Keystone-SDA
Catastrophe scenario in northern Pakistan: sudden Mousson rains killed 164 people in 24 hours and a helicopter who came to the rescue crashed on Friday, killing five dead.
(Keystone-ATS) The country, the most populous fifth in the world, is one of the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and, warn the authorities, the rains will further intensify for the next two weeks.
The 255 million Pakistanis have already undergone massive and murderous floods in recent years, explosions of glacial lakes and unpublished droughts, as many phenomena that will multiply under the influence of climate change, warn scientists.
In the past 24 hours, the deadliest torrential rains have taken place in various districts in the mountain province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, border of Afghanistan, which alone deplores 150 deaths. In the village of Salarzai, in the district of Bajaur, dozens of inhabitants look at the excavators dig the mud which has covered everything suddenly.
From the brownish mass, the mechanical shovel takes out a mattress or clothes, the last vestiges of the lives just engulfed. In the sky, a helicopter flies over which is now like a muddy river. There, clay houses were stood, swept away like straw fetuses by the mudslide.
“Unusual” monsoon
Another helicopter, a Soviet mid -7, also had to bring food and rescue equipment. But “he crashed due to a bad weather” before arriving in Bajaur, Ali Amin Gandapur, chief minister of the province reported. “The five crew members, two of whom died, are dead,” he added.
The Provincial Authority for Management of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has declared “victims” of many districts where “rescue teams have been deployed in reinforcement” to try to approach hamlets with accident geography.
“In the district of Buner, a dozen villages were severely affected by the spouts,” adds the authority, which has several dozen houses and several damaged public schools and buildings.
Nine other people died in the Pakistani cashmere, while in the cashmere administered by India, at least 60 victims were identified in a Himalayan village – and 80 others are still missing. Finally, five people died in the Gilgit-Baltistan region, in the far north of Pakistan, which houses several of the highest peaks in the world.
Since the start of a summer monsoon qualified as an unusual “by the authorities, 477 people, including a hundred children, have been killed by rains, floods, mudslides and other landslides, while 763 others have been injured. The authorities detail that three -quarters of the victims were struck by sudden floods or collapse of houses, while 10% suffered electroctions or was struck down.
Poor quality of structures
For Syed Muhammad Tayyab Shah, the national disaster management authority, “more than half of the victims died because of the poor quality of the structures”. It is absolutely necessary, he says, that individuals and local communities maintain “gutters to avoid collapses of roofs” and that everyone limits travel in the rain or in flood zones.
The authorities now recommend avoiding the country’s northern tourism, which is particularly popular in the summer of mountaineers from around the world. Because on the climate front, this year records records. In July, the Pendjab, where almost half of the Pakistanis live, recorded precipitation 73% higher than those of the previous year.
During this month alone, the province identified more deaths than on the entire previous monsoon. The monsoon brings 70 to 80% of annual precipitation in South Asia between June and September and is vital for the subsistence of millions of farmers in a region which has around two billion inhabitants.
But it can also cause devastating floods as in 2022, when torrential rains had affected nearly a third of the country and more than 33 million people. Some 1,700 people had then been killed and a large share of harvests had been lost.