Severe weather conditions left numerous cities without electricity, one person reported dead  Weather storm has covered nearly the whole territory of Ukraine.

Numerous regions report of accidents and power cuts caused by heavy rains and winds. Local residents also suffer from the consequences of natural disasters.

A 20-year-old man died in Kharkiv region amidst the field, his mother later found his body. In a while the medical expertise showed he had been struck by lightning and died because of electrical shock.

Ihor Lupandin, member of Ukraine's State Emergency Service in Kharkiv Region: "The field is an open space, so it is no surprise the man was killed by lightning. The medics later confirmed he had been damaged by electricity. Except for the thunderstorm, there can be no other reasons."

Torrential rains followed by thunderstorm struck several districts of the city of Kharkiv. The meteorologists say there have been a monthly rainfall level during one night. Four cars have been damaged so far, several multistoried buildings remain without roof, for it has been torn off by strong wind flow. The workers of communal service say they will need at least a couple of days to eliminate the results of the weather disaster.

15 villages in the whole region remain without electrical supply.

In the city of Dnipro the abnormal heat was replaced by heavy rains and thunderstorm. A great deal of rainfall has resulted in massive floods in the city centre, as well as the outskirts. In order to escape submerging deeply in water, numerous pedestrians had to climb up the benches. Those driving a car encountered additional problems, since the vehicles were not able to move through the entire water front. Some of the number plates were washed off, now the police seek for their owners. 

Photo courtesy - social media

One more accident caused by weather conditions happened in the city of Poltava, that is north-eastern Ukraine. A multistoried building caught fire after being hit by lightning. A portion of electricity struck the aerial on the roof, the next moment the flame encompassed the area of 500 square metres in total.

City administration sent the whole firemen staff to battle the fire. Despite big number of workers, they managed to extinguish the flame only three hours later. One of the flats on the 5th floor is totally burnt, 10 other apartments are flooded with water, the roof is also partially destroyed.

Ukrainian capital also suffered from bad weather. In the centre of Kyiv strong winds overthrew an old maple. No injuries reported, though the centennial tree damaged four cars, electrical cable, and protective net on one of the balconies. The vehicles belonged mainly to the workers of Ukraine's Security Service that is situated close to the site. Now some of them are set to complain to the court.

What are they based on?

It is with bemusement that we note our Minister for Relief and Disaster Management giving such categorical assurance that Bangladesh will not experience a massive earthquake in the magnitude of 8 or 9 on the Richter scale. This he has said in the backdrop of a study by a geologist at Columbia University in New York City that has found that Dhaka sits on a dangerous fault which could trigger a massive earthquake affecting around 140 million people in the region that includes Bangladesh, India and Myanmar. 

While we are not suggesting for a moment that there will be a mega quake, we hesitate to rule out such a possibility altogether without scientific basis. Just because we have been lucky enough to be spared an earthquake of such magnitude for the last 200 years as the Minister has quoted, does not guarantee that it will not occur now or in the near future. While it is important for the minister to tell people not to panic, his dismissal of an earthquake of that scale occurring, we feel, is misplaced. Given that it is not possible to predict whether such an earthquake is imminent, or that it may occur after a few hundred years, the most prudent task for a country under risk would be to boost its preparedness for such a disaster.  

What the minister should be telling the public is how prepared the nation is or needs to be for such a disaster should it occur. This includes training rescue teams, mobilizing volunteers, educating the public on survival skills, keeping adequate hospital staff to attend to the injured, enough ambulances, firefighting facilities etc. Only such contingency plans can reassure the public.

DEHRADUN: The year 2016 is proving to be a terrible year for Uttarakhand in terms of human lives lost in natural disaster incidents. As per official figures, 62 people have been killed in natural disasters like flash floods, cloudbursts, landslides and forest fires as of Monday. Over 64 persons have been injured.

Even animals have had to bear the brunt of nature's fury with around 887 animals including domestic cattle perishing in disasters since January this year. Besides loss of human lives, there has been considerable property loss as well with around 144 houses getting completely damaged and 133 sustaining severe damage in natural disaster incidents.

Elaborating on the reasons behind the high numbers, Santosh Badoni, deputy secretary, disaster management department, told TOI, "Uttarakhand is sensitive to natural calamities due to its terrain. Besides flash floods and landslides which take maximum lives in a year, the state is also one of the most seismic or earthquake-prone regions in the country with majority of its area lying in either the highly vulnerable Zone 5 or Zone 4."

This year, Pithoragarh has been the worst affected disaster-hit district in the state with 17 causalities and eight people missing and feared dead in the series of cloudbursts which ocurred on July 1, triggering flash flood and landslides and wreaking havoc in the Bastadi, Naulanda, Charma and Pathorkot villages of the district.

Even Dehradun district reported 13 deaths due to natural disaster in the present year with as many as 10 workers being killed in a single incident when they were hit by a landslide in the Chakrata area in the month of May. Eight people lost their lives in Tehri district followed by Chamoli district where five persons have been killed this year.

Around 87 drinking water pipelines and 1184 electricity lines were also damaged during the natural disasters in Uttarakhand between January and July.

Data from the disaster management department shows that on an average 73 people have lost their lives every year in the state since 2001, mainly due to landslides and flash flood-related incidents. The average death count excludes fatalities during the 2013 catastrophe which alone killed over 4,000 people.

Overall, since its inception, the state has seen 1,016 people getting killed (excluding the 2013 disaster) in landslides and flash floods. In the last two years, landslides and flash floods have claimed 119 lives.

And if the modelling is correct, this earthquake could be at least as devastating as the 2011 quake which devastated Japan and took 16,000 lives.

The discovery of the hidden geographic fault lurking under southern Asia could unleash a magnitude 9.0 quake, placing up to 140 million people at risk in the most densely-populated place on earth, researchers fear.

The study of the area took more than a decade and detected the massive fault beneath Bangladesh, parts of India and Myanmar.

The research, the first to use GPS data collected from Bangladeshi tracking stations, suggests the northeastern corner of the Indian subcontinent is on a collision course with Asia.

The tectonic plates far beneath the earth’s surface are covered in layers of sediment more than 20m thick, and the study models suggest at the upper levels they are stuck in a pile-up, one thrusting under the other in a ‘megathrust’ which may have been under stress for more than 400 years.

Potential quake zone. Solid red line indicates an area of about 62,000 square kilometres that could move during a subduction-zone earthquake, affecting 140 million people or more. Image: Chris Small/Lamont-Doherty Earth ObservatorySource:Supplied

Researchers believe the area is spring-loaded to buckle and rupture under the strain. But because their discovery is relatively recent, they have no idea when, or if, the fault will give way and trigger a 8.2 to 9.0 megaquake.

“We don’t know if it’s tomorrow or if it’s not going to be for another 500 years,” study co-author Michael Steckler, a geophysicist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York City said in an article on the university website.

“We don’t know how long it will take to build up steam, because we don’t know how long it was since the last one. But we can definitely see it building.”

Overcrowding would make it difficult to rescue survivors in the event of an earthquake.

“Right now, the streets are clogged with traffic such that it’s impossible to drive around Dhaka on a normal day,” Steckler said. “If you fill the streets with debris, it’s really going to be impossible to get supplies and rescue equipment and things like that around,” Steckler told Live Science.

The research team is now building a more detailed map of the shape of the fault, as well as looking at historical tsunami data to understand how often megathrust earthquakes occur, Steckler said.

Japan tsunami hits Sendai

The March 11, 2011 Japan earthquake, with a magnitude of 9.0 struck off Japan’s northeastern shore and was the most powerful to ever hit the island country.

The quake triggered a devastating tsunami which struck the area with waves of up to 40m, tearing apart villages and towns, flattening homes and carrying ships inland, before sucking back to out to sea carrying debris, vehicles and bodies in its wake.

Damage to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant completed a deadly treble of disaster, contaminating an area which continues to see more than 100,000 displaced locals living as evacuees.