Heavy floods caused by three days of heavy rain have killed 13 people in central Vietnam, a region still struggling to recover a month after being hit by the worst floods in a century, AP reported. A cold spell has dumped more than 25 inches of water in the region in a three-day period, flooding tens of thousands of homes and destroying thousands of acres of newly planted rice fields, officials said. This time, the rains are hitting farther south, from Thua Thien Hue province to Khanh Hoa province, an area home to 7.5 million people. Central Vietnam is one of the country's poorest regions.

I remember my mother coming in from a storm one night many years ago and telling us, "You don't want to know what's going on out there." I think there's a tendency to take a similar approach to the undeniable warming of the earth's oceans and atmosphere, and the extreme weather events that scientists believe are associated with it. If you watch television or read the newspapers or step outside you might begin to think a plague of biblical proportions is under way.

Parts of North Carolina are still under water, and New Jersey is trying to recover from some of the worst flooding in its history. And New York City was brought to a virtual standstill when, as reported in The New York Times, "clouds like those that had merely puckered overhead all summer suddenly discharged up to four inches of rain in less than three hours."

Hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, torrential downpours and flooding, raging forest fires, deadly disease outbreaks--all descending on us in frighteningly rapid succession. You can be forgiven for not wanting to know what's going on out there.

The outbreak of St. Louis encephalitis, the potentially deadly viral disease that is spread by mosquitoes, was so unexpected in New York that doctors at first were unsure of what they were seeing. But a paper published in March 1998 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society noted that climate warming and outbreaks of extreme weather could be expected to have serious implications for the spread of such diseases. The lead author of the paper was Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. We are learning that "climate change is not a gradual process," said Epstein.

Much more serious public health consequences from extreme weather events have been occurring in developing countries. The incredible rains and flooding that accompanied Hurricane Mitch, which killed more than 11,000 people in Central America last year, led to outbreaks of cholera, malaria, dengue fever and other diseases.

The San Francisco area has a 70 percent chance of being hit by a major earthquake over the next 30 years, an almost inevitable disaster that will nevertheless catch millions of people unprepared, federal scientists said.

In a report issued to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the devastating 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said northern California was rife with major seismic faults long overdue for rupture. "We have earthquake probability distributed throughout the Bay Area," said USGS geologist David Schwartz, lead author of the new report. "There really is no escape."

Schwartz said that even if San Francisco continues to escape the inevitable "Big One" measuring 6.7 or higher, there is an 80 percent chance the Bay Area will be hit by one or more earthquakes measuring more than 6 during the next three decades.

FROM Colombia to India, Turkey to Taiwan, Mexico, and now California, 1999 has been the year of the earthquake. More than 20,000 people have died in six serious earthquakes this year, with many thousands more left injured and homeless.

The worst was in north-western Turkey two months ago, when more than 16,000 died in the densely populated area around Izmit. Seismologists said yesterday's quake in California's sparsely populated Mojave desert would have been "devastating" if the epicentre had been 100 miles to the west in Los Angeles.

 

Geologists know where earthquakes are likely to occur: the difficulty is predicting when. A spokesman for the California Institute of Technology said: "It's almost impossible to know when they will come. All we can do is take as many precautions as we can."

The cost of repairing the physical damage caused by quakes is enormous. Insurers estimate that last year was the most expensive since records began, with losses totalling $93 billion from all natural disasters. This year's figure could be higher.

The United Nations has declared the 1990s the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. Last Wednesday, more than 1,000 British schools took part in an "IDNDR day" to promote education about disasters.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- A large earthquake that shook Taiwan early today was strong enough to cause widespread damage -- but didn't because of its location, experts said.

The tremor measured 6.9 on the Richter scale, but no major building damage, injuries or deaths were reported. The earthquake caused a few brief power outages and other minor damage.

It was centered deep in the Pacific Ocean, 27 miles northeast of the city of Taitung in southeast Taiwan, said Lu Pei-ling, a seismologist with the Central Weather Bureau.

Still, the quake was close enough to the island to shake people awake at 1:53 a.m. local time and knock things off shelves in the capital, Taipei, 90 miles north of Taitung. In Taitung and the east coast city of Hualien further north, several people spent the night in tents, fearing another quake would flatten their homes.

Thousands of tremors and aftershocks have rattled Taiwan since a 7.6-magnitude quake hit the island on Sept. 21, killing more than 2,400 people and leaving thousands homeless. About eight of the tremors were of magnitudes between 6 and 6.8, the weather bureau has said.

Last month, a 6.4 magnitude quake injured dozens of people and damaged several buildings in the southern city of Chiayi.

Today, a 4.5-magnitude quake struck south of the central Taiwanese city of Taichung, close to the epicenter of the deadly Sept. 21 tremor, the bureau said. No damage or injuries were immediately reported.

A huge relief operation was under way last night in the Indian state of Orissa where a 160 mph 'super-cyclone' has killed hundreds, possibly thousands, and left more than 1.5 million people homeless. The eastern state remains cut off and without power and telecommunications, but early reports suggest that the number of dead could exceed the 10,000 killed by a cyclone there in 1971.

The Indian Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who held an emergency meeting of the cabinet yesterday, called the disaster a national calamity and released more than £60 million of immediate aid. Torrential rain and a series of 30ft tidal waves have left much of the coastal region submerged and in darkness. Bridges have been swept away and all major road, rail and air links have been cut.

The worst hit areas are thought to be the coastal districts of Kendrapada and Jagatsinghpur. The port of Paradip has also been partly destroyed. Its main shipping channel is blocked with sunken trawlers and 200,000 houses in the surrounding area have been flattened.

Water from the sea had come about 15 km (nine miles) inland from the coast near the port of Paradip and was three to five feet deep, after being lashed by winds of up to 260 km (160 miles) per hour.