In the state of Karnataka, the death toll has passed 200 while in neighboring Andhra Pradesh, more than 50 people have died. The floods have also severely affected the western state of Maharashtra.

Overflowing rivers have broken banks and inundated large areas that had been suffering from a severe drought until a few weeks ago. More than 800,000 people have become homeless thus far.

Prerna Suri of Worldfocus partner Al Jazeera English reports from South India.

Wayne Hay of Worldfocus partner Al Jazeera English reports from a makeshift hospital in Padang, where rescue workers are struggling to keep up.

Wayne Hay of Worldfocus partner Al Jazeera English reports on questions surrounding the government’s response to the crisis.

Fires in Athens.

Massive fires near Athens have forced thousands of Greeks to flee their homes, destroying roughly 37,000 acres of forest. Firefighters have been battling to contain the blaze for days.

Two years ago, Greece faced its most deadly fire in recent memory, which killed 65 people. In the aftermath, the government was criticized for its lack of coordination and preparation.

Blogger “Zeta Zizou” mourns the Pendeli mountain, a casualty of numerous fires:

Today the skies are not orange or grey. They are dark, but you can see the blue
The fires have eaten all the mountain of Penteli, everything that I hold dear as it is part of the place I grew up.

Pendeli has been burnt down many times. Various locations. In 1998 I remember I was one of the volunteers trying to save what I could only to run with new fire fronts exploding behind me with flames reaching more than 40m. I was trying to free the anmals from the abandoned houses. I was trying to water the roofs. Some was saved

Well, not any more. The entire mountain of Pendeli is now gone. From Marathon to Palea Pendeli. Well, the rocks are still there, they will be there till the end of time. Everything else is gone. Everything that has anything to do with life.

Of course I can not say that I did not expect that. But not this biblical catastrophy. Pendeli should not have been inhabited. Some very old neighborhoods, especially the hospitals and the monasteries have good reason to be there. But all these areas should not exist. Pendeli ought to belong to its forrest, to its rabbits, wolves, foxes, eagles, ducks, wildboar etc. None of that exist now as Man has burned it down so many times.

View an interactive map of the current fires.

In this amateur video from YouTube user mourmouranews, watch firemen attempt to battle the flames:

Blogger “John Psaropoulos” observes efforts to fight the fires:

I saw the ease with which wood re-inflames itself off Pendeli Square, in the eastern suburbs. Fire reached the front yards of houses off the square in the middle of the day. It nestled in some piles of dead wood in an untended plot and jumped from there to the branches of a large Aleppo pine.

A fire truck put it out once, followed by a municipal water tanker a second time. It reignited yet a third. It was left to a few young men and women with buckets of water and branches to carry on the fight.

One of them climbed a ladder and took a saw to a flaming branch. It was too thick to cut. Another climbed up with a bucket of water and doused the limb. But it was a small victory in a small yard. Around the volunteers smoke filled the air and helitankers circled overhead like angry wasps in an orange sky, a reminder that the size of this task requires superhuman machinery.

[...] Inevitably after these fires people argue about how they started and whether the fire service strategised its response well. But the key question is what is being done to prevent them. Why forest floors are not cleared, dead wood cut away from trees and networks of early warning heat sensors installed in the forest are the questions the government has to answer.

In another video from YouTube user oposoum, residents are seen trying to quench the fire with buckets and spades:

A blogger at “Devious Diva” blames the government for not making changes in the aftermath of the 2007 fire:

It’s just criminal what is happening.There are not enough fire engines, firefighters, planes, helicopters… not enough of anything. What happened to the promises made two years ago ? Where are the firebreaks ? Where are the new planes? Why has it taken the government two days to declare a state of emergency so that Greece can get help from other countries ? We have about three hours of flying time left (firefighting planes can’t function in the dark) and then the residents of these areas are on the own with the few professionals they are “lucky” enough to have nearby.

It’s tragic and unbelievable.

I am sitting here shaking with rage at the lack of foresight the authorities have shown and at the downright lies that people were told after the huge wildfires in 2007.

It’s disgusting.

And you know what’s even more disgusting ? No matter how this all turns out. No matter how many injuries and even deaths. No matter how many homes and businesses are burned.

Absolutely NOTHING will be done to prevent this happening again.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user superbilly16v under a Creative Commons license.

Aftermath of April’s devastating earthquake in Italy.

After an earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale struck central Italy in April, killing more than 300 and displacing 65,000, more than a thousand survivors are still living in tents.

Mara Warwick is a senior urban environment specialist with the World Bank in China. After witnessing the devastation following that country’s earthquake in Sichuan, she recently visited the quake site in Italy.

Key after the quake is the work of volunteers

I am in the beautiful historic town of L’Aquila, devastated by the earthquake which struck the Ambruzzo region of central Italy at 3:30am on April 6, 2009.

Last Wednesday we visited Onna, a small village close to L’Aquila.  As we pass through the police cordon and walk down the main street of Onna with collapsed masonry houses on either side, for a moment I feel like I am in Sichuan again.  We can see clothes hanging in closets, their doors ajar on the top floor of a house that no longer has walls. Toys, personal papers and the daily paraphernalia of life is scattered through the masonry rubble.  A fleet of crushed cars is neatly parked and fenced on a neighboring field.  A foal — still on legs so spindly it must have been born after the quake — curiously noses the 42 bouquets of flowers lined up in memory of the villagers who died in this quake.

Just next to the devastation is an immaculately run tent camp housing more than 250 survivors.  Blue tents arranged in neat rows surround the central camp services.  A large tent houses the canteen, behind which is a fully-equipped cooking trailer.  The lady in charge of the kitchen – a volunteer who has been in the camp since hours after the earthquake – apologizes that the espresso machine is not working, but assures us that another is on its way from Rome for the camp residents.  She belongs to a volunteer organization from a neighboring region of Italy, fully trained and prepared by the Italian Civil Protection Agency to respond in just such an emergency.  The lady tells us that she recently lost her job because of the economic crisis and she is glad to have the chance to contribute to the recovery of Onna.

The largest tent right in the center of the camp is the temporary church.  Next to it is a wooden bell tower built by the fire brigade to house the bells that they retrieved from the collapsed church in the village, so that the bells may continue to ring out over Onna.  Nearby, nuns attend infants and toddlers in a tented childcare center which opened 2 days ago.  I am moved to see how volunteerism and religion are starting to bring this community together again to heal.

To read more, see the original post.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user αnnα under a Creative Commons license.

The town of L’Aquila was close to the epicenter of the earthquake. Photo: U.S. Geological Survey

UPDATE: The death toll in Italy’s earthquake is at least 207. 

A strong earthquake struck central Italy, injuring more than 1,500 and leaving tens of thousands homeless. It was Italy’s worst earthquake in decades.

Hardest hit was the town of L’Aquila, 60 miles northeast of Rome and not far from the epicenter.

Blogger “Will” in Rome describes the earthquake:

The building was making that groaning noise a building makes when its under stress. The bed was shaking, a cupboard door swung open and the inside light came on. The pipes were knocking together and the crystals on the chandelier in the living room making that tinkling sound that at 3:30 in the morning looses all sweetness and becomes just ominous. It was an earthquake. It went on for over a minute but seem longer; the repeat 45 minutes later was less intense and shorter. Maybe an hour later there was one more prolonged shudder.

[...]This morning was upsetting and it was hard to get back to sleep but for us that is really all that was disturbed: our sleep. For many others in the region around L’Aquila this morning more than their sleep has been disturbed - their homes have been destroyed or worse their loved ones lay in morgues or beneath rubble.

Blogger Patrick Hayden at “Making Light” writes that Italy’s buildings are no match for earthquakes: 

We knew pretty immediately that it had been an earthquake, which is kind of an alarming thing when you’re in a city built entirely out of bricks, stone, and concrete. 

[...]We were just in the countryside of central Italy the day before yesterday—not near l’Aquila, but more to the north-northeast, in the Sabine Hills—and while it’s easy to say that all of those ancient stone buildings have survived a lot of shaking, not every structure is ancient or, for that matter, well-built. 

Other bloggers have expressed anger at the government over its response to warning signs prior to the quake. An Italian seismologist who had earlier predicted a major earthquake around L’Aquila, Giacchino Giuliani, was reported to the police for “spreading alarm.”

Blogger “John Brownlee” blames bureaucracy for hindering response to national disasters:

A recent earthquake in Italy illustrates the problem bureaucracy can have in reacting to scientific predictions of natural disasters. [...] After a major earthquake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale killed dozens of people in the area, the Mayor is looking none too good for his decision to prosecute Giuliani. But the situation is not so clear cut, as the head of Italy’s National Geophysics Institute made perfectly clear in a statement.

“Every time there is an earthquake there are people who claim to have predicted it,” he said. “As far as I know nobody predicted this earthquake with precision. It is not possible to predict earthquakes.”

It seems, then, that Giuliani’s prediction might have been more lucky soothsaying than science. But without a clear process for politicians to assess the real-world dangers of scientific predictions of disaster and to quickly act upon them, technology will be powerless to save lives.

Watch a video (Italian) of Giuliani making his prediction:

Flooding in Itajai has left much of the Brazilian city underwater.

Floods in Brazil have killed at least 117 and driven more than 100,000 from their homes. Now, victims are beginning to return home, and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pledged to help rebuild the worst-hit areas.

Several months’ worth of rain fell on Brazil in under a week, leaving parts of the southern state of Santa Catarina underwater.

Global Voices Online posts accounts of Portuguese-language bloggers in affected areas — some forced to leave their homes – here and here.

The “Luz e Estilo” blog posts photos from Itajai, a city in Santa Catarina that witnessed some of the worst flooding.

The Itajai city government set up an information blog in the wake of the floods.

Blogger “Gschineider” visits Itajai and writes that people are trying to return to normal, though wary of continuing rain.

Blogger “Gringa in Rio” calls the floods the “Brazilian Katrina” and suggests that global warming is at fault.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user emarquetti under a Creative Commons license.