Tag: disaster

Dozens dead in Phil­ip­pines

Res­id­ents trapped on roofs, sev­eral miss­ing after storm trig­gers floods

A man makes his way through debris after Typhoon Kalmaegi hit Cebu city, central Philippines, Tuesday. The area was still recovering from a 6.9magnitude earthquake in September that left at least 79 people dead and displaced thousands.

This article was written by Jim Gomez and was published in the Toronto Star on November 5, 2025.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES Typhoon Kal­maegi has left at least 52 people dead with 13 oth­ers miss­ing in the cent­ral Phil­ip­pines, mostly in wide­spread flood­ing that trapped people on their roofs and swept away scores of cars in a hard­hit province still recov­er­ing from a deadly earth­quake, offi­cials said Wed­nes­day.

Six people were killed in a sep­ar­ate incid­ent when a Phil­ip­pine air force heli­copter crashed in the south­ern province of Agusan del Sur on Tues­day while en route to help provide human­it­arian help to provinces battered by Kal­maegi, the mil­it­ary said without provid­ing other details, includ­ing what could have caused the crash.

Kal­maegi was last spot­ted early Wed­nes­day over the coastal waters of Lina­pacan in the west­ern island province of Palawan with sus­tained winds of 120 kilo­metres per hour and gusts of up to 150 km/h. It was fore­cast to blow away into the South China Sea later Wed­nes­day.

Bern­ardo Rafaelito Ale­jandro IV, deputy admin­is­trator of the Office of Civil Defence, and pro­vin­cial offi­cials said most of the deaths were repor­ted in the cent­ral province of Cebu, which was pum­melled by Kal­maegi on Tues­day, set­ting off flash floods and caus­ing a river and other water­ways to swell.

The res­ult­ing flood­ing engulfed res­id­en­tial com­munit­ies, for­cing startled res­id­ents to climb up to their roofs, where they des­per­ately pleaded to be res­cued as the flood­wa­ters rose, offi­cials said.

The Phil­ip­pine Red Cross received many calls from people need­ing res­cue from their roofs, its sec­ret­ary­gen­eral Gwen­dolyn Pang said Tues­day, adding the efforts had to wait until flood­ing sub­sided to lessen the risks for emer­gency per­son­nel.

“We did everything we can for the typhoon but, you know, there are really some unex­pec­ted things like flash floods,” Cebu Gov. Pamela Baricuatro said.

Tor­ren­tial rains sparked by the typhoon may have been worsened by years of quar­ry­ing that caused heavy silta­tion of nearby rivers, which over­flowed, and sub­stand­ard flood con­trol projects in Cebu province, Baricuatro said.

A cor­rup­tion scan­dal involving sub­stand­ard or non­exist­ent flood con­trol projects across the Phil­ip­pines has sparked pub­lic out­rage and street protests in recent months.

“There has to be an invest­ig­a­tion of the flood con­trol projects here in Cebu and people should be held account­able,” Baricuatro said.

Cebu, a bust­ling province of more than 2.4 mil­lion people, declared a state of calam­ity to allow author­it­ies to dis­burse emer­gency funds more rap­idly to deal with the latest nat­ural dis­aster.

Cebu was still recov­er­ing from a 6.9­mag­nitude earth­quake on Sept. 30 that left at least 79 people dead and dis­placed thou­sands when houses col­lapsed or were severely dam­aged.

Thou­sands of north­ern Cebu res­id­ents who were dis­placed by the earth­quake were moved to stur­dier evac­u­ation shel­ters from flimsy tents before the typhoon struck, Baricuatro said, adding that north­ern towns dev­ast­ated by the earth­quake were mostly not hit by floods gen­er­ated by Kal­maegi.

Other typhoon deaths were recor­ded in South­ern Leyte province, where an eld­erly vil­la­ger drowned in flood­wa­ters after the typhoon made land­fall in one of its east­ern towns facing the Pacific. Another res­id­ent died after being hit by a fallen tree in cent­ral Bohol province, offi­cials said.

Before Kal­maegi’s land­fall, offi­cials said more than 387,000 people had evac­u­ated to safer ground in east­ern and cent­ral Phil­ip­pine provinces. Author­it­ies had warned of tor­ren­tial rains, poten­tially destruct­ive winds and storm surges of up to three metres.

Res­cues con­tinue from flood­ing after Hur­ricane Melissa

This article was written by Nora Gamez Torres and was published in the Toronto Star on November 1, 2025.

Res­cue oper­a­tions and urgent evac­u­ations con­tin­ued in Cuba on Fri­day, as people remained trapped by severe flood­ing left by the tor­ren­tial rains from Hur­ricane Melissa on rural areas and towns across the affected provinces on the east­ern end of the island.

Cuban state tele­vi­sion reporter Lázaro Manuel Alonso said emer­gency evac­u­ations were ongo­ing in the province of Granma of res­id­ents in sev­eral com­munit­ies along the Cauto River, Cuba’s longest and the site of a major dam.

The num­ber of people evac­u­ated from Cauto Embar­ca­dero, Mel­ones, Cayama and other vil­lages was expec­ted to rise up to 7,500, Alonso said.

“The Cauto River Basin is cur­rently facing its crit­ical point of flood­ing, a com­plex phe­nomenon where intense rains, dam releases, run­off from the Sierra Maes­tra moun­tains and the dan­ger­ous pen­et­ra­tion of the sea that blocks the river mouth con­verge,” Alonso said on Face­book.

Cauto Embar­ca­dero is close to the Cauto del Paso dam, one of the largest in east­ern Cuba. On Thursday even­ing, the local gov­ern­ment of Rio Cauto muni­cip­al­ity reas­sured res­id­ents the dam was not going to col­lapse or sud­denly over­flow and the flood­ing was mainly due to the rain from Melissa. There was no evac­u­ation order in the last pub­lic­a­tion in the gov­ern­ment’s offi­cial account on Face­book as of 10:47 p.m. Thursday.

By early Fri­day, about 2,500 people had been evac­u­ated from the com­munity of Cauto Embar­ca­dero and were being housed in sev­eral schools in Bayamo, the province’s cap­ital city, local sta­tion Radio Bayamo repor­ted.

The local Granma TV sta­tion said the evac­u­ation was a com­plex oper­a­tion car­ried out by com­bined forces from the Bayamo Fire Com­mand, along with rein­force­ments from the provinces of Camagüey, Holguín and San­ti­ago de Cuba, mem­bers of the Las Tunas Bor­der Guard Troops and Red Cross work­ers.

“Cauto Embar­ca­dero was flooded by the over­flow­ing of the Cauto River down­stream from the Cauto el Paso dam. Granma’s largest reser­voir was releas­ing water at a rate of 4,000 cubic metres per second due to the massive influx of water,” the sta­tion repor­ted.

Des­per­a­tion has grown among rel­at­ives of the people repor­ted trapped since com­mu­nic­a­tions were dis­rup­ted in most of the island’s east­ern region. Rel­at­ives have been using social media to pub­lish urgent calls for inform­a­tion about their loved ones.

As of Fri­day morn­ing, some people reportedly remained trapped by flood­ing in Cauto del Paso, in the roof of a bodega and on top of a roof of the vil­lage’s elec­tric sub­sta­tion, their rel­at­ives said on social media.

People tra­verse a road flooded by Hur­ricane Melissa on the south­ern coast of San­ti­ago de Cuba on Thursday.

Author­it­ies defend flood response

Death toll tops 270 as offi­cials accused of fail­ing to warn res­id­ents to evac­u­ate ahead of rains

This article was written by Muhammad Sajjad and Riaz Khan, and was published in the Toronto Star on August 18, 2025.

Res­cuers recovered dozens more bod­ies from the rubble of col­lapsed homes in a north­west­ern dis­trict of Pakistan, bring­ing the death toll to at least 274, as author­it­ies defen­ded their response to the flood­ing and said they did not need any for­eign help at this point.

Heavy rains and flood­ing also killed dozens of people in neigh­bour­ing Kash­mir.

Mohammad Suhail, a spokes­per­son for Pakistan’s emer­gency ser­vice, said 54 bod­ies were found in Buner, a moun­tain­ous area in Khy­ber Pakh­tunkhwa province, where tor­ren­tial rains and cloud­bursts triggered massive flood­ing on Fri­day.

Suhail said vil­la­gers remain miss­ing and search efforts are focused on areas where homes were flattened by tor­rents of water that swept down from the moun­tains, car­ry­ing boulders that smashed into houses like explo­sions.

Author­it­ies have warned of more deluges and pos­sible land­slides between now and Tues­day, urging local admin­is­tra­tions to remain on alert. Higher­than­nor­mal mon­soon rains have lashed the coun­try since June 26 and killed more than 600.

In India­admin­istered Kash­mir, loc­ated across Pakistan’s north­east­ern bor­der, rains triggered more flash floods in two vil­lages in the Kathua dis­trict, killing seven people, offi­cials said Sunday. Res­cuers in Chos­iti vil­lage are still look­ing for dozens of miss­ing people after the area was hit by flash floods last week dur­ing an annual Hindu pil­grim­age. At least 60 people were killed, and some 150 injured. More than 300 oth­ers were res­cued.

Res­id­ents in Buner have accused offi­cials of fail­ing to warn them to evac­u­ate after tor­ren­tial rain and cloud­bursts triggered deadly flood­ing and land­slides. There was no warn­ing broad­cast from mosque loud­speak­ers, a tra­di­tional method in remote areas.

The gov­ern­ment said that while an early warn­ing sys­tem was in place, the sud­den down­pour in Buner was so intense that the deluge struck before res­id­ents could be aler­ted.

Lt.­Gen. Inam Haider, chair of the National Dis­aster Man­age­ment Author­ity, told a hast­ily con­vened news con­fer­ence in Islamabad that Pakistan was exper­i­en­cing shift­ing weather pat­terns because of cli­mate change. Since the mon­soon sea­son began in June, Pakistan has already received 50 per cent more rain­fall than in the same period last year, he added.

He warned that more intense weather could fol­low, with heavy rains fore­cast to con­tinue this month.

Some coun­tries have reached out to Islamabad offer­ing help, but Haider said Pakistan has suf­fi­cient resources and does not require for­eign assist­ance at this time.

Idrees Mah­sud, a dis­aster man­age­ment offi­cial, said Pakistan’s early warn­ing sys­tem used satel­lite imagery and met­eor­o­lo­gical data to send alerts to local author­it­ies. These were shared through the media and com­munity lead­ers. He said mon­soon rains that once only swelled rivers now also triggered urban flood­ing.

An emer­gency ser­vices spokes­per­son in Buner, Mohammad Sohail, said more than half the dam­aged roads in the dis­trict had reopened by Sunday, allow­ing vehicles and heavy machinery to reach cutoff vil­lages. Crews were clear­ing piles of rocks and mud dumped by the floods. They were still using heavy machinery to remove the rubble of col­lapsed homes after fam­il­ies repor­ted that some of their rel­at­ives were miss­ing.

In one of the dead­li­est incid­ents, 24 people from one fam­ily died in the vil­lage of Qadar Nagar when flood­wa­ters swept through their home on the eve of a wed­ding. The head of the fam­ily, Umar Khan, said he sur­vived the floods because he was out of the house at the time. Four of his rel­at­ives have yet to be found.

A girl sits on the rubble of her dam­aged home Sunday fol­low­ing Fri­day's flash flood­ing in Buner, in north­w­est Pakistan.

Flash floods kill more than 280

Death toll in north­w­est Pakistan hits at least 157, accord­ing to offi­cials

Villagers collect wood and other items from the debris of damaged houses at the site of a cloudburst that triggered a flash flood, in Naryan Behak village near Muzaffarabad, Kashmir, on Friday.

This article was written by the Associated Press and was published in the Toronto Star on August 16, 2025.

Flash floods triggered by tor­ren­tial rains have killed over 280 people in India and Pakistan and left scores of oth­ers miss­ing, offi­cials said Fri­day, as res­cuers brought to safety about 1,600 people from two moun­tain­ous dis­tricts in the neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.

Flood­ing began a day earlier in Indian­con­trolled Kash­mir and spread to the north and north­w­est in Pakistan, triggered by sud­den, intense down­pours over small areas. The floods and sub­sequent land­slides injured dozens of people and forced the evac­u­ation and res­cue of thou­sands of oth­ers, par­tic­u­larly in the Khy­ber Pakh­tunkhwa province.

Such cloud­bursts are increas­ingly com­mon in India’s Him­alayan regions and Pakistan’s north­ern areas, and experts have said cli­mate change is a con­trib­ut­ing factor.

Lead­ers in both coun­tries offered their con­dol­ences to the vic­tims’ fam­il­ies and assured them of swift relief.

In Indian­con­trolled Kash­mir, res­cuers searched for miss­ing people in the remote Him­alayan vil­lage of Chos­iti after flash floods a day earlier left at least 60 people dead and at least 80 miss­ing, offi­cials said.

At least 300 people were res­cued Thursday fol­low­ing a power­ful cloud­burst that triggered floods and land­slides, but the oper­a­tion was hal­ted overnight. Offi­cials said many miss­ing people were believed to have been washed away, and the num­ber of miss­ing could increase.

Res­id­ent Harvinder Singh said he joined the res­cue efforts imme­di­ately after the dis­aster and helped retrieve 33 bod­ies from the mud.

At least 50 ser­i­ously injured people were treated at hos­pit­als, many of them res­cued from a stream filled with mud and debris.

In north­ern and north­west­ern Pakistan, flash floods killed at least 243 people, includ­ing 157 who died Fri­day in the Buner dis­trict in north­w­est Pakistan.

Financial relief for floodhit residents

Province to offer up to $250,000 in disaster assistance

This article was written by Joshua Chong and was published in the Toronto Star on December 1, 2024.

Mississauga residents affected by flooding in this summer’s torrential rains can now apply for up to $250,000 in disaster recovery assistance from the Ontario government.

The new program, announced Friday in a press release issued by the city, is open to those who suffered damage to their property due to the rain storms and reside in designated areas near Little Etobicoke Creek.

Many of the city’s residents, particularly those who live near Little Etobicoke Creek, suffered extensive damage to their properties due to the floods in July and August, which turned roadways into waterways and left first responders scrambling to rescue people trapped in their cars, houses and apartment elevators.

The region recorded approximately 106 millimetres of rain from the downpour on July 15 and 16. The following month’s storm, on Aug. 17 and 18, unleashed an additional 170 mm of precipitation.

Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish said she appreciates the financial support from the province. “This is something we have been asking for since the flooding this summer,” she said in a statement. “Many Mississauga residents and businesses are still working to repair damage to their homes and properties.”

The financial relief is available to homeowners, residential tenants, small owneroperated businesses and notforprofit organizations.

The program, which will accept applications until March 31, 2025, reimburses up to 90 per cent of total eligible costs, with limits for emergency expenses, household appliances and furnishings. The province, however, said the financial aid is not meant to replace insurance coverage.

“Applicants with insurance may be eligible for additional payment under the program only if insurance coverage is insufficient to cover the essentials,” the province said on its website.

The program is also open to residents in parts of Burlington and the community of Norval who experienced flooding on July 15 and 16.

This new disaster assistance joins several other programs previously announced by the city of Mississauga to help residents affected by the floods. Starting Monday, the city will issue onetime payments of $1,000 to those who experienced basement flooding over the summer. In February 2025, the city will also start to offer rebates of up to $6,800 for eligible flood prevention improvements.