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THE STORM THAT hit the country on Wednesday seemed pretty terrible — but how bad was it really?
Well, pretty bad. Amongst the five worst storms we’ve seen since Met Éireann started keeping records, forecaster Evelyn Cusack told reporters the following day (the weather service is still crunching the numbers on where exactly it sits in that chart).
In terms of good news — there were no lives lost. According to the official update from the chairman of the Emergency Coordination Committee on Thursday afternoon, there were “a number of minor injuries” reported, but nothing too serious.
So from that welcome ‘zero’ to a quarter-of-a-million-plus, here’s the 12 February storm (or ‘Darwin‘ to its friends) in numbers:
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Surprised to see Madagasgar on the list..thought that was a fairly prosperous country
It was deforested excessively and now isn’t able to sustain much effective crop growth
Sad considering the amount of aid Africa receives..if their politicians and indeed some of the aid workers themselves (note: some, N O T all) were not lining their own pockets, there might not be the hunger problems at all.
@Elayne, Africa is a big continent and not a nation, i guess you should be able to distinguish countries without using a collective name. People don’t generalise Europe when they refer to Albania etc.
Hmm Thats certainly taught me something.. Mainly that some people like being smug and pedantic even when their comment has nothing really to do with the subject matter in the comment they are criticizing.
That is a horrible sweeping generalisation. I trust you realise also that OUR emissions of CO2 in the wealthy west are already affecting many African countries’ ability to grow their own food – and they will suffer the most in coming decades – Mary Robinson’s Foundation for Climate Justice has lots of statistics and information on this…
#2 Eritrea, surely, Aoife? Sad to see practically all are in Africa . I’m surprised to see Madagascar on the list and astonished that Zimbabwe’s not there, after Mugabe’s shenanigans!
“Sad to see practically all are in africa”
??
What does that even mean? Would a more even global distribution somehow reduce these people’s suffering?
@ Mary, the last time i checked my geography textbook, Yemen is not in Africa, and Madagascar. so please check your facts.
Head back towards the bookshelf, take down a dictionary and look up “practically”.
Maybe next time you’d like adjust the tone of your replies.
Just to encourage you to do so I’ll also point out that you’ve mixed up your tenses: “last time I checked Yemen *was*…” Also missing is a capital letter for the word ‘I’.
You’re welcome, smart-arse. From a smarter-arse :)
Thanks Fuh Qui , for defending me against these know-it-alls. And unless I’m mistaken Madagascar lies off the South eastern coast of Africa. I know it’s a separate country.
Actually I think Madagascar is included in the countries of the continent of Africa. otherwise it would be like saying that Ireland and Britain aren’t European because they’re islands off the European mainland.
Oh yes, Mathematical@YDL, just one other thing. You might just check your gramnar before posting smart-aleck comments.
“Yemen is not in Africa, and Madagascar…”
When a sentence uses a negative verb the correct conjunction to use is “nor”.
Your sentence should have read: “Yemen is not in Africa, nor is Madagascar…”.
@Mary, thanks for the correction, and sorry about the English language, but should I remind you that English is not my native tongue, infact, it is the third language I speak, so don’t blame me if I am not perfect at it, at least I can speak my language perfectly and proud of that, i don’t even make my living by speaking English language, so why did you think I should take pride in being perfect about a colonial language? Sorry.
Sorry @MathematicalYDL. It’s not eay to know if people have English as their first language when they don’t use their own name. Hope I haven’t been too hard on you, but at least you got a free English lesson out of it! ;)
@mary, not really, but i think i have learnt enough of English language sufficient for me to buy few pints without needing an interpreter,
FFS! get a life!
I neva heard of these countries … wtf wrong with me
Mentally malnourished maybe ;-)
Ah Criminal, you’ve been owned. lol!
we should be ashamed of ourselves
crying about the budget when people are literally starving to death
Hi Mary – it is indeed, I left out a letter by accident. The mistake has been fixed.
Thanks Aoife. Sorry to be such a pedant!
And we pay farmers here not to grow food to protect the price makes no sense
Oh well; if they had excess food they would have so many kids that overpopulation and it’s resulting problems would kill millions anyway.. Watching the ageing rich first world contend with the hungry populous third world makes for scary viewing over the next half century..
Send contraception and food please….
Erirea ???? sounds like a bowl movement
Greed has a lot to do with a country, continent, (people) starving. Climate also plays a role, there are parts of the world where food is thrown out if not ‘used by a date’, where people actually die from too much food, where you can buy a handful of fruit for 39 cent. Yet money is sent, crops are grown, animals are transported and yet the people starve. There will always been starvation, the world is over-populated. It was calculated that the “average” person requires a certain square acreage of land during their lifetime for food growth, animal grazing etc. and with this they deducted that the world is nearly 3 times over populated. There are no easy fixes for this problem!
40% of food is wasted and thrown away… there really is enough food to feed the world… unfortunately many countries in Africa are suffering from the effects of climate change reducing their ability to grow their own food, as a result of our C02 emissions and this will only get worse :-(
Is that you Mel Finn from Longfort?
An article on the starving people.of Syria was mostly ridiculed by people in the comments section by making jokes while there are no jokes made in this article (and rightly so if I may add)
Shows the lack of compassion people have for the Syrian people.
It reminds me of the Irish famine. Lots of the poor folk were fussy eaters and did not like fish. They preferred to die rather than eat fish which was in abundance all around the country.
Really, were you there, I doubt anyone suffering from starvation would be a fussy eater
Yep. Bizarre , isn’t it?
Well, Padraig, I wouldn’t call eating the grass on the side of the road being a fussy eater myself.
have your say