Flooding hits BiH

Flooding hit the Sarajevo area of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) on Monday due to persistent rain over the weekend.

Some homes were flooded in the suburbs of Sarajevo, the capital of BiH, with dozens of people evacuated. There were also several landslides and some roads closed.

There were no reports of casualties. Local governments put their civil protection forces on alert as the rain continued on Monday in Sarajevo Canton.

The Balkan state has not recovered from the huge flooding in May, 2014, the worst in some 120 years, with dozens killed and large areas submerged underwater.
  Source: Xinhua - globaltimes.cn
20/1/15
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Evacuation of burning Italian ferry completed (Hundreds of passengers brought to safety)

All remaining passengers on board an Italian ferry that caught fire in the Adriatic Sea off the Greek island of Corfu have been rescued, Greek officials have said.

The blaze left seven people dead. Six bodies were recovered from the water around the stricken Norman Atlantic on Monday, a day after the body of a 62-year-old Greek man was pulled from the heaving sea.
 
A 24-hour evacuation operation that proved to be extremely difficult was concluded shortly after midday.

Many of those rescued said the fire, which broke out at dawn on Sunday, triggered panic which the crew appeared ill-prepared to deal with.
One of the first passengers rescued told reporters after arriving in the Italian port of Bari he had thought he was going to die as parts of the ferry, with 478 passengers and crew on board, became engulfed by thick smoke as it travelled from Greece to Italy.
"We did not know what to do. The staff had no idea how to get people off the boat," he said.
"The lifeboats did not work, there was only one of them in the water and none of the crew were there to help people."

Others said they stayed huddled on the vessel's upper decks, pelted by rain and hail and struggled to breathe through the thick smoke.
A passenger recalled people being awakened by "the smell of burning plastic" and that the heat from the fire felt like the floors were "boiling".

The evacuation was completed nearly 36 hours after the fire broke out on the car deck and left the huge vessel drifting dangerously in high seas off the coast of Albania.

'Mystery'
With the evacuation complete, questions are being raised as to how the fire started and why it was not contained.
Bari prosecutor Giuseppe Volpe announced a criminal investigation which will seek to establish whether negligence contributed to the disaster.
The Italian owner of the boat, Carlo Visentini, said he would cooperate fully.
He insisted that the vessel, which was leased to Greek operator ANEK ferries, had passed a technical inspection which included its firedoors on December 19.

Al Jazeera's Simon McGregor-Wood, reporting from Italian coastal city of Brindisi, said what caused the fire remained a mystery.

"But what we do know from various sources is that the fire took hold in the car deck," he said. "There were 200 vehicles of all kinds including several tanker trucks containing olive oil, which it is expected to have contributed to the fire."
 [aljazeera.com]
29/12/14
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•  Italy ferry: All passengers evacuated after fatal fire ...

• 251 People Rescued, 227 Still on Board Norman Atlantic Ferry (Italian Navy) 

• Italian-flagged ferry with 466 people on board evacuated due to fire / Un ferry en feu au large de la Grèce: sauvetage en cours (VIDEO YT)

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Typhoon Hagupit strikes Philippines (video aljazeera)

Typhoon Hagupit has killed at least three people, destroyed homes and and flooded coastal communities across the eastern and central Philippines, affecting millions of people.
The storm moved in from the Pacific Ocean and struck remote fishing communities on Samar island on Saturday night, but weakened from 210km to 165km an hour as it continued its path through the country on Sunday.

The wind strength made Hagupit the most powerful storm to hit the Philippines this year, exceeding a typhoon in July that killed more than 100 people.


In a span of just 24 hours, the storm brought 396mm of rain, which is equivalent to half a month of precipitation.

Two people, including a baby girl, died of hypothermia in central Iloilo province at the height of the typhoon, officials said.
Another person died after being hit by a falling tree in the eastern town of Dolores, where the typhoon first made landfall, according to Mar Roxas, interior secretary.

Two women were injured when the tricycle taxi they were riding was struck by a falling tree in central Negros Oriental province.
"Tin roofs are flying off, trees are falling and there is some flooding," Stephany Uy-Tan, the mayor of Catbalogan, a major city on Samar, told AFP news agency.
According to reports from news agencies and local media, close to a million people had fled to shelters in areas along the path of the typhoon.
So far, the provinces of Albay, Camarines Sur and Masbate have declared emergency.
Al Jazeera's Andrew Thomas, reporting from the capital Manila, said that the storm had made another landfall in the central island of Masbate, but had slightly weakened as it moved northwest.
Witnesses in Masbate told him that roads had been blocked from typhoon debris, making it difficult to deliver food packages to evacuees.

Lessons of Haiyan
In a statement to Al Jazeera, the UN office in Manila said the humanitarian needs in the Philippines would not be fully known until Hagupit passed over.
Fearful of a repeat of last year when Supertyphoon Haiyan claimed more than 7,350 lives, the government launched a massive evacuation effort to provide shelter to people in the path of Hagupit.
"The government is absolutely determined to do this better," Al Jazeera's Thomas said............................http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2014/12/typhoon-tears-into-disaster-weary-philippines-201412713344420641.html
7/12/4
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Related:
 

• Philippines Start to Evacuate Residents Amid Fears of Powerful Typhoon (3/12/14)

• About half a million people have fled coastal villages and evacuated their homes in the Philippines as a powerful storm approaches the archipelago (6/12/14)

• ***le super typhon Haiyan

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Philippines Start to Evacuate Residents Amid Fears of Powerful Typhoon

The Philippines have started to evacuate residents of coastal villages and landslide-prone communities following warnings of typhoon Hagupit, which is expected to hit the central part of the country, Reuters said.
 Typhoon Hagupit, which translates “lash” from Filipino, is currently near the Palau islands, but is expected to hit the eastern Philippines after picking up more strength – Hagupit’s winds are expected to reach up to 140 km per hour and gusts more than 170 km per hour.

“Definitely we will now strictly enforce forced evacuation,” said vice-mayor of Tacloban City in Central Philippines Jerry Yaokasin, as quoted by Reuters. “We have no more excuse, we have gone through Yolanda, and to lose that many lives, it’s beyond our conscience already”.

Last year, Typhoon Haiyan left more than 7,000 people dead or missing. Tacloban City was almost entirely flattened, accounting for nearly half of the dead, Reuters reported.
[sputniknews.com]
3/12/14
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***le super typhon Haiyan

Over 12,000 evacuated ahead of Philippines volcano eruption

MANILA - The Philippines has evacuated more than 12,000 people from around the foot of its most active volcano as the crater glows red and authorities warn of a possible eruption.
Mount Mayon, known for its near-perfect cone shape in the coconut-growing central Bicol region, has recorded a series of recent quakes and rockfalls, indicating a possible eruption within weeks.

"We are now raising the alert status of Mayon Volcano from alert level 2 to 3," Renato Solidum, head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs), said on Tuesday.

Joey Salceda, governor of the central Albay province, said more than 12,000 people were forcibly evacuated.
"What the alert level 3 did was to fast-track the preparation to evacuate 12,000 families in the 6-8 km extended danger zone," he said.
The evacuees would be housed in temporary shelter for as long as three months, he said. More villagers, facing the southeastern crater rim, would be moved to safer areas if Mayon erupts.
Troops were enforcing the no-go area, preventing people from returning home.
A major eruption is not expected to impact the country's farm output with mostly subsistence farmers tilling the land around the volcano. There is also no major industry in the area.
But an eruption could boost tourism, as happened the last time Mayon erupted in 2009. It has erupted nearly 50 times over the last 600 years.
The most destructive eruption was in February 1841, when lava flows buried a town and killed 1,200 people. 
REUTERS
http://www.todayonline.com/world/philippines-evacuates-thousands-volcano-glows-red
16/9/14