Floods Awash Around the World: India’s Toll Exceeds 1000 as Canada and France Mop Up
Posted by Stephen Cook on June 24, 2013 
Praying: Children pay tribute to the victims at a school in Amritsar. Photo: AFP
Stephen: A major cleanse of nature’s energies can happen in many ways, so it may not be just a coincidence that India, Canada and France are all currently facing torrential deluges.
For each, the significant impact is relative to what the local people and their region are used to and how accessible (and funded) both they and emergency care are.
Our hearts go out to everyone who is facing such calamity at this time.
Death Toll from Indian Floods 1000 and Rising
From Al-Jazeera – June 24, 2013
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2013/06/201362465625349861.html
Army officials said bad weather has hampered efforts to evacuate thousands of people stranded in northern India where nearly 1,000 people are reported dead in monsoon flooding and landslides.
Officials and authorities in the affected state of Uttarakhand on Sunday said the death toll could rise, with the one minister telling Al Jazeera’s Sohail Rahman that the number could be up to 5,000.
Brigadier Uma Maheshwar said on Sunday that the army had suspended helicopter flights to rescue people stranded in the state after dense fog descended on the Himalayan region.
Instead, troops built makeshift bridges and people were being brought to safety by road.
Thousands of people were still stranded in remote mountain valleys in Uttarakhand, a popular pilgrimage destination, trapped in up to 100 towns and villages cut off since Sunday.
Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said that 34,000 people have been evacuated so far but 50,000 were still stranded in the region.
Al Jazeera’s Sohail Rahman, reporting from Dehradun, the Uttrakhand state capital, said that there are villages that are completely submerged and that access to roadways is becoming a major issue for the military, who are in the process of clearing it up.
Kedarnath Temple
Uttrakhand government spokesman Amit Chandola said the rescue operation centered on evacuating nearly 27,000 people trapped in the worst-hit Kedarnath temple area – one of the holiest Hindu temples dedicated to Lord Shiva.
The temple escaped major damage, but debris covered the area around it and television images showed the bodies of pilgrims strewn around the area.
More than 2,000 vehicles carrying stranded Hindu pilgrims have moved out of the area since late on Thursday, he said.
Thirty-six air force helicopters had been ferrying rescue workers, doctors, equipment, food and medicine to Kedarnath, the town closest to many of those stranded, said Priya Joshi, an air force spokeswoman.
Zubin Zaman, humanitarian programme manager for Oxfam India, told Al Jazeera from Kolkata that there was still a lack of drinking water, food aid and power, and that the scale of response from the government needed to be improved.
Another seven aircraft carried paratroopers and fuel to the region.
Hundreds of people looking for relatives demonstrated in Dehradun where flood survivors were taken by helicopters.
They complained that the government was taking too long to evacuate the survivors, with small helicopters bringing in four to five people at a time.
Jasveer Kaur, a 50-year-old housewife, said she and her family survived by taking shelter in a Sikh shrine, which withstood the flood, located in Govind Dham.
“There was destruction all around,” said Kaur after she was evacuated by an air force helicopter. “It was a nightmare.”
Sehjo Singh, programme and policy director for Action Aid, told Al Jazeera from New Delhi that rescue efforts and media reports are focused on tourists and pilgrims and locals have complained that they are being ignored.
Flood waters in the Elbow River threaten a home on the west side of the town of Bragg Creek, Alberta, near Calgary. Photograph: QMI Agency/Rex Features
Canada’s Power Supplies Could be Hit for Months by Floods
Floods force 100,000 to flee homes in southern Alberta, where oil industry is in chaos as rains blamed for spilling 750 barrels
Reuters, The Guardian – June 23, 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/2013/jun/23/canada-power-supplies-floods
Power cuts in the Canadian oil capital of Calgary could last for weeks or even months, city authorities said on Sunday, after record-breaking floods swept across southern Alberta, killing three people and forcing more than 100,000 to flee their homes.
Some Calgary residents were able to return to sodden homes as rivers dropped and some evacuation orders were lifted. But Bruce Burrell, director of the Calgary Emergency Management Agency, said power restoration in the city centre, where many of Canada’s oil companies have their headquarters, could take days, weeks or even months. Many oil companies were making plans for employees to work from home.
“This is an evolving situation and because of the volatility of electricity and water and the infrastructure that was damaged we have got a lot of issues with restoring power to different parts of the city of Calgary,” Alderman John Mar told CBC radio. “We are facing an absolutely gargantuan task.”
Heavy rains were blamed for the spilling of 750 barrels of synthetic oil from a pipeline about 70km (43 miles) south of Fort McMurray in northern Alberta early on Saturday.
“We are still investigating the cause, however, we believe that unusually heavy rains in the area may have resulted in ground movement on the right-of way that may have impacted the pipeline,” Enbridge, Canada’s largest pipeline company, said in an emailed statement. It has shut two major oil pipelines serving Canada’s oil sands region as a precaution. Provincial authorities said it was too early to count the cost of the flood damage because rivers have not peaked in some places.
The South Saskatchewan River is expected to burst its banks in the city of Medicine Hat in south-east Alberta on Monday. About 10,000 have been evacuated. The floods already look worse than those of 2005, which caused C$400m (£248m) damage in the province.
The floods followed 36 hours of unusually heavy rainfall that pushed the volume of water in rivers to record levels. Some communities received six months of their normal rainfall within two days. Evacuations started on Thursday and the Enmax utility switched off power to central Calgary on Friday afternoon to avoid water damage to its facilities. Troops were used on Sunday morning to shore up the east bank of the Bow River in Calgary and ensure the stability of an Enmax substation.
It was unclear how much crude trading would take place on Monday after little if any trade on Friday.
Shorcan Energy Brokers, which provides live prices for many Canadian crude grades, operated out of Toronto on Friday rather than from Calgary, although there were no trades in Western Canada Select heavy blend or light synthetic crude.
Net Energy Inc, the other main Calgary crude broker, was closed on Friday and no trading took place.
As the Bow and Elbow rivers in Calgary, which during the weekend hit five times their normal flow rate, slowly receded, the scale of the damage became apparent. Roads and pavements were left covered with a layer of thick silt, fallen trees lined the riverbanks and residents pumped dirty brown water out of basements.
Police said three bodies had been found near High River, about 60km south of Calgary.
Flood water covered the grounds of the Calgary Stampede, an annual extravaganza of cows, cowboys and horses scheduled to start on 5 July. City authorities insisted the show would go ahead despite the disruption.
The flooding could hardly have come at a less opportune time for Lourdes, whose economy depends heavily on the summer tourist season.By Caroline Blumberg/European Pressphoto Agency
Flooding Damages Lourdes, French Holy Site
By Scott Sayare – June 20, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/world/europe/flooding-damages-lourdes-french-holy-site.html?_r=0
PARIS — The waters of the Christian holy site of Lourdes, reputed for their powers of healing, have been cruel this week.
Snowmelt from the Pyrénées joined with heavy storms to form surging floodwaters in the rivers of southwestern France on Tuesday and Wednesday. The generally tranquil Gave de Pau, which cuts a sharp bend along the edge of Lourdes, rose by as much as 15 feet, officials said, spilling its banks and inundating the celebrated grotto and vast subterranean church there.
Pilgrimages were canceled and hotels evacuated. Officials of the Sanctuary of Notre Dame de Lourdes, a complex of soaring basilicas and chapels on and within the hillside above the grotto, partly closed the site on Tuesday, estimating that the flooding had caused several million dollars’ worth of damages.
And so Lourdes, visited by nearly six million pilgrims every year, many of them looking to be healed of pain and disease, turned to the faithful for financial relief.
“The sanctuary will not recover from the consequences of this natural disaster without the generosity of everyone!” read a mailing released by the sanctuary on Wednesday. The appeal included a mailing address for checks and a link to an online giving portal, as well as the sanctuary’s bank codes, for payment by wire transfer. Insurance is expected to cover much, but not all, of the damages.
“This leaves us quite traumatized,” Mayor Jean-Pierre Artiganave told Agence France-Presse.
The flooding could hardly have come at a less opportune time for Lourdes, whose economy depends heavily on the summer tourist season, when pilgrims — mostly Roman Catholic — from France, the rest of Europe and across the world flock to the holy site. Lourdes, a city of just 15,000, counts nearly 200 hotels, a concentration per square kilometer said to be second in France only to Paris.
Pilgrimages by several thousand faithful were canceled Wednesday and for the coming days, sanctuary and city officials said, though Masses were still being celebrated in the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception above the cave. At least 1,000 other pilgrims were evacuated from hotels in the city center, according to Mr. Artiganave; floodwaters had swelled to “centennial” levels and reached the second story of some hotels along the banks of the Gave de Pau, Mr. Artiganave told the Paris newspaper Le Figaro.
Floodwaters in the region have killed two people in their 70s, destroyed roads and forced the evacuation of nearly 3,000 from their homes, according to Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who traveled to Lourdes on Wednesday. About 7,000 residents remained without electricity on Wednesday evening, French news media reported.
The grotto, which reportedly filled with as much as five feet of water this week, is among the most visited pilgrimage sites in the Roman Catholic faith. It became known as a place of miracles after several reports of apparitions of the Virgin Mary there in 1858.
The Catholic Church has now recognized 68 official miracles at Lourdes; 49 of those involve drinking or bathing in the spring water that flows into the cave. (Bottles of Lourdes water can be ordered from the sanctuary; buyers pay only for shipping and handling.) A television station, TV Lourdes, generally provides a live video feed from the cave. It was forced to cease broadcasting on Tuesday evening, however, when the electricity was cut.
Less violent floodwaters damaged the grotto last October, though they did not reach the underground Basilica of St. Pius X. That flooding caused about $3 million in damages, paid largely by donations from the faithful.
“The damage is much more significant than in 2012,” the sanctuary reported on its Web site, calling the situation a “catastrophe.”
“It is impossible to put numbers on it for the moment, but we fear the worst.”
Cleanup work had begun by Wednesday evening, when the waters began to recede, officials said, and in the early evening the sanctuary issued its call for donations.
“Lourdes has one element of good luck,” Mayor Artiganave said. “It’s that the world is generous with Lourdes. When Lourdes is in trouble — we saw it in October — people respond.”