Cyclone Nargis death toll in the tens of thousands
A disaster of staggering magnitude continues to unfold in Myanmar, where the death toll from Tropical Cyclone Nargis exceeds 22,000. In one city alone--Bogalay, about 50 miles southwest of the capital of Yangon--10,000 people are thought to have died. Bogalay is a decrepit city of 100,000 that lies at the head of a estuary that leads to the sea. No doubt this narrow waterway served to funnel a storm surge over ten feet high into the city. News reports have not yet been received from the coast southeast of Yangon, which also received a significant storm surge, and the toll from Nargis is certain to go much higher.
Nargis hit the coast of Myanmar Friday night as powerful Category 3 cyclone with winds of 130 mph. The cyclone took the worst possible track, passing directly over the densely populated and low lying Irrawaddy River delta. A deadly storm surge--probably around 12 feet high--inundated the delta region, accounting for most of the deaths. The storm's fierce winds killed many more. The only fortunate thing about Nargis was its small size. Hurricane-force winds covered an area about 90 miles in diameter (Figure 1). In contrast, the wind field of Katrina at landfall spanned an area about 205 miles in diameter. Winds from both storms at landfall were about the same (strong Category 3), but Katrina's winds covered an area four times larger than Nargis.
Figure 1. The wind field (black contours, in knots) of Nargis shortly after landfall, when it was a Category 3 storm with top winds of 105 knots (120 mph). Hurricane force winds (red wind barbs) spanned an area about 90 miles in diameter. Image credit: CSU/CIRA/RAMMB.
Loss of the rice harvest
Nargis' arrival came at the worst time possible, during the winter bora rice crop harvest. This crop, planted in January, and very heavily focused in the Irrawaddy River delta, was significantly affected by Nargis. Rice prices have nearly tripled in the past year, and now Myanmar must wait until the summer rice crop is harvested in September and October before adequate supplies of rice will be at hand. The impact will spread beyond Myanmar, since they export rice to Banladesh and Sri Lanka, according to Reuters.
Comments from Chris Burt
I've been in regular communication about this disaster with Chris Burt, author of the excellent book Extreme Weather. He has been visiting Myanmar every year for 30 years, and has much insight on the situation there:
Note this: No word yet about casualties from the Mon or Karen States; those areas not in the Delta region but to the SE of Rangoon where a major storm surge and flooding from rains may have occurred.
The government considers these areas 'minority states' and these states have traditionally been looked down upon by ethnic Burmese, They are heavily populated. I will bet they will be the last areas to receive aid, and the last regions from which we hear news so far as storm damage is concerned.
I might add this is indicative of just how bad the situation in Burma is. People who are not aware of the isolation of Myanmar, one of the largest most populated countries in the world, will not be able to grasp the gravity of this disaster. It is a country under the thumb of complete ignorants: the leaders of this county have NEVER traveled outside of Burma before. They have no education whatsoever. They live in a dream world of astrology and have maintained their control by funneling all the nation's vast resources to crony patronage and the military. China is their only steadfast friend in the international arena. Even Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and India who do business with this regime do so at hands length.
If you can understand what I am saying here you will understand just how bad the situation is.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 — Blog Index
That's almost 50-Cents for each of the 6-million people devestated by the cyclone. It's nearly enough to provide a days worth of food (as long as rice and beans are OK) or to stock 100 tiny medical clinics for a day.
Lets see... after Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. got from overseas aid:
$100 million in cash - United Arab Emirates
$50 Million in cash - Kuwait
$5 Million in cash - China
$5 Million in cash - Bahrain
$3.8 Million in cash - South Korea
$2 Million in cash - Taiwan
Myanmar just had a much more devestating cyclone (not saying that N.O. isn't important, but in terms of lives lost). The U.S. government plan to give $3 Million in aid. How generous!
I wonder where that will put us on the list of nations offering assistance? #25 or #30 probably on that list... just after Morrocco and Ghana.
:>) Keep smiling.
..I love the smell O sulfur in the morning
from the entry above,Dr. Masters
Nargis hit the coast of Myanmar Friday night as powerful Category 3 cyclone with winds of 130 mph. The cyclone took the worst possible track, passing directly over the densely populated and low lying Irrawaddy River delta. A deadly storm surge--probably around 12 feet high--inundated the delta region, accounting for most of the deaths. The storm's fierce winds killed many more. The only fortunate thing about Nargis was its small size. Hurricane-force winds covered an area about 90 miles in diameter (Figure 1). In contrast, the wind field of Katrina at landfall spanned an area about 205 miles in diameter. Winds from both storms at landfall were about the same (strong Category 3), but Katrina's winds covered an area four times larger than Nargis.
We do.
GOM 120 Hour Surface Current Forecast Model
Fla Included.Area Specific. Just Clicka yer spot of choice. Link
however, the predicted production rate from ANWR would be about 1.4MMbbl/day. Production, using the lowest possible estimate numbers, would then last for 8285 days, give or take. Certainly worth the effort...
??
--your numbers multiply to about 11.6 billion barrels, more than a billion barrels more than what's predicted to be in the Refuge
--even if oil drillers to start today, there would be no production for 7 to 12 years, or more.
--worth the effort for less than 15% of our oil consumption? Maybe.
A column of ash billows over Chile's Chaiten volcano on Sunday.
1 of 3 President Michelle Bachelet interrupted a speech in the capital to announce that "the volcano is exploding so a total evacuation of the town of Chaiten has been ordered."
Experts say that while some lava has appeared, it is not yet oozing down the volcano's sides but remains at crater level. They say that pyroclastic material -- hot gas and rock -- is being expelled.
Volcanologist Juan Cayupi said the strong eruption early Tuesday widened the volcano's two small craters into a large, single one. He spoke from near the volcano, after police and air force helicopters flew over the 4,000-foot (1,200-meter) mountain.
Chaiten is just 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the volcano in southern Chile.
More than 4,000 people had fled earlier and the few remaining were being transferred to two navy ships. Watch huge cloud of ash boil out of volcano »
Palena province Gov. Fernando Aguilar said some people were resisting, but "everybody must leave."
On Sunday, Bachelet toured shelters packed with evacuees fleeing the eruption, as Chaiten continued to blast ash into the sky.
Evacuees sought their president's support to rebuild the town of Chaiten outside the path of the like-named volcano, which sprung to life Thursday for the first time in thousands of years. Chaiten neighborhood association leader Lorenzo Maureira was among those suggesting the town of 4,500 should be moved.
But Bachelet said it was too early to decide on relocating the town.
Roiling clouds of volcanic ash loomed overhead as Bachelet briefly visited Chaiten and spoke with a few remaining residents.
Don't Miss
Kilauea's toxic gas kills crops, sickens islanders
Thousands flee erupting Colombian volcano
Police and soldiers patrolled deserted streets to keep looters from stores and homes, while preparations were made to evacuate the mountain village of Futaleufu near Chile's border with Argentina, Bachelet said. Her attempt to reach that village was frustrated by lack of visibility.
Visiting Puerto Montt on Sunday, the president vowed to provide evacuees with cash subsidies, food, shelter and medical care, though she gave no details and unveiled no specific aid package.
"The people of Chaiten deserve a round of applause," Bachelet said, praising their orderly evacuation.
Most of Chaiten's residents fled as the initial eruption cloaked their corner of the Los Lagos region with a thick layer of ash -- polluting the air and water supply.
Police said Sunday that a 92-year-old woman died of a heart attack aboard a navy boat as she was evacuated.
Experts estimate that Chaiten last erupted at least 9,000 years ago.
Poor Levee design and structural failures flooded the City ..Ya must missed the report.All the outfall canal Levees failed at Cat 2 Water Heights. Not at the CAt-3 design Limit. ,respectfully. Link
Katrina Report Blames Levees
Army Corps Of Engineers: 'We've Had A Catastrophic Failure'
NEW ORLEANS, June 1, 2006
A new report released by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers June 1, 2006, admits failures in the hurricane protection system during Hurricane Katrina. (AP)
(CBS/AP) A contrite U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took responsibility Thursday for the flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and said the levees failed because they were built in a disjointed fashion using outdated data. Link
TIME
..for Light reading.
The Threatening Storm
By MICHAEL GRUNWALD Link
The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2. The city's defenses should have withstood its surges, and if they had we never would have seen the squalor in the Superdome, the desperation on the rooftops, the shocking tableau of the Mardi Gras city underwater for weeks. We never would have heard the comment "Heckuva job, Brownie." The Federal Emergency Management Agency (fema) was the scapegoat, but the real culprit was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which bungled the levees that formed the city's man-made defenses and ravaged the wetlands that once formed its natural defenses. Americans were outraged by the government's response, but they still haven't come to grips with the government's responsibility for the catastrophe.
They should. Two years after Katrina, the effort to protect coastal Louisiana from storms and restore its vanishing wetlands has become one of the biggest government extravaganzas since the moon mission—and the Army Corps is running the show, with more money and power than ever. Many of the same coastal scientists and engineers who sounded alarms about the vulnerability of New Orleans long before Katrina are warning that the Army Corps is poised to repeat its mistakes—and extend them along the entire Louisiana coast. If you liked Katrina, they say, you'll love what's coming next.
Before Katrina, the Corps was spending more in Louisiana than in any other state, but much of it was going to wasteful and destructive pork instead of protection for New Orleans; one Corps project actually intensified Katrina's surge. After Katrina, a series of investigations ripped the Corps for building flimsy floodwalls in soggy soils, based on wildly flawed analyses—and shoddy engineering was only one way the Corps betrayed New Orleans. But while fema director Michael Brown's resignation made front-page news, Corps commander Carl Strock's resignation hardly made the papers. By the time Strock admitted his agency's "catastrophic failure" eight months after the storm, the U.S. had moved on.
I'm not going to answer that. If you are old enough and smart enough to use a computer, you should already know the answer to that question. If you don't, no amount of explaining will enlighten you.
Life does have a way of teaching people lessons that they need to learn. Please make sure I'm not on the plane with you when that happens.
The US dollar status with world currencies:
1.00 USD = 10.7624 MXN Peso
1.00 USD = 0.650470 EUR Euro
1.00 USD = 0.990710 CAD Canada
1.00 USD = 7.10600 CNY China Yuan
1.00 USD = 103.157 JPY Japan Yen
1.00 USD = 40.4100 INR India rupees
1.00 USD = 23.8484 RUB Russian Rubies
1.00 USD = 1.02995 CHF Switzerland Francs
1.00 USD = 7.78747 ZAR S. African Rand
As of 3/12/08.
1.00 USD = 10.5337 MXN Peso (LOSS)
1.00 USD = 0.633070 EUR Euro (LOSS)
1.00 USD = 1.02150 CAD Canada (GAIN)
1.00 USD = 7.00650 CNY China Yuan (LOSS)
1.00 USD = 100.975 JPY Japan Yen (LOSS)
1.00 USD = 39.9400 INR India rupees (LOSS)
1.00 USD = 23.4755 RUB Russian Rubies (LOSS)
1.00 USD = 1.00115 CHF Switzerland Francs (LOSS)
1.00 USD = 7.80890 ZAR S. African Rand (GAIN)
As of 4/12/08.
1.00 USD = 10.5071 MXN Peso (LOSS)
1.00 USD = 0.643544 EUR Euro (GAIN) slight
1.00 USD = 1.00259 CAD Canada (LOSS)
1.00 USD = 6.98781 CNY China Yuan (LOSS)
1.00 USD = 104.639 JPY Japan Yen (GAIN)
1.00 USD = 40.6277 INR India rupees (GAIN) slight
1.00 USD = 23.7122 RUB Russian Rubies (GAIN) slight
1.00 USD = 1.04952 CHF Switzerland Francs (GAIN) slight
1.00 USD = 7.52090 ZAR S. African Rand (LOSS)
A look one week ahead of my May 12 scheduled report (above) for comparison based on the new record oil bl price today. Loss or Gain is from Apri 12 figures. There were some slight gains with the Swiss franc, Russian ruby, Indian rupee, Euro and slightly more gain with the Japanese yen.
It will be interesting to see how this next week's trading goes with the additional spike in oil prices, the fed rate-cut last week, consumption, production down in Mexico and Russia, the Myanmar storm, etc. My guess is that it's going to take another leap upwards.
Hopefully not.
Well in an attempt to get the gloomy subject of Nagris killing over 22,500(according to Fesse Ferrel)off everyones minds.... This wave looks rather interesting.
Not a wave.
United Nations: UN humanitarian chief offers emergency funds for cyclone-hit Myanmar
You havent a clue Griff.
But 400,000 visitors the past 2 weeks do.
You just dont get it friend.
LOL.
Jazzfest attracts up to 400,000, highest since Katrina struck
Posted by Leslie Williams, the Times-Picayune May 06, 2008 8:54AM
Categories: Jazzfest Link
218. Stormchaser2007 7:18 PM GMT on May 06, 2008
Well in an attempt to get the gloomy subject of Nagris killing over 22,500(according to Fesse Ferrel)off everyones minds.... This wave looks rather interesting.
Not a wave.
Well thanks, but next time can you be a little more nice in the way you say it....
Drak, isn't that associated with the ITCZ?
Yes.
3.5 Million people in any given year will experience homelessness 1.35 million of them children. 744,000 of them at one time.
Veterens make up 1 in 4. These are people who served our country.
17.5 million Americans live at or below the poverty line.
2006 8.7 million children had no health insurance.
5 million on welfare. Most of which could work.
over 100 thousand foreclosures recently.
I could go on and on. How can you say to our homeless vets sorry here is your box while we ship aid to another country.
Looks pretty warm around Jamaica there Drakoen. I can't see it that well though. Is that water around the island in the 100's?! Isn't that abnormal?
Around 90 degrees. Summer is approaching and with the Dry air that has been over the Caribbean that helps to increase the Surface Temperatures with the Sun's heating.
Hey StormW. They have me a little fired up today. Drak nice to see you again as well.
Viewing: 201 - 251
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 — Blog Index