As natural disasters intensify, insurers are withdrawing from high-risk regions, mortgages are failing, and real estate values are weakening. Analysts fear a chain reaction that could resemble, or surpass, the 2008 crisis.
Tag: disaster
A tragic aviation disaster, a major political milestone, and the birth of a cinematic icon.
The political project in the Arab world, both of tyrants and their opponents, has been focused on visions of glory and repeating slogans. But what is a movement if it doesn’t seek to improve the lives of those for whom it claims to speak?
Hundreds of people died when a boat carrying migrants capsized on its way to Europe. Eyewitnesses raise serious accusations: were Greek officials to blame for the disaster? And what role does the “smuggling mafia” play? Die Welt reconstructs the events of the tragedy.
A reflection of what the Feb. 6 earthquake exposes deep problems in Turkish public life over the past two decades, and what we can expect in the coming months and years.
The Feb. 6 earthquake, with a magnitude of at least Mww 7.8, has destroyed thousands of buildings in southern and central Turkey, as well as locations across the border in Syria. Many of the more than 20,000 dead were killed in those collapsing buildings. Yet even as we try to tally to the toll of […]
The Indian authorities’ decision to hide factual reports on the land subsidence in Joshimath only furthers a sense of paranoia.
The images of the Italian cruise ship, which had run aground just a few hundred meters from the Tuscany coast, captured the world’s attention for a chilly winter week in 2012.
One of the most striking photographs of the destruction caused by the tsunami that struck Japan and set off the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
In the movie version, the contagion would lead to lawlessness and chaos. But in reality, institutions are encouragingly resilient.
The late American essayist Susan Sontag theorized that people are drawn to watching disaster films to help normalize and rationalize what we find psychologically unbearable. Watching a fictionalized apocalypse on the screen, she argued, inures us to the possibility that a real one may arrive. Sontag’s idea in 1965 about the need for a remedy […]
PARIS — Firefighters said early Tuesday that they’d extinguished the final flames of the massive Notre Dame cathedral fire that began shortly before 7 p.m. local time Monday. Authorities say the cause of the fire may be “potentially linked” to ongoing renovations. The images of a blaze engulfing one of history’s most iconic sights, which […]
Hellish firestorms in northern California have killed at least 17 people and razed entire neighborhoods, destroying more than 2,000 structures. Dozens of other people have been reported missing, raising fears that the death toll could rise sharply. The “disaster is relentless,” Wednesday’s front page of the San Francisco Chronicle reads above a photograph of the […]
The devastating earthquake in 1985 upended politics in Mexico. Could last month’s deadly disasters do the same?
-OpEd- PARIS — Donald Trump’s task on Tuesday should have been simple enough. Traveling to the storm-ravaged island of Puerto Rico, the American president was supposed to offer some comforting words, distribute emergency supplies, and commit the federal government to rebuild the U.S. territory as quickly as possible. But rather than disaster relief, Trump was […]
Brought on by relentless rain and an overflowing river, a devastating landslide over the weekend has left at least 250 dead in Mocoa, Colombia. The front-page headline Monday of La Opinión declares that the tragedy could have been predicted. Situated in the Andes mountains in southwestern Colombia, the region is particularly prone to natural disasters. […]
It was the worst nuclear plant accident in history, measured in both casualties and cost. And though the death count paled in comparison to the more than 100,000 killed by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, the amount of radioactive material released in Chernobyl was 400 times higher. Six months after the 1986 disaster, the Soviet […]
MARINDUQUE — Elisa Hernandez dips her yellow blouse into the Boac River’s rushing water and then slaps it up against the shoreline’s gray stones. The 73-year-old used to earn a living washing her whole community’s laundry this way. “We felt at home in this river … It was so clean, we played in it and we used to catch a lot of fish here too,” she says. But that all changed in March 1996, when a drainage pipe inside a copper mine burst about 20 kilometers upstream. Millions of tons of toxic mine waste, including lead and arsenic, flooded into […]
From ancient religions to contemporary ecology, dire warnings that the end of the world is upon us are not only false — they bring a damage of their own.
Five years since the devastating Japan earthquake prompted a tsunami that washed tons of refuse into the Pacific Ocean, ocean creatures in and around that underwater wreckage is burgeoning.
Ordinary citizens, the media and politicians make so much noise about ideology and petty politics, but quietly carry on in the face of massive mining pollution.
Rescue efforts continued into Wednesday as a total 14 survivors were rescued from the Eastern Star, the cruise ship carrying 456 that sank Monday night in China’s Yangtze River. So far, 19 bodies have been recovered, leaving more than 420 people unaccounted for, most of whom are by now feared dead. The boat, which departed […]
NEPAL CONTINUES TO DIG OUT Photo: Pratap Thapa/Xinhua/ZUMA Rescue operations continue to find survivors in Nepal after Saturday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake. The latest official figures number the dead at 3,726 with more than 6,000 injured. Dozens are also believed to have died in neighboring China and India. The death toll is likely to rise as rescue […]
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Extra! Death Toll Climbs After Nepal Quake
Monday’s front page of Nepalese newspaper The Himalayan Times shows the picture of a house that collapsed in the outskirts of Kathmandu, following Saturday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake. The official death toll climbed overnight, as rescuers are struggling to reach remote villages. There are also scores trapped, and many feared dead, from an avalanche on Mt. Everest […]
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Extra! Chile Hit By Floods, Mudslides
El Mercurio De Antofagasta, March 26, 2015 Northern Chile was plunged into chaos yesterday as the worst rains in 24 years hit the regions of Antofagsta, Coquimbo and Atacama, typically one of the world’s driest areas. The Antofagasta edition of Chilean newspaper group El Mercurio reports that thousands of people have been affected by the […]
CYCLONE LEAVES 150,000 HOMELESS Photo: Luo Xiangfeng/Xinhua/ZUMAA tearful Vanuatu President Baldwin Lonsdale urged the world to send humanitarian help immediately to the South Pacific archipelago after cyclone Pam devastated the country over the weekend. “The humanitarian need is immediate,,” he said. According to aid agencies, up to 150,000 people could be left homeless in the […]
Considered history’s worst industrial accident, having killed thousands in a Dec. 3, 1984 gas leak at a Union Carbide plant in India, the health effects in Bhopal can still be felt today.
A visit to Ansan, South Korea, where a month after 260 of its children died in the South Korean ferry sinking, the city must elect its mayor. Mourning and anger are the politics of the day.
More than 300 dead in last week’s mining disaster in Soma, rage from the people, and utter insensitivity from an Erdogan government interested only in its own fate.
A solar-powered hospital offers a glimmer of hope in a country still mired in poverty, and the after-effects of the massive 2010 earthquake.
OLBIA — Twelve hours notice. Forty-four centimeters of rain in 90 minutes. Sixteen dead, including four children. And, now, a fax alert. The blame game has begun in Sardinia after the tragic Cyclone Cleopatra hit the island earlier this week. Antonio Sanò, head of the weather website ilmeteo.it, said that Monday’s storm had been forecast […]
Tuesday, September 9, 2014 MH17 PRELIMINARY REPORT Dutch experts this morning published their preliminary report into the causes of the July 17 crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine. The report stopped short of saying whether a missile had hit the aircraft, explaining instead that it broke in mid-air after being hit by […]
REUTERS, ABC, WALL STREET JOURNAL Worldcrunch TOKYO — Radiation readings near tanks holding toxic waters at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant have jumped to a new high, according to Japan’s nuclear regulator, as the government prepares to step in to help contain leaks. According to Reuters, this new rise in the radiation levels and […]
They were shocked by 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and they firmly believe the world is coming to an end. To cope with the imminent disaster, some of these preparation enthusiasts (or “preppers”) turn their SUVs into armored fortresses while others buy fancy bunkers. Julie Zaugg met one of those so-called “survivalists.” NEW […]
BD NEWS 24 (Bangladesh), THE TIMES OF INDIA (India), BBC NEWS (UK), REUTERS Worldcrunch DHAKA – Tens of thousands of Bangladeshis joined May Day protests Wednesday demanding the death penalty for the owner of the garment factory building that collapsed last week near Dhaka, as the number of people killed in the disaster moves past […]
BANGLADESH NEWS 24 HOURS (Bangladesh), BBC NEWS (UK), AP Worldcrunch DHAKA – Police said Thursday that the owners of the eight-story building housing garment factories that collapsed in Bangladesh, killing at least 187, had ignored warnings not to allow their workers into the building. Search for survivors is continuing as hundreds are still unaccounted for, […]
This is the good kind of cheesy…
Those who managed to survive the March 11, 2011 disaster that killed nearly 19,000 have suffered from both physical and social fallout.
JAPAN TIMES, ASAHI SHIMBUN (Japan) AFP Worldcrunch TOKYO – On Monday, Japan honored the victims of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis that killed nearly 19,000 people two years ago. At 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck northeast Japan, triggering a tsunami with 30-meter high waves that wiped out entire […]
BEIJING – On the night of Aug 8, 1975, a line of people frantically piled sandbags atop the Banqiao Dam, in the central Henan Province, while being battered by the worst storm ever recorded in the region. They raced against the rapidly rising Ru River to save the dam and the millions of people that […]