Hurricane Raymond swirls off Mexico, dumps heavy rain on Acapulco – ‘If Raymond carries on moving at this speed and the cold front keeps holding it, we’ll have permanent rain for the next 72 hours’

By David Alire Garcia, Reuters21 October 2013 ACAPULCO, Mexico (NBC News) – Ports were closed, school classes were suspended and hundreds of people were evacuated Monday along Mexico’s southern Pacific coast as a major hurricane loomed over a region still recovering from record flooding a few weeks ago. Raymond, a category three hurricane, was stationary […]

Water radiation soars at Fukushima nuclear plant – Strontium readings spike 6,500-fold in one day

FUKUSHIMA (AFP-JIJI) – Radiation levels in groundwater under Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant are soaring, Tepco said Friday after taking samples from an observation well. Tepco said 400,000 becquerels per liter of beta ray-emitting substances such as strontium were detected in water sampled Thursday from the well located some 15 meters […]

Cyclone Phailin impact spreads, thousands stranded by floods – ‘The paddy crop has been destroyed completely’

By Nita Bhalla in NEW DELHI and Manoj Chaurasia in PATNA15 October 2013 BHUBANESWAR, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Thousands of people were left stranded by floods on Tuesday as the powerful cyclone which pounded the east coast over the weekend moved inland, bringing heavy rains and hindering rescue and relief operations, aid workers and […]

Cost of flood insurance rises, along with worries – ‘The flood insurance program is one big storm away from not existing at all’

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ and CAMPBELL ROBERTSON12 October 2013 MIAMI (The New York Times) — Sharp increases in federal flood insurance rates are distressing coastal homeowners from Hawaii to New England and are starting to hurt property values and housing sales in areas just beginning to recover from the recession, according to residents and legislators. In […]

Cyclone Phailin leaves widespread damage in India – Hundreds of thousands of homes washed away – ‘There are no farms left. Everything has disappeared into the water.’

13 October 2013 (AP) – People in India began sorting through the wreckage Sunday after Cyclone Phailin roared ashore, flooding towns and villages and destroying tens of thousands of thatch homes, but officials said the country had been spared the widespread loss of life that many had feared. About 18 hours after the storm — […]

Cyclone Phailin battering India, turns deadly – 600,000 people evacuated, 12 million people likely to be affected

By Eric Leister, Meteorologist12 October 2013 (AccuWeather) – Tropical Cyclone Phailin has made landfall in northeastern India, where a catastrophe threatens to unfold and deaths are already being reported. Destructive winds well over 160 kph (100 mph) and flooding rain of at least 100-200 mm (4-8 inches) is expected across a wide area. There will […]

Typhoon Phailin bearing down on India with winds and rain – ‘It’s going to cause pretty complete devastation on the coast where it hits’

KENDRAPARA, India, 11 October 2013 (UPI) – Rough seas forced fishing vessels to return to port Friday as Typhoon Phailin bore down on India’s Bay of Bengal, officials said. Four fishermen were rescued a day after their ship capsized near the Gahirmatha and Bhitarkanika marine sanctuaries, Paradip marine fisheries officer Ranjit Keshari Dash told Press […]

Flooding is costliest disaster ever in Mexico at $5.7 billion – At least 3 percent of farmland destroyed

By Luis Rojas, with additional reporting by Miguel Gutierrez; Writing by Dave Graham; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz27 September 2013 MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Severe flooding that hit Mexico this month is likely to knock off about 0.1 percentage point from growth in 2013, with reconstruction efforts in the final quarter helping to dampen the impact, […]

Heavy rains spawned by Typhoon Usagi kill 36 in Vietnam, Cambodia

HANOI, 24 September  2013 (AFP) – Heavy monsoon rains exacerbated by Typhoon Usagi have pounded parts of Vietnam and Cambodia killing at least 36 people, authorities said Tuesday, with many swept to their deaths in floods. Despite not being directly hit by Usagi — the world’s most powerful storm this year — parts of Southeast […]

Mexico storms death toll rises to 123 – 613,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of planted land ‘completely lost’

By Luis Enrique Martinez, with additional reporting by David Alire Garcia and Noe Torres23 September 2013 ACAPULCO (Reuters) – The death toll from a pair of storms that flooded much of Mexico rose to 123 on Monday, and large tracts of farmland were declared lost as the country cleans up some of the worst storm […]

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