Storms steal lives and homes across Asia as millions struggle to recover

The past few weeks have felt like a nightmare that won’t end for families across South and Southeast Asia. A relentless chain of storms and powerful cyclones has torn through the region, killing more than 1,600 people since mid-November and forcing millions from their homes. Entire neighborhoods—from Indonesia’s forested valleys to Sri Lanka’s coastal villages—have disappeared beneath floodwaters. Landslides have buried homes where families once slept, and early estimates put the economic toll above $20 billion.

Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, whose country endured the wrath of Cyclone Ditwah, put words to what many across the region are feeling: this is “the largest and most challenging natural disaster in our history.”

A season that became something else entirely

Rains are nothing new this time of year—but this wasn’t just rain. Scientists say the storms arrived like a drumbeat with no pause, fueled by La Niña and supercharged by climate change. In Hat Yai, Thailand, residents watched 300 years of rainfall records shatter in a single day. In Sri Lanka, Cyclone Ditwah swept along a path experts say these storms simply don’t take.

“They are wetter and more destructive because the background climate has shifted,” said climate scientist Roxy Koll. “Water, not wind, is now the main driver of disaster.”

That shift has real human consequences. Nearly 11 million people have been touched by the storms’ destruction, and 1.2 million are sleeping on plastic mats in evacuation centers, many of them children who haven’t seen their schools or homes in weeks. “Children are sitting at the frontline of the climate crisis,” UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires said.

What survival looks like in Vietnam

Vietnam may be the clearest picture of this new reality. The country has been battered by 21 storms this year—15 of them typhoons. When reporter Christine Spolar arrived in November, she found Hue and Hoi An—normally bustling UNESCO World Heritage sites—quiet, soggy, and coated in mud.

“I was the first tourist my guide had seen in 10 days,” she said. Local families, with no home insurance to rely on, spent day after day sweeping sludge out of streets and markets, laying soaked carpets and clothes in the thin sun. Piles of debris towered near riverbanks. “People were drying whatever they could save,” Spolar recalled.

Meanwhile, leaders at the COP30 climate summit were announcing promises of future funding—news that felt painfully distant to communities still wiping mud from their walls.

Where human decisions meet nature’s fury

In Indonesia’s Aceh province, hunger—not water—has become a lethal threat. Roads are buried or broken. Aid trucks can’t always pass. “People are not dying from the flood, but from starvation,” warned Governor Muzakir Manaf.

Local leaders and environmental groups say the disaster didn’t start with the rain. Years of deforestation in Sumatra—trees cleared for mining, palm oil, and timber—have left hillsides bare and rivers clogged with fallen logs. When the rains came, the earth simply gave way. In response, Indonesia has revoked 20 commercial logging permits, including in flood-hit districts.

Cities, too, are feeling the consequences of their own growth. Pavement, concrete, and rapid construction leave little ground available to absorb water. Some parts of Vietnam that still have thick tree cover flooded anyway—the soil was already so waterlogged from earlier storms that it couldn’t take in a drop more.

Fragile systems meet an unforgiving climate

Across Asia, basic infrastructure is buckling under the strain of extreme weather. When Typhoon Kalmaegi slammed into Vietnam’s Quy Nhon, winds ripped down power lines, cutting off electricity and communication for thousands. Water systems—already vulnerable—were overwhelmed again and again.

Asia now accounts for 41% of global flooding, yet the region’s water and sanitation systems remain massively underfunded. According to recent analyses, governments are managing only 40% of the annual $250 billion needed to prepare for the next decade and a half of climate threats.

Amit Prothi of the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure says the choice ahead is stark but full of possibility. “The amount of infrastructure we’ll build in Asia in the next three decades will be as much as what was built in the last two centuries,” he noted. The challenge, he says, is to build not just more—but smarter.