Pakistan Flooding

[Posting a link?]

Forum Guidelines
Posting a link? Read This!

Forgot your password? Need help?
Click Here To Contact Us

Mudflats Merchandise
AKMuckraker Amazon Store
Support AKM Merchandise

Download it here!

[Fresh Tracks]

Ongoing flooding has reached the lower river delta.  Millions more affected. 

Stark reminder of how the world's poor suffer the most from these disasters--five years now after Katrina.

This is not all natural disaster.  Human influences on the land and across the globe have set up these scenarios.

 

Fears for Pakistani town after new flood levee breaches
Floodwaters in Sarjani village, Thatta district, Pakistan (28 August 2010) The floodwaters are threatening to swamp the town of 300,000 residents

Officials in southern Pakistan are battling to save the town of Thatta, where the raging Indus river has breached more of its levees.

Tens of thousands of people have fled the town in the past few days and some outlying districts were reported to already be under water...

The massive floods in Pakistan have lasted for more than a month, leaving 8m people in need of emergency relief.

As the waters start to recede in the north of the country, the full extent of the damage has begun to emerge.

The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has warned that the Indus river in the south has swollen to 40 times its usual capacity.

More than seven million people have now been displaced in southern Sindh province - one million in the past few days alone. Out of the 23 districts in the province, 19 have so far been badly affected by the floods.

Across the country, some 17 million people have been affected...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11121215

[Forty Watt]

This is just wretched

THE old man was sitting on his string bed. But it was upside down; its finely rounded legs were pointing to the sky, and the knotted ropes strung across its wooden frame were wet. Underneath it were several plastic drums — once used for storing diesel fuel — that had been emptied out and tied to it for buoyancy. The makeshift raft was bobbing up and down, and the man sitting on it had his legs in the yellow-brown water, which stretched around him for miles and miles like a strange sea, the tops of faraway trees sticking out of it like little islands.

“Hold it like that for five more minutes!” cried the cameraman.

[...]

A sweating, bespectacled farmer who was standing behind the camera said that all the snakes had come out of the water and climbed into the trees. “In some places there are 20 snakes to a tree,” he said.

“Are they poisonous?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” said the farmer, laughing at my question, which had prodded the deadly reality of his predicament. “Oh, yes.”

[Forty Watt]

And now -

More than 175,000 people have fled Pakistan's southern city of Thatta, leaving it virtually empty, as flood waters threatened to submerge the city's outskirts.

Troops and civilians were struggling on Sunday to protect the city after floodwaters broke through levees on the Indus.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/08/201082873211738615.html

[judi]

So proud of my 8 yr old granddaughter...after showing her and her brother pictures of Pakistan...she immediately came up with a donation jar...
then put ALL of her $2.00 allowance into it

will do a lemonade stand tomorrow

have to share

[Forty Watt]

You should be proud, judi, but then look at the role model she has in her grandmother. 

[boodog]

You have quite a granddaughter, judi!

[pacos_gal]

That is so cool judi.     Nice to know that a new generation will grow up with the your values.

[Lani]

The flooding of this delta is straight out of Gore's documentary, sorry to say.  And now we have a hurricane threatening Cape Cod.

Global warming, anyone?

[judi]

Thank You all...

try to tell them how we have to care for others in the world...seems like she at least has picked some of it up
but then how could anyone look at those pictures
and then look at what we all have
and not care?

oh yes Lani...so scary...after reading Eaarth...everything he talks about is happening right now before our eyes.  Every day something else...

[Sirenoftitan]

The Chinook helicopters, travelling in pairs, swooped and curled between the lush valley walls of the Hindu Kush. The aftermath of Pakistan's epic flood scrolled underneath: torn bridges, crushed houses, entire fields swept away by the racing waters.

Inside the helicopters about 70 highland peasants, mostly fathers and their sons, gripping one another in terror and wonderment. Some poked fingers in their ears against the deafening engine roar; others peered out of the open hatch, awestruck – they had never seen their homeland like this before.

At a small military base the villagers stumbled out of the Chinooks, clothes pressed to their skin by the powerful rotorwash. Then their rescuers – silent American soldiers in black, bug-like helmets, eyes hidden behind mysterious looking black visors, turned around and headed back up the valley for more.

Pakistan floods: 'When the children come running, it makes my heart drop' by Declan Walsh, The Guardian

[boodog]

The floods that swept through the country began in the northwestern Swat Valley and were at their most ferocious. Only one of 51 bridges survived. Hundreds of homes and businesses were swept away in hours. Electricity plants were destroyed, along with hotels for the tourists who frequent Swat's beauty spots.

American army Chinook helicopters still crisscross the valley, ferrying food, building materials and passengers. But for now, a handmade road is the only route for travelers heading to warmer areas as winter approaches.
...

Some officials see a comforting irony: They predict some bumper harvests because the floods dumped fresh nutrients on the soil.
Farmers are less sure. "The old people around here say sometimes it has a good effect, sometimes bad," said Mohammed Tariq, who owns about a hectare (two acres) of land by the River Bara, which burst its banks in late July. "We will have to wait and see what nature does."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40056079/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/