Chikungunya - dengue's nasty cousin spreads

Chikungunya fever, like dengue, tortures sufferers with severe pain especially in the joints. Spread by the same mosquitoes that transmit dengue, it is common in Africa and Asia, but is now extending its presence alarmingly.

First detected in the Caribbean in December on St Martin, it has now spread to 15 other countries there. More than 4,500 cases have been confirmed, though health officials admit there may be thousands more. Haiti has more than 1,500 cases.

The disease probably crossed the ocean in the blood of an infected traveller. It has also reached French Guiana and Florida. Chikungunya is less lethal than dengue, but there are fears that it could leave victims with long-lasting arthritic pain in the joints.

Local people are being urged to get rid of puddles or containers holding water where mosquitoes thrive, while travellers are being told to wear long trousers, long-sleeved shirts and socks, and to use insect repellent. 

Haiti 4 years on - recovery stalled

Four years to the day after the devastating Haiti earthquake that killed perhaps a quarter of a million people, the government is facing heavy criticism over the slow pace of reconstruction.

In the capital, Port-au-Prince, the cathedral and the presidential palace still lie in ruins. Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe said last week he was going to ‘press on the accelerator’, but the opposition accused the government of failing to implement the recovery plan negotiated with foreign donors.

Both parties agree, though, that a lot of the money went on emergency aid rather than rebuilding, and they also say that some of the promised funds never arrived. Mr Lamothe has asked for a further $9bn in aid.

Nearly 200,000 people are still living in very poor conditions in temporary shelters, while anti-government protests have been growing.

*A Spanish website has reproduced the section on the Rape of Nanking from my Historia mundial de los desastres (A Disastrous History of the World) -

http://www.burbuja.info/inmobiliaria/historia/489426-masacre-de-nanking.html

Boat people - Haiti

There have been many sad stories about migrants in recent months – dying of thirst in the Sahara desert or drowning off the coast of Italy (see my blogs of Oct 4 and 31). In those cases, the victims were Africans, but a lot of Haitians are also desperate to leave their country, regarded as the poorest in the western hemisphere.

This week a vessel carrying migrants from Haiti capsized off the Bahamas. Up to 30 people may have been killed, and US coast guards reported 100 were clinging to the hull of the upturned boat. Rescue services have dropped food and life rafts, and a number of people have been winched up to helicopters.

In June of last year, eleven Haitians were drowned when their boat capsized also off the Bahamas, while in 2011, at least 38 died when their vessel sank off Cuba.

One of the worst incidents off recent years came in 2009 when about 70 migrants from Haiti were lost when their boat capsized off the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Great disasters - great escapes

 

With a death toll of more than 1,120, the fall of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh is now confirmed as the deadliest building collapse in modern history, but in the midst of terrible tragedy, there was an astonishing story of survival.

Nineteen year old Reshma Begum was pulled from the rubble alive after being trapped for 17 days.  Rescuers had spotted her waving an aluminium curtain rail.   Reshma had come to the big city from the countryside three years ago, and had been working at her factory in the Rana Plaza for less than a month when the block collapsed.  

Three years ago, a 24 year old man was dragged out of the remains of a hotel eleven days after the Haiti earthquake, and 17 days after the collapse of the Sampoong department store in Seoul, South Korea, in 1995, an 18 year old was found alive.

In 1906, nearly 1,100 miners were killed by an explosion in a colliery at Courrieres in France.   To the astonishment of rescue workers, 20 days later, a group of 13 survivors emerged.    They had kept themselves alive on food that miners took down the pit to eat during their breaks and by slaughtering a horse.

*My third video on Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters is a story from Scotland - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKR5Ayyx6cs

 

Compensation for cholera: UN says no

The United Nations has rejected demands for millions of dollars in compensation from victims of a cholera outbreak that killed 8,000 people in Haiti following the earthquake of 2010.  

There is some evidence to suggest that the cause was leaking sewage pipes at a camp occupied by Nepalese UN peacekeeping troops, but the organisation has never accepted this.  More than 600,000 people have been infected.

Anyway the UN maintains that the charter that established it grants it legal immunity for its actions, but lawyers for the victims plan to challenge this view in Haiti’s national courts.  

Last December, the UN launched an appeal to raise $2bn to fight the epidemic, which is currently the worst in the world.   Haiti is particularly vulnerable because it has very few effective sewage disposal systems.  (See also my blogs of 23 Oct, 12 and 24 Nov, 2010.)

*New Spanish review of Historia mundial de los desastres - http://www.argentinawarez.com/ebooks-gratis/2769602-descargar-coleccion-libros-bizarros-lb-letitbit-gratis.html

Haiti three years on

It is three years since Haiti was devastated by the earthquake that killed up to 300,000 people on January 12, 2010.  Today more than 350,000 Haitians are still living in tents.

Most of the rubble has now been cleared from the streets, but around 3 million Haitians are without formal jobs.     Over the last two and a half years, more than 7,500 people have died from cholera, which becomes more dangerous every time a tropical storm strikes.

Last year one of those storms inflicted a further blow when it caused huge damage to crops, sending the cost of living spiralling upwards, and now many of the donor programmes set up after the quake have come to an end.

Billions of dollars in aid were promised in the wake of the disaster, but according to the UN Special Envoy, many pledges have not been fulfilled, and now the organisation is launching a new appeal.     One donor who has come up with the goods is President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who provides subsidised oil worth about $400m a year.

The growing cost of disasters

The Economist ran a fascinating piece in its January 14 edition on the growing cost of disasters.   Five of the ten most expensive disasters in history have happened in the last four years, and a leading reinsurer, Munich Re, reckoned 2011 was the most costly year in its history.

The most expensive disaster ever is last year’s Japanese tsunami, followed by Japan’s Kobe earthquake of 1995, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.   Most expensive does not mean highest number of casualties.      The Japanese tsunami cost fewer than 16,000 lives, Kobe 6,400 and Katrina 1,300, compared with a quarter of a million killed in the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, and perhaps a similar number in the Haiti earthquake of 2010.

One reason for the growing cost of disasters is that there are more and more human beings around to suffer losses.   The population of hurricane-belt state Florida, for example, has risen from 2.8m in 1950 to 19m now.

And overall human beings are getting richer so there are more things to be destroyed, while sometimes not enough thought is given to where development takes place.   Thailand’s growing industries, for instance, have been located in areas known to be vulnerable to flooding.

Disaster relief funds - record for a famine

Britain’s Disasters Emergency Committee has announced that it has raised a record sum to help famine victims in Somalia.     The £72 million donated is the highest ever for a food crisis, and the only disasters of any kind to have attracted a bigger response were the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

DEC’s chief executive said the money had saved many people’s lives, but that the situation produced by a devastating drought remained ‘grave’, and that help was not reaching many of those in greatest need.

Relief work has been hampered by the militant Islamist group, al-Shabab, which is affiliated to al-Qaeda (see my blog of July 21), but now rains have revived pasture for livestock in some areas, and some crops are being harvested. 

Aid agencies had been afraid that the actions of Somali pirates might discourage people from making donations.    They have kidnapped a number of foreign tourists, including a 56 year old British woman, Judith Tebbutt, who was abducted from 25 miles inside Kenya.    The pirates murdered her husband.

New Zealand's worst disasters

The death toll in last week’s earthquake at Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island stands officially at 154, but the authorities are warning it could rise as high as 240. Today the country held a two-minute silence to commemorate the victims.

The earthquake – with a force of 6.3 - was not as strong as many others that have done less damage, such as last September’s in the same region which was measured at 7.1. On that occasion, the quake happened in the middle of the night when there were fewer people around, and it also struck further from the surface.

Though survivors were being pulled from the rubble left by the Haiti earthquake eleven days after the disaster (see my blog of Jan 24, 2010), all hope seems to have been lost of finding anyone else alive in Christchurch.

New Zealand’s deadliest ever natural disaster remains the Hawke’s Bay earthquake of 1931 which happened on the country’s North Island. Measured at 7.9, it killed 256 people. The country is prone to earthquakes because it lies along the boundary between the Australian and Pacific plates.

Haiti one year on

It’s a year since the disastrous Haiti earthquake killed a quarter of a million people, and twelve months on, the pace of reconstruction has been disappointing, with at least 800,000 people still living in temporary shelters. This is a particular nightmare for the women and girls who live in the camps, as rape and sexual assault are daily occurrences.

With so many people finding it hard to get access to clean water, 3,500 have died of cholera over recent months, and political deadlock has made the situation worse. There were complaints of fraud and intimidation in November’s indecisive elections, and the second round has still not been held.

Last March, international donors promised more than £1.25 billion, but by the end of last month, nearly 40 per cent of that had still not been spent. Former US President, Bill Clinton, now a UN envoy to the country, admitted his frustration, but said he hoped the pace would now pick up.

*Now you can follow me on Facebook:- http://www.facebook.com/update_security_info.php?wizard=1#!/pages/Disaster-historian/166380310063983

Haiti cholera gets worse

The cholera epidemic in Haiti (see my blog of Nov 12) is spreading even quicker than was feared. So far more than 1,400 people have died, and the UN’s co-ordinator for humanitarian relief, Nigel Fisher, is expecting to see 200,000 cases. He has called on aid agencies to send more medical staff.

As this is the first time the disease has struck Haiti in a century, there appears to be little natural immunity around. Last week, there were riots against UN peacekeepers from Nepal who were accused by some Haitians of having introduced cholera to the country. The UN says there is no evidence to support this accusation.

The first global cholera pandemic began in 1817 in India, and swept through much of Asia and East Africa over the next six years. The second started in Russia in 1830, reaching most of Europe before crossing the Atlantic to infect North and Central America. However, the disease may have been present in India as early as the fourth century BC.

*Here's a new article I’ve written on the worst disasters ever to afflict London.

http://angel.greatbritishlife.co.uk/article/what-a-disaster-26547/

For Spanish readers – an article about me:-

http://www.elmostrador.cl/opinion/2010/11/21/el-aporte-de-la-cronica/#print-normal

Cholera threatens to "overwhelm" Haiti

As had been feared (see my blog of Oct 23), cholera is now spreading rapidly through the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. The disease broke out last month in the Artibonite River valley about 60 miles away, and it was hoped for a while that it might be prevented from reaching the capital where more than a million people are still living in tents after January’s earthquake.

Eighty Haitians have died of cholera in the last 24 hours, taking the total to more than 720, and there are about 11,000 cases, with 1,000 new ones each day. The head of infectious diseases at Port-au-Prince’s main public hospital has warned that if this goes on, they will be “overwhelmed”. The situation has been worsened by Hurricane Tomas, which caused widespread flooding last week, in addition to killing at least 20 people.

Cholera is spread by water and causes diarrhoea and vomiting, leading to severe dehydration. It can kill very quickly and horribly, but it can be easily treated through antibiotics and replacement of lost fluids and salts, so long as these are available. (For more details about cholera, see A Disastrous History of the World.)

The billions of dollars of aid promised by the rest of the world to Haiti after the earthquake has been slow in arriving, with only just over a third delivered so far.

*Yesterday was Remembrance Day. See http://www.flickr.com/photos/clemypix/5165934757/

Haiti - cholera strikes

Back in January, there were fears that the devastating Haiti earthquake might be followed by epidemics, particularly of cholera. Nine months later, the disease has finally arrived.

So far there have been more than 2,600 cases, and nearly 200 people have died. The areas affected are about 60 miles from the heavily populated capital, Port-au-Prince, where tens of thousands of people are still living in crowded tents with poor sanitation and little access to clean drinking water, though there are suspected cases in a suburb of the capital.

Officials say the victims were infected through drinking contaminated river water. Hospitals have been overwhelmed and for a time people were being treated in car parks. The World Health Organisation says this is the first time cholera has struck Haiti in a century.

See also my blogs of Jan 31, 2009 and Jan 14, 15, 16, 19, 22, 23 and 24; July 12 and Aug 26, 2010. The new paperback edition of A Disastrous History of the World also contains a section on the earthquake.

Pakistan floods - an ungenerous response?

Three weeks after the monsoon floods were unleashed on Pakistan, Louis-Georges Arsenault, director of emergency services for UN agency UNICEF, has blasted the international response as “extraordinarily” inadequate.

M Arsenault says this is the biggest humanitarian crisis “in decades.” The UN had called for around £300m in emergency aid, and says it has raised nearly 70% of this, but the Pakistan government says the cost of rebuilding could be as high as £10bn, and up to 17m people have been hit by the floods.

So if the response has been rather lukewarm, what are the reasons? One offered is that the death toll has been relatively small - “only” about 1,600 compared with around ¼ million in the Haiti earthquake and the Boxing Day tsunami, and that the flood has been a more slowly developing and less dramatic disaster

Then there are said to be worries about corruption, a feeling that oil-rich Muslim countries have failed to do enough, the perception that Pakistan has been an exporter of terrorism, and the global financial crisis. Against that, the people of the UK have stumped up £30m out of their own pockets, and India, which has often believed itself a victim of Pakistani-inspired terrorism, has provided around £3m.

Haiti earthquake + 6 months

It’s six months today since the Haiti earthquake. It was not one of the most powerful in history, but it was one of the most deadly because of its epicentre’s proximity to major centres of population.

Even before the quake struck, Haiti was already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and we now know that it killed more than 222,000 people, and left more than 2 million homeless. Thousands of civil servants and hundreds from international relief agencies were among the dead. Only one government ministry building was left standing.

In spite of this almost total destruction of what Haiti had in the way of an administrative infrastructure, food was provided for more than four million, and nearly one million were vaccinated, helping to avert the epidemics and starvation that so often come in the wake of disasters.

Six months on, though, 1.5 million people are still living in temporary camps, and the hurricane season is about to begin. Bill Clinton, co-chair of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Committee, has complained that 90% of the $5 billion pledged by the world’s governments to help has still not been handed over.

(See also my blogs of Jan 14, 15, 19, 22, 23, 24; Feb 2; April 22.)

Smallpox

On this day…..261 years ago, Edward Jenner, the man who discovered the smallpox vaccine, was born in Berkeley, Gloucestershire. Jenner discovered that by infecting someone with the much milder cowpox virus, you could protect them against smallpox, which had been killing an estimated 400,000 Europeans a year.

The disease had done its cataclysmic worst, though, in the New World, where native populations were completely lacking in immunity. The Spanish conquistadores terrified the Indians with their fire-spitting guns, but actually the smallpox virus was the deadliest weapon they brought.

It began in the early sixteenth century by cutting a swath through the populations of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Cuba. Then Hernan Cortes took it with him to Mexico, and when the Aztecs tried to resist him, they were cut down by the virus, and “died in heaps, like bedbugs.”

The Incas met a similar fate, with their great king, Huayna Capac, among those who died. Smallpox, helped by other imported illnesses, like mumps and measles, would reduce their numbers from seven to just one million. (See also my blog of Nov 6.)

Concorde crash trial + Haiti update

In France, Continental Airlines and five individuals have gone on trial over the Concorde crash at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on July 25, 2000. The aircraft came down on the nearby town of Gonesse, killing four people on the ground and all 109 passengers and crew on board. It was the only fatal accident the supersonic airliner was ever involved in, but it never recovered, and was retired from service in 2003.

An investigation concluded that one of Concorde’s tyres had burst after it hit a piece of metal left on the runway by a Continental DC-10. Debris from the tyre then ruptured a fuel tank, which made the airliner burst into flames. Continental denies this, and claims that Concorde had caught fire before it hit the metal.

Among the individuals facing manslaughter charges alongside Continental are one of its mechanics and a maintenance official, as well as Concorde’s former chief engineer, a former head of the Concorde division at Aerospatiale and a former member of France’s civil aviation watchdog.

** I’ve been quoted by Newsweek in an article on the Haiti earthquake and its aftermath. The link is http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/wealthofnations/archive/2010/01/25/why-haiti-is-without-parallel.aspx

Survivors and great escapes - 2

Eleven days after the Haiti earthquake, a 24 year old man in remarkably good shape has been pulled from the rubble of a hotel. Wismond Exantus, who worked in its grocery store, said he survived on soft drinks and little bits of food. On Friday, an 84 year old woman and a 21 year old man were rescued. Emmannuel Buso had had nothing to eat or drink.

Mr Exantus’s rescue came shortly after the Haitian government had officially called off the search for survivors. On January 16, I blogged about some other remarkable escapes after disasters.

It was long after the search for survivors of the Courrieres coal mine explosion of 1906 in northern France had been abandoned that 13 miners emerged. They had lived for 20 days on food taken down by miners to eat in their lunch breaks and by slaughtering a horse. They had lost all sense of time, and believed they had been trapped for only four or five days.

In China’s Tangshan earthquake of 1976, miners working underground had a much better chance of survival than people on the surface. Only 13 out of 15,000 perished, but some were trapped for 15 days without food or clean water. They too thought they had been entombed for only a few days, but their emaciated bodies told the real story. For more on both disasters, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Quakes in capital cities

The Haiti earthquake may be the deadliest ever to hit a capital city if the estimate of up to 200,000 killed is accurate. The Tokyo quake of 1923 killed about 150,000 in the Japanese capital and its port Yokohama, and about 1.9 million were made homeless, as up to 360,000 buildings were destroyed.

Within days, though, businesses and shops left standing had begun trading again, and seven years later, it was said that Tokyo had been restored with scarcely a single visible scar from the disaster. A plan to rebuild the capital at a new site, less vulnerable to earthquakes, was rejected.

The Lisbon earthquake of All Saints' Day 1755 struck a city that was then not just the capital of Portugal, but the hub of a great empire. As many as 90,000 people were killed, while thousands of buildings were flattened - much of the damage being done by the fires that broke out after the quake. The king put his prime minister, the Marquis of Pombal, in charge of reconstruction, and Pombal turned his coach into an improvised office among the ruins, living on soup brought in by his wife as he got to grips with the crisis.

He posted guards at exits from the city to stop any able-bodied men from leaving, then pressed them into work on the clean-up, while he sent ships to all corners of the empire with the message that the capital was still open for business. Some, like the Jesuits, argued that the city should not be rebuilt as the quake was a punishment from God, but within a year the Marquis was constructing a new Lisbon with the big squares and long avenues that form the elegant heart of the city we see today, and which his statue surveys from the top of a tall column.

Haiti in historical perspective

If the estimates we are now hearing of 200,000 people killed in the Haiti earthquake are accurate, that would make it probably the eighth deadliest in history. The worst may have been one that hit the eastern Mediterranean region in 1201 or 1202, devastating countries like Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Palestine. Some say this disaster claimed more than a million lives, though many of these may actually have perished in the famine that was raging through Egypt about the same time.

Better documented is the quake that devastated Shaanxi province in China in 1556, killing up to 830,000 people, many of whom had been living in man-made caves they had dug into the soft soil. Perhaps third worst was the quake of 526 that destroyed Antioch in modern-day Turkey. Known as "the Fair Crown of the Orient", it had been the third biggest city in the Roman Empire, and was the place where the word "Christian" was first used to describe the followers of Jesus. The death toll was said to be 300,000.

In more modern times, the Chinese earthquake in Tangshan in 1976 was officially said to have killed 242,000, though the Chinese government did not admit to this figure until three years afterwards. Unofficial estimates put the death toll as high as 655,000. More recently, the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 claimed 230,000 victims.