Hundreds killed in flooding disasters around the globe

A spate of flooding disasters in Asia, Europe, and Africa has led to hundreds of deaths, thousands of injuries, and mass displacement events across three continents, underlining the global scale and humanitarian impact of extreme weather events.

In Myanmar, Typhoon Yagi has claimed at least 113 lives and displaced more than 320,000 people, with unconfirmed reports indicating that hundreds more may have been killed in more rural areas, some of which were cut off by floodwaters.

The aid response in Myanmar, where the military rulers are under heavy international sanctions as they face down several armed opposition and separatist groups, is likely to be hampered by insecurity and access restrictions.

Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, China, and the Philippines also all felt the deadly effects of Yagi, the strongest typhoon of the year so far, as it swept across East Asia over the last week. At least 292 people were killed in Vietnam, with dozens still missing. More than 230,000 homes were damaged, and the economic cost was put at $1.6 billion, according to state media.

Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia bore the immediate brunt of Storm Boris in Europe, with the death toll from flooding and landslides standing at 16 by Monday, and hundreds of thousands of people having been evacuated from their homes.

After declaring a national emergency on Monday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced $260 million in aid for people affected by Storm Boris.

In Hungary, 12,000 soldiers were placed on standby amid fears that the River Danube could burst its banks. The Mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karacsony, warned the capital’s residents that the nation is expected to experience the largest floods in decades in the coming days.

In Austria, the province surrounding the capital, Vienna, has been declared a disaster area, with leaders calling it "unprecedented”, and parts of the Czech Republic experienced three months’ worth of rain in just three days.

In Nigeria, meanwhile, aid agencies and the government are still scrambling to respond to a major disaster in Maiduguri, where at least 30 people were killed and tens of thousands displaced when a regional dam burst and flooded half the city.

The climate crisis is blamed for the prevalence of extreme weather events, prompting leading humanitarian ethicist Hugo Slim to suggest that this “Earth emergency” demands a radical overhaul of humanitarian action. For more, read his recent opinion:

Saving humans is not enough. Humanitarian purpose needs to change
New principles, new ethics, new mandates: Hugo Slim’s radical call to reinvent humanitarianism for the climate emergency.