Hurricane Fiona causes destruction in Puerto Rico
Photo courtesy of Flickr.
Hurricane Fiona caused flooding and property damage across Puerto Rico on Sunday, Sept. 18.
By Shira Sadeh ’25
Science & Environment Editor
Content warning: This article mentions mass death.
On Sunday, Sept. 18, Hurricane Fiona reached Puerto Rico from the southwest, causing environmental and infrastructure disasters, an Associated Press article reported. The island scrambled to evacuate and secure shelter for residents as high-speed winds ripped out the power grid, tore up roads and caused widespread flooding. According to AP News, forecasters are predicting record levels of rainfall up to 30 inches this Sunday and Monday, Sept. 25 and 26.
Puerto Rican Governor Pedro Pierluisi has called the effects of Hurricane Fiona “catastrophic,” according to an NPR article. “In many areas, flooding is worse than what we saw during Hurricane Maria,” Pierluisi said. Health Secretary Carlos Mellado explained to AP News that health centers are currently relying on generators, which have already failed at the Comprehensive Cancer Center, where many patients had to be evacuated.
According to a Washington Post article, Fiona comes just two days before the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Maria. Maria left Puerto Rico powerless and mourning the deaths of over three thousand people, The Washington Post reported. Although the federal government had set aside billions for recovery after Hurricane Maria, The Washington Post explained that much of that money has yet to reach Puerto Rico.
According to NPR, President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration on Sunday and authorized the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assist in the disaster relief efforts. The Washington Post also stated that Pierliusi is coordinating recovery efforts with leaders in New York, New Jersey and California. Additionally, the National Guard has activated 600 soldiers throughout the island and has rescued approximately 1,000 people.
Pakistan’s floods demonstrate the damages of climate change
Photo by Rameen Farrukh ’23.
Floods in Pakistan have displaced many and caused severe damage to the country’s infrastructure.
By Anoushka Kuswaha ’24
News Section Editor
Content warning: This article discusses mass death.
Unprecedented rainfall from the summer monsoon season has caused heavy flooding in one-third of Pakistan, according to an article by Nature Magazine. The Worldbank’s Climate Change Knowledge Portal describes a monsoon as a summer rainy season typically lasting from June to September in Pakistan. Nature Magazine reports that the flooding has displaced millions, leaving them in urgent need of food, shelter and medical attention.
According to the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund Pakistan has received unprecedented levels of monsoon rains and floods. The rainfall has caused swelling of the Indus River, creating immensely long lakes, CNN reported.
Pakistan is also home to the most glaciers in the world outside of the polar regions. Due to warming climates and higher rainfall, Pakistan’s glaciers are increasingly prone to higher levels of melting, contributing further to flooding, as stated by CNN.
The deadly floods have engulfed houses, roads and infrastructure, massively impacting sources of livelihood. Due to the flood’s’ effect on land and infrastructure, the Pakistani government expects a decrease in its gross domestic product growth for the fiscal year of 2022-2023 to three percent instead of the initially-projected five percent, according to Reuters. According to Rameen Farrukh ’24, a Mount Holyoke student from Pakistan, the floods have wiped away the entirety of some families’ material possessions.
PBS reported that upwards of 33 million people have been affected by the flooding. Additionally, a statement by UNICEF calling for donations and aid states that more than 1,100 people have lost their lives due to monsoon rains. The PBS report explained that the Pakistani government has made international appeals for aid through the U.N. to repair the many damages the flooding has caused to the country’s population, infrastructure and economy. According to Reuters, these appeals to the U.N. call for $160 million in aid. According to Al Jazeera, several countries have shown interest in providing aid and relief to Pakistan. Pakistani officials stated that “more than 50 special flights carrying aid have arrived so far in the country and more are scheduled in the coming days.”
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres arrived in Pakistan early morning on Friday, Sept. 9, to show support for the Pakistani public in the face of what the U.N. describes as a dire humanitarian crisis, UN News reported. The secretary-general stated that he was “struck by the unquantifiable depths of human suffering” he saw during his visit.
Guterres reaffirmed his claim that the cause of the crisis is closely linked to climate change, according to an article from UN News. Reuters reported that Pakistan’s government, based in the capital city of Islamabad, echoed these sentiments, blaming climate change for the devastating level of flooding.
The pledges to support Pakistan by various international governments have not gone unnoticed or unappreciated, Farrukh expressed in an interview with Mount Holyoke News. Farrukh is from the city of Multan in the Punjab province of Pakistan. However, Farrukh expressed doubts regarding the Pakistani government’s ability to fully utilize the aid provided, even if it should remain consistent.
Farrukh maintains a steadfast faith in the work of private Pakistani organizations to collect donations. Farrukh’s father has been deployed by the Pakistani government to coordinate the distribution of medical and food supplies in the city of Dera Ghazi Khan, Punjab Province. He is also working to establish medical camps and food banks in the district.
Due to the urgency of the crisis, evacuations are still taking place in “high alert areas in the district,” Farrukh said. Damage to infrastructure, like electricity and utility poles, has meant a lack of contact between Farrukh and her immediate family in Pakistan. Whatever contact has occurred has allowed Farrukh and her family members to gain awareness of the supplies in highest demand, such as “clothes, dry food supplies, baby food, sanitary supplies and tents,” Farrukh explained.
In a statement by UN News, Secretary-General Guterres described the floods in Pakistan as “climate carnage” and encouraged “massive and urgent financial support for Pakistan.” The Secretary-General added that aid in this time of need was not a matter of “solidarity or generosity” but rather “a question of justice.” Guterres encouraged governments worldwide to consider hastening their actions toward preventing climate change. “Let’s stop sleepwalking toward the destruction of our planet by climate change,” Guterres concluded as he launched the funding appeal.
In response to how Pakistani students on campus can best be supported at this time, Farrukh stated, “I think being mindful [that] these crises affect different people … in different ways. Some students — if not directly impacted by the flood — are indirectly affected by having their farms and crops flooded … [which] definitely affects the annual income of their family. … For some people, their parents are medical professionals or government officials who are actively working for the flood victims. Kindness is the answer.”,
A situation report from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs published on Aug. 26, 2022, states that the flooding affected 2 million acres of crops and 793,900 heads of livestock in Pakistan. CNN stated that further secondary damages are consistently emerging, such as difficulties with providing medical care in the wake of damage to over 800 health care institutions being damaged, with around 180 institutions closed due to permanent damage. The lack of medical institutions has created a burgeoning health crisis in the country, with severe outbreaks of “diarrheal diseases, skin infections, respiratory tract infections, malaria and dengue in the aftermath of the floods, as well as a litany of waterborne diseases,” as stated by World Health Organization Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in an article by CNN.
The floods come at a time of political and economic turmoil, a sentiment echoed by young Pakistanis like Farrukh, who believe that while the government “knows the high alert areas that are usually flooded during the monsoon season in Pakistan [they have] not been able to take any solid initiative in preventing populations [from residing] in the dangerous areas. Dams need to be built, but many projects have been hindered due to political unrest and change in governments over the past decade [or] so.”
Year in Review: Natural Disasters
Image courtesy of Flickr.
By Casey Roepke ’21
News Editor
The past year has brought a pandemic, political unrest and other chaotic events into the public experience. 2020 has also included record-breaking natural disasters that many say will only worsen with the ongoing impacts of climate change.
The Mount Holyoke News reported on 2020’s worst natural disasters and environmental catastrophes, from wildfires and floods to heatwaves and cyclones. Here is 2020 in review:
Australia Wildfires
In January 2020, wildfires burning through the Australian bush since late 2019 converged into one of the worst recorded fire seasons. The New York Times called it “calamitous,” citing drought, high winds and a heatwave — including Australia’s hottest day on record with average high temperatures of 107.4 degrees Fahrenheit — for the heightened impact. Tens of millions of acres burned throughout the continent, and 33 people died due to the fires, according to the Australian Parliament.
The United Nations Association of Australia has stated that Australia is high on the list of developed countries most vulnerable to climate change. While Australia typically experiences wildfires, this season was especially destructive because climate change has already begun to increase drought and heat intensity, leading to more dangerous fire conditions.
“I had anticipated the whole landscape to be blackened, but instead the line of the fire front snaked along, dividing the land,” Yasmin Andrews ’22 said in their January on-location coverage of the fires in the Mount Holyoke News. “We saw trees burning from the inside out, small flames peeking out of fallen leaves and dried out stream beds. Most alarmingly, the fire had come within 30 feet of the house, after leaving the nearby shearing shed a twisted pile of metal.”
California Wildfires
Residents of California and much of the Pacific Northwest also experienced record-breaking destruction from wildfires in 2020, starting in August and extending into October. In California, the August Complex wildfire was the first to burn 1 million acres in the state’s history, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, earning it the title of California’s first “gigafire.”
Stanford University researchers estimated that exposure to air pollution from the smoke caused by the fires may have indirectly led to thousands of more deaths in California alone and link the higher risk of burning to climate change. This came in the wake of a Southern California heatwave which reached a high of 121 degrees Fahrenheit, a new record, according to The New York Times.
“You can barely see the sun,” Alexa Harbury ’24, who lives in Oregon, said to the Mount Holyoke News in September. “For the whole of last week, it was hard to tell what time of day it was, because everything just looked yellow or orange.”
Philippines Floods
In November 2020, areas in the Philippines within Cagayan province were exposed to flash floods that submerged whole villages underwater.
The New York Times reported that rain and typhoons caused the flooding and subsequent landslides. Typhoon Goni hit the Philippines in late October with winds as high as 165 miles per hour, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, which categorized it as a super typhoon. Around 70 people died as a result of the floods, and the government was compelled to deliver supplies and reinforcements to residents by air.
Vietnam Typhoons
2020 has been Vietnam’s worst season for tropical storms in decades. The Mount Holyoke News previously reported that Typhoon Molave marked the fourth storm in an intense typhoon season that had already killed 130 people and destroyed over 300,000 homes.
Hurricanes
Hurricane Eta made landfall in Nicaragua in November as a Category 4 hurricane. With Eta, 2020 ties with 2005 for the record of having the most storms that have grown strong enough to be named, as recorded by the National Hurricane Center and the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. According to The New York Times, climate scientists have drawn a connection between global warming and more intense hurricanes.
With less than a month until the end of the year, it is hard to predict what natural disasters 2020 will bring next.
Weekly Climate News
December 3, 2020
Outdoor heating systems have made an emergence into the outdoor dining scene as a result of the pandemic. Read this article on how they impact the environment.
A compromise was reached between European and Saudi Arabian leaders on climate change at the G20 summit.
Bates Smart, an architecture firm in Melbourne, Australia, made plans to turn 1,200 acres of empty parking garage roofs into rooftop gardens.
A joint U.S. and European satellite that will monitor the world’s oceans and the rise of global sea levels launched Nov. 21.
Global warming makes Northeastern forests more susceptible to the large-scale wildfires that frequently light up the western United States.
Natural disasters are increasing around the world, leaving marginalized and less advantaged communities in extremely dangerous living conditions.
The United Nations will make building a global net-zero emissions coalition a priority for 2021.
Canada is set to put a goal for net-zero emissions by 2050 into law.
New Zealand declared a climate change emergency.