Floods

Heavy rains have destroyed or damaged hundreds of shelters housing ethnic Tamils displaced during Sri Lanka's civil war, the United Nations said Monday. The weekend flooding has added to concern over the welfare of nearly 300,000 people who have been living in tents and makeshift shelters since the May defeat by government forces of the Tamil Tigers, ending their 25-year armed campaign for a homeland for the ethnic Tamil minority. Parts of the Manik Farm camp in the island's northeast were inundated, and about 1,925 shelters may have been damaged or destroyed, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement.

A levee break early Saturday sent up to 8 feet of icy water coursing through hundreds of homes in the northwestern Nevada town of Fernley, the largest catastrophe tied to the weekend storms that have lashed California and Nevada. The flooding stranded thousands of people, some of whom were carried out of their neighborhoods in pontoon boats or helicopters. No injuries were reported, but more than 1,500 people were displaced, officials said Saturday night.

The water ravaged the Crimson Road neighborhood. It punched in windows, buckled pavement, dug a 7-foot-deep gulch. It barreled over Tony Ebert's redwood fence and hurled his shed across the yard. Calf-deep in brown water on Sunday, he wondered: How could this happen again?

The wave of storms battering Southern California began to take its toll Friday, causing avalanches that killed one skier and left another near death in Wrightwood, flooding roads and threatening additional damage as more rain approaches. The new round of storms was expected to begin about 6 tonight, bringing up to 5 inches of rain to Los Angeles County, up to 3 inches in Orange County and up to 8 inches in Riverside and San Bernardino counties by Monday morning.

Before floodwaters sent mud, timber and debris roaring through it, Boistfort Valley Farm was a model of modern food production based on old-time values: community involvement and organic growing methods. The family farm supplied veggies, fruits, herbs and flowers for farmers' markets in Seattle, Olympia and Chehalis, Wash.

The Grand Canyon is about to take a bath, and National Park Service officials who oversee the natural wonder are worried. Federal flood control managers, led by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, this week plan to unleash millions of cubic feet of water from behind Glen Canyon Dam to "flush" the huge canyon bottom with a simulated springtime flood. Bureau of Reclamation and U.S.

A gorgeous, sunny day didn't fool dozens of residents as they packed their belongings into trucks Thursday and high-tailed it to high ground. The rising, churning waters of the Meramec River foretold disaster: By today, the river's projected all-time crest of more than 31 feet was expected to send floodwaters gushing through the low-lying downtown, swamping the streets and floors of dozens of houses in this hamlet southwest of St. Louis.

Strong thunderstorms toppled trees, knocked out power and damaged homes Friday in Mississippi and Alabama, while flooding in Kentucky forced evacuations and killed a 2-year-old girl. Across Mississippi, fast-moving storms unleashed possible tornadoes, heavy rain and some hail. Power failures were reported in several communities, including Jackson and downtown Vicksburg. Tate Moudy of Brandon, east of Jackson, had just walked into the Southern States Utility Trailer Sales office on U.S.

High in the Himalayas, above this peaceful valley where farmers till a patchwork of emerald-green fields, an icy lake fed by melting glaciers waits to become a "tsunami from the sky." The lake is swollen dangerously past normal levels, thanks to the global warming that is causing the glaciers to retreat at record speed. But no one knows when the tipping point will come and the lake can take no more, bursting its banks and sending torrents of water crashing into the valley below.

California's capital city may be best known for politics, but it has another claim to fame: It's America's most flood-threatened city not named New Orleans. A recent state report predicts that the right combination of unlucky weather conditions could put some parts of the city under more than 20 feet of water, causing a $25-billion disaster that would cripple state government and ripple through the California economy.