Turkey rocked by 6.0 quake. Is this part of a pattern or just another day at Earth's office?

The quake struck at 4:30 this morning, local time, in Elazig province in eastern Turkey. Six villages were hit hard; the death toll is 57 with about 70 injured. The search for survivors has already been called off so it doesn't seem the toll will rise much higher.

Is there any special significance to the timing of the earthquakes that have struck recently? Faith Mangan reported on March 1 at a Fox News blog that "the earth is constantly on the move: in the last 8 to 30 days, more than 400 earthquakes have been recorded."

What does seem out of the ordinary is that two historic quakes, one in Haiti and the other in Chile, occurred within weeks of each other. There were also record-setting snowstorms in the Atlantic and southern regions of the USA and in Western Europe. These were followed by unseasonable torrential rains in Kenya and neighboring Uganda, which set off a devastating landslide in the latter country, and by unusual storms that generated rare cyclones in Australia and Western Europe. Haiti was also hit by unseasonable rains in February.

Lost in the shuffle of major record-breaking snowstorms this winter was a major earthquake in the northern California town of Eureka (6.5 magnitude, but no serious injuries or damage), which struck on February 10. And there was a surprising earthquake 50 miles northwest of Chicago on February 10 that was three miles deep. The quake struck the day after Snowmageddon 2 -- the historic blizzard in North America, which followed the historic Nor'easter three days prior. Although the quake's magnitude was small (3.8) it was felt as far away as Wisconsin and was only the second notable earthquake in more than 30 years to strike the region.

Then there was the strange weather in the American southwest this winter. From Dr Jeff Masters at the Weather Underground blog, dateline January 22:

The most powerful low pressure system in 140 years of record keeping swept through the Southwest U.S. yesterday, bringing deadly flooding, tornadoes, hail, hurricane force winds, and blizzard conditions. We expect to get powerful winter storms affecting the Southwest U.S. during strong El Niño events, but yesterday's storm was truly epic in its size and intensity.

The storm set all-time low pressure records over roughly 10 - 15% of the U.S. -- over southern Oregon and most of California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. Old records were broken by a wide margin in many locations, most notably in Los Angeles, where the old record of 29.25" set January 17, 1988, was shattered by .18" (6 mb).

Bakersfield [California] broke its record by .30" (10 mb). The record-setting low spawned an extremely intense cold front that rumbled thought the Southwest, and winds ahead of the cold front reached sustained speeds of hurricane force -- 74 mph --last night at Apache Junction, 40 miles east of Phoenix (Arizona).

Wind gusts as high as 94 mph were recorded in Ajo, Arizona, and a Personal Weather Station in Summerhaven (on top of Mt. Lemmon next to Tucson, Arizona) recorded sustained winds of 67 mph, gusting to 86 mph, before the power failed. Prescott, Arizona sustained winds at 52 mph, gusting to 67 as the cold front passed, and high winds plunged visibility to zero in blowing dust on I-10 connecting Phoenix and Tucson.

The storm spawned one possible tornado in Arizona, which touched down at 8:32 pm MST in Phoenix near Desert Ridge Mall. No damage or injuries were reported. If verified, it would be only the 7th January tornado in Arizona since record keeping began in 1950.[...]

There's more eye-popping information in the same report about that record low-pressure system. But moving along there's been a lot of other record-setting weather this winter, in the United States at least.

From a February 12 report at the Examiner:

There has been a break in the record weather pattern that just brought two blizzards in 5 days to Baltimore, but the pattern itself is not letting up. The southern storm today is dropping snow in Alabama and Georgia. As of 5 pm, Atlanta set a record for the date with 1 inch of snow and more to fall. This storm has prompted Winter Storm Warnings from the Gulf Coast to coastal South Carolina and Georgia. ... Yesterday it passed through Texas and dumped a record 11 inches on Dallas bringing their season total to over 14 inches. The last storm was in December when the city saw its first white Christmas in 83 years. ...

Florida had its hard freeze in January and the coldest Orange Bowl on record. Back in December 2009, Houston received record snow of 0.8 inches ... but up to 6 inches fell farther inland. It was the earliest snow on the record, and the only time in their recorded history that it snowed two years in a row. A reminder of last year's early snow that also set a record in Las Vegas on December 18th. Meanwhile Baltimore has its record setting snowfall for December and the record total month of December with last week's blizzard. Go back to October, and find that record snow at Penn State (in Pennsylvania) cancels tailgating on Homecoming Weekend.[...]

So while perhaps in any given year some part of the world can report unusual or even record-breaking weather or geological events, it does seem we've had a cluster of unusual climate/geologic events within about three months.

The question is whether the cluster means anything more than greater human attention to Earth's housekeeping. I don't think there's any way to objectively answer the question because extensive record-keeping on climate/geological events is not that old. There's just not enough information to draw a conclusion, beyond the general understanding that Earth generates patterns of periodic upheavals.

What we do know with great certainty is that megacities are something new on the planet. This observation begins Joel Achenbach's wonderfully gloomy report for the Washington Post on February 23 titled Under the world's greatest cities, deadly plates -- as in plates that can suddenly slip and cause the ground to swallow a quarter million or so people in a few seconds. The report brings out that the greatest fault resides not in the Earth but in human nature:

... The theory of plate tectonics, largely developed since the 1960s, explains why earthquakes happen in general. The major plates of the earth's crust move constantly, creeping along at about the speed of fingernail growth. They rarely move smoothly past one another but are usually locked in place.

On a strike-slip fault of the type that ruptured in Haiti, strain builds on the fault line for decades or centuries. The fault in Haiti had not ruptured in 240 years. An earthquake is a sudden, stress-relieving event. The fault is said to "break."

Scientists can map faults and estimate how much strain has accumulated since the last quake. What they can't do is say that a given fault will break tomorrow or next year or 10 years from now. Any calculation of earthquake probabilities has a lot of slop in the numbers.

"The problem is, the slop is huge on a human time scale," said Susan Hough, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "We're wired to deal with the immediate. We're not geared to plan and stress about things likely to happen in 30 years." ...

Achenbach ends with what I consider an alarming bit of advice from a seismologist named Roger Bilham:

Bilham said he would like to see the United Nations develop a building-inspection program akin to its efforts to look for banned nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

The United Nations was not even capable of managing something as relatively simple as an oil-for-food program without turning it into a ripoff. And how much inspection does it require, if you know that the vast majority of buildings in a city perched near a fault do not use reinforced concrete?

Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, and the three little words

Mark Safranski's essay The Rule of Law is a five-paragraph crash course on the technical meaning of the rule of law. The history lesson caused me to recall Dave Schuler's Three Little Words and ponder that today the United States is not so much ruled by law as by regulations.

Dave's essay, published in September 2009, throws cold water on ideas under national discussion to restore America's industrial greatness, including creating a 'green jobs' sector and the one put forward by the Wall Street Journal's Dan Henninger in his recent discussion with John Batchelor. Dan proposed that what this country needs are some old-fashioned 'robber barons' -- of the kind who refused to accept government help -- to create industries that would employ millions of Americans.

Dave Schuler's "three little words" -- adverse business climate -- are the reality check to all these ideas:

... U. S. companies pay the highest corporate tax rate of any OECD country and the effective tax rate is even higher. ... I also doubt that any country in the world has as complex a regulatory environment as the United States. Not only is there the federal government but we have 50 state governments and a maze of county, city, and other local governments, all with their fingers in the regulatory pie. ...

And none of that speaks to the miles of red tape created by the World Trade Organization. Frankly it's a rather clever idea, if somewhat short-sighted, to bind nations to each other with so many trade regulations they have trouble extricating themselves from each other's economies, let alone declaring war on each other. But the WTO does not exist to defend capitalism.

The bottom line is that if a Vanderbilt rose today he'd face so many regulations he'd be forced to become a criminal or outsource his industry to another country. The Rule of Regulation is so pervasive in the USA it transforms every business into a lawbreaker-in-waiting.

As to how we went from the Rule of Law to the Rule of Regulation, I don't know exactly; maybe Mark Safranski can put together Cliff Notes to explain in a few words.

What I do know is that today's regulatory environment is entrenching graft at every level of government, from the local to the federal. And it's institutionalized socially-acceptable forms of extortion (e.g., corporations that habitually make large campaign contributions to both major parties). The only way out for large American companies is to get out -- to find a country with fewer regulations in which to base a major part of their operations.

Fast forward to Glenn Beck's February 20 keynote speech at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and the reaction from Mark Levin. (H/T Riehl World View) Mr Levin is a best-selling conservative author and talk-radio show host and a lawyer who served in various capacities in the Reagan White House. He's also one of the self-proclaimed guardians of Conservative core values:

... I have no idea what philosophy Glenn Beck is promoting. And neither does he. It's incoherent. One day it's populist, the next it's libertarian bordering on anarchy, next it's conservative but not really, etc. ...

Now what's missing from Mark Levin's list?

I interject that sometimes I wonder how many of Glenn's critics actually watch his television show on Fox News Cable; I get the impression that many critics, including those among the Republicans, have formed their opinion from watching snippets of the show at YouTube or from reading critiques.

I have watched his show, and except for a hiatus during the worst part of the Haitian earthquake crisis, I've watched virtually every show and taken notes. From this exercise I've found nothing incoherent about Glenn Beck's position. He's first and foremost a capitalist.

Yet I can see why Mark Levin finds Glenn's views confusing. Both the moderate and conservative wings of the Republican party have as much to do with capitalism as sand has to do with ink. Ditto for the Democratic party. In fact, the United States of America is a statist society, not a capitalist one. Government allows just enough 'free market' activity to provide a tax base worth bleeding.

Neither political party is willing to trust the capitalist system -- and neither do the voters who keep the parties in power and entrench the political status quo, while all the while complaining that things are always a mess in Washington.

So here we are today. I don't know whether Dave Schuler would agree with my views on the parties and capitalism; I'll have to ask him. But no matter how far apart we might be in such views, we're seeing the same outcome, which Dave summarized in his opinion of how far 'green jobs' can take this country on the road to economic recovery:

Based on past performance can you imagine the Obama Administration taking the steps necessary to make creating those jobs as attractive as they are in Germany let alone in China? I can’t. I can, however, imagine them subsidizing companies that import products made in Germany, Spain, Italy, Taiwan, Abu Dhabi, and China and touting the relative handful of marketing, sales, and administrative jobs in those companies as green jobs they’ve created.

You could substitute the name of any likely Republican presidential candidate for Obama's and it would be the same; any Republicans who say differently are kidding themselves. I believe that was the point of Glenn's CPAC speech.

Republicans insist that America's dedication to free market principles is what made this country great economically in the post-World War Two eras. So how is it that as soon as central banks began diversifying away from the dollar as a reserve currency, a burst speculative bubble was able to crash the American economy?

For that matter, how is it that the United States had been running on the fumes of speculative bubbles for almost two decades prior?

And if you want to dial it back to the LBJ-Nixon era, how is that Nixon had to shut the gold window to keep the U.S. economy from falling off the cliff, and all because West European governments got tired of shouldering American debt via massive dollar purchases?

(Nixon's cagey move gave our European allies no choice but to keep buying U.S. debt, although it unwittingly provoked France and Germany into getting serious about creating a eurozone currency that could compete with the dollar's reserve status.)

America the bastion of capitalism, my foot. Americans have confused gains from capitalism with the power of the U.S. dollar's function as the world's major reserve currency. It's that power that propped up the U.S. economy, even when American industry had been regulated out of being competitive.

If Mr Levin protests that he really is a capitalist -- I can't turn on the radio or TV these days without coming across an American businessperson or Libertarian or Conservative activist professing a love for capitalism.

The protestations remind me of a line from an old TV series called "The Equalizer." It was about a man who was dedicated to defending justice and left his wife and young son to pursue a career first as a spy then as a kind of vigilante.

When the son is in 20s he meets up with the father, who tells him, "I want you to know I always loved you."

The son replies, "I know, dad. It's just that you loved other things more."

Haiti disaster relief: Despite massive donations, efforts of UN and other agencies fall disturbingly short

"Down with NGO thieves" -- Graffiti on a wall in Port au Prince

March 3, 2010 (IRIN)

PORT-AU-PRINCE. Thirteen dead. Submerged houses. Fields and banana plantations waterlogged. Drowned livestock. Impassable roads. Fresh trauma for quake-displaced thousands. This is the plight of Les Cayes, a city on Haiti’s south coast, after an unseasonal deluge. And hurricane season is not far off. [...]

The rainy season usually starts in Haiti around the beginning of April and peaks in May but on February 27 and 28 the heavens opened. On 2 March many homes still had standing water, an aid worker told IRIN: “Many, many people have told us they lost their crops [including banana trees and sugar cane] and their animals,” he said.

The misery and death brought by the early rains is as nothing, next to what awaits Haiti's homeless earthquake victims when the rains begin in earnest. On February 28 Lawrence Downes, an American journalist and member of The New York Times editorial board who's reported from post-earthquake Haiti, penned an editorial for The New York Times, in which he excoriated the poor planning by donor governments and international aid agencies. He wrote:

[...] The rainy season is the hard deadline against which Haiti’s government and relief agencies in Port-au-Prince are racing as they try to solve a paralyzing riddle: how to shelter more than a million displaced people in a densely crowded country that has no good place to put them.

The plan after the quake was to move people to camps outside the city. But in a sudden shift last week, officials unveiled a new idea. They would try to send as many people as possible, tens of thousands, back to the shattered streets of Port-au-Prince before the rains come. The prime minister approved it on Friday.

If it sounds insane, insanity is relative in Haiti now. Consider the choices:

Let people stay in filthy, fragile settlements where no one wants to live, and pray when the hurricanes hit.

Build sturdy transitional housing in places like Jérémie, in the southwest, that can absorb the capital’s overflow.

Encourage people to return to neighborhoods that are clogged with rubble and will be for years, where the smell of death persists. In areas like Bel Air and Fort National, near Champ de Mars, people whose homes still stand are sleeping outside, in fear of aftershocks. They were still pulling bodies out of Fort National over the weekend, burning them on the spot.

The first plan is intolerable. The second may come true only several years and hurricanes from now. The third is merely absurd.

Officials believe that if they clear just enough rubble from certain areas of the city and improve drainage in flood-prone areas, they can ease the pressure on the camps and save lives. It makes some sense to keep people near their neighborhoods, holding on to what remains of their lives and livelihoods.

But when what remains is nothing, it’s hard to make sense of that idea. Harder still when you realize that the Haitian government and aid agencies are still overwhelmed by the crisis. The government hasn’t even figured out where to put the rubble, and doesn’t seem to know who is living where.[...]

William G. O’Neill, director of the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum in New York, was a little more tactful in his condemnation after he also personally assessed the situation in Haiti. He told the Christian Science Monitor on March 2:

"Some in the international community failed to understand just how crucial securing temporary shelter and sanitation systems would be, given the imminent arrival of the rainy season. Someone should take a hard look at what went wrong in the humanitarian planning system.”

Someone did take a look. The head of UN relief efforts took his own people to task in an email that was leaked to the press:

U.N. aid chief 'disappointed' with Haiti earthquake relief efforts

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
February 18, 2010

UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations' top humanitarian relief coordinator has scolded his lieutenants for failing to adequately manage the relief effort in Haiti, saying that an uneven response in the month after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake has undercut confidence in the world body's ability to deliver vital assistance, according to a confidential e-mail.

The e-mail, which provides a rare and highly critical internal assessment of the massive U.N.-led relief effort, portrays an organization that is straining to set up enough shelters, latrines and other vital services for Haiti's displaced population. It also warns that a failure of the U.N. system to improve relief assistance could result in political unrest and mass demonstrations.

The criticism from John Holmes, the head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, focuses on the United Nations' sluggish implementation of its humanitarian "cluster strategy," which assigns key U.N. relief agencies responsibility for coordinating the delivery of basic needs in 12 sectors, including water and shelter.

The cluster strategy has been developed in recent years to head off traditional conflicts between competing aid agencies that provided overlapping services. But it has been showing signs of strain.

A "lack of capacity has meant that several clusters have yet to establish a concise overview of needs and develop coherent response plans, strategies and gap analyses," Holmes, who described himself as "disappointed," wrote in the e-mail. "This is beginning to show and is leading others to doubt our ability to deliver."

U.N. relief officials confirmed the authenticity of the e-mail, but Holmes's office declined to comment on it.

Officials said that the U.N. World Food Program has fed 3.4 million Haitians and that more than 850,000 people get daily five-liter rations of water. More than 66,000 people have been employed under a U.N. cash-for-work program.

Holmes acknowledged that the relief community has "achieved a great deal in Haiti."

Still, Chris de Bono, a spokesman for UNICEF, said the logistics of procuring material have been difficult. "It's now in the pipeline, and it's certainly a priority for us," he added.

Holmes noted that Haiti will face heavy storms in the upcoming hurricane season. "This is a major test for all of us," he wrote, "and we cannot afford to fail."

Darn straight you can't afford to fail, not with all the money thrown at UN agencies for Haiti relief efforts by private, corporate, and government donors. On February 9 UNICEF reported that their portion of the take from the January 22 "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon was $6 million.

Yet that's a drop in the bucket, next to what UNICEF and other UN agencies have been given for Haiti. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has given them a blank check by not attaching any stipulations, and so have many other donors the world over. Yet Lewis Lucke had the gall to rattle the tin cup in his tone-deaf reply to Lawrence Downes. Lucke, who's identified as "the United States response coordinator for Haiti" wrote in his March 2 letter to The New York Times:

Lawrence Downes, in his March 1 Editorial Observer (“Haiti’s Futile Race Against the Rain”), called Haiti’s short-term housing plan “ludicrous.” We would call it a difficult, realistic and necessary step that will save lives.

To meet the needs of the hundreds of thousands of displaced Haitians who wish to stay in Port-au-Prince, we continue to provide emergency food and water, expand available medical care, improve sanitary conditions and work to control the outbreak of disease. Debris removal and habitability assessments are also under way.

By the start of the rainy season, enough emergency shelter materials will have been distributed through United States and international partners to meet the short-term needs of the estimated 1.3 million people affected by the earthquake.

While this is a remarkable achievement, the Haitian people will not be out of danger when the rains come. That is a sad reality.

The government of Haiti is already focused on long-term housing needs. But the Haitian government must summon the political will to build Haiti back better and under stronger building codes than it was before January. The international community, led by the United States, must do its part and provide sustained financing for many years. All of this can and should be done.

Well, at least one of Haiti's earthquake survivors has a pithy editorial comment on the kind of hubris displayed by Mr Lucke, as Joanathan M. Katz reported on March 5 for the Associated Press:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The world's bill for the Haitian earthquake is large and growing — now $2.2 billion — and so is the criticism about how the money is being spent.

A half-million homeless received tarps and tents; far more are still waiting under soggy bed sheets in camps that reek of human waste. More than 4.3 million people got emergency food rations; few will be able to feed themselves anytime soon. Medical aid went to thousands, but long-term care isn't even on the horizon.

International aid groups and officials readily acknowledge they are overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster. Haitian leaders — frustrated that billions are bypassing them in favor of U.N. agencies and American and other non-governmental organizations — are whipping up sentiment against foreign aid groups they say have gone out of control.

In the past few days, someone scrawled graffiti declaring "Down with NGO thieves" along the cracked walls that line the road between Port-au-Prince's international airport, the temporary government headquarters, and a U.N. base.

Ahead of a crucial March 31 post-quake donors conference in New York, many are taking a hard look at the money that's flowed in so far.

First the good news: Assistance has indeed been pouring into Haiti, sometimes from unexpected places.

Donations from Americans for earthquake relief in Haiti have surpassed $1 billion, with about one-third going to the American Red Cross, the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University said Friday. Other major recipients include Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and the U.S. wing of Doctors Without Borders, according to a separate report by the Chronicle for Philanthropy.

An analysis of U.N. data shows that private donations make up the bulk of the total, accounting for more than $980 million of what has already been delivered or that donors have promised.

The United States leads all countries with its commitments of $713 million — with Canada, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Japan and the European Union among other top donors. Saudi Arabia poured $50 million of its oil wealth into the U.N. Emergency Response Relief Fund. Even countries with their own troubles rushed to Haiti's aid: Afghanistan provided $200,000.

A Nevada real estate developer agreed to send $5 million worth of circus tents formerly used by Cirque du Soleil. Leonardo DiCaprio and Coca-Cola are each sending $1 million. Dollar General is donating $100,000. Hanesbrands is shipping 2 million pairs of underwear.

But leaders including Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive are not happy with the way the aid money is being delivered.

"The NGOs don't tell us ... where the money's coming from or how they're spending it," he told The Associated Press. "Too many people are raising money without any controls, and don't explain what they're doing with it."

Haiti wanted aid organizations to register with the government long before the quake, a goal identified as a priority by former U.S. President Bill Clinton when he was named U.N. special envoy in 2009. But it was never completed.

U.N. and U.S. officials said there is close monitoring of NGOs who receive funds. The U.S. Agency for International Development requires recipient groups to file reports every two weeks on how their activities are lining up with their planned programs, said Julie Leonard, leader of the agency's Disaster Assistance Response Team.

Governments tend to give funds to agencies from their own countries.

USAID paid at least $160 million of its total Haiti-related expenditures to the Defense Department, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, two local U.S. search and rescue teams and, in at least two instances, itself.

Tens of millions more went to U.S.-based aid groups. While much of that bought food and other necessities for Haitians, it often did so from U.S. companies — including highly subsidized rice growers whose products are undercutting local producers, driving them out of business.

One cent of every dollar has gone to the Haitian government.

Saudi Arabia's donation is essentially a blank check for the U.N. fund to spend on Haiti relief as it sees fit. So is Afghanistan's. DiCaprio's million is going through the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, while Coca-Cola and Dollar General's donations are headed for the American Red Cross. The underwear is going through the Atlanta, Georgia-based aid group CARE.

[DiCaprio is not the only Hollywood star who's donated $1 million, and Tiger Woods has donated $3 million. See Wikipedia's article and links for extensive information on donations from private, corporate, and government donors.]

The circus tents are for the Haitian government.

In the days immediately after the quake, this is exactly what many Haitians said they wanted. Distrustful of leaders they said were corrupt, some went so far as to say they hoped the U.S. would annex the country.

But the top U.N. official in Haiti said the country's leaders are right: For half a century, the international community has kept Haiti's government weak and unable to deal with disaster by ignoring officials and working with outside organizations.

"We complain because the government is not able to (lead), but we are partly responsible for that," said U.N. Assistant Secretary-General of Peacekeeping Operations Edmond Mulet.

Worse, the patchwork of roughly 900 foreign and thousands more Haiti-based NGOs do not coordinate, take on too many roles and swarm well-known neighborhoods while leaving others untouched — doing what Mulet called "little things with little impact."

He said the individual organizations should identify specific roles, such as road construction, and stick to them to make it easier for the Haitian government to coordinate the overall response.

A French Foreign Ministry official said the solution is to take the Haitian government seriously.

"It's a bit the image of a child: If you believe he will never become an adult, he will never become an adult," said Pierre Duquesne, who oversees foreign aid.

Clinton has put out two statements in the past week noting that much has been left undone in the massive international relief effort. Refugees International published a report saying the "the humanitarian response has fallen short of meeting the Haitian people's immediate needs."

Deputy U.N. emergency relief coordinator Catherine Bragg said the group was being unreasonably pessimistic.

"The Haiti situation, as has been said many, many times since the first day, is the most complex humanitarian response we've ever had to deal with," she said.

The government estimates the quake killed 230,000 people — though without a civil registry or accurate means of counting, nobody really knows how many died. More than 1.2 million lost their homes, about half of those fleeing the capital to the even harder-to-track-and-reach countryside.

The Haitian government has gone through three prime ministers in two years, had a president overthrown in 2004 and was already helpless to rebuild from hurricanes and riots in 2008. It lost nearly all its major buildings and much of its staff in the quake.

Mulet said a strong plan at the New York donors' conference could help organize the response, strengthen the government and provide help for the Haitian people. But doing so will mean changing the way things have been done in Haiti for decades.

"If this shake-up was not enough to really change us nor them, then I don't know what will," he said.
___

Associated Press Writers Michelle Faul in Port-au-Prince, Edie Lederer at the United Nations in New York and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS that there were two U.S. studies on Haiti donations, adding the Chronicle for Philanthropy.)

Australia: Record rains of "Biblical proportions" end Brisbane's ten-year drought as mini-cyclone unleashes chaos on Melbourne. (UPDATE 3:10 AM ET)

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Wasyl Drosdowsky said the hail that hit in one suburban area was up to 10 centimetres (four inches) in diameter. '(It was) tennis ball size roughly,' he said. 'As far as we can tell, that's close to the biggest hail we've seen in Melbourne.' As the city readied for further violent storms on Sunday, once-in-a-century floods were peaking in the state of Queensland in the country's northeast, parts of which have been in drought for almost a decade. Townships in the state's cotton-growing south were cut off by rising flood waters and in St George the Balonne River reached 13.5 metres (44 feet), its highest level since records began in 1890. -- AFP

Office workers across Melbourne escaped injury as waterlogged roofs collapsed, and in what might be read as a cosmic editorial statement the Bureau of Meteorology was one of the affected buildings. Mercifully it was a Saturday so while many caught outside at a big horse race and Melbourne's Moomba festival reported welts and bruises from wind-lashed hail that ranged in size from marbles to golf balls to tennis balls, there were no deaths and nobody was seriously injured.

AFP reported that the mini-cyclone, with winds clocked in excess of 62 mph, struck Melbourne at 2:50 PM (Australia time) today, dumping 19 millimetres (three-quarters of an inch) of rain in just 18 minutes on Australia's second city, and brought an inch (2.5 centimeters) of rain in less than an hour. The hail was so huge and blanketed the ground so fast that Melbourne looked as if it'd been hit by a snowstorm.

"It was a very dangerous thunderstorm," said the weather bureau's senior forecaster Richard Carlyon. "We don't often see storm cells like that." One report mentioned that the storm was the worst Melbourne had seen in 38 years. However, many residents reported that the "shock and awe" storm was like nothing they'd ever seen.

Up in Queensland state, a cliffhanger emerged in a series of towns as record rains fell. Earth Times reported:

The 3,000 people of waterlogged St George in Australia's formerly drought-affected northeast were gleeful Saturday after learning the Balonne River would not top a record set 120 years ago, when it peaked at 14 metres. A fresh high-water mark would mean more evacuations and put 80 per cent of houses at risk of inundation.

"You have got no idea how relieved we are," Mayor Donna Stewart said after the river peaked at 13.5 metres. "It was just absolutely wonderful news that our community was safer than they thought they were going to be."

St George, 513 kilometres west of Brisbane, is the latest of a string of country towns threatened by water barreling down rivers that had been mostly trickles over the 10-year drought.

"Outside my window is something resembling the Mississippi River," said St George resident and local member of parliament Barnaby Joyce.

Joyce had sympathy for thousands dealing with sodden furniture and ruined electrical appliances but urged his constituents to take a long-term view.

"Water is money, water is cotton, water is grapes, water is wheat, water is cattle," Joyce, a former accountant, said.

The volume of water has been of Biblical proportions, with veterans of many floods saying this year's wet had beaten all records.

A record for the amount of water falling in a single day over the region set in 1956 was smashed last week.

Keith de Lacy, the chief of 93,000-hectare cotton farm 490 kilometres west of Brisbane, said the property's massive water storages were filling up fast.

Already, there is enough irrigation water for one-year's cropping. "It's just brilliant," de Lacy said. "People are cheering and walking around with smiles on their faces."

Many farmers in central Queensland have survived the drought only though going into debt. The billions of litres of water now powering down the region's rivers will help shift bank balances back into the black.

The floods cannot come soon enough for de Lacy's Cubbie Station, which is being chased by bankers for 320 million Australian dollars (288 million US dollars) in mortgage arrears.

Like a ball on a pinball machine, the water cascades down the river system, inundating towns as it goes.

Theodore, just south of St George, is the next with an urgent flood warning. Theodore homes and shops are being sandbagged as the Dawson River heads towards 13 metres. An evacuation centre has been set up and householders are expected to stay up until the all-clear is given.

That's a heck of a way to escape foreclosure. Back to Victoria state: The Herald Sun yesterday:

Thousands of people were stranded across Melbourne last night as the city was thrown into chaos. It began minutes after the storm hit, with roads and public transport networks shut down. ... [S]treets looked like rivers moments after the downpour as the city's infrastructure failed because of flooding. Many people caught in the rain could only watch in awe as cafe stools were swept away from footpaths, stairwells became waterfalls and sirens sounded from emergency vehicles through the city as the storm passed over. Hundreds of shops were forced to close immediately due to flooding, roof collapses and broken windows.

Melbourne is the most populous city in the small state of Victoria and also the second most populous city in Australia. The city is located on the large natural bay known as Port Phillip, with the city's center positioned at the estuary of the Yarra River (at the northern-most point of the bay), according to Wikipedia.

More violent storms are on the way for the region. From the West Australian on Saturday:

Melburnians should expect another dose of nasty weather on Sunday, with rain of up to 100 mm forecast. ...
The storm forced the cancellation of the NAB Cup AFL football game between Brisbane and Geelong.

In an ironic twist, the game was only rescheduled to Melbourne at the last minute because of poor weather all week on the Gold Coast, where the match was supposed to be played.

Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Scott Williams described the weather as a "super cell storm," the likes of which are only seen in Melbourne about once every five to 10 years.

"What you get with the super cell thunderstorm that we've had is that the clouds actually do rotate around a centre of low pressure," he said.

"It is like a mini-cyclone."

The SES received more than 2500 calls for help, with 1,000 coming from the Knox area, in Melbourne's outer east.

By about 8pm (AEDT) only 500 of the jobs had been cleared and spokesman Andrew Gissing urged people to be patient.

Thirty thousand CitiPower and Powercor Australia customers in the central business district and inner suburbs lost power, with 8000 still without supply about 9 pm.

Metro spokesman Chris Whitefield said delays across the entire train network were about 40 minutes.

Trains on the Sandringham line were suspended and buses replaced trains on sections of the Alamein, Belgrave and Pakenham lines. ...

Mr Williams said it was likely there would be more storms across the state on Sunday, but they would not be as severe as Saturday's deluge.

"Tomorrow I think there is a good chance that we'll get some severe thunderstorms once again," he said.

"It's pretty much the whole state. We're under a major tropical air mass with a low pressure system coming in from the west."

The weather bureau later issued a flood warning for the Upper Murray, Mitta Mitta, Kiewa, Ovens and King catchments.

By 10 pm on Saturday, the SES had received more than 3100 calls for help, with almost half coming from the Knox area, and about 1000 of the jobs had been cleared.

If you've been reading closely you might wonder how long before the storm struck that Melbourne meteorologists had known about a "major tropical air mass with a low pressure system coming in from the west," and whether planners for the big outdoor events on Saturday had paid attention to signs that a cyclone could be brewing. However, I suppose that kind of weather pattern is so unusual in Australia that people there can be excused for being caught off guard. There will be less excuse if the weather doesn't let up and the Queensland residents in harm's way aren't evacuated to safety.
******************
3:10 AM ET UPDATE

Report from ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp.) three hours ago:

Thunderstorms are moving across Victoria as the state recovers from yesterday's wild weather which left a trail of destruction.

Melbourne is still mopping up after heavy rain and hail up to 10 centimetres in diameter pelted the city causing flash flooding and building damage.

The weather bureau has issued a severe thunderstorm warning for northern and central Victoria and the storms are currently moving across the state.

The weather bureau's Ted Williams says an intense storm has just passed through Shepparton, but is weakening as it moves south.

"We haven't had any reports of much in Victoria, but a little bit earlier in the day it was going through Deniliquin and we have had a report of very strong winds and some tree damage there," he said.

"And just looking at the radar there's a strong possibility of large hail as well."
[...}

And so far, a "magnificant response" from St George's community to the storm: the "evacuation centre has worked well and all their planning really paid off." The bad news is the price tag for the storm in nearby areas. From AAP via The Sydney Morning Herald:

Once-in-a-century flooding has caused hundreds of millions of dollars damage in southwest Queensland, with authorities focusing on a number of hard-hit communities after the town of St George escaped the worst.

St George, the township at the centre of one of the state's major cotton-growing regions, was spared a potentially ruinous river level peak of 14 metres on Saturday.

But the record-breaking flooding is causing problems for the townships of Thallon, Bollon and Dirranbandi, south of St George.

The water has breached the levee at the Moonie River at Thallon, and road access to all three regional communities has been cut off.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said the damage bill from the flooding was expected to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

"Without a doubt, this will be a damage bill in the hundreds of millions of dollars," she told reporters as she toured St George on Sunday.

"There's been major cuts to highways, we have seen railway lines washed away.

"This is a massive water event which has smashed all the records known here in the southwest.

"All this water ultimately is going to mean great things for local primary producers but there is a lot of pain to be felt in these communities before we can see total recovery."

Ms Bligh, who was also set to tour the Dirranbandi area on Sunday, said all shires across the southwest region would be eligible for disaster relief assistance.

She said the costs of the damage would be shared by all levels of government but urged people to dig deep and donate to the state government's flood appeal. [...]

The community of St George had been preparing for the Balonne River to reach 14 metres on Saturday evening, which would have inundated 80 per cent of the town.

But the level was subsequently downgraded to 13.5m - still the highest level since recordings began in 1890.

Balonne Shire mayor Donna Stewart said St George had escaped the worst and the town should be back on its feet in a week.

Ms Stewart said the main priority now was Thallon, Bollon and Dirranbandi.

Ms Bligh said additional SES resources would be brought in to help St George on Sunday afternoon and over the next couple of days, and authorities were also focusing on assistance for residents of Thallon.

"Overnight Thallon had a very serious influx of water which has breached their levee and we'll be looking to ensure that they can be assisted in their recovery as well," Ms Bligh said.

Twenty-five homes in St George were inundated with water and about 40 of the town's 2800 residents displaced by the flooding moved to a make-shift evacuation centre at the showgrounds.

"This community has had a magnificent response, their evacuation centre has worked well and all their planning really paid off," Ms Bligh said.

Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce, who lives in St George, commended the work of the community and all levels of government.

"We've been working flat out sandbagging and helping people in the emergency centre," he said.

But efforts would now be centred on Thallon and Dirranbandi because the river levee had been breached.

"The problem we've got is trying to get access to there," he said.

Uganda Landslides Disaster: "By far the most serious incident in recent times." Say, might Cafédirect lend a hand?

March 2, Missionary International Service News Agency (MISNA):

At least 50 people were killed and some 320 are missing after a landslide buried an entire village in the mountainous region of the eastern Ugandan district of Baduda. According to sources contacted by MISNA in Kampala, the landslide was caused by the heavy rains of the past three days in the region of the Mt. Elgon national park.

“The landslide began yesterday afternoon and swept away the entire Nyametsi market, where there were at least 150 people. Due to poor weather and bad communications, rescuers were only able to reach the area this morning”, said a MISNA source.

According to the local media, some fifty bodies were recovered, but the toll is feared to be much higher. The eastern Bududa region, around 300km east of Kampala, has been theatre to frequent land and mudslides due to wide deforestation in the Mt. Elgon area.

Okay, everybody get out your map of Africa. The landslides are occurring in east Uganda (in East Africa). That region has been prone to landslides and mudslides for more 40 years and it's not only deforestation that's the cause. Note the detail in this abstract about seismic activity:

The East African region has experienced major landslides in recent years. These landslides have caused many fatalities and injuries, loss of many hectares of productive farmlands and destruction to infrastructure such as roads, railways and bridges.

The warm and wet climate of the landslide-prone regions causes rapid weathering and produces a regolith weaker than the underlying rock with an interface between the two layers. This interface serves as the most common plane along which landslides are initiated once it becomes saturated. Landslides in the region are associated with steep topography, human activities such as deforestation, overgrazing, and unplanned farming on steep slopes and are induced by earthquakes and high intensity of rainfall.[...]

From Indo Asia News:

Kampala, March 2: [...] The chairman of the eastern Bududa district, Wilson Watira, told DPA that mud and boulders crashed through homes and health centres overnight in the villages of Nameti, Kubewo and Nankobe.

Watira said that rescuers had recovered between 40 and 50 bodies, but that he expected the death toll to increase.

"We estimate that 300 people died," Watira said. "As I speak, we are trying to rescue people. All the houses are buried and it is difficult to recover all the dead bodies from the rubble because we have no excavators.

"The situation is terrible."

The minister for the northern region, David Wakikona, who rushed to the scene, said that at least 10,000 people have been displaced.

The government is mobilising aid and rescue equipment, including excavators to help alleviate the situation.

Landslides often occur on Elgon and also the mountains of the Ruwenzori range on the other side of the country during heavy rains, but this is by far the most serious incident in recent times.

Why do the people live in those dangerous conditions; why don't they migrate to a safer region? Coffee. Mount Elgon - the vast volcano, straddling the border with Kenya - is where Uganda's finest coffee is grown.

From today's Wall Street Journal

Mbale is the leading coffee producer in eastern Uganda, growing the country's premium arabica coffee brands like Fully Washed AA, A and Drugar. [...] Uganda is experiencing above normal rains and the country's Meteorological agency has forecast the heavy downpours will continue up to May.

Uganda's Ministry of Disaster Preparedness has asked people living on mountain slopes to vacate the areas to avoid landslides. People living in low-lying flood-prone areas have also been asked to move.

What is Mbale? It is the town that coffee built, and so it's entwined with the reigns of terror overseen by Milton Obote and Idi Amin Dada. This long, fascinating, gruesome, and (in light of the landslides) strange 2008 article for the U.K. Guardian about the intersection of Amin's brutal rule and coffee growing culminates with a 'happy ending:'

[...] the British company Cafédirect arrived on Mount Elgon. Founded on a business model of fairness, integrity and transparency, its ethos could be described as 'Fairtrade Plus'.

First, it is part-owned by the farmers - who make up 20 per cent of the board, ensuring their voice is heard. Then, as with all Fairtrade products, it pays farmers a fair and stable price (an agreed minimum, or the prevailing world market price, whichever is higher) together with a 'social premium' to be invested in the community.

From the outset, Cafédirect set this premium at 10 per cent of the price received, when the normal Fairtrade premium was five US cents per pound. (In June last year, however, the Fairtrade figure was doubled to 10 US cents per pound.) What's more, Cafédirect commits to buying a significant amount of coffee in advance, so farmers can raise finance and plan ahead.

Finally, 60 per cent of Cafédirect's own profits are ploughed back into farming communities through its Producer Partnership Programme (PPP) - a farsightedness that goes way beyond Fairtrade. The money pays for management training, education (in areas such as fair trade, democracy and accountability) and organic certification. It is not unusual for Cafédirect to work with producers for three to five years, improving quality and building capacity, before bringing a product to market and reaping the financial benefits.

Much of that work is done on the ground by Twin, the alternative trading company that helped launch many of Britain's best-known Fairtrade brands - Cafédirect (coffee, tea, cocoa), Divine (chocolate), Oké (bananas) and Liberation (nuts).

It is, in many ways, the unsung action hero of Fairtrade. Founded as the Third World Information Network in 1985, the company is adept at supply-chain management and logistics, continuing to ship coffee out of the Dominican Republic when Hurricane Georges struck in 1998, for example. "Most buyers got out," says Simon Billing of Twin, "but we stayed in."

The same tenacity can be seen in land-locked Uganda, where the coffee produced by Gumutindo is loaded onto trucks that join a 100-vehicle convoy heading for the Kenyan border, then on to the port of Mombasa. Like most of the lorries we see in Uganda, these ones are escorted by armed guards. Early this year, when ethnic violence erupted in Kenya, Twin considered shipping coffee out of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania - but that would have been a break with tradition. In the coffee-smuggling days, Kenya was the bridge between Ugandan farmers and consumers. Symbolically, that remains the case today.

That link would not be complete without Cafédirect, the brand, which bought its first Ugandan coffee from the BCU in 1994 when the industry was on its knees. Worldwide coffee prices had soared - good for farmers in the short term, but attracting get-rich-quick investors who rushed headlong into coffee-processing because the profits were high. Private buyers in Uganda snapped up all the coffee they could, regardless of quality, to feed the insatiable processing mills. Before long, Ugandan coffee had become a laughing stock.

That is why, in 1998, the charismatic Willington Wamayeye left his job at the BCU to build a new cooperative with Cafédirect's help. Gumutindo (which means 'excellent quality' in the local language, Lugisu) started life as a quality-improvement programme to raise the bar for Uganda's disillusioned farmers.

In the first year, Willington recruited nearly 200 growers from all over Mount Elgon, driving for hours to persuade them of the benefits of producing washed arabica (partly processed gourmet beans) instead of lower-grade unwashed coffee. By focusing on quality and consistency, farmers could rack up a few extra cents, Willington explained. (Today, that 'quality differential' ranges from five to 15 US cents per pound, and a grower like Oliva Kishero produces 4,400lb a year.)

By boosting the reputation of Ugandan coffee, he told them, the farmers could guarantee themselves a market and an income. Secure in the knowledge that Cafédirect would buy all the high-quality beans they produced, the growers saw sense.

"I knew some of them from my BCU days," Willington says, "but they in turn led me to others."

When his car fell apart, destroyed by the battering it took from potholed mountain roads, he did his rounds on a motorbike. Then, as the number of Gumutindo farmers grew, Cafédirect took the decision to have all the co-op's coffee certified by the Soil Association - notching up a further organic premium of 20 cents per pound, in addition to the one for quality.

"We are winning the hearts of farmers with these premiums," Nimrod tells me, but Willington puts it another way: "The mountain is ours!" [...]

Yes, well, if the mountain is theirs perhaps they could see fit to station a few earthmovers and other excavation equipment up there, against future landslides.

France hit by double whammy of Cyclone Xynthia and government unreadiness for flooding in Vendee and Charente-Maritime regions

"We need to ask how, in France, in the 21st century, families can be surprised in their sleep, die drowned in their home." - French President Nicolas Sarkozy

As of last night there are 62 confirmed deaths associated with Xynthia, which tore through several European countries over the weekend, including Germany, Portugal, Belgium and Spain. But in France, where the majority of deaths occurred, many victims drowned in their homes, surprised by surging waters that punched through inadequqte sea walls. Flooding has rendered swaths of western France uninhabitable, including an area between La Rochelle and L' Aiguillon-sur-Mer.

Yet experts warned for years about the risks posed by France's antiquated coastal dams. Add to this, warnings about Xynthia were inadequate. Below, two reports fill in the picture and if it looks vaguely familiar to American readers, think back to 2005:

The ABC TV news crew and millions of other Americans had gone to sleep that night nearly sick with relief that New Orleans (Nola) had dodged the bullet: Hurricane Katrina had veered before it struck, sparing the city the worst, and the levees had held. The streets in the hotel district were dry as a bone.

The next morning, in the pre-dawn, the ABC crew stepped out of their hotel. A look of confusion followed by horror crossed Brian Williams's face. Water was rushing down the street. That could only mean Nola's inadequate levees had been breached somewhere....

You'd think the French had taken lessons from what inadequate levees coupled with inadequate warnings and evacuation procedures had done to New Orleans. Clearly not:

Atlantic storm Xynthia kills dozens in Western Europe

In France, many victims drowned in their homes, surprised by surging waters that bashed through aged sea walls. Sarkozy calls for an investigation into warnings and orders repair of the dikes.

By Devorah Lauter, March 1, 2010, 5:06 p.m. PST
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Paris - Rescue workers continued to search Monday for victims of a powerful weekend storm that combined with high spring tides to batter France's Atlantic coast, killing at least 62 people in Western Europe.

By Monday evening 51 deaths had been reported in France. Most of the victims drowned in their homes early Sunday morning, officials said. At least 11 more people died in other Western European nations as a result of the storm named Xynthia.

Warnings had been issued by Friday evening in France for people to stay off beaches and coastal roads, but hundreds were surprised in their homes in the middle of the night by surging waters that smashed through aging sea walls.

Those who were able to act quickly scrambled to second floors or rooftops, where they waited hours for rescue workers.

In the badly damaged Charente-Maritime coastal region, most of the 11 killed were elderly people in their homes, officials said.

"The warning was only for strong winds" of up to 99 mph, said Mario Hamelin, 48, who owns hotels on the Ile de Re, an island in Charente-Maritime. "We have winds this strong every year, but . . . what wasn't emphasized by the French government, or weather services, was the fact that [the winds] would be combined with a high tide. A lot of people didn't pay attention to that."

About 40 families whose homes were flooded were being housed for free by the local hotel association, of which Hamelin is president. No official count was available on the number of homes damaged or people displaced. At least eight people remained missing Monday.

The toll left many asking whether an evacuation should have been required, and whether restrictions on coastal construction are adequate.

On a visit to the devastated Vendee and Charente-Maritime regions Monday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he wanted a full investigation.

"We need to ask how, in France, in the 21st century, families can be surprised in their sleep, die drowned in their home," Sarkozy told French journalists in the vacation town of La Rochelle.

"We were ready to respond to a storm. We weren't ready to respond to such a fast rise in water level," Lt. Col. Patrick Vailli, a spokesman for France's civil service agency, said in an interview.

Vailli said that in the future, a "larger evacuation" would be required in regions expected to face "a similar phenomenon."

Sarkozy promised $4 million to help storm victims and said he would issue a natural catastrophe declaration Tuesday. He also called for a "dike plan" to rebuild the coastal area.

Many of the region's sea walls, including those around the Il de Re, were damaged. Roads were torn, and by Monday night about 70,000 customers remained without electricity.

The dikes, some of them hundreds of years old, were being repaired as quickly as possible, said Frederic Brassac, a sub-prefect who helped lead rescues in Charente-Maritime. But while the tide is high, he said, it is unsafe for residents to return to damaged homes. "It acts a little like a tsunami. ... " said Brassac. "So we ask people not to go on roads, or leave their homes."

Lauter is a special correspondent.

March 2, 2010

Storm Exposes Risks of Napoleonic Dams
By GABRIELE PARUSSINI, The Wall Street Journal

PARIS — France started rethinking its rules governing coastline construction and dam building after the nation's fiercest storm in a decade killed at least 51 people.

President Nicolas Sarkozy Monday rushed to the stricken area and pledged €3 million of emergency aid. He also pledged to review the system of dams that failed to protect coastal inhabitants from the sea surge.

"It's a true tragedy," Mr. Sarkozy said in a press conference at l'Aiguillon-sur-Mer. "This shouldn't prevent us from analyzing the dams and the urban planning. We can't go on building everywhere." Mr. Sarkozy asked Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo to present a national dam plan before the summer.

The president also charged a commission to report on the 100 kilometers of dams protecting the sandy coast, which date back to the Napoleonic era. The dam line was breached in several points, said Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Vailli spokesman for France's civil-protection agency.

Experts for some time have warned of the risks attached to the coastal dams.

"When something exceptional happens, dams simply aren't enough," Bruno Toison, an official from the agency that supervises the country's coast line, said on the phone. "We must decide to stop construction in risky zones" close to the dams. He said that the Languedoc-Roussillon region, the Mediterranean coast of Camargue, as well as the northern coast on the channel, close to Calais, remain at risk of inundation.

Mr. Toison said that dams would require more maintenance, but that politicians lack incentive to invest because catastrophes aren't frequent. He added that the dam management is split between local authorities, land owners and the state, making decisions more complicated.

Weather had improved markedly Monday. But experts warned that while the strong winds that hit the coast over the weekend had subsided, the damage caused by the storms had left the region vulnerable.

"The main risk is behind us, but there are still high tides which could push sea water inland, where it's already breached the dams," said Patrick Galois, a forecaster at Meteo France, the national weather service.

In the night between Saturday and Sunday, the combination of an exceptionally high tide pushing up the sea level by over a meter above normal and strong winds gusting to 160 kilometers an hour spawned waves as high as 8 meters, which overran dikes and flooded inland areas.

The worst damages were recorded in Vendee, in west-central France- where the coastal towns of Aiguillon-sur-Mer and Faute-sur-Mer took the brunt of the tempest and tallied over half the casualties.

Firefighters and emergency workers were still on Monday trying to rescue people trapped in the storm-stricken regions.

By Monday night, about 10,000 people had been evacuated from their homes on the Atlantic coast and rescue teams staff were trying to find eight people still missing, Mr. Vailli said. Damages caused by the storm were vast.

In the coastal region, an estimated 220,000 homes remained without electricity after almost one million houses lost power due to the storm, ERDF, France's power grid manager, said in a statement. On Monday afternoon, about 172,000 households were still without electricity, and Prime Minister Francois Fillon said it may take "several days" to restore power to everyone.

The rest of the country suffered a virtual standstill for most of the weekend. Air France-KLM, France's Franco-Dutch national carrier, cancelled over 100 flights out of about 700 leaving or landing its main hub at Charles de Gaulle, north of Paris.

National railway operator SNCF faced multiple incidents due to trees falling on the rails. High speed trains on the whole network suffered long delays.

Finance Minister Christine Lagarde called on insurers to speed up the refunding procedures for individual and businesses hit by the storm. Allianz, Europe's largest insurer, extended the deadline for damage declaration and pledged more leniency in the evaluation of reimbursement demands. [...]

Fears of Pinochet's ghost slow Chilean government's response to earthquake, setting off spiraling crises; echoes of Hurricane Katrina disaster

7:50 AM ET UPDATE
Ah! I see Chile's government is using the little gray cells. Better late than never. The Beeb reports today: "International aid has started to arrive, four days after the huge earthquake in Chile. The authorities are setting up an air bridge to fly supplies from the capital, Santiago, to Concepción, the city worst hit, where there is still no electricity and little water."
************************
A trio of reports conveys a picture of politics gone berserk and the cost to modern societies, which are only as a strong as their response to natural disasters. The good news for Chileans, as we saw in the response of Haitians to their country's historic earthquake, is the human capacity to act sensibly without government help. Yet the tale of Chile's post-earthquake crisis is also a warning that the capacity is atrophying, leaving societies vulnerable to the rule of the mob in the absence of massive government intervention during a crisis.

(See the third report, from the Los Angeles Times, for information on U.S. aid to Chile.)

I'll start with an excerpt from Jon Lee Anderson's insightful March 1 report, Chile’s Test for the New Yorker blog, which includes emails from a half-dozen Chilean friends. The report begins with an overview of the situation in Chile:

Two days on, the extent of the destruction caused by the earthquake in Chile is becoming somewhat clearer. As many as two million of its seventeen million citizens have been affected; an estimated one and a half million homes damaged.

South of Santiago, the central region of the long, narrow country has been very badly hit; many of its Pacific coastal communities were ravaged by the tsunami that followed the quake, its towns and cities cut off because of extensive highway damage.

Hundreds of people are missing and feared swept out to sea.

Feeling isolated and desperate, people in Concepción, the country’s hard-hit second-largest city, and elsewhere have fended for themselves, looting shops and warehouses for food and water. Others, as generally happens in such disasters, have taken advantage of the breakdown in security to cart off consumer goods and luxury items like television sets.

Some Chileans blamed officials for issuing erroneous or insufficient warnings about the imminent tsunami risk, or of not dispatching aid with sufficient speed.

The chaos, in the most orderly and prosperous of Latin American countries, has provoked feelings of impotence and despair and, in some cases, the anger of some of its citizens who, as I wrote Saturday, had relatively high expectations regarding their government’s competence.[...]

Next, I'll quote extensively from the Wall Street Journal report, filed March 1, 11:36 PM EST, Fires, Looting Plague Quake-Battered City. The report details the struggles of Concepción's volunteer firefighters and how private citizens have organized to guard their neighborhoods against looters. With a population of almost a million people, Concepción is Chile's second-largest city, an industrial hub, and the capital of the quake-battered Bío Bío region. Yet a modern, thriving city was reduced to a primitive state because the government failed to act in timely manner out of fear of political fallout if troops were used to keep order. By the time the government did act, chaos had broken out and the troops called up were too few to restore order. As the Wall Street Journal reports:

CONCEPCIÓN, Chile — Fires raged as night fell across Chile's second-largest city Monday, with an exhausted all-volunteer force of firefighters pushing itself to the limit since a deadly quake struck the Andean nation nearly three days ago.

[...]

Army troops backed by armored military vehicles enforced a curfew from 8 p.m. Monday until noon Tuesday, a show of force designed to stop the rampant looting that gripped the city during the day.

Stores and supermarkets were frequently set ablaze after being ransacked.

The firefighters have worked nearly nonstop since the 8.8-magnitude temblor struck. "Since the earthquake, this has been a new and undesirable experience for me," said Concepción fire chief Marcelo Plaza, a chemical engineer by trade. "This is the worst thing I've ever seen."

The 400-strong Concepción force has fought at least 10 major fires since the quake, and undertaken search-and-rescue missions at the more than 50 collapsed buildings. Currently, rescue work has focused on a 15-story building that tipped onto its side. The work was delicate, with rescuers cutting small holes through the jagged metal and twisted concrete in an attempt to find survivors.

A family waiting for word of trapped loved ones wailed in the darkness after receiving bad news.

So far, 723 are confirmed dead in Chile. But in Concepción, the natural disaster has become accompanied by a widespread breakdown of social order.

Police officers and soldiers seemed overwhelmed earlier in the day, chasing away looters from one area only to have an outbreak somewhere else. Typically, the thieves would return to the location only minutes after police left.

A group of 20 police officers in riot gear fired tear gas into the Santa Isabel supermarket as the crowd of looters swelled to more than 150. Around the corner, an aluminum awning covering the windows of a department store was torn away. A mass of people surged forward to enter the store, later walking away with small appliances and clothes.

One of the looters set fire to the department store, La Polar, and the blaze quickly built into a roaring inferno that turned into one of the city's largest post-earthquake fires. Smoked belched from underneath the store's aluminum siding, sending thick plumes of smoke skyward as firefighters already black with soot from previous battles arrived on the scene.

"We are exhausted," one firefighter said, wiping the grime and sweat from his forehead. "But we're going to have to keep at it for days."

The firefighters combat fatigue by taking breaks and visiting their families before returning to duty.

"This is a vocation for us because we all have different day jobs," Mr. Plaza, the fire chief, said. "We are here doing this because this is what we love to do."

Late Monday, the La Polar blaze was brought under control. A bit of good luck averted a greater tragedy as a firewall between La Polar and the Santa Isabel supermarket kept the fire from spreading to other buildings on the tightly packed block.

Meanwhile, smoke was billowing from a fresh blaze in the night sky a few blocks away. Firefighters said another supermarket had been set ablaze.

People in some parts of the city booed the looters from afar, yelling "thieves" and "shame on you." Some residents banded together to protect what was left of their shattered neighborhoods, trying to ward off roving packs of looters.

Andres Coronado joined with his neighbors in the Pedro de Valdivia Bajo neighborhood of Concepción after they saw the situation spiraling out of control. They milled around a street covered in bricks and stone—the debris of somebody's home—and made use of a small fire to keep warm. They vowed to stay at their posts all night.

"There aren't enough of them," Mr. Coronado said of the police and soldiers in Concepción. "The situation is out of their hands right now, so we organized at midday."

Piles of used tires were laid out on top of the rubble, a line of defense if one of the roving packs from a rival neighborhood decided to cause trouble. A similar pattern was repeated in other battered working-class neighborhoods.

Many residents complained that they survived the earthquake only to face organized violence. "It was only an earthquake and now this. Now, we have to worry about people coming into our neighborhoods," a man said at one neighborhood checkpoint. [...] Report filed by ANTHONY ESPOSITO, SERGIO ABARCA And JEFF FICK for the Wall Street Journal with additional reporting by Carolina Pica in Santiago.

Finally, the following report from the Los Angeles Times, which details the emergencies that spiraled from the national government's all-too-political response to the crisis. The situation evokes the Bush administation's disastrous attempt in 2005 to keep 'hands off' the Louisana state government's authority while the massive Hurricane Katrina headed for New Orleans.

Chile scrambles to distribute aid, quell disorder

Looting surges as desperate citizens say they lack any services. President Bachelet, slow to seek international aid, has asked for help.

By Patrick J. McDonnell and Tracy Wilkinson
Los Angeles Times, March 1, 2010, 5:38 p.m.

Reporting from Mexico City and Constitucion, Chile - Looting spread in earthquake-leveled parts of Chile on Monday even as government troops deployed in armored vehicles and on horseback to restore order and protect shipments of food and water. Scores of people were arrested for violating an overnight curfew.

With the death toll creeping higher, Chile continued to reel from Saturday's massive magnitude 8.8 quake, one of the strongest on record. At least 723 people were killed, the government said, and many remained missing.

Numerous oceanfront towns, like Lloca, Dichato and Constitucion, were devastated first by the quake and then, minutes later, by a tsunami, a kind of seismic coup de grace. Little or no help had reached these sites, residents said.

"We need food! We need water!" said a beleaguered Cesar Arrellano, a municipal comptroller in Constitucion who received unrelenting reports of damage, death and the desperate need for help.

Chile's second-largest city, Concepcion, seemed to be suffering the brunt of post-disaster chaos. Looters raided a firehouse in search for water and gasoline, which are in short supply; others later torched a shopping center.

Concepcion Mayor Jacqueline Van Rysselberghe said looters were moving in organized packs and attacking firefighters and city workers attempting to distribute water.

"Our firefighters, our personnel, don't want to keep doing this work in these circumstances," she said. "If a bigger contingent [of soldiers] isn't sent here quickly, the people will begin to take the law into their own hands."

Fire raged in a downtown Concepcion shopping mall. A radio reporter said she saw people in a vehicle toss a Molotov cocktail into the collection of stores just before the fire erupted. Firefighters could do nothing: They had no water. The building, looted earlier in the day, was collapsing under the flames.

President Michelle Bachelet imposed emergency decrees, including putting the army in charge of hard-hit areas, measures not taken in 20 years.

The government promised to distribute food, water and other essential supplies on Monday in Concepcion and other communities.

But aid seemed arrive in trickles, slowed by mangled roads, collapsed bridges and the lack of electricity. A small plane bringing aid to Concepcion crashed Monday, killing all six people on board.

Bachelet called on power companies to restore energy to hospitals and clinics and urged local authorities to quickly identify and bury bodies.

In Constitucion, caskets were stacked in the town gym that had been converted into a morgue.

Bachelet declared a 30-day state of emergency for the coastal states of Bio Bio and Maule, sent in the army and slapped an overnight curfew on major cities in the region.

It was the first time a government has taken action to suspend some civil rights since democracy was restored to Chile in 1990.

Using the army for public security is still a sensitive subject in a country that endured nearly two decades of military dictatorship before the 1990 ouster of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's regime.

The possibility of a "social explosion" quickly emerged as the government's "worst fear," the leading Chilean newspaper El Mercurio reported, noting the emergency decree was agreed to only after intense debate because of its potential symbolism.

"Coordination between civilian and military authorities is functioning correctly," government spokeswoman Pilar Armanet said.

"We are attempting to normalize basic services, with the difficulties that implies."

In a sign of the government's alarm over deteriorating conditions, Defense Minister Francisco Vidal announced that the curfew imposed for Concepcion and its surroundings would be lengthened to begin Monday night at 8 and extend to noon Tuesday.

Deputy Interior Minister Patricio Rosende sought to calm the public amid reports of roving mobs and vigilantes in suburbs around Concepcion.

"Undoubtedly we can't have the military on every corner, but public order is in the hands of the armed forces and you must trust in that," he said.

In Concepcion, rescue efforts centered on a 15-story apartment building that collapsed onto its side.

Rescue workers equipped with search dogs and architectural blueprints sliced through concrete and punched triangular holes into the side of the building in hopes of finding survivors.

On Sunday, eight bodies and about two dozen survivors were pulled out, but many people were believed trapped.

Early Monday, fire brigade commander Juan Carlos Subercaseaux reported signs of life on what had been the building's sixth floor.

"We heard knocking and some glass being broken," Subercaseaux told reporters at the site.

By afternoon, another body had been recovered and rescuers continued the search for survivors.

In Santiago, the capital, life crept slowly back to normal Monday, with many people driving to work but also with long lines at supermarkets and gasoline stations. The start of school after the Southern Hemisphere's summer vacation was postponed until next week.

Slow to ask for help, Bachelet has said she would welcome international aid.

The United Nations said Monday that it would rush deliveries, and Argentina announced that it was sending a field hospital and water treatment supplies.

In Washington, U.S. officials said Monday that Chile has made modest requests of the United States so far, leaving it unclear whether the Obama administration would mount a major effort for the earthquake-stricken country, as it has for Haiti and others.

Philip J. Crowley, the State Department's chief spokesman, said the United States has so far been asked to contribute a field hospital, communications equipment and water filtration equipment.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who will arrive in Santiago Tuesday as part of a five-nation Latin America tour, will bring satellite equipment.

Crowley said the United States "will stand ready to support them in any way." But he said the Chileans are well prepared and are assessing how much outside help they need.

The United States has not formed a task force to deal with the emergency, as it did quickly with the earthquake in Haiti, Crowley said. American search and rescue teams from Los Angeles and Fairfax County, Va., are on standby but haven't been asked to help, he said.

U.S. officials said they sent the Chilean government a 10-page "grocery list" of available items, services and workers, including American cardiologists, orthopedists and anesthesiologists.

See also March 1 Pundita post, Chile's earthquake: signs and portents for humankind, which includes a report on the collapse of the 15-story apartment building mentioned above.

Chile's earthquake: Signs and portents for humankind

"The authorities acknowledged that the damage was spread over such a vast area that they were just beginning to get a grasp on it."

The death toll, now at 723, is continuing to rise. Despite Chile's experience in dealing with earthquakes the massive initial quake, powerful aftershocks, and a tsunami that tossed around huge shipping containers as if they were child's blocks, are exposing weaknesses in the country's disaster preparedness and building codes.These are portents that must be carefully considered when we look at disaster preparedness in our own country, as the tragedy in the Vendee and Charente-Maritime regions of France underscores.

Chile prides itself on earthquake-proof buildings and stringent building codes. The head of CNN's desk in Santiago said yesterday that every time there's an earthquake they rebuild with the latest anti-seismic technology. As the collapse of a brand new 15-story apartment building illustrates, there is still room for improvement.
The New York Times report below provides a good summary of disaster relief efforts in Chile and the problems they're encountering but before I turn to that, an amazing story is connected with the collapse of that apartment building; it reminds me of the 'meta' plot of the movie Signs, which is the priest's discovery that God cheats.

CONCEPCION, Chile (Feb. 28 - Associated Press) -- When their 13th-floor apartment in the 15 story building began to shake, Alberto Rozas pulled his 7-year-old daughter into the bathroom doorway and waited for it to stop.

Instead, they fell.

Thirteen stories they plummeted as their brand-new apartment building toppled like a felled tree, hugging each other all the way down.

Rozas had no idea which way was up until he looked through his apartment's shattered window and spotted light - "the light of the full moon."

Rozas and his daughter, Fernanda, clambered up and to safety with nothing more than a few cuts, scrapes and bruises.

"The earthquake and the fall were one single, horrible thing," Rozas told The Associated Press on Sunday. "I held onto her and she never let me go."

[...]

Rozas took Fernanda to her mother's house, then returned to help firefighters understand the layout of the toppled building.

He retrieved medicine and clothes for Fernanda. And his guitar.

[...]

Rozas' neighbors who lived on the other side of the hall found themselves trapped beneath the structure, as rescuers painstakingly used electric saws and a generator-powered hammer to cut into the concrete.

"We don't have any listening devices or cameras," said Ian Argo, a firefighter commander.

As of Sunday, 23 people had been pulled alive from the 15-story Rio Alta building and seven bodies had been removed. An estimated 60 people remained trapped inside Sunday.

Socovil, the company that opened the concrete-and-glass structure last June, issued a statement saying it had complied with all building codes. But many residents were angry.

"The construction was obviously poor," Rozas said. [...]

There was another spine-tingling story associated with the building's collapse. From the same AP report:

On the second floor, Maribel Alarcon and her husband Gunther rushed to comfort their 2-year-old son Oliver when he started crying moments before the temblor.

Their concern was their salvation: Oliver's bedroom was the only place spared in their apartment.

"We prayed a lot," Alarcon said. "And if God let us survive, that was because someone was going to rescue us."

But from the AP report, it looks as if Alberto Rozas and his wife were divorced or separated. So the question is what would have happened if the entire family had been together in that apartment during the quake. Only by holding tightly onto each other did the father and daughter survive and with no serious injury; I'm not sure three people could have held on tightly to each other during such a plummet.

Note too that because the father survived with barely a scratch he was able to help rescuers 'map' the building's layout, thus surely saving many trapped inside.

We're supposed to be creatures of free will and we are, but sometimes we can look back and find signs that God scanned far ahead in our lives and built a series of escape hatches that would allow us to survive at a critical moment. That some of the hatches can be tragic, confounding, or so prosaic as to escape notice at the time, and that their sum is vastly greater than their parts -- well, M. Night Shyamalan's genius showed all that in his profound meditation on faith and its accommodation for free will.

Wrecked Roads and Bridges in Chile Hinder Rescue Effort
By MARC LACEY
New York Times, March 1, 2010

LIMA, Peru — Rescue workers and government troops struggled on Monday to reach earthquake-ravaged corners of Chile still cut off by crumbled roads, fallen bridges and downed telephone lines. Meanwhile, the Chilean government asked the United Nations for emergency assistance to cope with the widespread devastation.

Aftershocks continued to rattle heavily damaged cities along Chile’s coastline, complicating rescue efforts two days after a magnitude-8.8 earthquake touched off what President Michelle Bachelet called “an emergency unparalleled in the history of Chile.”

The death toll from Saturday’s quake rose to 711 — most in the country’s main wine-growing area — and was likely to increase, Chilean officials said Monday. Security officials told Chilean newspapers that dozens of people had been arrested on charges of looting and violating overnight curfews.

In the southern city of Concepción, 55 people were arrested for violating a curfew, Chile’s deputy secretary of the interior told La Tercera newspaper. Otherwise, he said, the city had been quiet overnight.

In scenes reminiscent of the frantic rescue efforts following January’s earthquake in Haiti, rescuers with trained dogs and search equipment began hunting through the rubble of collapsed houses and apartment buildings in search of survivors.

As they worked, the first waves of 10,000 soldiers dispatched by Ms. Bachelet to the hardest-hit areas began to arrive to restore order and help distribute aid, according to news reports.

But residents expressed frustration at what they called the slow pace of aid delivery. Several told Chilean radio that government provisions had been slow to arrive and said that almost all markets and stores had been stripped bare of food, water and other supplies. There were scattered reports of burglaries at abandoned homes in the earthquake zone. The United Nations said that Chile, in its request for emergency help, had asked for mobile bridges, generators, water filtration equipment, field hospitals and surgical centers, as well as help from damage-assessment teams.

“Everything is now moving,” said Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “We are looking immediately to match the needs. We need to see what we have in our stock to respond to this request.”

As the country’s farmers and vineyard owners began to tally the damage to Chile’s lucrative wine and fruit industries, wary investors sent the country’s main stock index tumbling nearly 2 percent on Monday afternoon. Chile exported more than $1 billion in wine last year, and is a major exporter of fresh grapes, apples, raspberries and other fruits to the United States.

A day earlier in Concepción, the police fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse hundreds of people who forced their way into shuttered shops. But law enforcement authorities, heeding the cries of residents that they lacked food and water, eventually settled on a system that allowed staples to be taken but not televisions and other electronic goods. Ms. Bachelet later announced that the government had reached a deal with supermarket chains to give away food to needy residents. Using power saws and their bare hands, rescue workers atop the rubble of collapsed buildings tried to pull out those caught inside. Although there were successes — like Julio Beliz, who managed to free his neighbor on Sunday from the rubble in Santiago, the capital, after hearing him yell out, “Julio, help me!” — the search for survivors was slowed by continuing aftershocks.

The earthquake, one of the strongest in recorded history, left a devastating footprint on a country that knows quakes well.

Residents of a collapsed 15-story apartment building in Concepción, opened just months ago, were outraged that it had been so badly damaged and were convinced that contractors had not complied with building codes that require buildings to be able to withstand temblors. Already, there was talk among residents of taking builders to court once the emergency is over.

On Sunday in Cobquecura, 50 miles north of Concepción, state television showed collapsed bridges, crashed buses and sunken pavement. Residents had fled to the hills, prompting local journalists to declare it a virtual ghost town.

In remote coastal towns, waves had obliterated homes, and boats were found on land next to overturned cars. The authorities acknowledged that the damage was spread over such a vast area that they were just beginning to get a grasp on it.

Early Sunday, a 6.1-magnitude aftershock, one of more than 100 that have followed the original quake, sent residents scrambling again for cover. With the earth still unsettled, many Chileans have opted to camp outside.

On Monday, the first of a series of significant temblors occurred at 3:24 a.m., with a magnitude of 4.8, according to seismologists at the United States Geological Survey, who placed the epicenter 105 miles south of the city of Valparaíso. Several aftershocks followed over the next hours, the most recent being a jolt with an estimated magnitude of 5.1 that struck at 1:56 p.m. local time, about 50 miles northeast of Concepción.

The National Office of Emergency has put the number of displaced people at two million.

Among the quake’s victims were Lurde Margarita Arias Dias, 24, and her infant child, Peruvian immigrants who were crushed as a wall toppled in their Santiago home.

“I tried to save them,” Adán Noé Saavedra Ríos, Lurde’s husband, told local reporters with tears in his eyes. He described his frantic wife trying to rush from the house with their daughter in her arms after the ground started moving. Before he knew it, he recounted, they were covered in rubble.

At the hospital in Talca, near the epicenter, personnel were treating victims in the parking lot because the hospital building was considered structurally unsound. Other hospitals were also damaged, and Ms. Bachelet said the military would set up field hospitals to treat the injured.

Speaking at a midday news conference on Sunday, Ms. Bachelet called on power companies to work quickly to repair their networks so that services could be restored and the country could begin to get back on its feet. “We need energy first,” she said, pointing out that cellphone communications, medical care and water distribution depended on it.

Ms. Bachelet said that the bulk of the known deaths, 541, took place in the Maule region, followed by Bío-Bío, where at least 64 people died. The military is taking charge of emergency operations in those two areas for the next month, she said.

The government has imposed a limited curfew in those areas that forbids people from wandering the streets at night, but will not force them inside damaged buildings.

Despite images of confrontation between the police and residents, officials said that the traumatized country remained mostly calm. Ms. Bachelet’s order will mean 10,000 soldiers will help in the relief effort, Defense Minister Francisco Vidal said.

The scenes of toppled buildings, overturned cars and bodies being hauled from rubble resembled those from Haiti a month and a half ago. But because of better building standards and because the epicenter was farther from populated areas and deeper, the scale of the damage from Chile’s significantly more powerful earthquake was nowhere near that sustained in Haiti, where more than 200,000 people are believed to have died.

The comparison with Haiti did little to soothe the suffering of Chileans, some of whom tearfully recounted how their children were crying for food and how their families were now living outside in the elements.

Still, many felt lucky to have survived.

“It was like God said, ‘No, run out the back,’ ” said Carmen Peña, 48, a grandmother whose home in Santiago was in shambles on Sunday. “If we’d gone out the front, we’d be dead.”

The quake hit during Chile’s summer vacation, which left thousands of Chileans stranded overseas. There were frantic scenes at airports throughout the region as the closing of the damaged Santiago airport prompted airlines to cancel or reroute flights away from the Chilean capital.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had a previously scheduled visit to Chile this week as part of a tour of Latin America, is going ahead with the stop despite the quake. Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to meet with both Ms. Bachelet, who leaves office this month, and her successor, President-elect Sebastián Piñera.

Reporting was contributed by Charles Newbery from Buenos Aires; Aaron Nelsen and Pascale Bonnefoy from Santiago, Chile; Catrin Einhorn and Jack Healy from New York; and Mark McDonald from Hong Kong.

***************
Thanks to Brenda J. Elliott at RBO for supplying photographs of the mysterious statues on Easter Island (also called Te Pito o Te Henua, 'The Center of the World’) and for thinking of them to evoke the far-sightedness of the Divine in the affairs of humans.

Europe's Cyclone: Vendee and Charente-Maritime Disaster

See yesterday's post, Cyclone, flooding wreak havoc in western Europe for background on the storm.

BBC -- Noon EST:

Blame is being laid on weak and aged sea defences after violent storms left at least 50 dead and thousands homeless along France's Atlantic coast.

Many died after the sea wall off the coastal town of L'Aiguillon-sur-Mer was breached, allowing 8m-high (26ft) waves to crash through the streets.

A local governor said the walls dated back to the time of Napoleon and needed to be replaced with taller barriers.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has pledged 3m euros (£2.6m) in emergency aid.

He was touring the worst-affected western coastal regions of Vendee and Charente-Maritime after declaring a national disaster, and promised to channel recovery funds quickly.

"It is a national disaster, a human drama with a terrible death toll," he said. "The urgent thing is to support the families who have members missing or dead."

The Atlantic storm, named Xynthia, smashed into the western coasts of France, Portugal and Spain on Sunday, with torrential rain driven by winds of up to 140km/h
(87mph).

The storm has since swept north-eastwards into Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. and deaths have been reported in Portugal, Spain, Belgium and Germany.

Napoleonic walls

While many L'Aiguillon-sur-Mer residents were trying to be stoical about the situation, there is some anger in the town that not enough had been done to maintain its sea defences, says the BBC's Emma Jane Kirby in the town.

Poor planning was also being blamed for constructing a mobile home park so close to the old sea wall.

"The sea wall that broke dated from (the era) of Napoleon," said Philippe de Villiers, a former presidential candidate who heads Vendee's regional government.

"Either we build (new) sea walls, in which case they need to be taller and taller... or we have to build further inland," he told France-Info.

But the French President said it was too early to start criticising the sea walls for the high death toll.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said flood prevention dykes would be strengthened.

"The priority now is to make all the homeless people safe, all the people who are still threatened by the rising waters," he said.

Nearly 10,000 emergency staff were working on the west coast on Monday morning, searching for and helping survivors.

As many as nine people are thought to be missing.

Massive power outage

In France, Xynthia put five of the country's 95 departments on red alert - only the second such warning since a new emergency system was introduced in 2001.

More than a million homes in France have lost electricity, from the Brittany peninsula in the west to the highlands of the Massif Central.

Huge waves and strong gusts battered many coastal towns, flooding inland areas and destroying buildings.

Residents took to their roofs in the Vendee region and police helicopters were in action trying to locate and rescue them.

French national power company EDF said half a million customers were still without power at nightfall on Sunday, AFP news agency reported.

Mr Fillon said it would take several days to restore power everywhere.