cleanup

Residents say the powerful storm brought ‘raging’ flash floods that destroyed homes, overturned cars and blocked streets.

Residents of the central Philippines have slowly begun cleanup efforts after powerful Typhoon Kalmaegi swept through the region, killing at least 85 people and leaving dozens missing.

Scenes of widescale destruction emerged in the hard-hit province of Cebu on Wednesday as the storm receded, revealing ravaged homes, overturned vehicles and streets blocked with piles of debris.

Among the 85 deaths were six military personnel whose helicopter crashed in Agusan del Sur on the island of Mindanao during a humanitarian mission. The country’s disaster agency also reported 75 people missing, and 17 injured.

In Cebu City, Marlon Enriquez, 58, was trying to salvage what was left of his family’s belongings as he scraped off the thick mud coating his house.

“This was the first time that has happened to us,” he told the Reuters news agency. “I’ve been living here for almost 16 years, and it was the first time I’ve experienced flooding [like this].”

Another resident, 53-year-old Reynaldo Vergara, said his small shop in the city of Mandaue, also in Cebu province, had been lost when a nearby river overflowed.

“Around four or five in the morning, the water was so strong that you couldn’t even step outside,” he told the AFP news agency. “Nothing like this has ever happened. The water was raging.”

The storm hit as Cebu province was still recovering from a 6.9-magnitude earthquake last month that killed dozens of people and displaced thousands.

The area around Cebu City was deluged with 183mm (seven inches) of rain in the 24 hours before Kalmaegi’s landfall, well over its 131mm (five-inch) monthly average, according to weather specialist Charmagne Varilla.

The massive rainfall set off flash floods and caused a river and other waterways to swell. More than 200,000 people were evacuated across the wider Visayas region, which includes Cebu Island and parts of southern Luzon and northern Mindanao.

Before noon on Wednesday, Kalmaegi blew away from western Palawan province into the South China Sea with sustained winds of up to 130km per hour (81 miles per hour) and gusts of up to 180km/h (112mph), according to forecasters.

The storm is forecast to gain strength while over the South China Sea before making its way to Vietnam, where preparations are under way in advance of Kalmaegi’s expected landfall on Friday.

China has warned of a “catastrophic wave process” in the South China Sea and activated maritime disaster emergency response in its southernmost province of Hainan, state broadcaster CCTV said.

July 29 (UPI) — Citing “unprecedented technological challenges,” Tokyo Electric Power Company announced on Tuesday it has put off the removal of hundreds of tons of radioactive waste from the tsunami-battered Fukushima nuclear power plant until 2037.

TEPCO’s announcement is the latest setback in cleaning up and decommissioning the nuclear power plant that was catastrophically damaged following an earthquake in 2011. The Fukushima nuclear power plant was flooded by a tsunami during the natural disaster that caused core meltdowns in half of its reactors, as well as hydrogen explosions that further damaged the facility.

Over a decade since the incident, “many uncertainties” remain about the condition of the containment structure of the No. 3 reactor and “the properties of the fuel debris,” according to a company report outlining the challenges.

TEPCO’s plans to begin an initial phase of the project that will take 12 to 15 years and involves removing a limited amount of the debris to test its processes and technology, according to the document. Preparing access points on the side and top of the facility as well as installing retrieval equipment will be required before full-scale removal can begin, the document states.

There is an estimated 880 tons of fuel debris in Fukushima’s reactors Nos. 1 to 3. A small amount of material was removed from the No. 2 reactor last year as an initial step toward cleaning up the site.

The Japanese government and the company have set a goal of decommissioning the ruined plant by 2051. Toyoshi Fuketa, the head of a regulatory body overseeing the plant, said at a press conference earlier that “The difficulty of retrieving the first handful of debris has become apparent,” according to the Kyodo News agency.

However, Akira Ono, chief decommissioning officer at TEPCO, said at a separate press conference that the company is sticking to that timeline until it sees how its removal processes perform, the agency reported.

Ben Birchall/PA Media

Ben Birchall/PA Media

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Reuters

At the scene – Tamsin Curnow, BBC Points West

Andy Bennett/BBC

Ben Birchall/PA Media

Ben Birchall/PA Media

City crews are clearing debris in Los Angeles after three nights of anti-ICE protests left burned vehicles, smashed windows, and graffiti across downtown. Cleanup began early Monday as officials assessed structural damage and transit disruptions caused by the unrest.