World
Early warning, evacuations saved lives during Cyclone Hudhud: UN
United Nations: A UN report says “timely and massive evacuation saved lives” during Cyclone Hudhud that slammed coastal Andhra Pradesh and Odisha last October, leaving only 41 dead in a disaster of that magnitude.
Overall, major disasters last year cost India 1,322 lives and $27 billion in damages, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific report released here Wednesday said.
It put the death toll from the September floods in Kashmir at 1,281 and the economic loses at $16 billion, and the material losses from the category 4 Cyclone Hudhud at $11 billion.
“One important lesson from 2014 is that end-to-end early warning systems save lives,” said Shamika Sirimanne, director of ESCAP’s Information and Communications Technology and Disaster Risk Reduction Division.
“The successful preparation for Cyclone Hudhud and Typhoon Hagupit (in the Philippines last December) lies not only in the ability to predict the movement and intensity of storms, but also the capacity to engage and mobilize vulnerable communities in disaster preparedness.”
Crowdsourcing using smart phones and Android apps helped assess the damage from the cyclone, the report said.
“With the increasing penetration of smartphone, crowdsourcing is emerging as an important tool to collect primary data for post-disaster damage assessment,” it said.
Overall last year, 119 natural disasters — over half of the world’s 226 — struck the Asia and Pacific region, which escaped a catastrophic earthquake or tsuanami.
The report reviewing last year’s natural disasters detailed the official efforts that helped reduce fatalities during Cuclone Hudhud.
“The National Disaster Response Force deployed 35 teams across the states of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha,” the report said. “A day before the landfall district official were seen along the coast and seashore villages evacuating villagers to cyclone shelters. Reports have circulated regarding officials personally knocking on doors to notify residents of impending danger.”
As a result of these efforts, 500,000 people were moved to safety, while an airport, a naval base, industries and infrastructure were destroyed.
The reported noted that the destruction of casaurina plantations and mangrove along the coast and deforestation on the hills resulted in damage to Vishakapatnam city. It also recommended introducing and enforcing building codes so that structures can withstand high velocity winds.
The review said that floods were increasingly occurring across borders and international cooperation was required to deal with them. It cited the cooperation between India and Nepal during the landslide in August that blocked the Sun Koshi River creating an artificial lake. It threatened flash floods across the border in India. The two nations acted jointly to evacuate people at risk.
Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.
Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai
Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.
Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.
Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.
WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.
Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.
Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy
Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.
The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.
Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.
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