Extreme Weather Batters Parts of Asia
By Howard Chang/John Van Trieste
From wildfires in Indonesia to intense flooding in China and Japan, parts of Asia are in the middle of a week of severe weather, made worse, in part by El Niño.
Extreme Weather Brings Fire and Floods Across Asia
==
REPORTER:
Palm oil farmer Roni surveys the destruction on his property in southern Borneo in Indonesia. There’s not much he can say: charred waste is all he has to show for seven years of work building up his own plantation. The wildfire that destroyed many of his trees came suddenly as Roni was caring for his wife in the hospital.
Roni (PALM OIL FARMER):
My father called us at around half past three, saying that the fire was getting close to the plantation. So we asked him to try watering down the surrounding fires. But the blaze got big very quickly and my father couldn't hold it down anymore.
REPORTER:
It was just before harvest time, too. There’s no money to replant: Roni says that it’s now a matter of cutting his losses.
REPORTER:
He’s just one of many facing ruin from wildfires that have overrun many parts of Indonesia as an El Niño brings dry, windy weather. The country gets wildfires, but this year is something extraordinary: from January to June, the country lost more than 100,000 hectares to fires, more than double the losses during the first half of 2023 when the last El Niño affected the country. And fire season isn’t over.
REPORTER:
While Indonesia burns, parts of China are underwater—same El Niño effect, different outcome. In the northern city of Xuchang, Zhu Guoxin tries to restore some order in a flooded yard.
REPORTER:
Typhoon Dolphin may have passed, but the storage yard where Zhu is caretaker, is still a wreck. The office space filled with shin-deep mucky water.
REPORTER:
The metal construction materials for sale are now left to rust, with a first estimate of $30,000 US dollars in losses from ruined steel pipes alone.
REPORTER:
Zhu tried to salvage the yard, but the weather won.
Zhu Guoxin (STORAGE YARD CARETAKER):
It's been raining two days and two nights nonstop.
We’ve been pumping water out
but the water level kept rising.
The rain is so heavy, it's like
water being poured down in buckets.
I'm over 60 years old
and it’s the first time I've seen rain this heavy
lasting for such a long time.
REPORTER:
All the while, extreme downpours pummel eastern Japan. Emergency crews say two men were found dead in floodwaters in Chiba Prefecture near Tokyo. In just 24 hours, Chiba City got more than three times the amount of rain it normally gets during the whole of August.
REPORTER:
As officials urged more than 100,000 households to evacuate, the rain shut highways and rail services, leaving thousands of people stranded. Until Thursday, this area had never been under the Japanese weather service’s highest alert level. It has now, rounding out a week of extreme weather spreading disaster across parts of Asia.
Howard Chang and John Van Trieste for TaiwanPlus.
