User:Yixin JIANG/sandbox

Disaster description
Sana'a, April 26, 2020 - According to a preliminary report, more than 100000 people in Yemen have been affected by heavy rain and floods since mid April.

Aden, Abyan, Lahj, Marib and Sana’a governorates and Sana’a City have been worst affected. Flooding has damaged roads, bridges and the electricity grid, and contaminated water supplies, cutting access to basic services for thousands of people. Conditions are hardest for thousands of families already displaced who have now lost shelter, food rations and household supplies. Health authorities in Aden Governorate, one of the hardest-hit areas, have confirmed seven deaths, including four children. Two people are missing, and deaths and injuries have been reported elsewhere.

It is reported that the Office of the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/ in Yemen recently released a report saying that 41000 people had been homeless in Yemen in June this year due to floods caused by torrential rains in many provinces. At present, the war in Yemen has not been extinguished, and natural disasters continue to occur. The international community should take concrete actions to intervene urgently. At present, the most worrying problem is the climate, because the region has suffered devastating floods. According to a report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the scale of "weeks of rainfall and floods" was abnormal, causing chaos, many deaths, and the destruction of houses, farmland, roads and important infrastructure. https://www.asianews.it/zh.html

Humanitarian agencies have rushed to provide life-saving assistance including emergency health care, food packs, shelter, clean water and survival items. Agencies are also helping to drain water and clean flooded sites.

Type of Natural hazards
River flood

According to the direct causes of formation, it can be divided into rainstorm flood, snowmelt flood, ice slush flood, glacier flood, dam break flood and soil collapse flood. It is characterized by obvious flood runoff generation and concentration process, flood propagation, flood regulation and storage and flood encounter, sediment carried by flood, and flood periodicity and randomness. Rainstorm flood and snowmelt flood in river flood are closely related to weather situation and climate change, and have obvious seasonality. In Yemen, rainstorm and flood often occur in spring and summer. Because this kind of flood occurs with the arrival of the season every year, it has obvious periodicity.

Direct causes
Torrential rains led to the flood. Heavy rains first hit the country in April and more rainfall followed in June – mainly in southern and eastern governorates and continued in July intensifying at the end of the month and into August.

Climate Risks
The climate varies within the three main regions according to its three kinds of topography: coastal regions, mountainous heights, and eastern plains. Yemen fails to meet the growing demand of the population due to the arid climate, minimal seasonal rainfall and evapotranspiration. The climate-induced scarcity of water has led to the over-exploitation of groundwater to alter the terrain, while the expansion of agricultural projects has led to a significant reduction in trees and shrubs, which has also deprived Yemen of a natural barrier against flooding. Experts predict that flooding will become more frequent in Yemen in the future because of the change in climate and topography.

Socio-Economic Situation
Overall, lack the of broader attention from Yemen itself and the international community and adverse humanitarian, institutional, social, and economic conditions make flood a great challenge to address. Constant flooding makes the environment more vulnerable and puts a lot of pressure on the infrastructure, making it less resilient in the event of a flood. At the same time, the volatile political situation and lack of governance capacity have left policymakers with little time to address issues such as infrastructure.

Social and economic impact
Yemen‘s social and economic conditions have been severely impacted by torrential rains and the ensuing flooding, which have resulted in injuries and fatalities, extensive property damage, destroyed homes and shelters, destroyed already precarious infrastructure, accelerated the spread of diseases, destroyed agricultural yields, and killed livestock. 14 governorates and at least 10,0000 were affected by the flash floods. Apart from that, broken facilities (bridges, roads, etc,.) and blocked access disrupted the humanitarian activities.

Environment impact
Flood waters carry refinery waste and by-products (salts, chemicals) into the ground, contaminating already scarce groundwater resources, destroying farmland and vegetation, and in turn weakening the natural resistance to flooding.