1,200 Dead from Monsoon Rains in Bangladesh, India, Nepal
Five days ago
At a Glance
A month of severe monsoon rains, which peaked earlier this week, resulted in the deaths of at least 1, two hundred people across India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and left two thirds of Bangladesh underwater.
According to the United Nations, around forty one million people have been affected by flooding and landslides that have ensued due to the monsoon across the subcontinent. They issued this estimation on August 24, which was before the brunt of the rains slammed Mumbai, India’s financial capital. As of Thursday, the rain and flooding is affecting Karachi, Pakistan’s most populous city, local sources have confirmed to weather.com. Eight people are cofirmed dead thus far as a direct result of the flooding.
This deadly flooding occurs as the United States’ Texas and Louisiana were slammed by a deadly storm formerly known as Hurricane Harvey (which has since been downgraded), which left deadly floods through Texas.
South Asia suffers from flooding during the monsoon season (June to September), but local authorities are in agreement that this year’s floods are among the worst they’ve seen.
“Even by Asian monsoon standards, it’s been a spectacularly moist summer in Bangladesh and parts of east India,” explained Jonathan Erdman, senior meteorologist at weather.com. “At least five hundred millimeters (about twenty inches) more rain has fallen than even an average raw phase of the monsoon over virtually all of Bangladesh and adjoining areas of east India and far western Myanmar this summer.”
“Heavy rain in the Asia monsoon is normal,” he said, “but, this was above the norm over a large area of Bangladesh, east India.”
While the sheer amount of water has in and of itself caused widespread devastation, Erdman added that “all that tremendous volume of water then has to drain leisurely to the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta and the Bay of Bengal,” meaning this devastation won’t simply clear overnight.
Oxfam said its Bangladesh staff reported two-thirds of the country was underwater, ABC News reported, and in some areas the flooding was the worst it has been since one thousand nine hundred eighty eight , which was the most devastating flood to hit the country resulting in 1,050 deaths.
In Bangladesh, “more than 600,000 hectares (almost 1,500,000 acres) of farmland have been partially bruised and in excess of Ten,000 hectares (almost 25,000 acres) have been downright washed away,” the Independent reported , noting that Bangladesh’s economy is dependent on farming.
“Farmers are left with nothing, not even with clean drinking water,” the Independent quoted Matthew Marek, the head of disaster response in Bangladesh for the International Federation of Crimson Cross and Crimson Crescent, as telling.
The UN also described the devastating situation in Nepal, where one hundred fifty people have died, as the worst flooding the country has seen in a decade. Homes have been swept away, the Fresh York Times reported . “This is the severest flooding in a number of years,” Francis Markus, a spokesman for the International Federation of Crimson Cross and Crimson Crescent Societies, tole the Fresh York Times from Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital.
The flooding and the mass human displacement across Bangladesh, Nepal, and India has created an urgent request for humanitarian supplies, according to the International Federation of Crimson Cross and Crimson Crescent Societies .
In India, the effects of this monsoon season have brutalized several states including Assam, Bihar, Odisha, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
Several villages in Bihar in the eastern part of the country, are still totally ravaged by the flood waters, leaving locals living in improvised shelters, many of which were thrown together out of whatever materials they could gather, according to a report in Indian Express . The cresting waters from nearby rivers have inundated the state, impacting seventeen million people in twenty one districts of the ninety nine million-person state thus far. Al Jazeera reported than more than half of the casualties from this deadly monsoon are from Bihar.
Swaths of residential and farmland are under water, too, in the eastern part of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. At least one hundred nine people have died in the area thus far as a direct result of the flooding brought about by the monsoon, Singapore’s The Strait Times reports . There are conflicting reports about the amounts of people impacted by the harm and amount of people impacted, with some estimates as high as three million people being affected in Five,000 of the state’s villages.
Mumbai was devastated as well, with the monsoon dumping a month’s average rainfall on the city in a single day. The inundation left streets severely flooded, halting public transportation and led to flight cancellations and diversion out of Mumbai’s international airport.
“Mumbai and adjoining areas are likely to get fairly widespread rainfall, which will be powerful in a few pockets,” K.S. Hosalikar, a senior India Meteorological Department official, said .
A four story residential building collapse in the city as a result of the flooding occurred Thursday morning, which left twelve people dead and at least twenty five others trapped in the wreckage. The collapse, which occurred in the densely populated Bhendi Bazaar, after the surrounding streets were already packed, The Guardian reported . “Authorities have advised people living in an adjacent building to evacuate after it developed cracks following the collapse,” the report added.
Daniel David Pezarker, 29, talked to weather.com about the conditions he’s experiencing in Mumbia, telling that “railway tracks were flooded with water.” And that the “rain attacked the lifeline of Mumbai (the trains) as it cannot budge further.”
When he realized what was happening on Tuesday morning, he ran home — four miles from work — to avoid the worst of the flooding. Many of his friends, family, and colleagues were less fortunate. They got stuck across the city: “Some were in [the middle of their] journey [and] could not reach home or turn back to the office. They had to stay outside on road, [or at the] railway station, [or] bus stop without food water or any [restroom] facility.”
The floods bruised Legitimate,000 schools across the entire south Asia, which in turn has left approximately1.8 million children incapable to attend indefinitely.