Bogota - A new storm is threatening to hit the Bahamas, less
than two weeks after Hurricane Dorian devastated the islands, the US
National Weather Service has said.
On Friday, the storm passed by the Bahamas' eastern Cat Island. It
was expected to head north-west and possibly develop into a tropical
storm before making a landfall on Grand Bahama Island on Saturday.
Winds of up to 75 kilometres per hour and heavy rain were forecast
for Saturday. If the storm strengthens as expected, it will be given
the name Humberto, according to US broadcaster CNN.
Dorian, which made its first landfall on September 1, left about
13,000 houses destroyed or damaged, according to the Red Cross. About
1,300 people remain missing and the death toll of 50 is expected to
rise.
Disasters triggered a record 7 million new displacements globally in
the first half of this year, according to the Internal Displacement
Monitoring Centre (IDMC), a source of data and analysis on internal
displacement.
The vast majority of the disasters were associated with storms and
floods, suggesting that mass displacement by extreme weather events
is becoming the norm, the IDMC said Friday.
Cyclone Fani triggered millions of new displacements in the form of
life-saving evacuations in India and Bangladesh, while cyclone Idai
wreaked havoc across Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Madagascar.
Floods also devastated Iran, Ethiopia, the Philippines and Bolivia.
The IDMC estimates that the number of new displacements associated
with natural disasters will more than triple by the end of the year
to around 22 million.