Sunday, August 28, 2022














CLIMATE CRISIS
Pakistan flooding: Deaths from ‘climate catastrophe’ rise above 1,000


Maroosha Muzaffar
Sun, August 28, 2022 

The unprecedented monsoon floods in Pakistan have claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people since mid-June, the authorities said on Sunday.

Nearly 100 people have died over this weekend alone, taking the death toll to 1,033 – including 348 children, Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority said.

The flooding has also left 1,527 injured in flood-related accidents across Pakistan.

A national emergency has been declared in the country as prime minister Shehbaz Sharif appealed to international partners to help relief efforts.

Experts have blamed the climate crisis for the exceptionally high number of cycles of monsoon rain in Pakistan this year. Sherry Rehman, the country’s climate change minister, called it a “climate-induced humanitarian disaster of epic proportions”, and a “serious climate catastrophe, one of the hardest in the decade”.

She said: “It is beyond the capacity of any one administration or government to rehabilitate and even manage the rescue and relief. We need all the help we can get.”

Disaster management officials said on Saturday that the average rainfall this year has been nearly three times the 30-year national average.

It noted that rainfall in Sindh province in Pakistan had been five times the average.

Thousands have been rendered homeless, and millions of others have lost access to electricity. Pakistan’s NDMA said that nearly half a million were living in damaged houses due to the floodwaters.

So far, across Pakistan, more than 500,000 people have been evacuated to relief camps and shelters.

Heartbreaking scenes have emerged of the devastation the floodwaters have wrecked across the country.


Children use a raft to make their way in a flooded area after heavy monsoon rains on the outskirts of Sukkur, Sindh province, on 27 August, 2022 (AFP via Getty Images)

On Saturday, the Dawn newspaper reported that Mr Sharif and army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa visited flood-hit areas in Balochistan and Sindh provinces.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in northwest Pakistan, local authorities said that around 350,000 people were evacuated from Nowshera and Charsadda districts – the most flood-prone areas. And at least 14 were killed in flood-related incidents in Lower Dir, Mansehra and Kohistan.

The two leaders promised to make efforts to compensate and rehabilitate all those affected or displaced by floodwaters. Mr Sharif said: “All affected provinces of the country would get relief grants; Rs 38 billion have already been released by the federal government.”


An auto-rickshaw drives past temporary tents of people who fled their flood-hit homes set along a road in Sukkur, Sindh province, on 27 August, 2022 (AFP via Getty Images)

On his Twitter, the prime minister wrote: “The magnitude of the calamity is bigger than estimated. Times demand that we come together as one nation to support our people facing this calamity. Let us rise above our differences & stand by our people who need us today.”

Pakistan Rai­l­ways has suspended operations from Lahore to Karachi until 31 August. Services are scheduled to resume from 1 September, although officials said this could be subject to change depending on the progress of maintenance work and improvement in the weather.


Pakistan declares emergency as millions affected by floods


By AFP
Published August 26, 2022
Ashraf KHAN

Heavy rain pounded parts of Pakistan Friday after the government declared an emergency to deal with monsoon flooding that it said had affected more than four million people.

The annual monsoon is essential for irrigating crops and replenishing lakes and dams across the Indian subcontinent, but each year it also brings a wave of destruction.

The National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) said Friday that more than 900 people had been killed this year — including 34 in the last 24 hours — as a result of the monsoon rains that began in June.

Officials say this year’s floods are comparable to 2010 — the worst on record — when over 2,000 people died and nearly a fifth of the country was under water.

“I have never seen such huge flooding because of rains in my life,” octogenarian farmer Rahim Bakhsh Brohi told AFP near Sukkur, in southern Sindh province.

Like thousands of others in rural Pakistan, Brohi was seeking shelter beside the national highway, as the elevated roads are among the few dry places in the endless landscapes of water.

The disaster agency said over 4.2 million people were “affected” by the flooding, with nearly 220,000 homes destroyed and half a million more badly damaged.

Two million acres of cultivated crops had been wiped out in Sindh alone, the provincial disaster agency said, where many farmers live hand-to-mouth, season-to-season.

“My cotton crop that was sown on 50 acres of land is all gone,” Nasrullah Mehar told AFP.

“It’s a huge loss for me… what can be done?”

Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman, who on Wednesday called the floods “a catastrophe of epic scale”, said the government had declared an emergency, and appealed for international assistance.

Pakistan is eighth on the Global Climate Risk Index, a list compiled by the environmental NGO Germanwatch of countries deemed most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by climate change.

– From drought to floods –

Earlier this year much of the nation was in the grip of a drought and heatwave, with temperatures hitting 51 degrees Celsius (124 Fahrenheit) in Jacobabad, Sindh province.

The city is now grappling with floods that have inundated homes and swept away roads and bridges.

In Sukkur, about 75 kilometres (50 miles) away, residents struggled to make their way along muddy streets clogged with flood-borne debris.

“If you had come earlier the water was this high,” 24-year-old student Aqeel Ahmed told AFP, raising his hand to his chest.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif cancelled a planned trip to Britain to oversee the flood response, and ordered the army to throw every resource into relief operations.

“I have seen from the air and the devastation can’t be expressed in words,” he said on state TV after visiting Sukkur.

“The towns, villages and crops are inundated by the water. I don’t think this level of destruction has taken place before.”

A national fundraising appeal has been launched, with Pakistan’s military saying every commissioned officer would donate a month’s salary towards it.

The worst-hit areas are Balochistan and Sindh in the south and west, but almost all of Pakistan has suffered this year.

Images were circulating on social media Friday of swollen rivers obliterating buildings and bridges built along their banks in the mountainous north.

In Chaman, the western frontier town neighbouring Afghanistan, travellers had to wade through waist-high water to cross the border after a nearby dam burst, adding to the deluge brought by rain.

Pakistan Railways said nearby Quetta, capital of Balochistan province, had been cut off and train services suspended after a key bridge was damaged by a flash flood.

Most mobile networks and internet services were down in the province, with the country’s telecoms authority calling it “unprecedented”.

A farmer and his livestock seek shelter from flooded lands alongside the national highway in Khairpur district of Pakistan's Sindh province - Copyright AFP Asif HASSAN

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