Is Your Town Threatened by Floods or Fires? Consider a ‘Managed Retreat.’
After suffering back-to-back floods in 1993, the town of Valmeyer, Ill., did something unusual. Instead of risking yet another disaster, it used funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state of Illinois to move the entire town a few miles away to higher ground.
As the climate continues to change, more and more communities will contemplate taking actions like Valmeyer’s. Rather than merely build levees or weatherize homes, communities will purposefully move away from places threatened by floods, droughts, fires or high temperatures.
This strategy is known as managed retreat. It is often considered an extreme option to be pursued only when no other alternatives remain. People don’t want to move from their homes, especially when environmental conditions, even if worsening, have not yet made life unlivable.
But managed retreat should be considered more often and in more innovative forms. Most adaptations to climate change involve both upsides and downsides: A home on stilts may reduce flood risks but restrict access for a person with limited mobility; air conditioning may keep some people cool but lead to untenable energy bills for others. While conversations about managed retreat tend to focus on its downsides, it can offer significant benefits if it’s done intelligently and with the necessary resources, as we argue in a recent article in the journal Science.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/opin ... 778d3e6de3
NATURAL DISASTERS
Smoke from a fire in Washington State wafted over the Snake River into Idaho earlier this month.Credit...
The Great Outdoors Is Giving Way to the Great Indoors
MISSOULA, Mont. — “I wouldn’t go out without an N95 mask,” an oncology nurse told me the other day. She wasn’t referring to Covid-19 protections. Cases here remain quite low. I’m vaccinated. Besides, I wasn’t planning to be indoors. It was for the smoke.
The nurse was responding to a question I posed on Twitter last week as the air quality in my town degraded before my eyes, from “moderate” to “unhealthy for sensitive groups” to plain “unhealthy.” I had planned to enjoy a midmorning trail run through the valley, usually one of the perks of summer in Montana. But when I opened the door, it smelled like a campfire.
The hills just across the valley were faint through the gauzy haze. After 18 months of worrying about masking and health risks from being indoors, I now wondered the reverse. Was it safe to exercise outside?
I went for my run, but I paid for it. I didn’t breathe the air, I chewed it. For the next day, I had a smoke hangover, marked by a dull headache, light wheeze, and a strange, bone-deep fatigue. But you don’t have to exercise to feel smoke malaise. My partner and I wake up cranky each morning and we seem to argue more lately over silly things. My neighbors have reported red, itchy eyes, greasy hair, and gnawing sinus pain just walking outside. As Covid’s Delta variant sweeps the country, Westerners have a new game to play: Smoke or Covid?
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Lovely Weather Defined California. What Happens When It’s Gone?
PALO ALTO, Calif. — Hollywood should have been in New Jersey. It was, after all, in that unglitzy state that Thomas Edison invented the Kinetograph and Kinetoscope, his cost-effective motion-picture camera and its companion viewer. And it was there that moviemaking took off; until the 1910s, many of the biggest hits of the day — “Jack and the Beanstalk,” for instance, or “The Great Train Robbery” — were produced in New Jersey and New York, many by Edison’s own company.
Yet by the end of that decade, the budding film industry had packed up and moved to California. Why? Scholars cite several reasons, but most accounts include an obvious one. The earliest movie cameras required lots of light, so films were often shot outdoors or on open-air sets. Unlike the gloomy Northeast, Southern California offered filmmakers year-round sun and a diversity of striking landscapes on which to dream up celluloid worlds — oceans, deserts and mountains within easy reach, glory wherever you looked.
In other words, Hollywood is in Hollywood rather than in West Orange, N.J., for many of the same reasons that California’s Central Valley produces about a quarter of the nation’s food, and why the Beach Boys wished for all of America to be like “Californi-a.” It’s why John Muir, looking from the summit of the Pacheco Pass, described a landscape that appeared “wholly composed” of light, “the most beautiful I have ever beheld.”
And it is the same reason that a lot of Californians first came here, and the reason so many of us, despite everything, still can’t help but stay: sunshine and natural splendor. We are hooked not just on California’s weather, pleasantly temperate and accommodating to seemingly any pursuit, but also the way life here feels defined just as much by what’s outdoors as what’s in.
A state that lives by nature, though, risks dying by it, too. In the last few years, as California battled heat waves and drought and fire, intensifying as the planet warms, I have found myself wondering about my home state’s future and, in a deeper sense, its purpose.
Is California still California when our weather becomes an adversary rather than an ally? What is California for when summertime, the season in which the Golden State once found its fullest luster, turns from heaven into hell?
Because that’s how I’ve come to think of late summer and fall here nowadays. Seven of the 10 largest wildfires in California history have occurred in the last three years. This fire season has already put an entry in the books. The Dixie Fire, which has been raging for nearly a month near Lassen National Forest, is already the second largest fire in the state’s history; it has consumed nearly half a million acres and destroyed hundreds of structures, and it’s only 25 percent contained.
Smoke from the Dixie Fire and other blazes this summer has blown more than a thousand miles away, choking the air in Denver and Salt Lake City. In the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live, the air has so far remained short of noxious, but nobody I know is expecting it to remain that way. As they did last year, face masks will soon likely serve a dual purpose for Californians — wear one indoors to evade the virus, and wear one outdoors to filter out smoke and raining ash.
I don’t mean to claim special hardship for my state; the weather is turning vengeful across the planet, not just in California. It is true, too, that wondrous as it often is here, California has never been exempt from bad weather and natural disasters. In an essay about the dry and dangerous Santa Ana winds that periodically blow through Southern California, Joan Didion described its climate as characterized by “infrequent but violent extremes.” Weather in Los Angeles, she wrote, “is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse.”
That strikes me as correct. Growing up in Orange County, I often saw headlines about drought and mudslides, fires here and there, El Niño, the Santa Anas. It was a place where the earth could never quite be trusted — you were to never forget that at any moment the ground beneath your feet could erupt in violent tremor, and everything around you might be destroyed in an instant.
What’s different about nature in California now is not the kind of disasters we face, but rather the regularity. The violent extremes are no longer infrequent — they are commonplace, expected. The weather of catastrophe and apocalypse is not freak; it is just the weather.
People who study California sometimes talk about the “weather tax.” Life in this state can be frustrating — it’s expensive, it’s clogged with traffic, taxes are high, inequality levels are among the worst in the nation. But maybe that’s just the price you’ve got to pay for amazing weather.
In 2015, pollsters at the University of Southern California and The Los Angeles Times asked people whether they’re likely to remain in California, and if so, why. Although respondents cited a litany of problems, more than 70 percent said they’d rather live here than anywhere else. The top reason, by far, was the weather. Life here may be tough, but people seemed willing to endure a lot to live in a place where it was so nice outside.
But the importance we place on pleasant weather is exactly why an altered climate could be so devastating to this state’s identity. The Mamas & the Papas sang of California as an escapist dreamland untouched by gloom. You’d be safe and warm if you were in L.A.
Not long from now, Los Angeles and elsewhere here might be more nightmare than dream — way too warm and none too safe, all the leaves burned, the sky ash gray.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/opin ... 778d3e6de3
PALO ALTO, Calif. — Hollywood should have been in New Jersey. It was, after all, in that unglitzy state that Thomas Edison invented the Kinetograph and Kinetoscope, his cost-effective motion-picture camera and its companion viewer. And it was there that moviemaking took off; until the 1910s, many of the biggest hits of the day — “Jack and the Beanstalk,” for instance, or “The Great Train Robbery” — were produced in New Jersey and New York, many by Edison’s own company.
Yet by the end of that decade, the budding film industry had packed up and moved to California. Why? Scholars cite several reasons, but most accounts include an obvious one. The earliest movie cameras required lots of light, so films were often shot outdoors or on open-air sets. Unlike the gloomy Northeast, Southern California offered filmmakers year-round sun and a diversity of striking landscapes on which to dream up celluloid worlds — oceans, deserts and mountains within easy reach, glory wherever you looked.
In other words, Hollywood is in Hollywood rather than in West Orange, N.J., for many of the same reasons that California’s Central Valley produces about a quarter of the nation’s food, and why the Beach Boys wished for all of America to be like “Californi-a.” It’s why John Muir, looking from the summit of the Pacheco Pass, described a landscape that appeared “wholly composed” of light, “the most beautiful I have ever beheld.”
And it is the same reason that a lot of Californians first came here, and the reason so many of us, despite everything, still can’t help but stay: sunshine and natural splendor. We are hooked not just on California’s weather, pleasantly temperate and accommodating to seemingly any pursuit, but also the way life here feels defined just as much by what’s outdoors as what’s in.
A state that lives by nature, though, risks dying by it, too. In the last few years, as California battled heat waves and drought and fire, intensifying as the planet warms, I have found myself wondering about my home state’s future and, in a deeper sense, its purpose.
Is California still California when our weather becomes an adversary rather than an ally? What is California for when summertime, the season in which the Golden State once found its fullest luster, turns from heaven into hell?
Because that’s how I’ve come to think of late summer and fall here nowadays. Seven of the 10 largest wildfires in California history have occurred in the last three years. This fire season has already put an entry in the books. The Dixie Fire, which has been raging for nearly a month near Lassen National Forest, is already the second largest fire in the state’s history; it has consumed nearly half a million acres and destroyed hundreds of structures, and it’s only 25 percent contained.
Smoke from the Dixie Fire and other blazes this summer has blown more than a thousand miles away, choking the air in Denver and Salt Lake City. In the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live, the air has so far remained short of noxious, but nobody I know is expecting it to remain that way. As they did last year, face masks will soon likely serve a dual purpose for Californians — wear one indoors to evade the virus, and wear one outdoors to filter out smoke and raining ash.
I don’t mean to claim special hardship for my state; the weather is turning vengeful across the planet, not just in California. It is true, too, that wondrous as it often is here, California has never been exempt from bad weather and natural disasters. In an essay about the dry and dangerous Santa Ana winds that periodically blow through Southern California, Joan Didion described its climate as characterized by “infrequent but violent extremes.” Weather in Los Angeles, she wrote, “is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse.”
That strikes me as correct. Growing up in Orange County, I often saw headlines about drought and mudslides, fires here and there, El Niño, the Santa Anas. It was a place where the earth could never quite be trusted — you were to never forget that at any moment the ground beneath your feet could erupt in violent tremor, and everything around you might be destroyed in an instant.
What’s different about nature in California now is not the kind of disasters we face, but rather the regularity. The violent extremes are no longer infrequent — they are commonplace, expected. The weather of catastrophe and apocalypse is not freak; it is just the weather.
People who study California sometimes talk about the “weather tax.” Life in this state can be frustrating — it’s expensive, it’s clogged with traffic, taxes are high, inequality levels are among the worst in the nation. But maybe that’s just the price you’ve got to pay for amazing weather.
In 2015, pollsters at the University of Southern California and The Los Angeles Times asked people whether they’re likely to remain in California, and if so, why. Although respondents cited a litany of problems, more than 70 percent said they’d rather live here than anywhere else. The top reason, by far, was the weather. Life here may be tough, but people seemed willing to endure a lot to live in a place where it was so nice outside.
But the importance we place on pleasant weather is exactly why an altered climate could be so devastating to this state’s identity. The Mamas & the Papas sang of California as an escapist dreamland untouched by gloom. You’d be safe and warm if you were in L.A.
Not long from now, Los Angeles and elsewhere here might be more nightmare than dream — way too warm and none too safe, all the leaves burned, the sky ash gray.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Re: NATURAL DISASTERS
Flooding in Nigeria Flattens a Town, Killing at Least 151
Nigerian authorities said they had expected flooding as part of the rainy season but were surprised by the extent of the damage.
By Ismail Auwal and Lynsey Chutel
Ismail Auwal reported from Abuja, Nigeria.
Published May 30, 2025
Updated May 31, 2025, 8:14 a.m. ET
Floodwaters from torrential overnight rainfall inundated a town in Nigeria on Friday, killing at least 151 people, according to officials, who said the severity of the flood had taken them by surprise.
The deluge displaced dozens of families and flattened homes and businesses in the town, Mokwa, about 235 miles west of Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. Mokwa’s central location at the intersection of three major roads has made it a thriving market town, with customers coming from several surrounding villages. The authorities and residents expect the death toll to rise as the floodwaters subside and rescue efforts continue.
A map locating Mokwa, in Niger province, Nigeria. Abuja and Lagos are also shown.
NIGER
NIGERIA
BENIN
NIGER PROVINCE
Mokwa
Abuja
Lagos
CAMEROON
200 MILES
By The New York Times
After heavy overnight rains, residents in Mokwa said they woke to a shocking scene.
“We had to knock on some doors, but before people could escape, the flood had already caught up,” Umar Jamil, who lost his shop in the disaster, said in a phone interview. “We have seen many bodies floating on the water, but we couldn’t help.”
At a camp for displaced people, Kaka Dazana, 48, said she had lost all four of her children and had barely made it out of the waters alive.
“I don’t know if I myself can survive this,” she said through tears. “The eldest was 20, and the youngest was 7.”
Ibrahim Hussaini, a spokesman for the state’s emergency management department, said on Saturday that more than 3,000 people had lost their homes.
The authorities are still searching for bodies and evaluating the damage, said Habibu Wushishi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management in Niger State, which includes Mokwa. They have also set up camps for the hundreds of displaced people expected to seek shelter, he said.
Each year, the rainy season, which runs from roughly April to October, brings downpours and flooding to Nigeria and other parts of West Africa. But scientists have found that climate change has contributed to the increased ferocity of the flooding in recent years. In 2022, more than 600 people were killed in Nigeria and 1.4 million displaced in what the country’s leaders described as the worst floods in a decade.
The authorities in Mokwa said they had expected flooding during this year’s rainy season, but not to this extent. Mr. Wushishi said officials had predicted that flooding would be limited to areas surrounding rivers. Mokwa, the seat of the region’s local government, is not on a river.
Still, residents like Mr. Jamil, the shopkeeper, were angered by what they said was the state’s slow response to flood warnings.
“There have been signs for a long time that a flood might occur here,” Mr. Jamil, 32, said. “You can only imagine the magnitude of the pain inflicted on our people by this flood.”
Jonathan Wolfe contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/worl ... e9677ea768
Nigerian authorities said they had expected flooding as part of the rainy season but were surprised by the extent of the damage.
By Ismail Auwal and Lynsey Chutel
Ismail Auwal reported from Abuja, Nigeria.
Published May 30, 2025
Updated May 31, 2025, 8:14 a.m. ET
Floodwaters from torrential overnight rainfall inundated a town in Nigeria on Friday, killing at least 151 people, according to officials, who said the severity of the flood had taken them by surprise.
The deluge displaced dozens of families and flattened homes and businesses in the town, Mokwa, about 235 miles west of Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. Mokwa’s central location at the intersection of three major roads has made it a thriving market town, with customers coming from several surrounding villages. The authorities and residents expect the death toll to rise as the floodwaters subside and rescue efforts continue.
A map locating Mokwa, in Niger province, Nigeria. Abuja and Lagos are also shown.
NIGER
NIGERIA
BENIN
NIGER PROVINCE
Mokwa
Abuja
Lagos
CAMEROON
200 MILES
By The New York Times
After heavy overnight rains, residents in Mokwa said they woke to a shocking scene.
“We had to knock on some doors, but before people could escape, the flood had already caught up,” Umar Jamil, who lost his shop in the disaster, said in a phone interview. “We have seen many bodies floating on the water, but we couldn’t help.”
At a camp for displaced people, Kaka Dazana, 48, said she had lost all four of her children and had barely made it out of the waters alive.
“I don’t know if I myself can survive this,” she said through tears. “The eldest was 20, and the youngest was 7.”
Ibrahim Hussaini, a spokesman for the state’s emergency management department, said on Saturday that more than 3,000 people had lost their homes.
The authorities are still searching for bodies and evaluating the damage, said Habibu Wushishi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management in Niger State, which includes Mokwa. They have also set up camps for the hundreds of displaced people expected to seek shelter, he said.
Each year, the rainy season, which runs from roughly April to October, brings downpours and flooding to Nigeria and other parts of West Africa. But scientists have found that climate change has contributed to the increased ferocity of the flooding in recent years. In 2022, more than 600 people were killed in Nigeria and 1.4 million displaced in what the country’s leaders described as the worst floods in a decade.
The authorities in Mokwa said they had expected flooding during this year’s rainy season, but not to this extent. Mr. Wushishi said officials had predicted that flooding would be limited to areas surrounding rivers. Mokwa, the seat of the region’s local government, is not on a river.
Still, residents like Mr. Jamil, the shopkeeper, were angered by what they said was the state’s slow response to flood warnings.
“There have been signs for a long time that a flood might occur here,” Mr. Jamil, 32, said. “You can only imagine the magnitude of the pain inflicted on our people by this flood.”
Jonathan Wolfe contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/worl ... e9677ea768
Re: NATURAL DISASTERS
Floods and Heavy Rain Kill Dozens in Pakistan
Relentless rain began on Wednesday, causing flooding in several cities and across vast rural stretches in the province of Punjab.
Video; https://nyti.ms/4kMB4bw
The relentless rain caused flooding across the country’s most populous province. Many of those killed have been children, officials said.CreditCredit...Aamir Qureshi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By John YoonZia ur-Rehman and Salman Masood
Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, Pakistan.
July 18, 2025
Heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan have killed at least 57 people in the past two days, many of them children, officials said on Friday.
The relentless rain began lashing Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, on Wednesday, causing floods in several cities and across vast rural stretches.
Most of the deaths were caused by collapsing buildings, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. Twenty-four of those who died were children, the agency said.
This is the latest extreme weather to hit Pakistan, which has seen intense heat waves and floods in recent years. Scientists and officials have linked these events to climate change.
This monsoon season in Pakistan began in late June, and the heavy rains have killed at least 180 people and injured hundreds more, the national disaster authority said. More than 80 of the dead were children.
Chakwal, around 60 miles south of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, was among the hardest-hit areas. The floods inundated several villages in the district and damaged infrastructure, including power lines.
“The floodwaters engulfed our homes and crops before my eyes,” said Malak Jamil, 56, a small farm owner in Chakwal. In a phone interview, he estimated his losses at more than $6,000, several times his yearly income. “I have no idea how I will recover from this,” Mr. Jamil said.
The floods cut off road access to many areas. The Pakistani military deployed helicopters to evacuate more than a hundred stranded people, according to the state broadcaster Pakistan Television. The authorities have urged people in low-lying areas to heed evacuation orders when they are issued and leave for higher ground immediately.
In Rawalpindi, a city next to Islamabad, the rain overwhelmed drainage channels and stalled traffic, turning the cityscape into murky pools strewed with debris. Floodwater poured into homes and stores.
Power was out for as long as 19 hours in many neighborhoods, municipal engineers said, leaving people without running water as well. An emergency public holiday was declared on Thursday, shutting government offices. The main flood channel swelled 22 feet above normal levels, setting off evacuation sirens.
“As the rain poured, one side of our house just gave way,” said Asim Ali, 35, a gardener who lives in the village of Jabbar Darvesh on the outskirts of Islamabad.
He said the house, where he lived with his mother, wife, children and brothers, was no longer habitable. “We’ve never seen anything like this before,” he said.
A break was expected from the heavy rainfall on Friday, the Pakistan Meteorological Department said.
Some of the deaths were caused by electrocution, officials said. Punjab’s provincial government has warned people to stay away from downed power lines and household appliances affected by floodwater.
“As monsoon rains continue and waters rise, children face life-threatening risks from drowning and collapsing homes to spikes in waterborne diseases and electrocution,” the United Nations Children’s Fund said in a statement.
Scientists have linked the heavy floods in recent years in Pakistan to climate change. Computer models have shown that human-caused warming has contributed to intensifying rainfall, which is especially strong during the monsoon season, which typically runs from July to September.
The monsoon season in 2022 brought some of the worst flooding to ever hit Pakistan. More than 1,700 people died, tens of thousands were left displaced and millions were recovering years later.
Heat waves have also become more intense in Pakistan in recent years. Disaster management officials in Punjab said this week that the accelerated melting of glaciers in the north of Pakistan has intensified the threat of floods.
Extreme Weather in Pakistan
Two Years After Deadly Floods Hit Pakistan, It’s Happening Again https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/worl ... loods.html
Sept. 4, 2024
In a First Study of Pakistan’s Floods, Scientists See Climate Change at Work https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/clim ... rming.html
Sept. 15, 2022
When It’s This Hot, ‘We Are Enduring, Not Living’ https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/12/worl ... -heat.html
July 12, 2025
John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/worl ... e9677ea768
Relentless rain began on Wednesday, causing flooding in several cities and across vast rural stretches in the province of Punjab.
Video; https://nyti.ms/4kMB4bw
The relentless rain caused flooding across the country’s most populous province. Many of those killed have been children, officials said.CreditCredit...Aamir Qureshi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By John YoonZia ur-Rehman and Salman Masood
Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, Pakistan.
July 18, 2025
Heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan have killed at least 57 people in the past two days, many of them children, officials said on Friday.
The relentless rain began lashing Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, on Wednesday, causing floods in several cities and across vast rural stretches.
Most of the deaths were caused by collapsing buildings, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. Twenty-four of those who died were children, the agency said.
This is the latest extreme weather to hit Pakistan, which has seen intense heat waves and floods in recent years. Scientists and officials have linked these events to climate change.
This monsoon season in Pakistan began in late June, and the heavy rains have killed at least 180 people and injured hundreds more, the national disaster authority said. More than 80 of the dead were children.
Chakwal, around 60 miles south of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, was among the hardest-hit areas. The floods inundated several villages in the district and damaged infrastructure, including power lines.
“The floodwaters engulfed our homes and crops before my eyes,” said Malak Jamil, 56, a small farm owner in Chakwal. In a phone interview, he estimated his losses at more than $6,000, several times his yearly income. “I have no idea how I will recover from this,” Mr. Jamil said.
The floods cut off road access to many areas. The Pakistani military deployed helicopters to evacuate more than a hundred stranded people, according to the state broadcaster Pakistan Television. The authorities have urged people in low-lying areas to heed evacuation orders when they are issued and leave for higher ground immediately.
In Rawalpindi, a city next to Islamabad, the rain overwhelmed drainage channels and stalled traffic, turning the cityscape into murky pools strewed with debris. Floodwater poured into homes and stores.
Power was out for as long as 19 hours in many neighborhoods, municipal engineers said, leaving people without running water as well. An emergency public holiday was declared on Thursday, shutting government offices. The main flood channel swelled 22 feet above normal levels, setting off evacuation sirens.
“As the rain poured, one side of our house just gave way,” said Asim Ali, 35, a gardener who lives in the village of Jabbar Darvesh on the outskirts of Islamabad.
He said the house, where he lived with his mother, wife, children and brothers, was no longer habitable. “We’ve never seen anything like this before,” he said.
A break was expected from the heavy rainfall on Friday, the Pakistan Meteorological Department said.
Some of the deaths were caused by electrocution, officials said. Punjab’s provincial government has warned people to stay away from downed power lines and household appliances affected by floodwater.
“As monsoon rains continue and waters rise, children face life-threatening risks from drowning and collapsing homes to spikes in waterborne diseases and electrocution,” the United Nations Children’s Fund said in a statement.
Scientists have linked the heavy floods in recent years in Pakistan to climate change. Computer models have shown that human-caused warming has contributed to intensifying rainfall, which is especially strong during the monsoon season, which typically runs from July to September.
The monsoon season in 2022 brought some of the worst flooding to ever hit Pakistan. More than 1,700 people died, tens of thousands were left displaced and millions were recovering years later.
Heat waves have also become more intense in Pakistan in recent years. Disaster management officials in Punjab said this week that the accelerated melting of glaciers in the north of Pakistan has intensified the threat of floods.
Extreme Weather in Pakistan
Two Years After Deadly Floods Hit Pakistan, It’s Happening Again https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/worl ... loods.html
Sept. 4, 2024
In a First Study of Pakistan’s Floods, Scientists See Climate Change at Work https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/clim ... rming.html
Sept. 15, 2022
When It’s This Hot, ‘We Are Enduring, Not Living’ https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/12/worl ... -heat.html
July 12, 2025
John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/worl ... e9677ea768
Re: NATURAL DISASTERS
Earthquake in Afghanistan Leaves More Than 800 Dead
The quake, near the border with Pakistan, injured more than 2,500 people in mountainous areas that rescue workers took hours to reach.
Video:
Injured people were airlifted from mountainous communities after a 6.0-magnitude quake. The death toll was expected to rise.CreditCredit...Hedayat Shah/Associated Press
Elian PeltierSafiullah PadshahZia ur-Rehman
By Elian PeltierSafiullah Padshah and Zia ur-Rehman
Elian Peltier and Zia ur-Rehman reported from Islamabad, Pakistan; and Safiullah Padshah from Kabul, Afghanistan.
Published Aug. 31, 2025
Updated Sept. 1, 2025, 2:23 p.m. ET
Leer en español
Rescue workers on Monday scrambled to reach mountainous areas in eastern Afghanistan hit by a 6.0-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 800 people overnight, Afghan officials said, warning that the death toll would probably rise.
Recovery efforts were complicated by landslides that stranded devastated villages already barely accessible by road. And so far, only a handful of countries have offered relief assistance to the Taliban government.
Most of the destruction from the earthquake, which struck just before midnight Sunday, took place in the province of Kunar, where dozens of villages of mud and brick houses were hit.
“The area is very steep and narrow and most of it is inaccessible because of landslides and rains that fell over the past few days,” said Kate Carey, a Kabul-based officer with the United Nations’ Office for humanitarian affairs.
Shake intensity
Light
Strong
Note: Map shows the area with a shake intensity of 4 or greater, which U.S.G.S. defines as “light,” though the earthquake may be felt outside the areas shown. Source: U.S.G.S. All times on the map are Afghanistan time. By William B. Davis and John Keefe
The quake hit Afghanistan as the South Asian nation has been battling a series of overlapping humanitarian, economic and geopolitical crises.
Hundreds of hospitals and health care centers have shut down since the Trump administration suspended U.S. foreign aid this spring. More than 2.3 million Afghan nationals have returned to Afghanistan this year, in some cases by force, after being expelled from Pakistan or Iran amid a wave of xenophobia and political pressure in those countries.
And four years into power, the Taliban have struggled to shed Afghanistan of its status of pariah and attract foreign investments despite timid engagement with Russia and China in recent months.
ImagePeople gathered around military helicopters that landed to provide help and evacuate victims.
People gathered around military helicopters that landed to provide help and evacuate injured victims in Mazar Dara, Kunar province, Afghanistan, Monday.Credit...Wahidullah Kakar/Associated Press
As of Monday afternoon, Iran, India, Japan and the European Union had committed support to the victims of the earthquake, the spokesman for the Taliban-run Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hafiz Zia Ahmad Takal, told The New York Times. It stood in sharp contrast with the assistance offered in 2023 after a devastating earthquake killed more than 1,300 people in western Afghanistan.
“We were already unable to meet existing needs, and I’m not even talking about the new needs created by this earthquake,” said Sherine Ibrahim, the country director for Afghanistan for the International Rescue Committee, a nonprofit. “We’re making a plea to all donors to set aside politics to relieve populations.”
The United States and other foreign donors have grown reluctant to provide humanitarian or development aid to Afghanistan in recent years. The Taliban have remained unflinching on draconian restrictions they have imposed on women and girls, and widespread allegations have spread that the group diverts humanitarian aid to their fighters and some communities at the expense of others.
Last month, a report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found that the Taliban denied nonprofits the right to operate unless they hired Taliban-affiliated businesses or individuals, and redirected aid to Pashtun communities — the group’s dominant ethnicity.
“The Taliban use every means at their disposal, including force, to ensure that aid goes where they want it to go, as opposed to where donors intend,” said Gene Aloise, the acting Special Inspector General, said in the report.
The quake in eastern Afghanistan was a shallow one, just five miles from the earth’s surface. This made it more likely to be destructive, because shallower waves retain more of their power when hitting the surface. Less than 100 miles away, residents of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, felt the aftershocks across the city, but no major damage was reported.
Map: 6.0-Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Afghanistan https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... quake.html
View the location of the quake’s epicenter and shake area.
Road access was difficult for rescue workers in the area’s steep terrain, where landslides had struck. Homa Nader, the acting head of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in Afghanistan, said it took Red Cross teams four hours overnight to reach the most affected area, in Nur Gal district, from Jalalabad, the closest large city just 35 miles away.
By Monday afternoon, the road linking Jalalabad, one of Afghanistan’s largest cities, to Kunar Province had reopened, and a steady stream of ambulances were rushing to the affected areas while on the other side, dozens were ferrying victims back to the city.
Hospitals were operational in both Kunar and Nangarhar with no significant damage, Ms. Nader said, while health centers in three districts of Kunar reported minor structural damages. But one village, Mazar Dara, was completely blocked and victims could only be carried out by helicopter, she said in a text message.
Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s chief spokesman, told a news conference in Kabul on Monday that 800 people had been killed and 2,500 injured in Kunar Province alone. In Nangarhar Province, he said, at least 12 people were killed and 255 were injured.
Image
An earthquake victim being carried away for evacuation by a helicopter from the Nurgal district of Jalalabad, in Kunar Province, on Monday.Credit...Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Earthquakes are a recurring danger in Afghanistan and other countries in the region, where many people live on or near geological faults. In 2022, a 5.9-magnitude quake that struck a remote area of Afghanistan’s southeast killed at least 1,300 people, according to the United Nations. The Taliban, who have ruled Afghanistan since 2021, said at the time that more than 4,000 people had died.
In neighboring Pakistan, tremors were felt across several districts of the northwestern border province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and other parts of the country, but officials reported no major damage or casualties.
The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, expressed his condolences to the victims’ families, adding, “The U.N. team in Afghanistan is mobilized and will spare no effort to assist those in need in the affected areas.”
But U.N. agencies and humanitarian organizations in Afghanistan have had to deeply cut their assistance efforts since the Trump administration, which provided 45 percent of the aid supplied to Afghanistan, suspended or eliminated nearly all of its contributions. Several European countries, including Britain, France and Sweden, then followed.
Less than 30 percent of humanitarian needs for Afghanistan have been covered for 2025, according to the United Nations office for humanitarian affairs. That was before Sunday’s earthquake.
“Domestic governance structure and international aid are very critical in a moment like the aftermath of this earthquake, and both are at a low point in Afghanistan at the moment,” said Daniel Aldrich, the director of the Resilience Studies Program at Northeastern University.
Image
Three people on an airport tarmac carry a fourth person on a stretcher. The nose of a plane is visible.
A person wounded in the quake was carried to an ambulance at an airport in Jalalabad, on Monday.Credit...Reuters
More than half of the country’s 42 million people are in need of aid, according to U.N. officials, and humanitarian organizations were bracing for a painful winter amid dwindling funds and the return of more than two million Afghans forcibly returned from neighboring Pakistan and Iran.
More are scheduled to arrive in the coming days: The earthquake hit while many Afghans living in Pakistan were on their way to Afghanistan, ahead of a Monday deadline set by the Pakistani government for them to leave or face arrest and deportation.
One of those Afghans, Said Meer, had planned to arrive in Jalalabad on Monday with his two wives and 12 children, a day after leaving Lahore, the city in eastern Pakistan where he was born and had spent his whole life.
On Monday, the colorful truck carrying Mr. Meer’s extended family and their meager belongings was at a border crossing, waiting to enter Afghanistan. Despite the destruction brought by the quake, he said he still planned to move to Jalalabad, 40 miles from the border, and transfer his livestock business there.
“May God watch over our Afghan people,” Mr. Meer said by telephone. “War, earthquakes, poverty — every hardship is a test from God.”
Image
A house destroyed by the earthquake, in Afghanistan.
A house destroyed by an earthquake in Mazar Dara.Credit...Wahidullah Kakar/Associated Press
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/worl ... labad.html
The quake, near the border with Pakistan, injured more than 2,500 people in mountainous areas that rescue workers took hours to reach.
Video:
Injured people were airlifted from mountainous communities after a 6.0-magnitude quake. The death toll was expected to rise.CreditCredit...Hedayat Shah/Associated Press
Elian PeltierSafiullah PadshahZia ur-Rehman
By Elian PeltierSafiullah Padshah and Zia ur-Rehman
Elian Peltier and Zia ur-Rehman reported from Islamabad, Pakistan; and Safiullah Padshah from Kabul, Afghanistan.
Published Aug. 31, 2025
Updated Sept. 1, 2025, 2:23 p.m. ET
Leer en español
Rescue workers on Monday scrambled to reach mountainous areas in eastern Afghanistan hit by a 6.0-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 800 people overnight, Afghan officials said, warning that the death toll would probably rise.
Recovery efforts were complicated by landslides that stranded devastated villages already barely accessible by road. And so far, only a handful of countries have offered relief assistance to the Taliban government.
Most of the destruction from the earthquake, which struck just before midnight Sunday, took place in the province of Kunar, where dozens of villages of mud and brick houses were hit.
“The area is very steep and narrow and most of it is inaccessible because of landslides and rains that fell over the past few days,” said Kate Carey, a Kabul-based officer with the United Nations’ Office for humanitarian affairs.
Shake intensity
Light
Strong
Note: Map shows the area with a shake intensity of 4 or greater, which U.S.G.S. defines as “light,” though the earthquake may be felt outside the areas shown. Source: U.S.G.S. All times on the map are Afghanistan time. By William B. Davis and John Keefe
The quake hit Afghanistan as the South Asian nation has been battling a series of overlapping humanitarian, economic and geopolitical crises.
Hundreds of hospitals and health care centers have shut down since the Trump administration suspended U.S. foreign aid this spring. More than 2.3 million Afghan nationals have returned to Afghanistan this year, in some cases by force, after being expelled from Pakistan or Iran amid a wave of xenophobia and political pressure in those countries.
And four years into power, the Taliban have struggled to shed Afghanistan of its status of pariah and attract foreign investments despite timid engagement with Russia and China in recent months.
ImagePeople gathered around military helicopters that landed to provide help and evacuate victims.
People gathered around military helicopters that landed to provide help and evacuate injured victims in Mazar Dara, Kunar province, Afghanistan, Monday.Credit...Wahidullah Kakar/Associated Press
As of Monday afternoon, Iran, India, Japan and the European Union had committed support to the victims of the earthquake, the spokesman for the Taliban-run Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hafiz Zia Ahmad Takal, told The New York Times. It stood in sharp contrast with the assistance offered in 2023 after a devastating earthquake killed more than 1,300 people in western Afghanistan.
“We were already unable to meet existing needs, and I’m not even talking about the new needs created by this earthquake,” said Sherine Ibrahim, the country director for Afghanistan for the International Rescue Committee, a nonprofit. “We’re making a plea to all donors to set aside politics to relieve populations.”
The United States and other foreign donors have grown reluctant to provide humanitarian or development aid to Afghanistan in recent years. The Taliban have remained unflinching on draconian restrictions they have imposed on women and girls, and widespread allegations have spread that the group diverts humanitarian aid to their fighters and some communities at the expense of others.
Last month, a report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found that the Taliban denied nonprofits the right to operate unless they hired Taliban-affiliated businesses or individuals, and redirected aid to Pashtun communities — the group’s dominant ethnicity.
“The Taliban use every means at their disposal, including force, to ensure that aid goes where they want it to go, as opposed to where donors intend,” said Gene Aloise, the acting Special Inspector General, said in the report.
The quake in eastern Afghanistan was a shallow one, just five miles from the earth’s surface. This made it more likely to be destructive, because shallower waves retain more of their power when hitting the surface. Less than 100 miles away, residents of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, felt the aftershocks across the city, but no major damage was reported.
Map: 6.0-Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Afghanistan https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... quake.html
View the location of the quake’s epicenter and shake area.
Road access was difficult for rescue workers in the area’s steep terrain, where landslides had struck. Homa Nader, the acting head of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in Afghanistan, said it took Red Cross teams four hours overnight to reach the most affected area, in Nur Gal district, from Jalalabad, the closest large city just 35 miles away.
By Monday afternoon, the road linking Jalalabad, one of Afghanistan’s largest cities, to Kunar Province had reopened, and a steady stream of ambulances were rushing to the affected areas while on the other side, dozens were ferrying victims back to the city.
Hospitals were operational in both Kunar and Nangarhar with no significant damage, Ms. Nader said, while health centers in three districts of Kunar reported minor structural damages. But one village, Mazar Dara, was completely blocked and victims could only be carried out by helicopter, she said in a text message.
Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s chief spokesman, told a news conference in Kabul on Monday that 800 people had been killed and 2,500 injured in Kunar Province alone. In Nangarhar Province, he said, at least 12 people were killed and 255 were injured.
Image
An earthquake victim being carried away for evacuation by a helicopter from the Nurgal district of Jalalabad, in Kunar Province, on Monday.Credit...Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Earthquakes are a recurring danger in Afghanistan and other countries in the region, where many people live on or near geological faults. In 2022, a 5.9-magnitude quake that struck a remote area of Afghanistan’s southeast killed at least 1,300 people, according to the United Nations. The Taliban, who have ruled Afghanistan since 2021, said at the time that more than 4,000 people had died.
In neighboring Pakistan, tremors were felt across several districts of the northwestern border province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and other parts of the country, but officials reported no major damage or casualties.
The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, expressed his condolences to the victims’ families, adding, “The U.N. team in Afghanistan is mobilized and will spare no effort to assist those in need in the affected areas.”
But U.N. agencies and humanitarian organizations in Afghanistan have had to deeply cut their assistance efforts since the Trump administration, which provided 45 percent of the aid supplied to Afghanistan, suspended or eliminated nearly all of its contributions. Several European countries, including Britain, France and Sweden, then followed.
Less than 30 percent of humanitarian needs for Afghanistan have been covered for 2025, according to the United Nations office for humanitarian affairs. That was before Sunday’s earthquake.
“Domestic governance structure and international aid are very critical in a moment like the aftermath of this earthquake, and both are at a low point in Afghanistan at the moment,” said Daniel Aldrich, the director of the Resilience Studies Program at Northeastern University.
Image
Three people on an airport tarmac carry a fourth person on a stretcher. The nose of a plane is visible.
A person wounded in the quake was carried to an ambulance at an airport in Jalalabad, on Monday.Credit...Reuters
More than half of the country’s 42 million people are in need of aid, according to U.N. officials, and humanitarian organizations were bracing for a painful winter amid dwindling funds and the return of more than two million Afghans forcibly returned from neighboring Pakistan and Iran.
More are scheduled to arrive in the coming days: The earthquake hit while many Afghans living in Pakistan were on their way to Afghanistan, ahead of a Monday deadline set by the Pakistani government for them to leave or face arrest and deportation.
One of those Afghans, Said Meer, had planned to arrive in Jalalabad on Monday with his two wives and 12 children, a day after leaving Lahore, the city in eastern Pakistan where he was born and had spent his whole life.
On Monday, the colorful truck carrying Mr. Meer’s extended family and their meager belongings was at a border crossing, waiting to enter Afghanistan. Despite the destruction brought by the quake, he said he still planned to move to Jalalabad, 40 miles from the border, and transfer his livestock business there.
“May God watch over our Afghan people,” Mr. Meer said by telephone. “War, earthquakes, poverty — every hardship is a test from God.”
Image
A house destroyed by the earthquake, in Afghanistan.
A house destroyed by an earthquake in Mazar Dara.Credit...Wahidullah Kakar/Associated Press
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/worl ... labad.html
Re: NATURAL DISASTERS
Landslide Kills Hundreds in Sudan
The landslide leveled a village in the remote Marra mountains, a local rebel group said. Its leader appealed for urgent help, saying, “This is a nightmare.”
map
The landslide on Sunday swept across the village of Tarsin in Sudan’s Darfur region, killing more than 1,000 people.Credit...The New York Times
Declan WalshQasim Nauman
By Declan Walsh and Qasim Nauman
Declan Walsh reported from Nairobi, Kenya.
Sept. 2, 2025
Hundreds of Sudanese villagers were killed when a landslide engulfed their village in Darfur, a region already stricken by famine and war, according to officials and a local rebel group that issued an urgent appeal on Tuesday for international help.
The landslide happened on Sunday after days of heavy rain and leveled the village of Tarsin in the remote Marra mountains, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army said in a statement.
The rebel group said that as many as 1,000 people had been killed in the disaster, with just a single survivor in the village. The toll was based on estimates of the village population.
The top U.N. official in Sudan, Luca Renda, said in a statement that between 300 and 1,000 people may have died. Sudan’s government and aid workers scrambling to reach the affected area offered similar estimates.
“This is a nightmare,” Abdul Wahid al-Nur, the leader of the rebel group, said by phone from Nairobi on Tuesday. He asked the United Nations and aid groups to send heavy machinery and rescue workers, saying, “We need to move thousands of tonnes of rock and earth.”
“Our biggest problem is that nobody is coming to help. This is beyond our capability,” he added.
The landslide was the latest calamity to befall a region already ravaged by Sudan’s two-year civil war and the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
“It’s a natural disaster in the middle of a war,” said Mathilde Vu of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which works in the region. “It’s the worst possible combination.”
Image
A group of people is seen on debris and mud.
A photo released by the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army on Tuesday shows people inspecting an area after Sunday’s landslide in the village of Tarsin.Credit...Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Efforts to reach Tarsin were being hampered by the village’s remoteness and continuing heavy rains, she said. The area has no phone networks, few roads and little state presence. Local responders said Tarsin could only be reached by donkey or a three-hour trek, Ms. Vu added.
The area has seen landslides before, most notably in 2018 when dozens of people were killed in the village of Tarba, according to Mr. al-Nur. But that was a modest crisis compared with the disaster that struck Sunday night.
Sudan’s military chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said in a statement that hundreds of people had been killed, and that the government he leads was mobilizing “all possible resources” to support those affected.
But his shaky writ does not extend to most of Darfur, a region that has suffered greatly since April 2023, when clashes between the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces exploded into a catastrophic civil war.
A famine that was declared last year in Zamzam camp, about 70 miles northeast of Tarsin, has since spread across Sudan. About 25 million people in Sudan now need urgent food aid, according to the United Nations, while at least 14 million have been forced from their homes.
Unusually, Mr. al-Nur’s group has remained neutral in the fight, despite being surrounded on all sides by the Rapid Support Forces. The Sudan Liberation Movement/Army’s stronghold of the Marra mountains, a range of volcanic peaks that rise to nearly 10,000 feet, has become a haven for civilians fleeing other areas.
But only a trickle of help has reached them, since both Sudan’s military and the R.S.F. have restricted aid flows amid the fighting, in which relief workers have also been killed and aid trucks looted.
Conditions are particularly dire in the town of Tawila, where the United Nations says at least 380,000 people have taken shelter in a makeshift camp. Nearly all have fled the besieged city of El Fasher, 30 miles away, and many have reported rapes or killing by fighters on the way, human-rights groups say.
In recent weeks, a cholera epidemic has gripped the town. The aid group Doctors Without Borders said it had treated 2,300 people for cholera in July at a facility in Tawila that had just 130 beds. There were nearly 100,000 cases of cholera and at least 2,470 deaths across the country as of Aug. 11, the aid group said.
Sudan’s meteorological authority had warned in its daily forecast that thunderstorms and heavy rainfall were expected in much of Darfur, as well in Blue Nile State, on Sunday. It placed the area around the Marra mountains under a “severe” weather warning through Wednesday, cautioning that thunderstorms and heavy rain could trigger more flooding.
Abdalrahman Altayeb contributed reporting in Omdurman, Sudan, and Nazaneen Ghaffar and Lynsey Chutel in London.
Humanitarian Crisis in Sudan
‘Bad Things Happen in Darkness’: Sudan’s Civil War Shifts West https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/worl ... arfur.html
Aug. 6, 2025
Disaster by the Numbers: The Crisis in Sudan https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/07/worl ... mbers.html
Jan. 7, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/worl ... e9677ea768
******
The Quake That Rocked Afghanistan ‘Like Doomsday’
Villages remain cut off in the remote, mountainous areas in the east that have been hardest hit by the disaster, which has killed at least 1,400 people.
Afghan villagers on Tuesday carried the body of a woman killed in the village of Shamraz two days earlier.Credit...Safiullah Padshah/The New York Times
Elian Peltier
By Safiullah Padshah and Elian Peltier
Safiullah Padshah spent the night in a cornfield with villagers in Shamraz, Afghanistan, who had lost their houses in the quake.
Sept. 2, 2025
Leer en español
When what sounded like an explosion jolted Mirza Gul Sayar out of bed on Sunday night, he woke his wife and they rushed outside with their two children. They found his parents, his younger brother and wife already out in the darkness.
But with Mr. Sayar’s older brother and his family nowhere to be seen, his parents and brother ran back inside.
A few seconds later, another tremor shook the ground of eastern Afghanistan, and the family house collapsed. Around them, the screams and cries of neighbors echoed in the village.
“It was like doomsday for us,” Mr. Sayar said as he rested on a carpet in his cornfield, where he was spending Monday night with the surviving members of his family.
The earthquake that rocked eastern Afghanistan on Sunday killed at least 1,400 people and injured more than 3,100 others, according to the country’s authorities. It destroyed thousands of fragile houses and wiped away entire villages perched on the steep hills of the mountainous region or nestled in narrow valleys.
Map: 6.0-Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Afghanistan
View the location of the quake’s epicenter and shake area.
Rescue workers on the ground say it will take days to scour the rubble of villages that, two days after the quake, were still out of reach. The Afghan military has evacuated hundreds of people, the injured and the dead, while U.N. agencies have been working to recommission a helicopter that had been grounded as a result of aid cuts from the United States and other foreign donors.
Reports so far provide an incomplete picture of the devastation that has swept through eastern Afghanistan.
“All the figures that have been announced so far are from the villages where the government and military rescue teams could have access,” said Zahidullah Safi, the director of a district clinic in Kunar Province — one of the worst-hit areas, and where Mr. Sayar’s family lives. “There are some villages which are still under the debris and so far, no government or aid agency has arrived there.”
ImageA boy covered in bandages stands inside the back of a van.
Treating injuries in Shamraz village in Kunar, one of the hardest-hit provinces, where entire villages in mountainous areas remained cut off from emergency workers.Credit...Safiullah Padshah/The New York Times
Sunday’s quake, the second devastating one in less than two years in Afghanistan, has added another layer of calamity on top of the overlapping economic, humanitarian and environmental crises that have all worsened in the South Asian nation over the past few months.
Emergency aid had already become scarcer this year after the United States and other major donors cut, suspended or reduced their humanitarian contributions to Afghanistan. Last year, the United States contributed more than 45 percent of the aid supplied to the country. That all but vanished after the Trump administration decimated the U. S. Agency for International Development and other foreign aid programs.
//In Photos and Video
//Searching the Rubble After Afghanistan’s Deadly Earthquake https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/worl ... hotos.html
Sept. 1, 2025
Even before the earthquake, U.N. agencies estimated that Afghanistan needed $2.4 billion in humanitarian funding this year, but they say that less than 30 percent of that sum has been received.
On Tuesday, Britain said that it would commit about $1.3 million in emergency support for those affected by the disaster. David Lammy, the British foreign secretary, said in a statement that the money would be distributed via the International Federation for the Red Cross and the U. N. Population Fund to ensure that “aid reaches those in need and does not go to the Taliban.”
The European Union is set to work with UNICEF, according to Sherine Ibrahim, the Afghanistan director for the International Rescue Committee, a nonprofit organization. The U.N. office for humanitarian affairs said it had unlocked $5 million in emergency funds.
Video
An injured victim about to be airlifted in Shamraz village on Tuesday.
Like Britain, many countries are wary of committing funds that may end up in the hands of the Taliban government.
A report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction published last month found that “the Taliban use every means at their disposal, including force, to ensure that aid goes where they want it to go, as opposed to where donors intend.”
Humanitarian workers have urged, so far with little success, that politics be set aside.
“A lot of help and assistance is still needed,” said Homa Nader, acting head of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in Afghanistan.
This was all too apparent in Kunar’s Mazardara Valley. That was where Mr. Sayar lost seven family members in the quake.
On Monday and Tuesday, villagers and emergency workers searched through for neighbors, relatives and friends, dead or alive. They carried them on makeshift stretchers like bed frames over slopes and through narrow alleys, down to trampled cornfields where helicopters were landing and taking off. They flew back and forth between the devastated areas and the hospitals of Jalalabad, the closest large city, and Kabul, the capital, about 100 miles away.
Khalil Ur Rahman Babakhil, 30, had traveled from Kabul to Mazardara, where his in-laws lived. When he arrived on Monday, he found their house collapsed, and in front of it the bodies of his wife’s parents and three siblings.
“I don’t know how to let my wife know,” Mr. Babakhil said.
Image
People searching a landscape of devastation.
Khalil Ur Rahman Babakhil, far left, clearing rubble.Credit...Safiullah Padshah/The New York Times
The bodies, like so many others, lay wrapped in colorful blankets because villagers had run out of the traditional white shrouds used to bury the dead.
Before the earthquake, more than half of Afghanistan’s 42 million people were already in need of humanitarian assistance. In Kunar Province's remote district of Nurgal, where Mr. Sayar lives, most communities live in extreme poverty, with no steady source of income other than their biannual harvest of corn, which brings them about $220 a year.
About 3.5 million children under 5 are malnourished in Afghanistan, according to UNICEF.
On Tuesday in Kunar Province, children sat in silence in ambulances or walked bewildered among the collapsed homes.
Image
Nezarullah, center, in front of his house. Credit...Safiullah Padshah/The New York Times
Nezarullah, 17, stood in front of his destroyed house. He and his 13-year-old brother, Rezwanullah, lost 12 relatives, he said.
“Last night before the earthquake we were together, we had dinner together and then we slept together,” said Nezarullah, who goes by one name. “How can I help my younger brother and how can I rebuild the destroyed home, when I have nothing?”
In his cornfield, Mr. Sayar recounted the terror of two days earlier.
After he escaped the house, he said, he heard his sister-in-law, still inside, screaming in the middle of the night after the second tremor. But in the darkness, and without any tools, the people outside could do nothing to help.
When the sun rose on Monday, Mr. Sayar found her dead, with her son. He also found his parents and younger brother, who had fled the house but then rushed back inside. Now they, too, were dead.
Image
A road covered with rocks.
A road from the district center to Shamraz village was blocked.Credit...Safiullah Padshah/The New York Times
Elian Peltier is an international correspondent for The Times, covering Afghanistan and Pakistan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/worl ... e9677ea768
The landslide leveled a village in the remote Marra mountains, a local rebel group said. Its leader appealed for urgent help, saying, “This is a nightmare.”
map
The landslide on Sunday swept across the village of Tarsin in Sudan’s Darfur region, killing more than 1,000 people.Credit...The New York Times
Declan WalshQasim Nauman
By Declan Walsh and Qasim Nauman
Declan Walsh reported from Nairobi, Kenya.
Sept. 2, 2025
Hundreds of Sudanese villagers were killed when a landslide engulfed their village in Darfur, a region already stricken by famine and war, according to officials and a local rebel group that issued an urgent appeal on Tuesday for international help.
The landslide happened on Sunday after days of heavy rain and leveled the village of Tarsin in the remote Marra mountains, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army said in a statement.
The rebel group said that as many as 1,000 people had been killed in the disaster, with just a single survivor in the village. The toll was based on estimates of the village population.
The top U.N. official in Sudan, Luca Renda, said in a statement that between 300 and 1,000 people may have died. Sudan’s government and aid workers scrambling to reach the affected area offered similar estimates.
“This is a nightmare,” Abdul Wahid al-Nur, the leader of the rebel group, said by phone from Nairobi on Tuesday. He asked the United Nations and aid groups to send heavy machinery and rescue workers, saying, “We need to move thousands of tonnes of rock and earth.”
“Our biggest problem is that nobody is coming to help. This is beyond our capability,” he added.
The landslide was the latest calamity to befall a region already ravaged by Sudan’s two-year civil war and the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
“It’s a natural disaster in the middle of a war,” said Mathilde Vu of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which works in the region. “It’s the worst possible combination.”
Image
A group of people is seen on debris and mud.
A photo released by the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army on Tuesday shows people inspecting an area after Sunday’s landslide in the village of Tarsin.Credit...Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Efforts to reach Tarsin were being hampered by the village’s remoteness and continuing heavy rains, she said. The area has no phone networks, few roads and little state presence. Local responders said Tarsin could only be reached by donkey or a three-hour trek, Ms. Vu added.
The area has seen landslides before, most notably in 2018 when dozens of people were killed in the village of Tarba, according to Mr. al-Nur. But that was a modest crisis compared with the disaster that struck Sunday night.
Sudan’s military chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said in a statement that hundreds of people had been killed, and that the government he leads was mobilizing “all possible resources” to support those affected.
But his shaky writ does not extend to most of Darfur, a region that has suffered greatly since April 2023, when clashes between the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces exploded into a catastrophic civil war.
A famine that was declared last year in Zamzam camp, about 70 miles northeast of Tarsin, has since spread across Sudan. About 25 million people in Sudan now need urgent food aid, according to the United Nations, while at least 14 million have been forced from their homes.
Unusually, Mr. al-Nur’s group has remained neutral in the fight, despite being surrounded on all sides by the Rapid Support Forces. The Sudan Liberation Movement/Army’s stronghold of the Marra mountains, a range of volcanic peaks that rise to nearly 10,000 feet, has become a haven for civilians fleeing other areas.
But only a trickle of help has reached them, since both Sudan’s military and the R.S.F. have restricted aid flows amid the fighting, in which relief workers have also been killed and aid trucks looted.
Conditions are particularly dire in the town of Tawila, where the United Nations says at least 380,000 people have taken shelter in a makeshift camp. Nearly all have fled the besieged city of El Fasher, 30 miles away, and many have reported rapes or killing by fighters on the way, human-rights groups say.
In recent weeks, a cholera epidemic has gripped the town. The aid group Doctors Without Borders said it had treated 2,300 people for cholera in July at a facility in Tawila that had just 130 beds. There were nearly 100,000 cases of cholera and at least 2,470 deaths across the country as of Aug. 11, the aid group said.
Sudan’s meteorological authority had warned in its daily forecast that thunderstorms and heavy rainfall were expected in much of Darfur, as well in Blue Nile State, on Sunday. It placed the area around the Marra mountains under a “severe” weather warning through Wednesday, cautioning that thunderstorms and heavy rain could trigger more flooding.
Abdalrahman Altayeb contributed reporting in Omdurman, Sudan, and Nazaneen Ghaffar and Lynsey Chutel in London.
Humanitarian Crisis in Sudan
‘Bad Things Happen in Darkness’: Sudan’s Civil War Shifts West https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/worl ... arfur.html
Aug. 6, 2025
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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/worl ... e9677ea768
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The Quake That Rocked Afghanistan ‘Like Doomsday’
Villages remain cut off in the remote, mountainous areas in the east that have been hardest hit by the disaster, which has killed at least 1,400 people.
Afghan villagers on Tuesday carried the body of a woman killed in the village of Shamraz two days earlier.Credit...Safiullah Padshah/The New York Times
Elian Peltier
By Safiullah Padshah and Elian Peltier
Safiullah Padshah spent the night in a cornfield with villagers in Shamraz, Afghanistan, who had lost their houses in the quake.
Sept. 2, 2025
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When what sounded like an explosion jolted Mirza Gul Sayar out of bed on Sunday night, he woke his wife and they rushed outside with their two children. They found his parents, his younger brother and wife already out in the darkness.
But with Mr. Sayar’s older brother and his family nowhere to be seen, his parents and brother ran back inside.
A few seconds later, another tremor shook the ground of eastern Afghanistan, and the family house collapsed. Around them, the screams and cries of neighbors echoed in the village.
“It was like doomsday for us,” Mr. Sayar said as he rested on a carpet in his cornfield, where he was spending Monday night with the surviving members of his family.
The earthquake that rocked eastern Afghanistan on Sunday killed at least 1,400 people and injured more than 3,100 others, according to the country’s authorities. It destroyed thousands of fragile houses and wiped away entire villages perched on the steep hills of the mountainous region or nestled in narrow valleys.
Map: 6.0-Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Afghanistan
View the location of the quake’s epicenter and shake area.
Rescue workers on the ground say it will take days to scour the rubble of villages that, two days after the quake, were still out of reach. The Afghan military has evacuated hundreds of people, the injured and the dead, while U.N. agencies have been working to recommission a helicopter that had been grounded as a result of aid cuts from the United States and other foreign donors.
Reports so far provide an incomplete picture of the devastation that has swept through eastern Afghanistan.
“All the figures that have been announced so far are from the villages where the government and military rescue teams could have access,” said Zahidullah Safi, the director of a district clinic in Kunar Province — one of the worst-hit areas, and where Mr. Sayar’s family lives. “There are some villages which are still under the debris and so far, no government or aid agency has arrived there.”
ImageA boy covered in bandages stands inside the back of a van.
Treating injuries in Shamraz village in Kunar, one of the hardest-hit provinces, where entire villages in mountainous areas remained cut off from emergency workers.Credit...Safiullah Padshah/The New York Times
Sunday’s quake, the second devastating one in less than two years in Afghanistan, has added another layer of calamity on top of the overlapping economic, humanitarian and environmental crises that have all worsened in the South Asian nation over the past few months.
Emergency aid had already become scarcer this year after the United States and other major donors cut, suspended or reduced their humanitarian contributions to Afghanistan. Last year, the United States contributed more than 45 percent of the aid supplied to the country. That all but vanished after the Trump administration decimated the U. S. Agency for International Development and other foreign aid programs.
//In Photos and Video
//Searching the Rubble After Afghanistan’s Deadly Earthquake https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/worl ... hotos.html
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Even before the earthquake, U.N. agencies estimated that Afghanistan needed $2.4 billion in humanitarian funding this year, but they say that less than 30 percent of that sum has been received.
On Tuesday, Britain said that it would commit about $1.3 million in emergency support for those affected by the disaster. David Lammy, the British foreign secretary, said in a statement that the money would be distributed via the International Federation for the Red Cross and the U. N. Population Fund to ensure that “aid reaches those in need and does not go to the Taliban.”
The European Union is set to work with UNICEF, according to Sherine Ibrahim, the Afghanistan director for the International Rescue Committee, a nonprofit organization. The U.N. office for humanitarian affairs said it had unlocked $5 million in emergency funds.
Video
An injured victim about to be airlifted in Shamraz village on Tuesday.
Like Britain, many countries are wary of committing funds that may end up in the hands of the Taliban government.
A report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction published last month found that “the Taliban use every means at their disposal, including force, to ensure that aid goes where they want it to go, as opposed to where donors intend.”
Humanitarian workers have urged, so far with little success, that politics be set aside.
“A lot of help and assistance is still needed,” said Homa Nader, acting head of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in Afghanistan.
This was all too apparent in Kunar’s Mazardara Valley. That was where Mr. Sayar lost seven family members in the quake.
On Monday and Tuesday, villagers and emergency workers searched through for neighbors, relatives and friends, dead or alive. They carried them on makeshift stretchers like bed frames over slopes and through narrow alleys, down to trampled cornfields where helicopters were landing and taking off. They flew back and forth between the devastated areas and the hospitals of Jalalabad, the closest large city, and Kabul, the capital, about 100 miles away.
Khalil Ur Rahman Babakhil, 30, had traveled from Kabul to Mazardara, where his in-laws lived. When he arrived on Monday, he found their house collapsed, and in front of it the bodies of his wife’s parents and three siblings.
“I don’t know how to let my wife know,” Mr. Babakhil said.
Image
People searching a landscape of devastation.
Khalil Ur Rahman Babakhil, far left, clearing rubble.Credit...Safiullah Padshah/The New York Times
The bodies, like so many others, lay wrapped in colorful blankets because villagers had run out of the traditional white shrouds used to bury the dead.
Before the earthquake, more than half of Afghanistan’s 42 million people were already in need of humanitarian assistance. In Kunar Province's remote district of Nurgal, where Mr. Sayar lives, most communities live in extreme poverty, with no steady source of income other than their biannual harvest of corn, which brings them about $220 a year.
About 3.5 million children under 5 are malnourished in Afghanistan, according to UNICEF.
On Tuesday in Kunar Province, children sat in silence in ambulances or walked bewildered among the collapsed homes.
Image
Nezarullah, center, in front of his house. Credit...Safiullah Padshah/The New York Times
Nezarullah, 17, stood in front of his destroyed house. He and his 13-year-old brother, Rezwanullah, lost 12 relatives, he said.
“Last night before the earthquake we were together, we had dinner together and then we slept together,” said Nezarullah, who goes by one name. “How can I help my younger brother and how can I rebuild the destroyed home, when I have nothing?”
In his cornfield, Mr. Sayar recounted the terror of two days earlier.
After he escaped the house, he said, he heard his sister-in-law, still inside, screaming in the middle of the night after the second tremor. But in the darkness, and without any tools, the people outside could do nothing to help.
When the sun rose on Monday, Mr. Sayar found her dead, with her son. He also found his parents and younger brother, who had fled the house but then rushed back inside. Now they, too, were dead.
Image
A road covered with rocks.
A road from the district center to Shamraz village was blocked.Credit...Safiullah Padshah/The New York Times
Elian Peltier is an international correspondent for The Times, covering Afghanistan and Pakistan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/worl ... e9677ea768