No remaining humanitarian needs in China in wake of deadly typhoon, UN finds

A United Nations assessment team dispatched to China in the wake of Typhoon Morakot – which has claimed hundreds of lives – has found that humanitarian needs have been met by the local, provincial and central authorities.

The typhoon is said to have wreaked damages totalling $5.3 billion, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

A UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) group sent to Beijing following the 6-11 landfall of the deadly storm wrapped up its mission to China yesterday.

Following a meeting with top Government officials on 27 August, the group visited the most affected areas in Zhejiang and Fujian provinces in eastern China.

In Zhejiang, the typhoon forced nearly 1 million people to leave their homes, affected 8 million others and destroyed 9,000 houses. Some 4,000 evacuation centres were set up, and hundreds of townships and villages remain under water. In Cangnan county, water levels reached two metres, the highest in five decades.

Meanwhile, in Fujian, 520,000 people were evacuated, 1.6 million people were affected and over 1,000 houses were ruined.

Another UNDAC team sent to Taipei concluded its assessment on 28 August after visiting Kaohsiung and Pingtung, the two most affected counties where more than 600 deaths have been confirmed.

That mission also found that no significant gaps in meeting emergency humanitarian needs remain, but a relatively small group of people, numbering over 2,600, are living in temporary shelters and will require continued support in the coming months.

In a related development, the top UN humanitarian official said today that high-visibility disasters, including Typhoon Morakot, have grabbed the headlines at the expense of other more grave weather-related crises, including the severe droughts in Kenya and Ethiopia.

Climate change is now a major driver of disaster, with ever more frequent and intense floods, storms and droughts, said Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes. Weather-related events are uprooting or impacting greater numbers of people everywhere, with over 65 million people – or 1 per cent of the world’s population – affected by floods and storms last year.

“If it is challenging for humanitarians to cope in today’s circumstances, the future could be much more difficult,” he warned. “To avert or reduce the worst humanitarian consequences of climate change, we know what needs to be done and we must do it.”

To this end, he appealed to countries to conclude a new agreement on slashing harmful greenhouse gases at the UN climate change conference this December in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Such a pact must “also help nations cope now with the harmful effects of climate change,” added Mr. Holmes, who also serves as UN Emergency Relief Coordinator.