Latest from Natural Disasters

Fukushima battles food fear factor

Government ministers, foreign press and ambassadors including New Zealand's Mark Sinclair are sitting in a glitzy conference room in downtown Tokyo, looking at stunning photographs on powerpoint of a....

Pam: Vanuatu counts the cost

New Zealanders in Vanuatu have been drafted in to help at the capital's main hospital after it was ravaged by Cyclone Pam.

Vanuatu - dozens feared dead

Dozens are feared dead on Vanuatu and up to 10,000 are homeless in the wake of Cyclone Pam.

Pam moves closer to NZ

Tropical Cyclone Pam is slowly weakening as it approaches NZ, but will still be "a very powerful tropical cyclone" as it passes the country within a few hundred kilometres.

Army joins clean-up after Cyclone Marcia

Floodwaters are swamping two central Queensland towns as the huge clean-up continues in two others that bore the brunt of Cyclone Marcia's fury.

Army helps clean up after Marcia

The big rebuild has begun in central Queensland with the army joining efforts in the mop-up of the war-zone-like destruction left by Cyclone Marcia.

Cyclone havoc in northwest Australia

Rescue and recovery teams have entered the four remote Australian Northern Territory communities hit hardest by Cyclone Lam and are beginning to catalogue the damage.

The eyes of the storms

Communities in coastal Queensland and New South Wales are bracing themselves for downpours of up to 500mm.

Silence ... then grim realisation

It was the first time in 40 years Andrew Welch had not been home for Christmas, his brother Jeremy recalls.

Decade on, Aceh looks to future

"I had never seen in my life so much destruction and death on such a massive scale. I remember going to a place called Lambaro, just outside Banda Aceh...

Memory of ruin still raw

Mike Bush was in Bangkok when the Boxing Day earthquake struck and even though he was 1250km from the epicentre, he felt it.

Model's life changed by tsunami

It was Christmas Day and life seemed perfect for Petra Nemcova. The Czech model had already graced the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine...

Powerful storm claims two lives

The US Pacific coast's most ferocious storm in years has moved south, bringing hurricane force winds and heavy downpours to southern California one day after claiming two lives in the Northwest.

Kiwi hard at work in typhoon zone

City braced for Hagupit storm surges

A powerful typhoon destroyed homes and flooded low-lying coastal villages in the Philippines, forcing a million people to flee to safety and reportedly leaving at least three dead.

Cleaning up after the big storms

A year ago, Typhoon Haiyan created a series of storm surges that left several thousand people dead and around four million homeless.