cell phone
Rural Rwanda is home to a pioneering new solar power idea.
A group of London graduates have, apparently against the odds, helped thousands of people in Africa access energy from the sun. Could their idea teach power providers in the West a thing or two?
Rural Rwanda is home to a pioneering new solar power idea
Nearly 20% of the world’s population has no electricity. Rachel Nuwer tells the story of a group of London graduates who, apparently against the odds, have helped thousands of people in Africa access energy from the Sun. Could their idea teach power providers in the West a thing or two?
By Rachel Nuwer
9 October 2017
Fidel Mberabagabo lives down a dirt path in a modest, hand-built mud and concrete home surrounded on either side by hazy, gently cresting green hills. Like most people in this part of Rwanda’s rural Rwamagana district, he is a farmer. Also like them, finances are strained; he never knows just how much he will make in a given month. But Mberabagabo’s life does now differ from that of many of his neighbours in one important way: he has electricity.
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In the developed world, people take for granted that light bulbs will turn on with the flick of a switch; that they can access unlimited power to charge copious devices; and that their well-stocked fridges and artificially cooled and heated homes will maintain just the right temperature.
But as anyone who has weathered the aftermath of a hurricane or found themselves in the midst of a major blackout will attest, if these precious amenities are taken away, life largely comes to a halt.
Yet for all our dependency on power, some 1.2 billion people around the world – 16% of the global population – do not have access to it at all.
Back in Rwanda, for example, less than 20% of the population live in homes that enjoy electricity – a fact that stymies development and reinforces poverty. It’s a huge problem that defines many of the problems we face in the 21st Century.
To some, however, such statistics ring not of hopelessness, but of opportunity.
“This is such an untapped market,” says Laurent Van Houcke, chief operations officer of BBOXX, a London-based company that brings off-grid energy to the developing world. “There are massive opportunities for entrepreneurship, as well as great possibilities for impacting lives.”
For Van Houcke and his colleagues, rural residents like Mberabagabo who lack electricity are not charity cases, but bona fide customers.
Their solution: a for-profit company that manufactures, installs and affordably loans out sturdy, hyper-efficient solar-powered chargers. In just four years, they have brought power to around 130,000 homes and businesses in 35 countries – by 2020, they're aiming for more than a million.
Breaking the mould
It all began at Imperial College London. While others focused on buffing up CVs for future careers in banking or the consultancy sector, electrical engineering students Van Houcke and his two BBOXX co-founders, Christopher Baker-Brian and Mansoor Hamayun, decided to found Equinox: a charity devoted to electrifying a few communities in Rwanda.
Africa will largely bypass the grid and leapfrog over Europe and North America straight into solar
In summer 2009, when they flew into Kigali, Rwanda’s friendly, laid-back capital, they could clearly see the challenge the country faced. The hilly city’s numerous lookout points afforded sweeping views of attractive buildings painted in shades of cream and yellow, interspersed with parks and a few high rises. But after sundown, a previously invisible divider revealed itself: the light abruptly stopped outside of the capital’s tight core.
How would Rwanda ever realise its goal of becoming “the Singapore of Africa” if so many of its citizens still lacked access to electricity?
Rather than stay in Kigali, they spent the majority of their time living and working in a rural Rwandan community of around 200 households. As they explored various ways to get power to their new neighbours, they realised that the grid will never supply those in Rwanda and beyond who currently lack electricity: such communities are dispersed over immense areas, and are too poor to afford such extensive infrastructure.
That’s when they arrived at a grand idea: they concluded that Africa will largely bypass the grid and leapfrog over Europe and North America straight into solar – just as it did in skipping landlines, a rarity in rural Africa, in favour of cell phones.
Encouragingly, their field investigations also revealed that many Africans in these communities were completely open to the idea of paying for solar energy.
“If you go to a customer and tell them, ‘You’re spending $5-$20 per month on kerosene and batteries, but for the same amount, you can have electricity’ – well, it’s a pretty easy sell,” says Hamayun, BBOXX’s chief executive officer. “Governments and development agencies also understand that solar is the long-term solution for those customers.”
This encouraged them to revamp their charity into a for-profit venture.
“Ultimately, our motivation was to scale the business, which meant making money and charging customers rather than seeing them as beneficiaries,” says Baker-Brian, BBOXX’s chief technology officer.
So why become a money-making business? It meant investing in the long term: freebie projects and charity-organised giveaways often fail to make a lasting impact because they tend to be one-offs, he says, and their dependency on donor funds likewise constrains their scope.
The company would need to raise investor funding to enable them to build a team and get the technology up to par. Yet despite their discoveries on the ground, nearly everyone they approached, as Hamayun puts it, “thought what we’re doing was really risky and not scalable, because it’s Africa.”
Freebie projects and charity-organised giveaways often fail to make a lasting impact
The first round of funding proved exceptionally difficult to raise, he continues, because there was no real precedent for doing technology business in Africa. “These are customers who have been underserved in every possible way,” he says.
They eventually found an initial investor, Khosla Impact, that believed in the idea. Meanwhile, three other similar off-grid solar companies also emerged around the same time that BBOXX launched.
Indeed, pay-as-you-go solar is an increasingly popular solution for bringing electricity to those in Africa who have never had it before.
Mobisol, a Berlin-based company, has installed 85,000 units in Tanzania and Rwanda; Off Grid Electric, based in San Francisco, serves 50,000 homes in Tanzania; and M-KOPA, a Kenyan company, has provided power to over 500,000 homes in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
Efforts have so far concentrated on East Africa, but it’s no doubt a matter of time before more companies join the roster and existing ones expand. According to a recent World Bank Group report, energy storage in emerging markets worldwide are expected to grow 40% each year over the next decade.
The technology itself, it turned out, was the simplest part of getting such operations up and running. In BBOXX’s case, solar energy gathered from a panel on the roof is stored overnight, while remote connectivity over 2G cell networks allows for geolocation and performance data to be sent back to headquarters. Algorithms monitor the units’ health and allow the team to proactively replace fading batteries (usually, after about three years).
As for payments, the team realised early on that rural customers would never be able to afford to buy a BBOXX unit outright. So they opted instead for pay-as-you-go monthly installment plans. “That removes the massive upfront barrier that’s often the case for solar systems in the developing world,” Baker-Brian says.
Customers can also buy accessories that BBOXX designed to minimise energy use, including shavers, smartphones and a 24-inch television that consumes 11 watts of power compared to an equivalent Western model’s 24 watts.
Finally, people can pay with mobile phone money transfers. “We don’t take any cash,” Baker-Brian says. “We’re 100% mobile money” – a decision that capitalises on a preference for cash-free payments that’s popping up across Africa.
Overlooked no more
Five months ago, when BBOXX established an office in Rwamagana, the district where Mberabagabo lives, he was one of the first to sign up. The technology, he says, “has changed my life.”
His family’s four lights have increased their sense of security against would-be trespassers, and he also appreciates that he no longer has to burn candles and lamps that emit smoke, which he knows is bad for his children’s health. A father of five, the lights mean that Mberabagabo’s older kids can read and study into the night, and go to bed later. “Now, there’s plenty of time to do whatever we need to do,” he says.
13-year-old Claude, his eldest child, says he “loves” the television that his family rents along with the box itself – their first TV. For optimal viewing, Mberabagabo set it up in a sort of home cinema room, windowless, cool and completely barren save for the TV and the benches located opposite for watching. Though transfixed by a Brazilian football match on a recent afternoon, Claude – who would like to be a teacher when he grows up – insists that the news is his favourite programme. Shy and polite, he stands by this unexpected answer, even when a foreign journalist asks him if he’s sure sports and cartoons aren’t his favourites.
“Now I’m able to know who is who in the government,” he explains. “I can ask better questions at school.”
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Solar grid keeps harvests high, hospitals lit in parched rural Zimbabwe.
With worsening droughts drying fields and hydropower, solar energy is providing a way forward in rural areas.
With worsening droughts drying fields and hydropower, solar energy is providing a way forward in rural areas
By Tonderayi Mukeredzi
MASHABA, Zimbabwe, Sept 11 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Until recently, farmers in this town in southern Zimbabwe struggled to water their crops, frustrated by poor rainfall and the regular breakdown of the diesel engines that powered their irrigation systems.
As in most areas of rural Zimbabwe, rain-fed agriculture provides most of the jobs in this part of Gwanda district, some 130km (80 miles) southeast of Bulawayo.
But sparse rains over the last decade, a worsening problem associated with climate change, have caused many harvests to fail, and cut into the country's generation of hydropower, which provides much of its electricity.
In Mashaba, however, the community's luck is turning. In 2015, the town installed a solar mini-grid power station that has helped green the hot, arid area transform into a hive of entrepreneurial activity.
The off-grid power system, with 400 solar panels that provide nearly 100 kilowatts of reliable power, has made it possible to effectively irrigate crops, boosting farming yields and fuelling economic growth. Local leaders say schools have become more productive and medical facilities safer.
The $3.2 million mini-grid was funded by the European Union, the OPEC Fund for International Development and the Global Environment Facility as part of a drive to promote universal access to modern energy in rural areas. Its construction was overseen by Practical Action Southern Africa, a development charity.
The plant powers the Mankonkoni and Rustlers Gorge irrigation schemes, which cover 32 hectares (79 acres) and 42 hectares (104 acres) respectively; the Mashaba Primary School; a business centre with three shops; the Mashaba Clinic; and the Masendani Business Centre, which has four shops and an energy kiosk.
A board of trustees selected by the community is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the mini-grid, and community members have been trained to maintain and operate it.
The mini-grid will be co-owned by an independent power producer and the community through the trust.
A view of solar panels as part of a community solar mini-grid in Mashaba, Zimbabwe. THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION/Tonderayi Mukeredzi
BIGGER HARVESTS
Thomas Makhalima, a Mashaba councillor, says an estimated 10,000 people are benefiting directly from the clean power grid.
In their area, often affected by drought, "we depend a lot on government relief aid. But the food donations have lessened because some people can feed themselves through the irrigation schemes", he said.
Makhalima said a third irrigation project will soon be connected to the grid, and negotiations are advancing to connect a new border post with Botswana at nearby Mlambapeli as well.
Mpokiseng Moyo, a mother of three who grows winter wheat on a plot of 0.2 hectares (0.5 acres) at Rustlers Gorge, said that in the past she could barely produce a tonne of food.
Now, since the new power supply was installed, she can easily harvest 15 tonnes, she said.
Moyo is one of 41 farmers – 26 women and 15 men – who collectively own an irrigation plant that services the 42 hectares at Rustlers Gorge.
"Before being connected to the solar grid, we irrigated our crops using diesel pumps and travelled as far as Gwanda (more than 100km away) to buy diesel for the pumps," she said.
"The pumps broke down many times, affecting productivity. But with solar energy we are able to farm throughout the year without any hassles," Moyo said.
Selling the surplus harvest has made it possible for her to send her children to school and buy provisions for the family, she said.
A solar energy kiosk in Mashaba, Zimbabwe, which now operates its own solar mini-grid system. THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION/Tonderayi Mukeredzi
POWER FOR SCHOOL, HOSPITAL
Obert Joseph Ncube, the deputy head of Mashaba Primary School, said the school's enrolment figures and exam results have improved because the presence of a reliable power supply has dissuaded teachers from transferring to other schools.
"We've registered an improvement in Grade 7 (pass) results from 21.5 percent in 2014 to 53.9 percent in 2016, which is a positive upward trend premised on our retention of all qualified staff," Ncube said.
At Mashaba Clinic, health workers no longer need to work by torchlight at night, including when delivering babies.
"It was difficult for us to operate or suture patients using candlelight or mobile phones, which meant procedures took longer to finish, or we had to wait till daylight or refer the patients elsewhere," said a health official at the clinic, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Pregnant women who come to the clinic to give birth are no longer required to bring their own candles, kerosene lamps and matches.
According to the Ministry of Energy and Power Development, only about 40 percent of Zimbabweans have electrical power, and only 13 percent in rural areas.
Rural communities meet 94 percent of their energy requirements from traditional fuels, mostly wood.
The biggest test for the Mashaba community will be to keep their solar grid functioning. At present, community members do not pay for electricity while they await a determination on the tariff to be charged.
"We've installed a prepayment system but we are still working on the tariff system. Once a tariff is agreed with ZESA (the state-owned power utility), the energy regulator and the community, users will then start paying," said Shepherd Masuka, Practical Action's project officer for sustainable energy for rural communities.
The income will be used to maintain the grid, he said.
Ncube, who also serves as secretary for the Mashaba Board of Trustees and a spokesman for the grid, said that people are happy to pay to keep power coming.
"We've had meetings with farmers and they are already putting aside some grain reserves so that when they are asked to start paying for electricity they are ready," he said.
(Reporting by Tonderayi Mukeredzi; editing by James Baer and Laurie Goering :; P
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In Houston, a terrifying real-life lesson for disaster-prone cities.
Cities across the country that live with the threat of disaster — from earthquakes in San Francisco to hurricanes in Miami — are watching the catastrophe in Houston for lessons learned.
LOS ANGELES — Cities across the country that live with the threat of disaster — from earthquakes in San Francisco to hurricanes in Miami — are anxiously watching the catastrophe unfolding in Houston for lessons learned, cautionary tales, anything to soften the blow when their residents are the ones in danger.
“We know we are racing against the clock,” said Elaine Forbes, the executive director of the Port of San Francisco, her office buttressed by a century-old sea wall that could collapse in an earthquake. “Seeing Houston stoked the fire.”
Emergency disaster officials in cities like Baltimore, Boston and Seattle have spent the last week and a half monitoring how Texan government officials and storm-affected residents are responding to a crisis that destroyed homes and disrupted electricity, drinking water and communications.
The causes might be different, but the devastation and social disruption can be similar from disaster to disaster. As such, Houston is offering other cities a real-life run-through of their own emergency plans as well as a stark reminder of the inevitability of such events.
“We look at this and realize that while they might be under water, we someday will be under crumbled buildings,” said Eric M. Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles. “And it will take years, if not decades, to rebuild.”
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James Redick, the director of emergency preparedness and response in Norfolk, Va., a city that has found itself vulnerable to hurricanes over the years, said he watched the water rise in Houston and began worrying about his own city’s plans to rebuild after a cataclysmic flood.
“I keep asking myself, is our recovery plan good enough for when you essentially have to start over?” Mr. Redick said.
Speaking before Hurricane Irma set its sights on South Florida, Juvenal Santana, Miami’s director of public works, expressed relief last week that his city was not the one in distress. “I’d be lying if I said we are not thankful that we are not sitting here talking about having had the storm come through Miami,” he said.
In Chicago, a city that lives under the threat of tornadoes, blizzards and overflowing rivers, officials watched the Houston response in search of new ways to guide a major population center through a crisis.
“I’m shooting notes over to my guys who work in emergency management and saying, ‘Hey, when was the last time we updated our shelters?’” said Alicia Tate-Nadeau, executive director of Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications. “‘Do we have a plan to put computers in our shelters, along with phone-charging banks?’”
Some of the lessons, officials said, have been encouraging, in particular the initial willingness of Republicans in Washington, some of whom famously resisted providing assistance after Hurricane Sandy pummeled New York and New Jersey in 2012, to approve the billions of dollars that will be needed to rebuild.
Photo
A view of Jersey City from lower Manhattan as hurricane Sandy approached in 2012. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
But for many emergency response leaders in major cities, Houston has also been a disturbing reminder of how even the best emergency plans are often not up to the task.
“It makes you realize, these megastorms, if you haven’t been hit by one, your worst-case scenario is nowhere near a true worst-case scenario,” said Daniel J. Kelly, the executive director of the New Jersey Office of Recovery and Rebuilding, as he recalled his state’s struggle to respond to Hurricane Sandy.
In Seattle, which has been bracing for a long-overdue and potentially devastating earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the Pacific Coast, officials said Houston has underscored what they have been trying to instill into residents, police and fire agencies and hospitals: assume that nothing will work, from communications systems to roads and electricity grids.
“They need to have themselves ready to be on their own, just like an awful lot of folks are stranded and on their own down in Texas,” said Barb Graff, Seattle’s emergency management director.
For city officials who would have to manage these kind of crises, Houston has been a reminder of one of the toughest parts of their jobs. Martin J. Walsh, the mayor of Boston, told a radio audience that a storm of that magnitude would leave the city “wiped out.”
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“It’s made me take a real serious look at how we would handle a storm,” Mr. Walsh said in an interview. “Hopefully a lot of cities and towns around America take their time and pay attention to what’s happening.”
Mr. Walsh said he had talked with the city’s water and sewer engineer about how much rain Boston could absorb without flooding, and had considered which neighborhoods might need to be evacuated. He said the city only had access to 7,200 cots, far fewer than he feared would be necessary in the event of massive flooding.
“Our financial district is pretty much on the coast,” Mr. Walsh said. And a number of the city’s neighborhoods, he added, are on the water.
Across Miami and other Florida cities, like Tampa and Orlando, Harvey ushered in a common refrain: There but for the grace of God. Like Houston, Miami is flat and has gobbled up wetlands like the Everglades and coastal stretches to build and build. The more a city has been paved over, the greater the chance of flooding.
There has typically been an uptick in disaster preparation in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophe — the 1994 Northridge earthquake here prompted many people to stockpile water and batteries, and some cities passed laws requiring vulnerable buildings to install reinforcing walls and pillars. That was just as typically followed by a return to normal behavior as the memory of the disaster faded.
But Lucy Jones, who served for 33 years as a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Service, and was recruited by Mr. Garcetti as his top earthquake adviser, said the reaction to Houston this week has led her to believe that has changed because of the ability of people across the world to feel the disaster up close through arresting images on their mobile phones.
“This will increase public awareness,” she said. “All of these gripping pictures of people in their flooded houses — we are looking at it in real time — is a change in the emotional reaction that I had seen in the past. Think about it: What can you tell me about Hurricane Camille?”
She suggested that events in Houston would thus provide the same kind of motivation to people in Southern California to prepare for the worst as a series of minor temblors did here in 2014.
Scott Ashley, 46, who works the Los Angeles Unified School District, said he remembered the earthquake of 1994, and that in the days since the flooding began in Houston, he had refreshed the emergency kit he had set up to help his family survive the next one.
“We are very ready,” he said. “We have our emergency kits, we have our evacuation plans, M.R.E.’s, water, kits for tents, warm weather supplies, storage space for materials, a kit that will take care of our family for at least 3 days.”
And Los Angeles got a reminder this weekend of the kind of disasters it might have to deal with beyond earthquakes, as wildfires broke out in parts of the city, destroying three homes and closing down a highway as temperatures soared above 100 degrees.
Walt Hubbard, the emergency manager for King County, which includes Seattle, said the Texas experience has demonstrated that many disasters can go on for weeks or even months, and that residents should be prepared for the long haul.
For Sam Liccardo, the mayor of San Jose, Houston reinforced the need for shelters evenly spread across the city and powerful but portable pumps, which his aides are now looking to purchase. “Nothing motivates action like the dreadful disaster that we see in Houston,” Mr. Liccardo said. “You can only hope that we all collectively learn and better prepare.”
Dr. Irwin Redlener, the director of National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, said emergency officials in New York state and city government were watching Houston to see how the storm affected high-security plants where dangerous chemicals and pathogens are stored.
“We are all questioning if they are secure enough,” he said. “New Yorkers have no problem imagining that any kind of man-made or natural disaster is not out of the question since we have seen both kind of events.”
Alex Padilla, the California secretary of state and a former state senator who helped push through financing for an early-alert statewide system for earthquakes, said that even though this was a different kind of event in a different state, it could only help efforts here to encourage people to prepare.
“It triggers memories of the Bay Area quake or the Northridge quake, he said, adding that Harvey has prompted many to ask, “Are we ready? Are we prepared?”
Adam Nagourney reported from Los Angeles, and Jess Bidgood from Boston. Reporting was contributed by Lizette Alvarez from Miami, Nicholas Corasaniti and Mark Santora from New York, Thomas Fuller from San Francisco, Kirk Johnson from Seattle, Mitch Smith from Chicago and Louis Keene from Los Angeles.
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The tiny Caribbean islands ravaged by Hurricane Irma are in trouble — and begging for help.
Hurricane Jose appears headed for the Irma-ravaged Caribbean islands, as well.
As the worst of Hurricane Irma departed Antigua and Barbuda early Wednesday, Prime Minister Gaston Browne boasted that “no other country in the Caribbean would have been as well prepared as we were.” The problem with this statement, as he later acknowledged, was that Barbuda was left “barely habitable.”
Barbuda sustained damage to about 95 percent of all properties there, Browne told local media after flying over the island. Aerial footage showed homes with entire walls blown out and entire roofs ripped away. Those who lived through it described a night of pure terror.
“I felt like crying,” Browne said after seeing the destruction, “but crying will not help.”
As Irma continues a merciless churn toward the U.S. mainland, those first islanders left in its wake are only beginning to decipher the scope of devastation — or, in some fortunate cases, a surprising paucity thereof.
Barbuda. Anguilla. St. Martin. St. Barthelemy.
These jurisdictions are part of the Leeward Islands, a vulnerable, isolated chain arcing southeast from Puerto Rico. As night fell Wednesday, and people took stock of what's been lost, there was confusion, desperation and worsening fear that another hurricane, Jose, which already has formed in the Atlantic, appears to be coming for them, too.
On Thursday and Friday, it will be others' turn to make sense of the damage wrought by Irma, only to look ahead at what Jose may have in store.
To the west, Irma raked the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, where nearly 1 million people were without electricity Wednesday night. The Dominican Republic, Haiti and the Turks and Caicos Islands are next in its path. Closer to Florida's southern tip, the Bahamas remain in danger, and mass evacuations are underway.
The United Nations has said Irma, a historic Category 5 storm, could affect as many as 37 million people.
At 5 a.m. Thursday, when the National Hurricane Center offered its latest update, officials offered this ominous bulletin about Jose:
“... JOSE A LITTLE STRONGER ...”
The looming storm now has sustained wind speeds nearing 90 miles per hour with even stronger gusts. Its potency is forecast to grow over the next 48 hours. “Interests in the Leeward Islands should monitor the progress of Jose. Hurricane and Tropical Storm Watches will likely be
required for portions of these islands later this morning.”
Of Barbuda's 1,400 residents, about 60 percent are homeless, Browne told the Associated Press. The prime minister has vowed to evacuate everyone there to Antigua ahead of Jose's arrival.
To the south, in the French territories of St. Martin and St. Barthelemy, at least eight people have died. Ghastly images, captured on mobile phones and circulated on social media, showed cars and trucks almost completely submerged in the storm surge, and several buildings in ruin.
French President Emmanuel Macron said it's still too soon to determine how many victims there may be. He has dispatched the country's overseas territories minister, Annick Girardin, who told reporters while en route to the region that evacuations may be necessary, the BBC reported.
In Anguilla, part of the British West Indies, the local government is “overwhelmed” and desperate for help, Attorney General John McKendrick told The Washington Post late Wednesday.
Officials were barely able to communicate among one another and with emergency response teams, he said. With most lines down, they were dependent on instant messaging.
It appears at least one person has died in Anguilla, McKendrick said.
“Roads blocked, hospital damaged. Power down. Communications badly impaired. Help needed,” he wrote in one message. In another, McKendrick said, “More people might die without further help, especially as another hurricane threatens us so soon.”
Jose remains deep in the central Atlantic for now, but as it gathered strength Wednesday, forecasters said it's expected to become a dangerous Category 3 hurricane by Friday. It's possible the storm could approach the same islands this weekend.
The United Kingdom's international development secretary, Priti Patel, announced Wednesday that the British navy, along with several Royal Marines and a contingent of military engineers, had been dispatched to the Caribbean with makeshift shelters and water purification systems. While some in England criticized the response, McKendrick told The Post that he's worried they, too, will quickly become overwhelmed by the amount of work that must be done to restore a sense of normalcy.
Elsewhere on Anguilla, some informal reports were less bleak. The Facebook page for Roy's Bayside Grill, for instance, remained active as Irma passed.
Around 7:30 a.m., the page broadcast a brief live video, about a minute of footage of the storm captured from inside an unidentified building. With rain pelting the windows and wind whipping the treetops back and forth, a narrator calmly describes the scene outside. “Can't see very far at all,” he says. “We've got whitecaps on the pool. Water is spilling out. And it's quite a ride. But thought I'd check in and let everyone know we're still good.”
Phone lines to the restaurant appeared to be down by the afternoon, and messages left with the Facebook page's administrator were not immediately returned.
At 1 p.m., a panoramic photo appeared showing several buildings. The decking on one appeared to be ripped apart, and debris was scattered about the beach. One industrial building had a hole in its roof, but by and large everything was still standing.
“We made it through,” the caption reads, “but there is a lot of work to be done.”
JUST IN: Aftermath of #hurricanirma in Tortola -British Virgin Islands pic.twitter.com/D4KQUTJrb5
— Newshub Ireland (@NewshubIreland) September 7, 2017
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FEMA avoids disaster in Houston — so far.
Officials have learned a lot from Katrina — and have a lot to learn from this storm.
THE GULF of Mexico coast is just coming to grips with the devastation of Hurricane Harvey, the remnants of which continued to pelt inland areas Thursday. Tragedy on this scale cannot be fully managed, and the response is only beginning. William “Brock” Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, warned before the hurricane hit that rebuilding would take years. Early damage estimates foresee costs ranging around or above $100 billion. Yet, given the effort so far, Harvey may not become synonymous with government mismanagement, as Katrina did.
Several things that occurred since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005 have helped make the beginnings of the response to Harvey seem more orderly.
The George W. Bush administration had to wait for assessments and consultations with local officials before dispatching federal resources. This time, the federal government was able to deploy officials on the ground well before Harvey hit, and coordination with state leaders was closer. Federal military officials and state National Guard forces are working together in ways not seen in 2005.
New technology has been deployed. Drones have been surveying damage. Fast Company reports that electronic flood gauges have fed information to a website through which Houstonians could monitor the state of waterways near them. Snapchat’s mapping feature has helped determine which places needed emergency attention. Facebook has served as a platform to spread information on dangerous conditions — and allowed people to report to their loved ones that they were safe. FEMA has “social listeners” who monitor electronic media and send the information they gather to responders.
Wired points out that Texas upgraded its 911 system after Katrina. Harvey still stressed Houston’s 911, with some callers unable to get through at the busiest times. But it could have been worse. Meanwhile, cellular phone service appears to have held up better during Harvey than during Katrina, in part due to how mobile carriers planned for this hurricane.
President Trump hired a professional emergency manager in Mr. Long. He has projected calm competence throughout the crisis, a welcome contrast to the pathetic spectacle of Bush FEMA director Michael Brown seeming unaware of the misery in New Orleans’s Superdome. Like Mr. Brown, Mr. Long and local officials have a big problem with the well-over-30,000 people displaced from their homes, many of whom are sitting in Houston’s convention and sports centers. How and how quickly these people are moved into more respectable dwellings — their own homes if habitable or motel rooms if not — will be a key measure of how well these leaders are doing their jobs. So will how they handle dicey public-health threats, such as toxic chemical spills, acrid smoke and waterborne disease.
There are more tests ahead, of course. Much of FEMA’s outrageous waste and mismanagement came well after Katrina’s floodwaters subsided. Even as recovery proceeds, the nation must also learn from Harvey as it did from Katrina. Emergency communications could be hardened by getting 911 off outdated wired telephone lines, enabling wireless “mesh” networks that work when cell towers do not and allowing for more detailed emergency alerts. State and local governments should update building codes to make homes and businesses more resilient. And the Trump administration should rethink some of the budget cuts it proposed to agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which would make future dangers harder to identify and respond to.
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How climate change is linked to sudden spike in American road fatalities.
A 7% spike in road deaths in 2015 has been attributed to unusually warm weather across the US.
A 7% spike in road deaths in 2015 has been attributed to unusually warm weather across the US.
The sudden increase in fatalities bucked a 35-year trend of decreasing road fatalities. It was previously attributed to the use of mobile phones, but this trend didn't seem to fit the sharp increase in deaths, according to a study in the journal Injury Prevention.
"Cell phones didn't change that much in one year. It was a record temperature year in the US, and people go out more when it's warmer," study author Leon Robertson, a retired epidemiologist at Yale University's School of Public Health, told IBTimes UK.
There was an average increase of 1.5C from 2014 to 2015. When the weather is warmer, people tend to take more trips.
"People consult the weather to decide whether to ride a bike or walk," Robertson said. "It's just a question of travel for any reason – recreation, visiting friends or going to play golf."
This potentially exposes them to greater risk of accident. Robertson found that in the 100 most densely populated counties in the US, people drove an extra 60 miles a year for every 1C increase in temperature. That added up to an additional 13.6 billion miles driven in 2015.
"More than half of the variation in deaths was explained by temperature," said Robertson.
Warmer weather hit the most vulnerable road users hardest – cyclist deaths went up 13%, pedestrian deaths went up 9.5% and motorcyclist deaths went up 8% from 2014 to 2015. Although a breakdown of how many people went walking or cycling by roads on given days is lacking, it's plausible people are more likely to get out on foot in warmer weather.
After accounting for factors such as precipitation, speed limits and drink-driving laws, the relationship with temperature was still significant.
Climate change has led to a slow average increase in temperatures on a global scale over decades. The spike in deaths was linked to a record high yearly temperature in just one year, following decades of decline due to tightening road safety laws. While this might seem counterintuitive, Robertson asserted that temperature strongly predicted a greater number of road deaths on a day-to-day basis.
As climate change progresses, record high temperature years - and other forms of extreme weather - are expected to become increasingly frequent. Analysis of 2016's data on road deaths, when it becomes available, will help to test the proposed link between temperature and fatalities. 2016 was the hottest year on record, and 2017 is predicted to come in a close second.
To counter this trend, Robertson recommended exercising in areas separated from cars and other traffic as much as possible.
"A lot of places are trying to create separate areas where there's no traffic, and some specific paths for bicycles and pedestrians. I would recommend people to continue to exercise in parks, fields, hiking trails – in places away from cars as much as possible."
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'Too many soldiers to feed': North Koreans fear more sanctions as drought threatens famine.
Sanctions and the worst drought for almost two decades threaten to cause severe hardship for millions of people in North Korea, while the country’s leadership continues to plough scarce resources into its missile and nuclear programmes.
Sanctions and the worst drought for almost two decades threaten to cause severe hardship for millions of people in North Korea, while the country’s leadership continues to plough scarce resources into its missile and nuclear programmes, according to UN agencies and those with contacts in the impoverished nation.
A drought that ravaged crops earlier this summer will leave the North unable to properly feed many of its people, including soldiers in the country’s million-strong army, the groups have warned.
While living standards have improved for some North Koreans under Kim Jong-un’s leadership, many of the country’s 25 million people face a struggle to secure enough food while others risk losing their jobs due to sanctions, according to Jiro Ishimaru, a Japanese documentary maker who runs a network of citizen journalists inside North Korea.
“For one thing, there are too many soldiers to feed,” Ishimaru, whose contacts are equipped with contraband mobile phones, told the Guardian at his Asia Press office in the western Japanese city of Osaka.
“And corruption is rife, so that by the time senior military officers have taken their share of food provisions to sell for profit on the private market, there is next to nothing left for ordinary soldiers.”
Ishimaru, who spoke to several contacts about living conditions in North Korea from the Chinese border earlier this month, added: “One of them told me that there was talk of war with the US, but that many North Korean soldiers are in poor physical condition and in no fit state to fight.”
Ishimaru fears the focus on missile launches and rising tensions between Pyongyang and Washington means the plight of ordinary North Koreans is being overlooked.
“This is exactly what Kim Jong-un wants – to project an image of strength, that he and the people are one and the same. In an ordinary country there would be riots over the food shortages, but not in North Korea.”
The state’s inability to provide has spawned a private market in food and Chinese-made clothes that is tolerated, if not encouraged, by officials. “The authorities allow it to continue because they know the state would collapse otherwise,” he added.
The UN, concerned about the prospect of widespread malnutrition and other illnesses after the country suffered its worst drought since 2001, has approved $6.3m in aid to help it cope with shortages of corn, rice, maize, potatoes and other essential crops.
The Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Workers’ party of Korea, reported that “prevention battles” had been launched to counter an “abysmal drought” that began in May according to the NK News website.
In a special alert last month, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimated North Korea’s early-season crop production was down almost a third from the same period last year.
“More rains are urgently needed to avoid significant decreases in the main 2017 cereal production season,” the report said. “Should drought conditions persist, the food security situation is likely to further deteriorate.”
It added: “Most of the country’s population is critically dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. At this point, it is vital that farmers receive appropriate and timely agricultural input assistance.”
UN officials are determined to prevent a repeat of a famine in the mid-1990s that, according to some estimates, killed as many as one million North Koreans.
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How bad was the famine in North Korea in the 1990s?
Ishimaru, who last week witnessed “clearly undernourished” soldiers washing their uniforms in the Yalu river near the Chinese border, said: “The drought, combined with sanctions, will take the North Korean economy in a dangerous direction by next spring. This is a time of real hardship for ordinary people.”
As Kim and Donald Trump traded verbal blows over Pyongyang’s missile tests, reports emerged of public discontent towards the regime’s focus on weapons development.
Soon after North Korea successfully launched a Hwasong-14 ICBM late last month, some residents in the country’s North Pyongan province questioned the wisdom of inviting more international reprisals by testing ballistic missiles.
The Daily NK website quoted a source in North Korea as saying that some residents felt “disillusioned by the Kim Jong-un regime, which spends more money on developing missiles than improving their livelihoods”.
This undated picture released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un visiting a pig farm at Taechon Air Base of the Korean People’s Army.
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This undated picture released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un visiting a pig farm at Taechon Air Base of the Korean People’s Army. Photograph: STR/AFP/Getty Images
The anonymous source added: “Everyone is aware that whenever the regime launches a missile, economic sanctions will follow. There’s nothing to celebrate for ordinary citizens. In the beginning, the residents were proud of the regime openly opposing the US with nuclear development and missiles, but these days, anti-US sentiment has weakened, while respect for the regime has plummeted.”
New UN sanctions that aim to slash by a third North Korea’s $3bn annual export revenue risk creating an extra layer of misery for ordinary North Koreans.
The measures are expected to threaten export-dependent jobs, including those at Musan mine, the country’s biggest producer of iron ore. The ban on seafood exports will hit fishermen whose livelihoods depend on selling part of their catch to China.
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