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STORY: GENEVA / COLOMBIA
TRT: 02:40
SOURCE: UNTV CH
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 04 APRIL 2017 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
RECENT - GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Exterior, Palais des Nations
04 APRIL 2017 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
2. Wide shot, press briefing room
3. Med shot, journalists
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Clare Nullis, Spokesperson, World Meteorological Organisation (WMO):
“The quantities of rainfall that we saw in the last week really were exceptional. So the municipality of Mocoa which was the hardest hit by the landslides, it saw 129 mm of rainfall in the space of 24 hours last Friday of which 80 percent fell in the space of just 3 hours from 11 pm to 1 am in the morning which – and that explains the size of the tragedy, the fact that you had so much rainfall falling in such a short time”.
5. Close up, journalist
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Clare Nullis, Spokesperson, World Meteorological Organisation (WMO):
“There were more than 500 municipalities at risk of landslides in Columbia and of these 182 had orange to red alerts, so that is at the top of the warning scale”.
7. Wide shot, journalists
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Clare Nullis, Spokesperson, World Meteorological Organisation (WMO):
“In Columbia there are 700,000 rivers and bodies of water, so it is obviously, given the number it is impossible to have monitoring stations at every single one of those”.
9. Med shot, journalist
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Clare Nullis, Spokesperson, World Meteorological Organisation (WMO):
“The authorities in Peru are sort of saying it is a coastal El Nino, it is a very very strong coastal El Nino. What we don’t have at the moment is a basin wide El Nino with global impacts. It could well be that it does develop later on this year in the coming months. For the moment, we don’t have a basin wide El Nino, but we do have a very very strong localised El Nino which is severely impacting Peru and also parts of Ecuador”.
11. Medium shot, journalists
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Clare Nullis, Spokesperson, World Meteorological Organisation (WMO): “We have seen very very warm coastal waters off the Peruvian coast, up to 10 degrees Celsius above average in some areas, which is quite considerable. It is quite rare, but it is not unprecedented, so there was a previous similar event I think in 1925.”
13. Close up, hands writing
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Clare Nullis, Spokesperson, World Meteorological Organisation (WMO):
“More and more models are saying that we are getting a basin wide El Nino later on this year. At the moment we are not expecting it will be as powerful as the one we had in 2015-2016, but strange things are happening with the climate systems”.
15. Close up, journalist
16. Wide shot, journalists
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said today (4 Apr) more than 500 municipalities in Colombia were at risk of mudslides as heavy rains and overflowing rivers have already killed 262 people in the country’s south-west.
Speaking to reporters in Geneva, WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis said the municipality of Mocoa was hit the hardest by the landslides with 129 mm, some five inches, of rain falling over a 24-hour period on Friday and 182 other municipalities were facing “orange to red alerts” putting them at the top of the warning scale for mudslides.
In addition to the extreme rainfall, Nullis said deforestation, which has removed some of the natural barriers to mudslides, and the sheer number of rivers in Columbia makes these disasters especially difficult to prevent. She added that the country had 700,000 rivers and bodies of water, “so it is obviously given the number it is impossible to have monitoring stations at every single one of those.”
Neighbouring Peru has also seen very heavy rainfall for the past 3 months, resulting in severe flooding and people being displaced. The authorities there believe this is due to a coastal “a very very strong coastal El Nino” according to Nullis. She said while there was currently no basin-wide El Nino with global impacts, but “more and more models” are predicting this will happen later this year. Nullis said the WMO did not expect this El Nino to be as powerful as the one which struck in 2015-2016, “but strange things are happening with the climate systems.”
