Islamabad(Pakistan)- Since June, the death toll from monsoon flooding in Pakistan has reached 1,061, according to figures released Monday by the country’s National Disaster Management Authority.
It said 28 people had died in the previous 24 hours, but authorities were still trying to reach cut-off villages in the mountainous north.
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.
Officials say this year’s monsoon flooding has affected more than 33 million people — one in seven Pakistanis — destroying or badly damaging nearly a million homes.
The NDMA said more than two million acres of cultivated crops had been wiped out, 3,457 kilometres (about 2,200 miles) of roads destroyed, and 157 bridges washed away.
On Sunday, Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported that “more than half of Pakistan” was currently underwater and that millions had been rendered homeless. At least half a million people had been evacuated and shifted to safer places, news reports said, citing Pakistan’s NDMA. News television has been running eyewitness accounts about people getting swept by raging rivers, especially children. Several people are reported to have died in house collapses triggered by flash floods and landslides in the hilly areas.
The average rainfall for Pakistan during this three-month monsoon season is 140 mm, according to PMD. But because the season is relatively short, yearly monsoon rainfall is a wide variation.
This year, the country saw plenty of rain from late June itself. But August has been exceptionally wet. Minister Rehman shared PMD data that showed until Friday, August had produced two and a half times its average rainfall — 176.8 mm against the expected 50.4 mm. It has rained almost eight times the average amount in Sindh during this period; Balochistan has received over five times more.
Source-AFP