March 10, 2017

What happened this week?

Bahamas. Residents of a community near the burning landfill in The Bahamas’ capital are not expected to get the all-clear to return to their homes for another few days... Read more

Paraguay. Over the weekend, six families were evacuated from their homes due to the overflow of Pirayu'i River in Edelira, Itapúa Department, due to heavy rains. In addition, hundreds of vehicles were stranded, leaving the area inaccessible and a bridge was affected... Read more

Peru. Heavy rains caused a landslide in La Libertad, Parcoy District, Pataz Province, and affected several homes and killed two people. There are 10 more homes at risk. In the Piruan province of Paita, streets flooded after 10 hours of continuous rainfall... Read more

United States.

1. Tornadoes slam Midwest, leaving a trail of destroyed homes and displaced residents. The Midwest was slammed with 29 reported tornadoes Monday, according to the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center, leaving a trail of damaged homes and displaced and injured residents...Read more
2. Tornado tore 15-mile path through Perry County, costing 60 families 'just about everything'...Read more
3. Rancher David Bouziden lost his home, his ranch and nearly all his cattle in wildfires that swept through Kansas this week...Read more

Interesting Facts

California won't meet its climate change goals without a lot more housing density in its cities. To meet the bold new climate change goals put in place last year, California will work to put millions of electric cars on the road, revolutionize its dairy industry and generate half of all power from solar panels and other renewable sources...Read more

Chattanooga still vulnerable to once-in-500-years flood. According to Tom Barnett, the senior manager at TVA's operations center TVA's system of dams and reservoirs cannot prevent all flooding in the city...Read more

Doctors turn to 3D printing to source medical supplies in earthquake-recovering. While otoscopes might be a common medical item in the West, for remote mountain hospitals in Nepal, sourcing such equipment can be next to impossible...Read more

Drought monitor shows dramatic changes to national map. The drought situation in the west has been improving in 2017 and the intense red colors on the map have been slowly shrinking since the later part of 2016...Read more

Fault system off San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles Counties could produce magnitude 7.3 quake. A fault system that runs from San Diego to Los Angeles is capable of producing up to magnitude 7.3 earthquakes if the offshore segments rupture and a 7.4 if the southern onshore segment also ruptures, according to a new study led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego...Read more

In the US, added wildfires due to carelessness, not just climate change. The United States spends billions of dollars every year fighting wildfires. A recent paper published in PNAS finds that human-started conflagrations account for 84 percent of all wildfires in the US in recent years...Read more

Oroville Dam faces another risk: Earthquakes from rapid rise in water levels. As Lake Oroville swung from being at 41% of capacity to 101% in just two months, scientists are asking whether the filling of the reservoir at the fastest rate in at least a generation can produce a damaging earthquake...Read more

What's new in Disaster Risk Reduction?

$1.5M flood control work in downtown Grand Rapids starts next month. The city is taking a more specialized design approach to the work in the area from Grand Valley State University's Eberhard Center north to Ab-Nah-Awen Park, where land largely serves as the flood wall...Read more

Americas region crafts disaster risk reduction plan. The vast Americas region today started a high-level conference on a wide-ranging plan that will seek to reduce the risks posed by natural and human-induced hazards...Read more

Guardsmen train with civilian counterparts for disaster preparedness. More than 50 Airmen from the Montana Air National Guard’s 120th Airlift Wing attended training at the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, Alabama...Read more

Indigenous peoples are key players in disaster risk reduction. The concerns and capacities of indigenous peoples need to be taken into account at all times when it comes to curbing disaster risk, leading members of communities from across the Americas said today at a high-level conference...Read more

International Women's Day: UN call for greater role for women in disaster risk management. The UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, Mr. Robert Glasser, today marked International Women’s Day with a call for greater advancement of women in disaster management and disaster risk reduction...Read more

Managing multi-hazard disaster risk in St Vincent and the Grenadines. Policy and practice options for managing destructive disaster events, such as volcanic eruptions and flash-floods, in St Vincent and the Grenadines...Read more