#Floods #top #Pakistans #disaster #epic #proportions
Record-high monsoon rains caused a “disaster of epic proportions,” Pakistan’s climate minister said on Wednesday, announcing an international call for help to deal with the floods that have killed more than 800 people since June.
The annual monsoon is essential for irrigating crops and filling lakes and dams across the Indian subcontinent, but it also brings a wave of destruction each year.
Heavy rain continued across much of Pakistan on Wednesday, and authorities reported more than a dozen deaths – including nine children – in the past 24 hours.
“It’s been raining for a month now. There is nothing left,” a woman named Khanzadi told AFP in hard-hit Jaffarabad, Balochistan province.
“We only had one goat that also drowned in the flood… Now we have nothing with us and are lying by the roadside starving with hunger.”
Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman said the authorities would make an appeal for international assistance once an assessment was completed.
“Given the scale of the disaster, there is no question that the provinces or even Islamabad can handle this scale of climate catastrophe on their own,” she told AFP.
“Life is at risk, thousands are homeless. It is important that international partners mobilize aid.”
According to the Global Climate Risk Index compiled by environmental NGO Germanwatch, Pakistan ranks eighth on a list of countries deemed most vulnerable to extreme weather conditions caused by climate change.
– From heat wave to flood –
Earlier this year, much of the nation was hit by a heatwave, with temperatures reaching 51 degrees Celsius (124 Fahrenheit) in Jacobabad, Sindh province.
The city is now grappling with flooding that has submerged homes and swept away roads and bridges.
In Sukkur, about 75 kilometers (50 miles) away, volunteers used boats along the city’s flooded streets to distribute food and fresh water to people trapped in their homes.
Zaheer Ahmad Babar, a senior Met Office official, told AFP that this year’s rains were the heaviest since 2010, when over 2,000 people died and more than two million were displaced by monsoon floods that covered nearly a fifth of the country.
Rainfall in Balochistan province is 430 percent higher than normal, he said, while Sindh is nearing 500 percent.
The town of Padidan in Sindh has received over a meter (39 inches) of rain since August 1, he added.
“It’s a climate catastrophe of epic proportions,” Rehman said, adding that three million people would be affected.
The National Disaster Management Authority said in a statement nearly 125,000 homes were destroyed and 288,000 others damaged by the floods.
Around 700,000 livestock in Sindh and Balochistan have been killed and almost two million acres of farmland have been destroyed, officials added.
Almost 3,000 kilometers of roads were also damaged.
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