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Death toll from Ida remnants rises to 65 in US
Torrential rains, floods, and tornadoes triggered by Storm Ida remnants claimed at least 65 lives across the United States as of Saturday, U.S. media reported.
Storm Ida also caused damage to residential buildings and infrastructures and led to water and power outages. Under its impact, some hard-hit areas of the United States have yet to return to normal life.
Ida remnants dumped rain at sometimes unprecedented rates on Wednesday night in the region, triggering floods that poured into subway stations and submerged homes and vehicles on highways.
Parts of New Jersey are still recovering from Ida’s impact. Earlier, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said the state was still not out of the woods, and his biggest concern lies in the further response to the still-high water levels and damages from Ida.
Infrastructures and residential buildings were destroyed in parts of New Jersey, with some residents saying their neighborhoods were almost completely destroyed by Ida.
New York state was also one of the hardest hit by Ida, with heavy rains submerging many parts of the city and flooding into low-lying areas.
U.S. media reported that at least 11 people, mostly immigrants and low-income groups, were killed when floodwaters submerged basement apartments in New York City.
The situation in Louisiana also remains grim. Local life is still not back to normal days after the storm. Statistics showed that over one million households in the state have suffered power outages, and the daily water supply to 600,000 people has been affected.
In addition, some nursing homes in Louisiana were reported to have failed to evacuate residents in time, and staff members even disappeared before the storm, leaving some elderly residents waiting for help without water or power.
At least six nursing home residents died after being evacuated, and their deaths are still under investigation, according to local media.
Many Americans expressed strong dissatisfaction and anger over the government’s poor response to the storm. Some accused the government of slow response and lack of an effective emergency plan. Others believed some lives could have been saved if the government had declared a state of emergency earlier.
Analysts believed that the massive loss of property and lives caused by Ida showed the dangerously old public infrastructures in New York and elsewhere are in urgent need of improvement.
Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the Center for an Urban Future, a public policy think tank, said in an interview that New York City’s infrastructures had not been able to keep up with population growth over the past few decades, let alone with increasingly violent storms and sea level rise from climate change.
Nicole Gelinas, an urban economics expert at the Manhattan Institute, said that New York City’s infrastructures can’t handle tens of centimeters of rainfall dumped in just a few hours. She added that short periods of heavy rainfall could clog sewer drains, and there is not enough green space to help absorb it.
“So some of these avenues, they become canals when there’s a big storm,” the expert said.
Officials in New York and New Jersey acknowledged Friday that state governments need to improve infrastructures and better prepare for extreme weather events.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the loss of lives from Ida highlighted weaknesses in the state’s disaster notification system, including a lack of notification in different languages.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a series of initiatives to tackle extreme weather events, including more aggressive travel bans, and measures to guide residents off the streets ahead of a storm and evacuate people living in vulnerable spaces like basement apartments.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy also admitted the state had a lot of work to do to adapt to climate change.
Storm Ida landed on Aug 29, the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s destructive strike, tying with 2020’s Hurricane Laura and the Last Island Hurricane of 1856 as the strongest ever to hit Louisiana. It was downgraded to a tropical depression on Monday afternoon and moved inland with torrential rain.
A tripartite meeting between the delegations of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan was held in Kabul with the aim of connecting North Asia to South Asia and reducing transit and transportation costs among these three countries, the Ministry of Trade and Commerce said in a statement.
In this meeting, an agreement was reached on the creation of a joint technical committee to continue the talks.
This tripartite meeting was held under the leadership of Nooruddin Azizi, the Acting Minister of Industry and Commerce, Vice President of Turkmenistan and Srik Zhumangarin, the Deputy Prime Minister of Kazakhstan.
Earlier, a bilateral meeting was held between the delegation of the Islamic Emirate and Turkmenistan. The ministry of commerce said the participants of the meeting discussed the construction of a large joint logistics center in Torghondi, the trilateral transit agreement between the IEA, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, the expansion of Afghanistan’s railway, solving issues related to Afghan transit and export goods, and a number of other commercial issues.
Acting Minister of National Defense Mohammad Yaqub Mujahid has said that no destructive groups including Daesh have physical presence in Afghanistan, adding the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) will not allow anyone to pose threat to any country in the region from the Afghan soil.
Mujahid made the remarks in a meeting with a delegation from Malaysia in Kabul on Thursday.
According to a statement released by the Ministry of Defense, Mujahid highlighted Malaysia’s “good treatment” of Afghan refugees and its long-standing relations with Afghanistan, and said that Malaysia is a powerful Islamic country and visits should increase.
He added that with the establishment of the Islamic Emirate, occupation and war ended in Afghanistan, and the country is fully secure.
Based on the statement, the Malaysian delegation called Afghanistan a friendly country and while emphasizing on comprehensive cooperation, it assured that what they have seen in Afghanistan will be shared with the authorities of their country.
The European Union signed an agreement worth 17 million euros with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to improve access to basic services, increased economic opportunities and protection for Afghans on the move and their host communities in Afghanistan.
The needs of women and girls are a particular focus of the programme, EU said in a statement released on Thursday.
The statement noted that from January 2023 until April 2024, over 1.5 million Afghans returned from Pakistan and Iran.
“I am deeply moved by the hardship returnees face when being deported to Afghanistan. In a country suffering from poverty and climate change, and in a city that just saw devastating earthquakes, this truly is a crisis within a crisis.”, said Peteris Ustubs, Director for the Middle East, Asia and Pacific of the European Commission’s Department for International Partnerships during the signing ceremony at the IOM transit centre in Herat.
Raffaella Iodice, EU Chargée d’Affaires a.i. to Afghanistan, added “The solidarity of the Afghan people towards their brothers and sisters is an inspiration. We must assure that communities hosting and helping new arrivals are supported. The partnership with IOM ensures access to essential services and provides protection for Afghan returnees and their host communities. As women and girls can be particularly affected, we make sure that all members of society can benefit”.
“IOM’s continued partnership with the EU has been critical in enabling our teams to reach hundreds of thousands of Afghan returnees and other vulnerable communities in the country”, said IOM Afghanistan Chief of Mission, Maria Moita. “Thanks to this renewed commitment, we will be able to focus on addressing the immense challenges in the areas of return and contribute to reintegration, social cohesion, and longer-term solutions for those communities.”
This additional contribution is part of a 5-year programme that is being implemented across Afghanistan and in four countries in the region. It builds on the EU’s previous support to IOM to improve the wellbeing of Afghans forced to return to the country, EU said.
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