DEADLY FLOODS

MONSOON DUE TO PAKISTAN

More than 33 million people, or one in seven Pakistanis, were also affected by the floods; nearly a million homes have been destroyed or severely damaged, according to the government. The NDMA said that more than 80,000 hectares of cultivable land have also been devastated. In addition, approximately 3,400 kilometers of roads and 149 bridges were washed away. Many rivers in the province of Khyber Pahktunkhwa, crossed by mountains and steep valleys, overflowed and destroyed dozens of buildings. Downstream, fear of flooding around the banks of the Kabul River prompted nearly 180,000 people in Charsadda district to flee their homes, according to disaster officials, with some spending the night on the roads with their livestock.

In the southern province of Sindh, where some 500,000 inhabitants live, already massively affected, torrents of water are expected to arrive again in the coming days. Fed by dozens of rivers and mountain streams that burst their banks following record rains and melting glaciers, the Indus, the river that crosses Sindh, continues to grow. The valves were opened to deal with a flow of more than 600,000 m3 per second, said the person in charge of the important dam which regulates the flow of the river.

Negligence in the maintenance of the Sukkur dam

In several places, the Indus already overflows on the banks and if the Sukkur dam fails to control the flow of water, a disaster is to be feared. Once built by the British Empire, the dam was considered an engineering marvel, capable of discharging 1.4 million cubic meters of water per second through 19 hinged steel gates between stone pillars.

This 90-year-old dam controlling the mighty Indus River redistributes water in nearly 10,000 kilometers of canals that distribute water over agricultural land. But after years of neglect, these channels can no longer process the record volumes recorded today. "The silt accumulated and could not be removed," the minister explained, adding that due to a lack of equipment, the canals have not been dredged since 2010.

The government declared a state of emergency on Friday and mobilized the army to deal with this “catastrophe of a rare magnitude”, as Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman called it. "The scale of the calamity is greater than estimated," Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a tweet on Saturday after visiting the flooded areas.

Essential but often dramatic rains

The monsoon, which usually lasts from June to September, is essential for the irrigation of plantations and to replenish the water resources of the Indian subcontinent. But it regularly causes many human losses and destruction. Authorities estimate that the current bad weather is comparable to that of 2010, when 2,000 people were killed and almost a fifth of the country submerged.

Pakistani officials attribute the devastating weather to climate change, saying Pakistan is unfairly suffering the consequences of irresponsible environmental practices elsewhere in the world. It is in eighth position among the most threatened by extreme weather phenomena, according to a study by the non-governmental organization Germanwatch. But corruption and ill-established urban planning programs contribute to aggravate the consequences of bad weather since thousands of buildings have been built in flood-prone areas.

The floods come at the worst time for Pakistan, whose economy is collapsing and which has been in deep political crisis since Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted in April following a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly.