Forgotten cyclone hits Africa

While the eyes of the world have been on Typhoon Haiyan as it devastated the Philippines (see my blog of 12 Nov), a cyclone has killed at least 140 people in the Somali region of Puntland. Hundreds of homes have been destroyed, and livestock has perished by the thousand.

The authorities say many people are still missing, and fear the death toll could reach 300. Heavy flooding has made many of the region’s dirt roads impassable, making it hard to get supplies to stricken communities.

Makeshift shelters have been built to accommodate people driven from their homes, while the government has appealed to international aid agencies to help. The Somali government has pledged $1 million.

Puntland declared itself an autonomous state in 1998 in an attempt to escape the clan warfare that has disfigured so much of Somalia, but the region has not escaped armed conflict and has been used by pirates as a base for attacks on international shipping.

·        * Another Spanish review of my book Historia mundial de los desastres http://lecturaserrantes.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Withington%20%C2%B7John

The disaster that nearly wiped out humanity

A Spanish-language blog has picked up the story of the earliest disaster featured in my book A Disastrous History of the World (Historia Mundial de los desastres).  A disaster that may have come close to wiping out the human race.   http://www.taringa.net/posts/info/15902116/La-erupcion-que-estuvo-a-punto-de-aniquilar-a-la-Humanidad.html

It was a huge volcanic eruption more than 70,000 years ago at what is now Lake Toba (pictured above) on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.   It is thought to have been one of the most powerful ever, at about 28 times the strength of the Tambora eruption of 1815, the biggest of modern times.

The eruption itself must have been deadly enough, but much worse was the volcanic winter that followed.   The ancient volcano spewed out an estimated 670 cubic miles of debris that dimmed the sun’s rays for six years.

As catastrophic global cooling resulted, the world’s estimated human population at that time of a million was reduced to perhaps just 10,000.   The eruption gouged out a vast crater which filled with water to produce picturesque Lake Toba, now a noted tourist destination.