unprecedented tragedy. There has been nothing like it in our history,” Alexander Tkachev said.

Local activists blamed the ferocity of the flood on the opening of sluice gates at the local reservoir.

The authorities admitted that an “automatic discharge” of water had taken place.

However, investigator Ivan Sengerov said on Sunday it was not thought that this was the main cause of the disaster in Krymsk, the Interfax news agency reports.

“The discharges were carried out in a normal, planned manner,” he told the agency.

“There was no overflow over the dam, so the discharges could not have caused the disaster.”

More than 7,000 Russian children were attending summer camps in the area and one of the camps was evacuated, Russian media reported.

Oil pipeline operator Transneft said it had halted crude shipments out of Novorossiysk – a major port on the Black Sea.

But the company added that that its infrastructure had been unaffected by the weather.

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