BBC News - Wales floods: Hundreds told to leave homes
I learned about it through Twitter, via Eilir Jones, who has been retweeting Welsh-language alerts (no, I don't know Welsh, but I could tell from the format). Roads are impassable in places and several schools are closed. Hopefully everyone will stay safe. The rain is abating but the rivers continue to rise.
Jeb, the black and brown dwarfed goat at Lake Superior Zoo, sought out Brad Jago every day for a little love, attention and a gentle scratch on the forehead where his horns once stood.10 inches of rain, and a near miss when a boy was swept into a culvert, but miraculously was rescued, so no major injuries or deaths among people. But it is sad that the animals died. Most were of the barnyard exhibit, although another report I read said there were exhibits underwater so more may have drowned. The seals were particularly resourceful. One was found in a street some distance from the zoo. :)
On Wednesday it was Jago seeking Jeb, as the groundskeeper and the rest of the zoo staff scrambled to find and recapture animals that escaped during torrential overnight flooding that forced the evacuation of some homes in a low-lying neighborhood in the port city of Duluth.
Zoo workers safely recovered two seals and a polar bear that had managed to escape their enclosures but Jeb and a dozen or so other animals from the zoo’s barnyard exhibit — including other goats, sheep and a miniature donkey — drowned.
As the Souris River rose relentlessly beyond its banks and swept over levees on Friday, the people of Minot came together as North Dakotans do -- with fortitude, determined generosity and few words.Here's to the safety of everyone. It's good to know that so many people helped others move their mementos and necessities while waiting for the water to come. But even more so is the kindness of giving people places to stay, as human lives, unlike things, cannot be replaced.
While more than 10,000 people were evacuated from areas ravaged by the worst flood in this city's history -- roughly a quarter of the population -- only 225 sought refuge in two shelters set up by the Red Cross.
Residents on high ground took in those from low. Some lent campers to the newly homeless. Others offered trucks and trailers along with their strong arms and backs to move evacuees' possessions to safe havens. With the state's oil boom and an influx of new workers, few, if any, apartments and hotel rooms could be found.
"We were prepared for about 800 people," said Susan Ewertt, the newly named site director of disaster operations for the Mid-Dakota Red Cross. "The community has been great. It speaks so highly of their kindness."
Desperation erupted into violence Tuesday in flood-ravaged Pakistan, as survivors who have yet to receive aid scrambled to put food in their empty bellies.
People in Sindh province blocked a highway to protest the slowness of aid delivery and clashed with police, the United Nations said. In a hard-hit district of Punjab, hungry mobs unloaded two aid trucks headed to a warehouse. Local aid agencies reported other incidents of looting.
An aid agency worker said distributions were hampered because of the crowds stopping the convoys and because large numbers of people were living along the road.
About 20 million people have been affected by the relentless monsoon rains that began falling three weeks ago, leading to massive flooding from the mountainous regions in the north to the river plains of the south.
About one-fifth of Pakistan is submerged, and entire families waded through filthy water, pleading for help.
More than 1,400 people have died. Health officials fear a second wave of fatalities from waterborne diseases, including cholera, which is endemic in Pakistan and now threatening to become a major outbreak.
A case of the deadly, waterborne disease cholera has been confirmed in Pakistan's flood-ravaged northwest and aid workers expect it is not isolated, the U.N. said Saturday.Cholera is a real threat whenever you have contaminated water. Modern sanitation goes a long way to prevent it, but in a case where you have major flooding and people homeless and in the midst of a major natural disaster, sanitation goes out the window, it could spread quickly, killing more than the floods.
The chilling discovery underscores the latest threat to the millions whose lives have been disrupted by the crisis and came as new flood surges hit the south.
In a press conference Saturday, Pakistan's Prime Minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani said that so far 1,384 people were known to have died, with more than 1,000 of those in the country's northwest.
He added that more than 1,600 had been injured with some 20 million people affected. Aid workers have warned that diseases spread in the aftermath could raise the death toll.
The worst floods in Pakistan's history have hit at least 14 million people, officials say.So awful. My thoughts and prayers are with them. Here are some organisations helping:
Twelve million are affected in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces, while a further two million are affected in Sindh.
In Indian-administered Kashmir, at least 113 people died in mudslides.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that a charity connected to a group with alleged al-Qaeda links has been providing flood relief.
Flooding has submerged whole villages in the past week, killing at least 1,600 people, according to the UN.
And the worst floods to hit the region in 80 years could get worse, as it is only midway through monsoon season.
According to the federal flood commission, 1.4m acres (557,000 hectares) of crop land has been flooded across the country and more than 10,000 cows have perished.
A UN official, Manuel Bessler, told the BBC that with crops swept away by floodwaters, some Pakistanis could be forced to rely on food aid to get through the winter.
'The curator is going through it now as much as she can in the dark,' Treinen said. 'We are seeing things that have water damage but nothing so far that we don't think can be conserved if necessary.'
'Really we're playing a race against the clock. Because all of those things haven't suffered massive water damage, at least things of real high value, the time is now to save it. If it got damp at all, it is going to be sent to cold storage and frozen for the next couple of months. That prevents the mold from setting in. It's really the paper that's the first concern, before the mold starts.'
