Week 28: Back-to-back typhoons strike China, forcing 2 million evacuations after 39 deaths

Within a fortnight, China was battered by two powerful storms, Typhoons Bavi and Maysak, triggering massive evacuations and deadly flooding.

Chinese authorities carried out one of their largest emergency operations, evacuating nearly two million people across the Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi and Shanghai provinces.

Typhoon Bavi made landfall near Taizhou in eastern Zhejiang Province on 11 July, bringing sustained winds of up to 144 km/h (89mph) and turning the streets into rivers.

“The winds were very strong,” said Li Liangxing, a resident of Wenzhou, a metropolis of nearly 10 million people in Zhejiang. “We could hear roof tiles and tree branches falling”, he told Reuters.

“Although Bavi has weakened significantly, it has already set multiple records,” explains China Daily, “including becoming the strongest typhoon to make landfall in Zhejiang in July since meteorological records began to be maintained in 1949.”

Bavi began as a super typhoon, battering Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands last Monday “with maximum sustained winds reported at 180 mph” (290km/h) says the NASA.

The super typhoon left thousands of people in Taiwan and Japan’s Sakishima Islands without power, and at least 26 people died in the Philippines, with over 244,000 families displaced. It is now heading for North Korea, where leader Kim Jong Un has urged “maximum vigilance” to prevent damage.

The massive evacuation comes just days after Typhoon Maysak devastated southern China, which made landfall on 3 July and left at least 39 people dead and nine missing.

Making landfall earlier in the month, Maysak unleashed catastrophic rainfall in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, causing a breach in the Liulan Reservoir dam in Nanning that resulted in 26 deaths.

Extreme weather, which experts link to climate change, “have increasingly threatened China’s residents and economy — especially its trillion-dollar agriculture sector”, comments the BBC.

• Syria dismantles IS cell behind Damascus bombings: Syrian security forces have arrested all the members of the Islamic State-linked cell behind the twin bombings in Damascus that happened during French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit on 7 July. The two explosions, which occurred within a few minutes of each other near the Four Seasons Hotel where President Macron had been staying, “resulted in the killing of one victim and the injury of 36 others with wounds of varying severity, most of them members of the Internal Security Forces”, reports the Syrian Network for Human Rights. The Élysée quickly confirmed that Macron was safe and continued his visit. The French president later reiterated Paris’s support for al-Sharaa’s Syria, stating we must “not let ourselves be destabilised” by such attacks. Raids across Damascus and its surrounding areas also uncovered a hidden cache of explosives intended for use in future attacks.

• Cuba suffers its second nationwide blackout in five days: The Caribbean island’s national power grid (SEN) collapsed completely on 10 July, according to a statement by the state-owned Unión Eléctrica on social media. It is the second such blackout to hit the island in just five days. “It has been another very tough week under the impact of the energy blockade: two disconnections of the SEN, almost no fuel to power the plants and with several units out of service,” Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said on his X account. Decades of underinvestment and insufficient maintenance of ageing thermoelectric power plants, exacerbated by a severe, months-long US oil blockade, are leading to more frequent failures. Record power outages have been reported in recent weeks, with “the biggest multi-day blackouts affecting between 70% and 72% of the country at the time of peak energy demand”, reports TeleMundo.

• Four Bengal tiger cubs born in Cuba’s National Zoo: On the brighter side for Cuba, the zoo in Havana is celebrating the rare births of four endangered Bengal tiger cubs, including an exceptionally rare white tiger. For the zoo’s keepers, the births are a “small miracle” given the severe economic crisis in the island, which is marked by chronic shortages of fuel, medicine and electricity, and makes it difficult to care for the animals. “Everything relies ​on fuel,” zookeeper Ángel Cordero told Reuters. “The animals’ movements, ​and the distribution of food (such as in the African savannah enclosure), which ​must be transported ‌on wheels; there is ​simply no ​other way.” To feed the vast population of animals across the 375-hectare (926-acre) site, the staff would need to use 20 litres of diesel fuel daily, which they cannot afford. Instead, the staff have switched to horse-drawn buggies and electric tricycles.

• Wildfire in Spain stabilises after burning 7,000 hectares: The catastrophic wildfire near Los Gallardos in Almería Province has stabilised after burning around 7,000 hectares (17,300 acres) of land since breaking out on 9 July, while leaving 13 people dead, most of whom were foreign nationals who died inside vehicles or while attempting to escape on foot. “There was neither notice nor official warning” about the fire, said 33-year-old Belgian virologist Thomas-Wolf, who lost his father in the flames. “I was on the phone with my father when it all happened”, he said to El Mundo. Authorities claim that those who died ignored the recommendation to stay confined in houses. Ten people remain officially missing, and the authorities are coordinating with foreign consulates to conduct DNA testing and identify the victims.

• June heatwave leaves over 10,000 dead across Europe: Last month’s record-breaking heatwave across Western Europe resulted in more than 10,650 excess deaths in a single week, according to EuroMOMO data released on 13 July. “There are no other obvious explanations or public health threats currently in Europe that could explain this,” Lasse Skafte Vestergaard, chief physician at Denmark’s Statens Serum Institut (EuroMOMO’s host), told Politico. “And the figures are really quite unusual in terms of the magnitude.” The vast majority of victims — over 9,000 — were individuals aged 65 and over, who were particularly vulnerable to heat stroke, cardiovascular stress and respiratory failure. Scientists emphasised that human-driven climate change made this extreme, record-breaking event virtually inevitable.

• Monsoon floods and landslides kill 56 in Bangladesh: Torrential monsoon rains in southeastern Bangladesh have triggered severe flooding and landslides, killing at least 56 people and leaving over one million residents stranded as “vast tracts of land remain under water”, reports The Daily Star. “The roads around our home, the low-lying fields ... Everything is under water”, Limon Barua, a madrasa lecturer from Banshkhali, told the Bangladeshi newspaper. “We are confined to our home.” Seven districts, including Cox’s Bazar and Chittagong, have been devastated by the disaster. Saturated, deforested hillsides have collapsed and rising rivers have severed roads, making delivering aid a challenging task for rescuers.

Kenyan runner Emmanuel Wanyonyi caused a stir on the tracks of Monaco last Friday, breaking the men’s 1,000 metres world record in two minutes 11.83 seconds, a record previously held by Noah Ngeny since 1999.

“This was the first time I ran the 1000m and breaking the world record makes me so happy,” said Emmanuel Wanyonyi. “I want to thank the other athletes who pushed me to my limit.” A humble thought for the pacers. Greatly appreciated!

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