Flood threat: 1.3m acres swamped in Sindh, Punjab

Met Office says another spell of monsoon rain expected this week.

ISLAMABAD:

Vast tracts of land spread over an area of 1.3 million acres have been inundated by flood water in Sindh and Punjab, cutting a swath of destruction through the two provinces, government officials said on Sunday.

Officials also estimated that more than 1.5 million people have been displaced from their homes, while the death toll from flood-related incidents has climbed to 208.

Around 1 million acres of farm land is believed to have been destroyed, leaving thousands of families starving and without an income in various kutcha (riverine) areas of Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B), and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).

Officials said more than 700,000 acres had been inundated in Punjab and around 600,000 in Sindh, where the water level continues to rise.

They said some 208 people had lost their lives during the floods, as the death toll had reached 87 in K-P, 58 in Punjab, 26 in AJK, 16 in Balochistan, nine each in G-B and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and three in Sindh. More than 4,000 villages have been affected, with damages to over 20,000 houses, they added.

“Hundreds of thousands of people are yet to be rescued in south Punjab and Sindh,” said an official involved in rescue operations.



An official of the Provincial Disaster Management Authority of Sindh corroborated the claim: “Around 500,000 people are still stranded in Sindh and Punjab.” The armed forces have, however, succeeded in rescuing more than a million people so far.

‘Worst yet to come’

Amid farmers’ complaints that the past and present governments have failed to tackle the issue of floods for decades, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has warned that climate change and monsoon rains could turn the flood situation worse in the coming days.

“Flooding of the Indus River will continue,” said an NDMA spokesperson, adding that rescuers were evacuating people stranded in the flood-affected localities.

Meanwhile, Chief Meteorologist Muhammad Riaz forecast that the Indus River at the Kotri, Guddu and Sukkur barrages is likely to attain high flood level.

“The Taunsa Barrage in Punjab is also undergoing high-level floods as the monsoon rains will continue for the next two days.”

He warned that another spell of monsoon rain was expected, adding that it could cause more flooding in the Indus and other rivers.

Environmentalist Dr Pervaiz Amir has also warned that the danger of monsoon rains is not over yet. “Extreme temperatures and glacial lake outbursts can prolong the monsoon season and cause heavy floods.”

He said that constructing new dams and barrages was the only solution to decreasing damages from heavy floods.

“We have a good capacity to cope with predicted and traditional flooding. But, unfortunately, flash floods go uncontrolled here.”

Published in The Express Tribune, August 10^th, 2015.