Widow looking for answers after Quebec man dies in Texas Ironman competition
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Landslides and flooding triggered by heavy monsoon rain hit parts of western India, killing more than 100 people, officials and news reports said Friday. More than 1,000 people trapped by floodwaters were rescued.
The dead included 54 killed in four landslides in the Raigad and Ratnagiri districts in western Maharashtra state on Thursday and Friday, according to District Collector Nidhi Chaudhary and state government official Sagar Pathak.
Many of those who were rescued were stranded on rooftops and even on top of buses on highways, Chaudhary said.
Pathak said more than 30 people were missing after the landslides.
Chaudhary said the rain had slowed, but water levels were rising again because of a high tide Friday. Rescuers, however, have reached the worst-hit areas.
Disasters caused by landslides and flooding are common in India during the June-September monsoon season, when heavy rains weaken the foundations of structures that are often poorly built.
Twenty-seven people were killed by houses collapsing or being swept away by rushing floodwaters in Satara district, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. It also said more than 20 deaths have been reported from the eastern districts of Gondia and Chandrapur.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was anguished by the loss of lives.
“The situation in Maharashtra due to heavy rains is being closely monitored and assistance is being provided to the affected,” Modi tweeted.
Elsewhere, a house collapsed Friday after heavy rains in the Shivaji Nagar area in eastern Mumbai, killing at least four two people and injuring eight others, fire officials said.
In Ratnagiri district, 200 people were rescued from hilly areas on Thursday after the heavy rains. In the coastal town of Chiplun, home to 70,000 people, more than half the area was flooded, said B.N. Patil, district administrator of Ratnagiri.
The army, navy, coast guard and the National Disaster Response Force were helping in rescue operations, the defense ministry said.
An Indian navy statement said it deployed helicopters to evacuate stranded people and sent rescue teams with boats to the region.
Authorities on Friday sounded an alert in the southern state of Telangana, with heavy rains causing flooding in Hyderabad, the state capital, and other low-lying areas.
Meteorologists said the 30 centimeters (12 inches) of rain that has fallen so far this month in Hyderabad, one of India's information technology hubs, is the most in July in 10 years. The floodgates of one of the main reservoirs, Osman Sagar, were opened for the first time in a decade to discharge excess water.
Last weekend, more than 30 people were killed in landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rain in and around Mumbai, India's financial and entertainment capital.
The monsoon is crucial for rain-fed crops planted during the season, but the rain often causes extensive damage and kills scores of people each year.
Experts said heavy rainfall along India's western coast is in line with how rainfall patterns have changed in the region in past years due to climate change.
“The frequency and intensity of heavy rains has increased,” said Roxy Mathew Koll, a scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in the western city of Pune.
He added that the warming Arabian Sea is driving more cyclones and more intense rainfall over short periods of time.
“Every year we need to be prepared on the west coast,” he said.
------
Associated Press writers Omer Farooq in Hyderabad, India, and Aniruddha Ghosal in New Delhi contributed to this report
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Facing pushback from physicians and businesspeople over the coming increase to the capital gains inclusion rate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his deputy Chrystia Freeland are standing by their plan to target Canada's highest earners.
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says that what's happening now in a trash-littered federal park in Quebec is a perfect metaphor for how the Trudeau government runs things.
People living near a wildfire burning about 15 kilometres southwest of Peace River are being told to evacuate their homes.
The world is seeing a near breakdown of international law amid flagrant rule-breaking in Gaza and Ukraine, multiplying armed conflicts, the rise of authoritarianism and huge rights violations in Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar, Amnesty International warned Wednesday as it published its annual report.
Police are investigating after a transport truck collided with a train in Sarnia.
As some family doctors are retiring and others are moving away from family medicine, there are fewer medical students to take their place.
Individuals being barred from entering Ontario’s legislature while wearing a keffiyeh say the garment is part of their cultural identity— and the only ones making it political are the politicians banning it.
United States authorities who have been searching for a pair of missing kayakers from British Columbia since the weekend have recovered two bodies in the nearby San Juan Islands of Washington state.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a Grade 4 student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.