Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday.
Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm.
The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.”
The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities said.
The mayor’s office said more casualties were possible in the city of 350,000, located 600km southwest of the capital, Buenos Aires.
The missing girls “may have been carried away by the water,” Bullrich told Radio Mitre.
At least five of the victims died on flooded roadways, possibly after being trapped in their vehicles by fast-rising water.
The downpour, which began on Friday morning, dumped more than 40cm of rain in the area in just eight hours, “practically what Bahia Blanca gets in an entire year,” Buenos Aires Minister of Security Javier Alonso said.
“This is unprecedented,” he added.
Tempers flared on Saturday as Bullrich and Argentine Minister of Defense Luis Petri tried to visit an affected neighborhood, with residents complaining they should have visited the area the previous night, according to a video shared on social media.
Some locals tried to drag Bullrich toward floodwaters, shouting “get wet” and other abuse, before she was pulled away from the scrum by police and government officials.
For Andrea Dufourg, director of environmental policy for the city of Itzuaingo outside Buenos Aires, the extreme weather event “is a clear example of climate change.”
“Unfortunately this will continue to take place... We have no other option than to prepare cities, educate citizens, establish effective early warning systems,” Dufourg said.
The number of evacuees on Saturday stood at 850, down from a peak of 1,321, the mayor’s office said.
Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime. More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right. The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties. A recent poll by the
TENSIONS HIGH: For more than half a year, students have organized protests around the country, while the Serbian presaident said they are part of a foreign plot About 140,000 protesters rallied in Belgrade, the largest turnout over the past few months, as student-led demonstrations mount pressure on the populist government to call early elections. The rally was one of the largest in more than half a year student-led actions, which began in November last year after the roof of a train station collapsed in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people — a tragedy widely blamed on entrenched corruption. On Saturday, a sea of protesters filled Belgrade’s largest square and poured into several surrounding streets. The independent protest monitor Archive of Public Gatherings estimated the
Irish-language rap group Kneecap on Saturday gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November last year. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury,
FLYBY: The object, appears to be traveling more than 60 kilometers per second, meaning it is not bound by the sun’s orbit, astronomers studying 3I/Atlas said Astronomers on Wednesday confirmed the discovery of an interstellar object racing through the solar system — only the third-ever spotted, although scientists suspect many more might slip past unnoticed. The visitor from the stars, designated 3I/Atlas, is likely the largest yet detected, and has been classified as a comet, or cosmic snowball. “It looks kind of fuzzy,” said Peter Veres, an astronomer with the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, which was responsible for the official confirmation. “It seems that there is some gas around it, and I think one or two telescopes reported a very short tail.” Originally known as A11pl3Z before
RSS