The battle over a $2.9 trillion climate risk

 

A repaired crack in the walls of a house in the village of Presles-en-Brie, outside Paris, on June 2. Photographer: Cyril Marcilhacy/Bloomberg

 By Claudia Cohen, Gautam Naik, and Tom Fevrier

 Today’s newsletter looks at how subsidence is become a worsening risk due to climate change. Unfortunately for homeowners, insurers don’t want to pick up the tab. 

 

When Bernard Weisse first noticed a tiny crack in the outer wall of his house on the outskirts of Paris, he dismissed it as little more than a nuisance. But in the four years since, a spiderweb of fissures has spread from floor to ceiling and snaked into virtually every corner of his home. 

“We can hear loud cracking noises especially when it’s warm outside,” said the retired salesman and father of three. “Sometimes, I think we should get all our stuff together and leave.” 

Like a growing number of people around the world, Weisse is grappling with subsidence — a term for the sinking land that’s causing damage to homes and other structures built on it. The slow-moving climate disaster has already caused tens of billions in damage and has the potential to affect 1.2 billion people in areas accounting for more than $8 trillion of economic output. 

While groundwater extraction, mining and earthquakes also cause the ground to shift, global warming vastly increases the risks. What happens is that soil swells with winter rain and then shrinks as it dries in the heat, cracking foundations in the process.

Because of its soil and its status as the world’s fastest-warming continent, Europe is particularly exposed. The European Central Bank estimates the region’s potential damage from sinking land at more than €2.5 trillion ($2.9 billion) across all euro-area financial institutions. Although most of that is classified as “low risk,” this summer is forecast to be one of the hottest and driest on the continent, creating perfect conditions for subsidence damage. 

For Weisse, the cost for repairs could climb to as much as €200,000 to keep his two-story home from crumbling. That would be part of the estimated €43 billion in damage that households face by 2050 in France alone, according to insurance trade group France Assureurs. With that much money at stake, it’s set off a battle over who will ultimately have to pay. 

Weisse’s town of Presles-en-Brie has teamed up with 14 nearby villages and sued the state to have their subsidence issues recognized as a natural catastrophe like flash floods and wildfires. That would trigger payments from insurers and the government, powerful opponents for the municipalities.

“It’s David against Goliath,” said Dominique Rodriguez, who’s been mayor of the pastoral community of 2,300 people for more than three decades.

 

So far, the big guys are winning. In Presles-en-Brie, at least 40 homeowners have sought subsidence compensation since 2020, and while two houses were granted CatNat recognition, others were rejected.  

Europe is the epicenter because of its clay-rich soil and relatively high population density. Also, buildings from the 1970s and 80s — when a postwar housing construction boom was still underway — are particularly susceptible.

While Presles-en-Brie is an early victim, the issues are global. Jakarta has sunk more than 2.5 meters (8 feet) in a decade, and Tehran drops as much as 22 centimeters a year. In the US, Houston is most affected, with 40% of the city subsiding more than half a centimeter a year. 

More than 425,000 Dutch houses will be exposed over the next decade, with subsidence already lowering house prices by as much as 5%, according to a recent study by the Tinbergen Institute. Repair costs can exceed €100,000 per home and are rarely covered by insurance. 

“The situation is urgent,” said Karsten Klein, director of advocacy at Vereniging Eigen Huis, a Dutch homeowners association. “Waiting until homes become uninhabitable is not an option.” 

 

Global heating ‘doubled’ chance of extreme rain in Europe in September

Residents wade through flood water after the Nysa Klodzka River flooded the town of Lewin Brzeski in south-west Poland on 19 September. Photograph: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock

 
 

Planet-heating pollution doubled the chance of the extreme levels of rain that hammered central Europe in September, a study has found.

Researchers found global heating aggravated the four days of heavy rainfall that led to deadly floods in countries from Austria to Romania.

The rains were made at least 7% stronger by climate change, World Weather Attribution (WWA) found, which led to towns being hit with volumes of water that would have been half as likely to occur if humans had not heated the planet.

“The trend is clear,” said Bogdan Chojnicki, a climate scientist at Poznań University of Life Sciences, and co-author of the study. “If humans keep filling the atmosphere with fossil fuel emissions, the situation will be more severe.”

 

Storm Boris stalled over central Europe in mid-September and unleashed record-breaking amounts of rain upon Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. The heavy rains turned calm streams into wild rivers, triggering floods that wrecked homes and killed two dozen people.

The researchers said measures to adapt had lowered the death toll compared with similar floods that hit the region in 1997 and 2002. They called for better flood defences, warning systems and disaster-response plans, and warned against continuing to rebuild in flood-prone regions.

“These floods indicate just how costly climate change is becoming,” said Maja Vahlberg, technical adviser at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, and co-author of the study. “Even with days of preparation, flood waters still devastated towns, destroyed thousands of homes and saw the European Union pledge €10bn in aid.”

Rapid attribution studies, which use established methods but are published before going through lengthy peer-review processes, examine how human influence affects extreme weather in the immediate aftermath of a disaster.

The scientists compared the rainfall recorded in central Europe over four days in September with amounts simulated for a world that is 1.3C cooler – the level of warming caused to date by burning fossil fuels and destroying nature. They attributed a “doubling in likelihood and a 7% increase in intensity” to human influence.

But the results are “conservative”, the scientists wrote, because the models do not explicitly model convection and so may underestimate rainfall. “We emphasise that the direction of change is very clear, but the rate is not.”

 

Physicists have shown that every degree celsius of warming allows the air to hold 7% more moisture, but whether it does so depends on the availability of water. The rains in central Europe were unleashed when cold air from the Arctic met warm, wet air from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

Warmer seas enhance the rainy part of the hydrological cycle, though the trend on parts of the land is towards drier conditions, said Miroslav Trnka, a climate scientist at the Global Change Research Institute, who was not involved in the study. When the conditions were right, he said, “you can have floods on steroids”.

Trnka compared the factors that result in extreme rainfall to playing the lottery. The increase in risk from global heating, he said, was like buying more lottery tickets, doing so over a longer period of time, and changing the rules so more combinations of numbers result in a win.

“If you bet long enough, you have a higher chance of a jackpot,” said Trnka.

The study found heavier four-day rainfall events would hit if the world heats 2C above preindustrial levels, with a further increase from today of about 5% in rainfall intensity and 50% in likelihood.

Other factors could increase this even more, such as the waviness of the jet stream, which some scientists suspect is increasingly trapping weather systems in one place as a result of global heating. A study published in Nature Scientific Reports on Monday projected that such blocking systems would increase under medium- and worst-case emissions scenarios.

Hayley Fowler, a climate scientist at Newcastle University, who was not involved in the study, said: “These large storms, cut off from the jet stream, are able to stagnate in one place and produce huge amounts of rainfall, fuelled by increased moisture and energy from oceans that are record-shatteringly hot.”

“These ‘blocked’ slow-moving storms are becoming more frequent and are projected to increase further with additional warming,” she added. “The question is not whether we need to adapt for more of these types of storm but can we.”

WWA described the week following Storm Boris as “hyperactive” because 12 disasters around the world triggered its criteria for analysis, more than in any week in the organisation’s history.

The study did not try to work out how much global heating had increased the destruction wreaked by the rains but the researchers said even minor increases in rainfall disproportionately increased damages.

“Almost everywhere in the world it is the case that a small increase in the rainfall leads to a similar order-of-magnitude increase in flooding,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute and co-author of the study. “But that leads to a much larger increase in the damages.”

 

Floods Wreak Havoc Across Four Continents

 

The swollen Elbe river in Dresden, Germany, on Tuesday.Credit...Filip Singer/EPA, via Shutterstock

By Austyn Gaffney and Somini Sengupta

 

Chad. Vietnam. Austria. The American South.

In very disparate regions of the world, extreme rainfall in recent weeks has killed thousands of people, submerged entire towns, set off landslides and left millions without power. It’s a harbinger of the wild weather events that are a hallmark of climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, and it is highlighting the need to urgently adapt, in rich and poor countries alike.

Bursts of extreme rainfall are making both coastal and riverine flooding more dangerous and unpredictable.

“Extreme events are getting stronger everywhere, so we should expect floods to be bigger regardless of where we are,” said Michael Wehner, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “There is no question that these kinds of floods all over the world are getting worse.”

What’s the climate connection?

Some of the recent deadly floods, like the landslides in Kerala, in southern India, earlier this summer, can be directly attributable to human-induced climate change.

 

A scientific study, released in August, found that the downpour that caused the landslide was 10 percent heavier because of human-caused climate change.

There are no similar attribution studies yet for the floods of recent weeks. Though some studies are underway, there simply aren’t enough resources to carry out an attribution study for every single event.

 Sifting through debris at the site of a landslide in Lao Cai province in Vietnam in the aftermath of Typhoon Yagi last week.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

Nonetheless, the science is clear: A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture. That can cause bursts of extreme rainfall, on top of other meteorological factors. For instance, Storm Boris, a sluggish, low-pressure system, has dumped five times September’s average rainfall across Europe since the storm began last week. A blast of cold polar air collided with a sweep of warm Mediterranean air dense with water vapor, producing an unusually powerful storm that brought heavy rains and strong winds. As of Wednesday, at least 23 people have died in Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania, according to Reuters.

In the United States, North and South Carolina are being battered this week by equally rare storms. Some areas recorded 18 inches of rain over 12 hours, an amount so statistically rare it’s considered a one-in-a-thousand-year event.

 

Typhoon Yagi, one of the region's most powerful storms, brought rain and winds up to 127 miles per hour across northern Vietnam. At least 143 people have died in the aftermath, including 22 who died following a landslide in the Lao Cai, a mountainous province bordering China. The storm marched on to Myanmar, killing at least 110 more people in flash floods and landslides.

Death tolls are higher in places already at risk

The latest floods come on top of accumulating hazards that have whittled away at people’s ability to cope.

Parts of Northern Nigeria were battered by seven days of nonstop heavy rainfall that caused a dam to burst, killing at least 200 people and submerging half the city of Maiduguri. Local officials told Reuters it was the worst flooding in two decades. The rain came just months after scorching pre-monsoon heat and after years of conflict in the area between Boko Haram militants and the Nigerian government forces. The governor of Borno state said that the floods had displaced more than a million people and that there was a high risk of diseases spreading

 

People displaced by floods arrived in Maiduguri, Nigeria, on Sept. 12.Credit...Audu Marte/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

 

Likewise in Chad, reeling from years of conflict and the influx of refugees from neighboring countries, 341 people have died in flooding in recent days, according to the United Nations.

 

Extreme weather is exceptionally costly for African governments. On average, African nations are losing 5 percent of their economies because of floods, droughts and heat, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Many are spending up to a tenth of their budgets just managing extreme weather disasters. Many of those extreme events are driven by the emissions of planet-heating greenhouse gases, but Africa is responsible for only a fraction of the world’s annual emissions.

Adaptation is urgent

The latest floods have made it abundantly clear that both rich and poor countries need to invest in shoring up their physical infrastructure and their public policies to minimize the effects of extreme weather.

The United Nations has pressed governments to put in place more early-warning systems, which are relatively inexpensive and potentially effective in saving lives. The U.N. says 101 countries now have early-warning protocols, at least on paper, which is double the number that reported having them in 2015.

There are many feasible measures to reduce the loss of lives caused by flooding. They include giving small amounts of cash to people so they can move out of harm’s way, and putting in emergency water and power systems to prevent the outbreak of disease after floods.

 

Flooding from Tropical Storm Debby in Isle of Palms, S.C., in August.Credit...Marco Bello/Reuters

Harder to do, but essential, local officials and disaster management specialists say, is to prevent deforestation and construction in areas that are prone to heavy flooding and landslides. The floods in Kerala were all the more devastating because of widespread deforestation and unplanned development in ecologically sensitive areas.

In wealthy countries like the United States, local governments have invested heavily in expensive infrastructure. North and South Carolina, for instance, both veterans of powerful storms, have spent millions of dollars retrofitting roads to better withstand extreme rainfall and starting to protect natural flood barriers, like wetlands, from development.

By contrast, low-income countries that are already strapped and weighed down by debts, have been less able to maintain their roads, let alone build flood-resilient infrastructure.

“We need to develop critical infrastructure,” said Olasunkanmi Habeeb Okunola, an urban planner from Nigeria who is working as a visiting scientist at United Nations University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security. “If you get that right, to some extent, you can lessen the impact of climate change.”

There is little doubt that climate change is making weather wilder and more erratic. That requires preparing for the unexpected.

 “We don’t know exactly when or which type of event will come,” said Diana Urge-Vorsatz, a professor at Central European University and vice chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Unfortunately there’s no question that more severe events are coming.”

 

 

 

(Antarctic Melting) Today’s newsletter looks at Brazil, which is being slammed with climate disasters

 

Residents and volunteers help with rescues through floodwaters in Canoas, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, on May 5. Photographer: Carlos Macedo/Bloomberg

Today’s newsletter looks at Brazil, which is being slammed with climate disasters, all while it prepares to host a UN summit on global warming next year. You can read a full version of today’s top story here. For unlimited access to climate and energy news, please subscribe.

The latest climate migrants

By Daniel Carvalho On April 29, Jéssica Lima and her family went to bed. They woke up with a river inside their house. Lima’s home, in a rural area of Roca Sales, Brazil, is one of the many pummeled by the worst flood in the history of Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state in the country. The catastrophic floods, following torrential rainfall, have taken the lives of at least 169 people and displaced more than 581,000. The impacts have been widespread across the state that is home to 11 million people.   This was the third major flood for Rio Grande do Sul in the past year, and there are indications that severe weather events such as this will become more common due to climate change. It’s given many residents like 30-year-old Lima reason to want to leave the area for good. “It’s hard to get a house here,” she said by phone. “It’s hard to find a place that hasn’t been hit by water. And we’ve lost everything. We’ve been pretty shaken up.” While the federal government has already announced resources in the order of 77.5 billion reais ($14.9 billion) in aid to Rio Grande do Sul – there are new concerns over whether efforts to rebuild its cities will be wasted the next time disaster strikes. Mayors and other local authorities are now weighing the idea of relocating entire neighborhoods away from high-risk areas. It’s a change that will permanently reshape Brazilian maps and turn thousands of people like Lima into the world’s newest climate refugees. Homes destroyed by floods in Roca Sales, on May 5. Photographer: Gustavo Ghisleni/AFP/Getty Images   “When you have the recurrence of dramatic situations like this that killed people, put people at risk, naturally, this is one of the real possibilities that have to be worked on,” Rio Grande do Sul Vice Governor Gabriel Souza said in an interview. There are more than 48,000 people sheltered in schools, colleges and sports gymnasiums. A countless number of families are in tents on roadsides, living with continuous rain and temperatures around 7C (44.6F) as winter looms. The state government is preparing to move displaced residents to four “provisional cities,” located in Canoas, Porto Alegre, São Leopoldo and Guaíba. Meanwhile, 5,500 houses are being built elsewhere at a cost of 140,000 reais ($27,090) each, according to the local government. Officials say it’s still impossible to estimate how many municipalities will have to move their residents to other areas because it’s still raining and the water has not yet receded completely. Severe weather has sparked mass exodus from cities before. For example, New Orleans in the US saw its population plummet after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — with those numbers never returning to what they were in the early 21st century. As climate change increases the number and intensity of floods and fires around the world, more people will likely be forced to move. The question remains: Where to? Residents remove damaged furniture from a home in Eldorado do Sul on May 22. Photographer: Tuane Fernandes/Bloomberg   Many families in Rio Grande do Sul still don’t know where to go. Yet, they are aware that there’s no alternative but to start life from scratch. Lima’s family has already shown resilience. Her husband and children — a four-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son, who has cerebral atrophy and severe autism — are currently living at a neighbor’s house as they look for a new home. Before the floods, Lima and her husband had just bought new furniture – not all paid off. “When we left home, the first thing I did was thank God for being alive,” she said. “The sadness was great, but the important thing is to be well. Things, in time, we’ll get back, God willing.”

Food Security - Food Safety - Por que redes de fast food estão tirando o tomate de seus menus na Índia

 

 

Custo da fruta no país aumentou mais de 400% nos últimos meses devido a quebras de safra após ondas de calor escaldante e fortes chuvas 

 No mês passado, o McDonald's anunciou que muitos de seus restaurantes em todo o país removeriam temporariamente os tomates de seus hambúrgueres Getty Images 

 Tara Subramaniamda CNN

 

Os tomates estão fora do cardápio na Índia enquanto o Burger King se torna a mais recente rede de fast food a ser impactada pelo aumento dos preços do alimento básico da culinária.

No mês passado, o McDonald’s anunciou que muitos de seus restaurantes em todo o país removeriam temporariamente os tomates de seus hambúrgueres, citando problemas de qualidade e escassez de suprimentos.

 

Agora, as lojas indianas do Burger King dizem que são “incapazes de adicionar tomates”.

Em uma seção de perguntas frequentes em seu site, o Burger King garantiu aos clientes que os tomates voltarão em breve, dizendo que sua ausência atual foi “devido a condições imprevisíveis na qualidade e no fornecimento das safras de tomate”.

Não ficou claro se a remoção de tomates se aplicaria a todas ou apenas algumas de suas lojas.

A decisão do Burger King ocorre depois que o banco central da Índia elevou sua previsão de inflação para o atual ano financeiro para 5,4%, ante 5,1%, citando o aumento dos preços de certos alimentos no país mais populoso do mundo.

“No futuro, o aumento nos preços dos vegetais, liderados pelos tomates, exerceria pressões de alta consideráveis ​​na trajetória da inflação de curto prazo”, escreveu em um comunicado.

Na semana passada, a Subway anunciou que suas lojas indianas cobrariam 30 rúpias (US$ 0,40) a mais por uma fatia de queijo na maioria dos sanduíches, informou a Reuters.

Quanto aos tomates, a culinária indiana é impensável sem a onipresente fruta. Mas o amado ingrediente está cada vez mais fora do alcance de muitos.

O custo do tomate na Índia aumentou mais de 400% nos últimos meses devido a quebras de safra após ondas de calor escaldante e fortes chuvas, de acordo com agricultores e especialistas em agricultura, embora os preços tenham moderado um pouco em agosto.

Um quilo de tomate vendido na capital da Índia, Nova Délhi, esta semana custou 107 rúpias (US$ 1,29), um salto surpreendente em relação às 27 rúpias (US$ 0,33) registradas em janeiro, segundo dados do Departamento de Assuntos do Consumidor.

Os altos preços se devem em parte ao clima extremo associado à mudança climática, disse Jocelyn Boiteau, pós-doutoranda do Instituto Tata-Cornell de Agricultura e Nutrição.

De acordo com Boiteau, apenas algumas regiões no sul da Índia têm condições adequadas para o cultivo de tomates durante os meses de verão, portanto, quaisquer “problemas relacionados ao clima” nessas áreas podem ter um impacto em nível nacional no fornecimento de tomates frescos.

Neste verão, o país foi abalado por quantidades sem precedentes de chuva e ondas de calor intensas, destacando como a nação mais populosa do mundo está entre as mais vulneráveis ​​aos efeitos da crise climática.

 

Floods, Fires and Torrential Rains Further Bedevil Europe

The extreme weather across the continent this summer has destroyed huge amounts of land, forced many to evacuate, and in some cases caused deaths.

Dropping water over a fire in Apesia, southern Cyprus, on Monday.Credit...Philippos Christou/Associated Press

By Emma Bubola Aug. 8, 2023 

Floods, fires and heavy rains have landed more blows across Europe this week, with the authorities on the continent scrambling to respond to the extreme weather that has become increasingly common in the past few years. 

The most recent events have destroyed large amounts of land, left dozens of people injured, forced thousands to evacuate and, in some cases, caused deaths, and they come on the heels of scorching temperatures that have engulfed much of Southern Europe this summer. 

Climate change has made extreme heat a fixture of the warmer months in Europe, but experts say that the continent has failed to significantly adapt to the hotter conditions. Governments in many countries are now struggling to address the devastating effects. 

“The extreme weather conditions across Europe continue to be of concern,” Roberta Metsola, the president of the European Parliament, wrote on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “The EU is showing solidarity with all those in need.”

Deadly Floods in Slovenia Heavy rains in recent days have led rivers to overflow across Slovenia in what the authorities there said was the worst natural disaster since the country’s independence in 1991. 

At least six people have died, according to the Slovenian news agency STA, and thousands have been forced to flee their homes to escape the floods. Several countries have tried to help, with France and Germany sending equipment such as prefabricated bridges, and even Ukraine, in the middle of a war with Russia, promising to send a helicopter. A flooded area in the northern Slovenian town of Crna na Koroskem on Sunday.

Entire villages have been left underwater, and huge rivers of mud have filled roads and sports fields and flowed below collapsed bridges, with cars stuck in the debris of landslides caused by the flooding. Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, said she would travel to Slovenia on Wednesday. Floods have also been reported in Austria, Slovenia’s northern neighbor, killing at least one person, according to the Austrian chancellor, Karl Nehammer.

Wildfires in Cyprus, Italy and Portugal Hundreds of firefighters were continuing to battle rural wildfires in Portugal on Tuesday. The blazes have prompted the evacuation of more than a thousand locals and tourists, and several firefighters have been injured while tackling the flames. The risk of fire in the past few days was at the highest level in large parts of the country, with strong winds and temperatures above 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Portugal has struggled with wildfires various times in recent years. Blazes killed more than 60 people in 2017.

A tractor cleaning up land during a wildfire in Aljezur, Portugal, on Monday.Credit...Pedro Nunes/Reuters 

Elsewhere, the European Union has sent firefighting planes to assist with efforts to tackle wildfires burning on Cyprus in recent days; Greece, which has also been plagued by wildfires this summer, has sent liquid flame retardant to the island to help. Israel has also provided aid, including firefighting planes, a crew of four pilots and ground crews. Jordan and Lebanon also sent support. Hundreds of people have also been evacuated on the Italian island of Sardinia, a popular tourism destination, after fires burned across large areas in recent days. 

Torrents in Norway and Sweden Heavy rains have been recorded in the two Nordic countries this month, causing the derailment of a train on Monday that left three people injured in eastern Sweden. The police said that the deluge had undermined the embankment where the accident occurred, causing it to collapse. More downpours were expected in both countries in the coming days. 

The Swedish meteorological and hydrological institute said that the amounts of rain that have fallen were unusually high for August in many locations. “Quite a few places have received more rain in one day than you normally get in the entire month of August,” said Ida Dahlstrom, a meteorologist with the Swedish meteorological institute. She added that the city of Lund, in Southern Sweden, had not received so much rain in one day for more than 160 years. 

The institute issued red alerts — the highest level of flood warning — for some areas of Sweden on Monday night and said that copious amounts of rain forecast in the south of the country could send water in streams and ditches to extremely high levels. The stormy weather has heralded not only heavy rain but also uncharacteristically high temperatures, with the town of Haparanda, in northern Sweden, reaching a balmy 86 on Tuesday, its highest temperature for August since 1969.

A stream overflowed its banks on Tuesday in Gran, Norway. Credit...Stian Lysberg Solum/NTB Scanpix, via Associated Press Christina Anderson contributed reporting. Emma Bubola is a reporter based in London. More about Emma Bubola - Nytimes.com

Devastating floods in Italy claim lives and leave thousands homeless

 Angela Giuffrida in Rome
Wed 17 May 2023 20.59 BST

Twenty-one rivers burst their banks after heavy storms across country cause landslides and submerge villages

People call for help as extreme floods engulf houses and roads in Italy 

Nine people have died and thousands have been evacuated from their homes after heavy storms wreaked havoc in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, causing severe flooding and landslides.

People sought refuge on the rooftops of their homes after 21 rivers broke their banks, submerging entire towns.

Among the victims were an elderly man and a couple who owned a company in the agriculture sector, according to Corriere della Sera. The body of a German woman was found on a beach in Cesenatico, a town by the Adriatic coast, but it is unclear if she was killed in the storms. Others are still reported missing.

The Emilia Romagna F1 Grand Prix scheduled this weekend has been cancelled.

“The only irreparable thing in this emergency are the nine people who lost their lives, and we hope there are no more,” said Stefano Bonaccino, president of Emilia Romagna.

Italy’s civil protection agency said on Wednesday there could be worse to come. “The rainfall is not over, it will continue for several hours,” the agency’s chief, Titti Postiglione, told SkyTG24 news. “We are facing a very, very complicated situation.”

The Savio River in Cesena, central Italy, which burst its banks. Photograph: AP

There has been heavy rain across Italy in recent days but the worst-affected area has been Emilia-Romagna and parts of the central Marche region, where 12 people died in floods last September.

In a video shared on social media, the voices of people trapped in their homes in Faenza, a city in Ravenna province, could be heard shouting for help. Massimo Isola, the mayor of Faenza, said: “We had a night that we will never forget. We’ve never known such flooding in our city, it is something unimaginable.”

Enzo Lattuca, the mayor of Cesena, where citizens swam through the floods to rescue others, said: “The situation is disastrous, it’s a catastrophe, and the rain has not yet finished.”

He said on Wednesday morning the River Savio was starting to swell again.

Emilia-Romagna and parts of Marche have been badly affected by heavy rain, floods and landslides

A bridge that connected Motta-Budrio with San Martino in the area of Bologna collapsed overnight. “Do not go near it,” Italy’s fire service warned. “There is a gas pipeline close by which also seems to be affected.”

Five thousand people were evacuated from their homes in Ravenna. “It’s probably the worst night in the history of Romagna,” Michele de Pascale, the mayor of Ravenna, told Rai radio. “Ravenna is unrecognisable for the damage it has suffered.”

Dario Nardella, the mayor of Florence, said mountain villages on the Romagna side of the Mugello valley had been cut off due to landslides.

Australian budget forecasts heavy hit to economy due to floods and natural disasters

 

Federal budget estimates growth will lose about quarter of a percentage point during the current quarter, or about $5bn in economic activity, because of recent flooding

The increasing frequency of natural disasters will take its toll on the economy in the near term and force the government to fork out hundreds of millions of dollars to build resilience for more to come.

As Australia endures its third La Niña event in as many years, the budget estimates growth will lose about quarter of a percentage point during the current quarter, or about $5bn in economic activity, because of the recent flooding across the country’s south-east.

While the rebuilding in subsequent quarters – extreme weather permitting – will add back to economic activity, the repair bill won’t be cheap and excludes other impacts such as the mental health of communities hit.

The floods will also significantly add to cost-of-living pressures by increasing the price of fruit and vegetables and reducing activity in agriculture, mining and construction, the budget said.

Based on preliminary analysis, the October floods alone will add 0.1 percentage points to inflation in both the December and March quarters.

Inflation, though, is still tipped to peak at 7.75% by the end of 2022 as lower than expected petrol prices relieve some of the pressure.

To address the impact of this year’s floods, there is $3bn in the contingency reserve to meet disaster recovery costs, including support payments to individuals, communities and businesses.

Some $38.3m will also be funnelled into Disaster Relief Australia to fund 5,000 extra volunteers.

As of 20 October, disaster assistance has been made available in 94 local government areas across Victoria, Tasmania and New South Wales due to the recent flooding events – representing around 30% of total agricultural production value in the 2020-21 period.

To prepare for future disasters, up to $200m per year will be budgeted towards prevention and resilience initiatives through the Disaster Ready Fund, funding projects such as flood levees, sea walls, cyclone shelters, evacuation centres and fire breaks.

Over the six-month period of the February, March and July floods, Services Australia provided nearly $3.2bn in assistance to 3.3 million claimants.

In disaster-prone communities, $22.6m will be provided over four years to help with insurance affordability and availability. The money will fund the establishment of new partnerships with the insurance industry on risk reduction and “inform mitigation projects that reduce premiums for Australian households”.

According to the Climate Council, large parts of Australia will be uninsurable by 2030 due to the risk of climate change.

Caitlin Cassidy and Peter Hannam Theguardian

Nigeria floods: 'Overwhelming' disaster leaves more than 600 people dead

By Ishaq Khalid & Elsa Maishman

BBC News, Abuja & London

Recent flooding in Nigeria has become an "overwhelming" disaster, and many states were not properly prepared for them despite warnings, the minister for disaster management has said.

More than 600 people have died in the worst flooding the West African nation has seen in a decade.

Some 1.3 million people have been displaced, and more than 200,000 homes have been destroyed.

Flooding is expected to continue until the end of November.

Nigeria is used to seasonal flooding, but this year has been significantly worse than usual.

The government has said unusually heavy rains and climate change are to blame.

 The emergency release of excess water from dams both in Nigeria and in neighbouring Cameroon was another key factor causing devastating flooding.

Experts also say poor planning and infrastructure have exacerbated the damage.

Since the flooding began in early summer, large swathes of farmland have been destroyed.

There are concerns about increased spread of disease, and food and fuel supplies have also been disrupted.

In a press conference on Sunday, Nigeria's minister for humanitarian affairs and disaster management, Sadiya Umar Farouk, called on local authorities to evacuate people living in the most high-risk areas.

Authorities are already providing food and other support to those affected, she said.

She added that despite ''concerted efforts'' and early warnings, many state governments "did not prepare" for the flooding.

The disaster has affected 27 of Nigeria's 36 states.

Part of the problem is that people return to their homes on flood plains each year after the water levels subside.

Many do not have the means to relocate.

Nigeria's economy has been battered in the past year, with inflation at an all-time high and many communities struggling to cope.

The World Food Programme and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation said last month that Nigeria was among six countries facing a high risk of catastrophic levels of hunger.

Nigeria's meteorological agency has warned that the flooding could continue until the end of November in some states in the south of the country, including Anambra, Delta, Rivers, Cross River and Bayelsa.