Lightning strike killed four people and injured eight in Murambi Sector, Karongi District on Sunday, January 5.
The Mayor of Karongi District, Gerald Muzungu, confirmed that the incident happened on Sunday evening when 12 people were seeking shelter from rain in a nearby house under construction.
"Eight people who were traumatized were taken to Kirinda hospital," he said, urging residents to avoid seeking shelter from risky areas during rain and thunderstorms.
He said the burial for the deceased would take place on Tuesday.
The Ministry in Charge of Emergency Management recommends installing lightning rods as a way to prevent lightning strikes.
The extraordinary landslide year of 2024 is now complete, so I'm able to provide my initial analysis of the fatal events that have occurred. Remember that this is an analysis only of fatal events- there have been literally hundreds of thousands of non-fatal landslides too, but at present we have no mechanism to collate these reliably.
I will seek to publish this data in a journal in the coming months, so the analysis presented here is provisional.
The methodology and background analysis is outlined in Froude and Petley (2018), which is an open access paper. There are also reflections on these analyses in Fidan et al. (2024), which is also open access.
As I have been describing through the year, 2024 was exceptional in every way in terms of fatal landslides. In total, I recorded 708 fatal landslides (excluding those triggered by an earthquake), costing 4,492 lives. In terms of the number of fatal landslides, this is the highest annual total that I have ever recorded, breaking the previous record by over 100 events.
Comment: Some of the global reports of deadly landslides due to heavy rainfall in just the last 2 months of 2024:
In the US, winter storm Blair is bringing the "heaviest snowfall" and coldest temperatures in over a decade.
The National Weather Service (NWS) has issued alerts for more than 30 US states, spanning from Kansas to the East Coast, warning of "whiteout conditions" and roads becoming impassable.
Up to 250 million people across states are in the storm's path, facing dangerously low temperatures and hazardous travel conditions. Around 63 million people in the US are under some kind of winter weather advisory. This disruptive storm has covered roads with snow and also brought snowfall —even thundersnow — to several cities such as Kansas and Kentucky that typically don't see much at all, prompting the National Guard to come to the aid of stranded motorists.
School closures, flight disruptions and trees falling over are only to be expected. On Sunday, Virginia state police alone reported at least 135 crashes, thankfully without any fatalities.
Winter storm Blair is the result of an 'Arctic outbreak', which results from a polar vortex — a 'very cold air mass that typically originates in the Siberian region of Asia, crosses over the north pole into Canada and pushes south and east into the lower United States,' the NWS explains.
Anita Dangazele Scrolla.africa Sun, 05 Jan 2025 11:06 UTC
A lightning storm in the Eastern Cape struck Nomcamba Village in Ngqeleni this week, killing two family members and several goats.
Nomakhaladi Silaza, 47, and her daughter Nomakhwezi Silaza, 23, who was a Walter Sisulu University student and set to be the family's first graduate, died in the tragic incident.
Two other children from the Silaza family were injured and taken to hospital.
The family of seven lives in a two-room mud house and is struggling to raise funds to bury their loved ones.
Rhodes saw severe weather again on Saturday evening, with streets filling with water and mud.
The emergency 112 number sent out an alert at 2am Sunday calling on residents to limit their movements.
The bad weather hit the areas of Faliraki and Kalythia, and then spread to southern Rhodes and the city of Rhodes. Houses were also flooded in the Pylona area, while the streets were filled with water, mud and stones.
According to local news two people were evacuated from a trapped car on a flooded road in the Afantou area. Both have been transported to a safe location.
Civil Protection forces are in full mobilization. Crews from the South Aegean region and the municipality of Rhodes, as well as volunteer groups, are on standby to deal with any problems.
Rhodes was also hit with severe flooding in early December. Areas in the island were declared in a state of emergency by the Civil Protection Agency following severe flooding due to the Bora storm.
Hundreds of people have been forced to leave their homes after heavy rain and floods battered large parts of north-west England, leaving cars abandoned and cancelling trains.
Greater Manchester Police declared a major incident after torrential downpours across Stockport, Bolton, Didsbury, Harpurhey, Stalybridge and Wigan - with large parts of Lancashire and Cheshire also hit on New Year's Day.
Lightning struck the US Capitol building and Washington Monument simultaneously on New Year's Eve which garnered responses from netizens on social media.
A user remarked on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), "After posting the videos of lightning simultaneously striking the U.S. Capitol building and the Washington Monument on New Year's Eve, I have lots of people telling me it's a sign or omen. Much of it based on their own political beliefs. I also think it's a sign. A sign that lightning often strikes the tallest objects."
Sao Paulo, Brazil Yahoo! News Tue, 31 Dec 2024 18:46 UTC
Hail in Sao Paulo collapses the roof of a supermarket and injures people.
The Brazilian meteorological institute forecast had warned earlier of hail and heavy rains across the region, highlighting risks such as power outages and flooding.
Due to heavy rain on Sunday there were reports of flash flooding in the Bukit Timah neighborhood.
According to the national water agency PUB, many parts of Singapore experienced heavy rainfall on Sunday afternoon. Due to high water levels in the adjacent drains and Bukit Timah Canal, flash floods started to occur around 5 pm along Dunearn Road and Bukit Timah Road near King Albert Park.
In a Sunday afternoon Facebook post, the agency stated, "PUB's Quick Response Teams were deployed ahead of the rain and later closed off affected lanes, directing traffic away from floodwaters." It was 20 minutes until the flash floods stopped.
The Bukit Timah area is prone to floods, according to PUB, and within the previous 10 years, drainage enhancement projects have been completed along the Bukit Timah Canal and Bukit Timah First Diversion Canal.
"The purpose of GLADIO was to attack civilians, the people - women, children, innocent people, unknown people, far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force the public to turn to the State and demand greater security. Under a strategy of tension, you 'destabilize in order to stabilize', to create tension within society and promote conservative, reactionary social and political tendencies."
~ Italian neo-fascist whose prosecution led to the discovery of NATO's 'Gladio' networks across Western Europe
- Vincenzo Vinciguerra
”
Recent Comments
i wonder why china and russia dont seem to be developing tesla tech, or are they part of the clan really and told what to do by you know who
Comment: Some of the global reports of deadly landslides due to heavy rainfall in just the last 2 months of 2024:
- Landslides, floods strike West Java, Indonesia - 10 killed, 2 missing
- 7 feared dead in landslide due to continuous downpour caused by Cyclone Fengal in Tamil Nadu, India - year's worth of rain in just 36 hours
- At least 20 killed, 100 missing as landslides after heavy rains bury homes in Uganda
- Landslide and flash floods after torrential rains leave 27 dead in Sumatra, Indonesia
- Girl missing as heavy rains in Bolivia cause landslide in capital La Paz
- Landslide triggered by heavy rain kills 10, including children, in eastern Congo
- Landslide amid heavy rain in Indonesia's central Java claims lives of 4 family members
- Super Typhoon Man-yi fells power lines, causes tidal surges in Philippines, at least 7 dead in landslide - 6th major storm in less than a month
- 12 bodies found after deadly landslides following torrential rain in Cameroon on November 6th - dozens of people still missing
- At least 6 killed in landslide after heavy rain in Konta, Ethiopia
More reports from 2024 and prior years can be found here.