Disaster preparedness and emergency response policy and administration

More than 100 new fire engines were provided to provincial police stations across the Kingdom in an effort to bolster the country’s firefighting capacity, Interior Minister Sar Kheng announced yesterday. ...

Behind a clutch of huts that hug the major route between Cambodia’s capital and its famed Angkor temples, rice farmers Phem Phean and Sok Khoert peer into a cement hollow.   ...

Fires have consumed more than 2,000 hectares of Prek Toal protected area in Battambang, killing some animals and destroying the breeding sites of multiple endangered species, Prek Toal project managers said yesterday. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen took to Facebook on Friday to call on citizens to use water sparingly amid the worst drought in decades, also explaining that the government was trucking water to those most in need. ...

Key Sokha was preparing dinner for her family at their home in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district on Thursday night when a chorus of shouts broke out nearby.   ...

Two homes were completely destroyed, while 35 others and four schools were damaged, by heavy rain and strong winds in the western province of Pailin on Friday.The schools remained open despite the damage, said Seng Vanntha, deputy chief of Pailin district. ...

Almost every province in Cambodia is facing some level of drought, according to director of the Meteorology Department at the Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology Oum Ryna, but only a few provinces were facing a severe shortage of water. ...

Government officials on Wednesday applauded China’s decision to take emergency measures to counter the impact of a regional drought by releasing water into the Mekong River from the Jinghong Hydropower Station in China’s southwestern Yunnan province. ...

The Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology issued a statement yesterday encouraging the Kingdom’s citizens to be cautious around lightning storms, which occur frequently between March and July. ...

The Law on Disaster Management, which passed in July and was discussed at a government workshop in mid-December, has yet to take effect because it still requires royal and government decrees, according to officials.   ...

Farmers and exporters have expressed concerns over an Agriculture Ministry notice issued on Wednesday asking farmers to have only one harvest this upcoming dry season because of water shortages across the country, given that this could affect the paddy output next year.The ministry notice cited ...

Education and disaster management leaders from eight Southeast Asian countries gathered in Phnom Penh yesterday in a bid to encourage schools in areas prone to natural catastrophes to make children safer. ...

Cambodia is ranked one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change. Many of its people rely on agriculture, and the changes to the country’s climate, whether more droughts or more floods, makes them particularly vulnerable. ...

As the weather pattern known as El Niño threatens to wreak havoc on climatic conditions across the globe, the Cambodian government has warned that higher-than-usual temperatures, which already sparked droughts this year, will cause next year’s rainy season to be even shorter.What’s more, the heat ...

The Chinese company that operates the hydroelectric power plant on the Kamchay River in Kampot province yesterday denied that a decision to open the dam’s gates during a recent storm was the cause of severe flooding in the area. ...

A coalition of civil society organisations (CSOs) has produced a document laying out in detail the projected dire effects of climate change on the Kingdom, in the hopes it will help their voice be heard among the 25,000 delegates attending the upcoming Paris Climate Talks ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has called on local authorities and government ministries to be ready to distribute water to farmers around the country due to the ongoing shortage in the Kingdom’s reservoirs. He added that if people had trouble contacting local authorities, individual farmers should ...

Cambodia has sustained far fewer deaths due to natural disasters than any other country in the region this year, deputy secretary general of the National Committee for Disaster Management Ross Sovann said on Friday, at a workshop coinciding with Asean Day of Disaster Management. ...

This year’s celebration of ASEAN Day for Disaster Management (ADDM) and International Day for Disaster Reduction (IDDR) will be hosted by Cambodia on Oct. 9-10, aiming to raise people’s awareness of disaster risk reduction. ...

Officials in Kampot province are working to quell rumors that flooding there was intentionally caused by the opening of a hydropower dam upstream. ...

A girl has died and thousand hectares of agricultural plantation have been flooded by flashflood in two separate districts in Battambang province, said Keo Vy, spokesman for the government’s National Committee for Disaster Management said today.   ...

Hundreds of families were evacuated from their homes in Pailin province over the weekend as tropical storm Vamco brought torrential rain to the country’s northwest after causing serious flooding in Kampot and Battambang provinces last week, officials said Sunday. ...

Floodwater in the region around the Kampot city and Toek Chhou district has been receding today, according to Kampot provincial authorities. ...

More than 3,600 families and 1,500 hectares of farmland have been affected by flooding in ten communes, in Kampot province. ...