SURESH RAMPHUL
2023 has been a year of heavy rainfall, storms, tornadoes and earthquakes that have caused tremendous damage in many parts of the world. We have also had plane crashes, train collisions, fires and other deadly accidents.
On Monday 6 February an earthquake of magnitude 7.8 hit Turkey and Syria. It was one of the strongest to hit the region in a century. Rescue aid was made difficult with heavy rainfall and snow. About 51,000 people died. An estimated 7 million children were affected. Many countries immediately offered help. A calamity so frightening teaches us how life on earth can be particularly fragile and how nature’s wrath can be implacable.
“Outlook” (India) announced on 8.2.2023: “Landslides triggered by steady rains swept mud, water and rocks into villages in Peru. 36 dead so far.” On 8.2.2023 Reuters reported that forest fires across south central Chile had left 24 people dead. Hundreds of houses were damaged. 300,000 hectares were affected and 2,190 people were injured. At least 4 people were killed on Thursday 9.2.2023 in Indonesia, in the eastern region of Papua, in an earthquake. 3 people got killed and 816 were injured in an earthquake in West Azerbaijan Province in northwestern Iran on Saturday night 28.2.2023. A TV report said, “This is the province’s second major earthquake in two weeks. A magnitude 5.4 quake struck Khay County on January 1, injuring more than 190 people.” An earthquake hit Maluka (Indonesia) in January, causing injuries and destroying buildings. It rendered 450 people homeless.
January 10 saw cholera killing more than 1,200 people in Malawi, according to WHO. On February 8, heavy rains flooded Maputo (Mozambique) and the Motola suburb, cutting roads, damaging houses and provoking a collision between a train and a vehicle. 6 people died in the worsening flooding, 36,700 were affected; 7,300 homes, 15 schools and 15 health centres were devastated. February 8 also witnessed a landslide in Merida, Venezuela. A bridge collapsed. 2 people died. At least 36 people died in southeast Brazil on Monday 20 February due to a downpour. It caused the displacement of 228 people and the evacuation of 338 others. 40 people died. On 20.2.2023 we learned that 14 passengers were killed in a bus crash in Pakistan. Tropical cyclone Freddy claimed 7 lives in Madagascar on Tuesday 21 February 2023, leaving 16,600 people displaced. 4,500 homes were flooded. Batsirai, in February 2022, had killed 120 people, causing $190 million damage.
Collapse
5 people died in China when a coal mine collapsed on Wednesday 22 February. Dozens were trapped. 48 went missing. A Spanish female teacher, 53, was stabbed in southern France in the classroom by a 16-year-old student. The boy is said to have heard voices telling him to kill her. The French Minister of Education called it “a tragedy of extreme gravity”. On 28 February, a passenger train collided with a freight train at night in northern Greece. 45 people lost their lives. Dozens were hospitalized. The station master was arrested. 3 days of national mourning were declared. The Minister of Infrastructure and Transport resigned. “When something so tragic happens, it is impossible to continue and pretend like it didn’t happen. This is called political responsibility,” he stated. The State paid for the funeral of the victims A ship carrying about 150 migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia, ran into trouble on Sunday 2 February, causing death by drowning of 62 migrants, including 12 children. 36 bodies were found inside a well at a hindu temple on 3 March. They fell in the muddy water when its cover collapsed. An overloaded boat was smuggling migrants on 14 June when it sank on the coast of Messenia, Greece. 500 people are said to have died.
7 people were killed and about 60 were reported missing on March 27 as a result of a landslide in Ecuador. On Saturday March 18, an earthquake, magnitude 6.8, caused havoc: 13 people died in Ecuador and 1 in Peru. 126 were injured. (In 2016 a quake in Ecuador killed more than 600 people.)
A Swiss train derailed in Switzerland on 10 August. There were no victims but the damage was considerable, repairs were likely to run into $140 million. In August, a sandstorm in Morocco caused several crashes on a highway, claiming the lives of 18 people. A fire swept through a Christian wedding in northern Iraq on 26 September, killing at least 107 people. The bride and the bridegroom survived the fire but were slightly burnt. They lost some of their relatives. In October, 21 people were killed when a bus plunged off a bridge in Venice and caught fire. 3 people died after a Filipino fishing boat collided with a foreign oil tanker in South China on 2 October. A fire in a Spanish nightclub caused the death of 13 people on Sunday 1 October.
Collisions
On Friday 6 October, a glacial lake burst through a dam in India’s Himalayan northeast, washing away houses and bridges. 150 people went missing. The death toll was 47. A small plane crashed in Chilliwack, 200 kilometres east of Vancouver, Canada, resulting in the deaths of 3 people. In Kazakhstan, on October 28, a fire broke out in a coal mine. 252 people were underground. 206 miners were evacuated but 46 did not survive. In the same country, in June this year, at least 15 people died in a wildfire. On October 4, 41 army vehicles were submerged under the slush when a cloudburst (a sudden and destructive rainstorm) led to flash floods. 23 army personnel went missing and 5 people lost their lives. A passenger train crashed into another in southern India on Sunday 29 October, killing 15 people and injuring at least 25. A cargo train hit a passenger train in northeastern Bangladesh on Monday 23 Oct, killing 7 people and wounding more than 100.
On the evening of September 25 a huge explosion at a fuel depot in Nogorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan) occurred, killing 170 people. A truck carrying ammonia overturned on September 30, 2023, on an Illinois highway in the US. The toxic chemical leak claimed the lives of 5 people, including 2 children. A head-on collision between a truck and a bus ferrying workers to a diamond mine in Limpopo Province in South Africa killed 20 people on Sunday 17 September. 2 people died and 21 others were injured after fire erupted on a moving double-decker bus along Delhi-Gurugram Expressway on Wednesday night 8 November.
As of 31 Oct, 40 people were reported dead and 58 missing in the wake of Category 5 Hurricane Otis in Mexico. It had smashed into the Mexican coast near Acapulco on 25 October. Waves of more than 10 meters were recorded. Streets were swamped, hospitals flooded, and furniture in hotels destroyed. A “never-before-seen” flooding in November killed 20 people and left thousands abandoned in Somalia. The UN called it “once-in-a-century” flood. In neighbouring Kenya, a few days earlier, 15 people died in a torrential downpour. On November 19 a storm brought torrential rains on Dominican Republic, displacing more than 13,000 people and killing 21 people, including 3 children. A severe storm caused a Turkish cargo vessel to sink in the Black sea on Sunday 19 November, leaving one victim and 13 other people missing. Elsewhere in Turkey, floodwaters killed 4 people.
On November 21 at a stadium in the Republic of Congo, 31 people died in a stampede. They were hoping to register in the army at a recruitment event. On the same day 20 people were confirmed killed in a bus accident in Peru. The bus plunged in a ravine 300 meters deep. Three disasters took place on Saturday 25.11.2023: a fire broke out in a building in a northern Paris suburb, killing 3 Haitian women and injuring 7 other residents; a fire in a shopping mall in Karachi, Pakistan, took 11 lives; and 4 students died and about 60 injured in a stampede during a concert at Cochin University in Kerala.
