Showing posts with label Chaos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chaos. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Strongest typhoon in quarter century batters #Japan


The strongest typhoon to hit Japan in 25 years made landfall Tuesday, killing two and injuring dozens, as it battered the west of the country with violent winds and heavy rainfall. 

 The strong gusts ripped sheeting from rooftops, toppled trucks on bridges and swept a tanker anchored in Osaka bay into a nearby bridge running to the Kansai International Airport.

    High waves whipped up by the storm also flooded parts of the seaside airport, where all flights were cancelled, and the severe weather caused power outages and travel chaos across much of the country.

 Typhoon Jebi made landfall around noon local time, slamming into the west of the country packing winds of up to 216 kilometres (135 miles) per hour.

    The fast-moving storm quickly crossed the country, and by nightfall was on the verge of leaving land and heading out to sea from Ishikawa in central Japan.

    Local media reported two deaths in the storm, including a 71-year-old man killed in western Shiga prefecture after being trapped under a warehouse that collapsed in strong wind. 



Public broadcaster NHK said 97 people had been injured across the storm's path, none of them seriously.

    In Osaka, television footage showed a large tanker that smashed into the bridge connecting the city of Izumisano with Kansai airport, with the top part of the ship knocking away a part of the bridge. There were no reports of injuries.

    The airport was closed after runways and parts of its basement were flooded by high waves, a transport ministry official confirmed.

    NHK also showed footage of a 100-metre (328-feet) tall ferris wheel in Osaka turning furiously in the strong wind despite being switched off.

    "I'm surprised that the switched-off ferris wheel began to move with the strong wind. I've never seen such a thing," a 19-year-old boy at the scene told the public broadcaster.

    Elsewhere, the winds whipped away part of the ceiling from Kyoto station and peeled off multi-storey scaffolding attached to a building in Osaka.

Friday, May 26, 2017

Bangkok flooding is chronic problem

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BMA officials admit they cannot cope with heavy rains as experts blame infrastructure and lack of preparedness.

BANGKOK WILL continue to experience flooding after heavy rains unless water-drainage problems including roads and canals are solved, water-management experts have said.
Heavy rain was to blame for yesterday’s floods in 25 areas around Bangkok after up to 170 millimetres of rain fell on the capital on Wednesday night, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) stated. 

Bangkok faced the prospect of more flooding as the Meteorological Department predicted more heavy rains last night and this morning.

 The heavy rains turned many streets of the city into canals and seriously worsened rush-hour traffic, causing many commuters to arrive late at work or school. One of the worst flooded areas was the Lat Phrao intersection at Ratchadaphisek Road, where the floodwaters reached about 30 centimetres and seriously disrupted traffic.

“Moreover, we could not drain the floodwater out of the street properly, because the canals were already full of water from the rains, even though we had decreased the water levels in the canals in advance.”

Sitang Pilailar, a lecturer at the Water Resources Engineering Department at Kasetsart University, said the reasons the BMA cited were chronic problems for the city.

“Bangkok will still flood every time after heavy rain, if the water cannot drain from the roads to the drainage pipes and to the canals properly,” Sitang said.

She said the first problem was that the drainage system mixed with the sewer system, so pipes were already full of wastewater. Moreover, during the floods in 2011, sand was dumped into the drainage system that had not been cleared out completely, lessening the capacity of the city’s drainage pipes by half.

Another problem was lack of preparation before the rain, Sitang said, adding the BMA usually received weather predictions from the Meteorological Department so water levels in the canals could be lowered in advance, but this time the BMA had not performed well.

“In addition to these problems, we still have the issue that many old communities suffer from chronic flooding because their location is lower than street level, so the water from the road drains into their communities instead of into the drainage pipes. The garbage in the drainage system is also significant, as many people still throw litter into drainage pipes and canals,” Sitang said.

“This is a task for all of us to tackle. The BMA has to be better prepared for flooding and maintain the drainage system to make sure that it can work properly, while the people also have to avoid clogging the drainage system with garbage if we want to sustainably solve the flooding problem in Bangkok.”

Source - TheNation

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