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How to avoid another monsoon disaster

Thursday, 4 July 2013 15:15 GMT

A man crosses a rope bridge over the Alaknanda river during rescue operations in Govindghat in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand on June 23, 2013. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

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* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Better warnings, river monitoring and weather forecasting could have helped prevent scores of deaths in mountainous India and Nepal

The recent flood disaster in the Mahakali River basin of western Nepal and India’s Uttarakhand has raised several questions: What kind of climatic events led to this disaster? Could anything have been done to reduce the loss of life and property? What can we learn from this disaster for the future?

This year, an early monsoon brought along with it intense rainfall. Over 60 hours of continuous rainfall from 15 to 17 June triggered numerous landslides and disrupted normal life in parts of India and Nepal.

In the Karnali River basin, adjacent to the Mahakali basin, more than 200 mm of rain fell in 24 hours causing river water levels to rise more than 6.7 m. In Dipayal, Nepal, which adjoins the Mahakali flood disaster area, a real-time web-based telemetry monitoring station reported 80.4 mm of rain on 16 June and 221.8 mm on 17 June. NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Monitoring Mission estimates that from 16 June to 18 June more than 300 mm of rainfall fell in the districts of Uttarkashi, Tehri and Chamoli in India.

The severity of these rainfall events led to the tragic loss of lives and property. In Darchula, Nepal, the flood swept away 77 buildings and displaced 2,500 people. More than three dozen people were killed in various districts of Nepal.

The effects were even more devastating in Uttarakhand, India where the flood occurred during the peak tourist and pilgrimage season, increasing the number of causalities, missing, and affected. Although more than 100,000 people have been rescued, up to 10,000 people are believed dead and several thousands more are missing.

‘END TO END INFORMATION’ NEEDED

The number of lives lost could have been reduced had there been a better end-to-end information system in place and proper infrastructure planning and development. Although warnings were disseminated by the India Meteorological Department about the possibility of high to intense rainfall, this information did not reach the people at risk.

Technological advances now make it possible to warn at-risk communities several hours before such events – enough time to save lives. Better institutional mechanisms to reach out to the communities at risk need to be in place to take full advantage of new flood forecasting, monitoring, and early warning technologies.

Strengthening hydrological monitoring on rivers that cross national boundaries is another necessary step to reduce disaster risk. On the Mahakali River, there are no hydrological monitoring stations for flood forecasting and early warning. India and Nepal must work together to jointly establish monitoring stations that will improve flood forecasting and management in transboundary basins to provide people with greater lead-time to escape the path of destruction.

An article in The Hindu (‘A man-made disaster, say environmentalists’) rightly said that damage could have been contained through proper infrastructure planning. It is important to keep in mind that, given the fragile ecosystems and young geology of the Himalayas, the development of infrastructure in mountain areas, whether roads or buildings, is different than in the plains.

In the recent floods, thousands of people were left stranded as large stretches of roads and settlements built in the path of the flood were washed away, raising questions about their design and construction as well as the monitoring and weak enforcement of existing policies.

To prevent such tragedies in the future, an end-to-end information system must be put in place, the carrying capacity of fragile ecosystems needs to be considered when making development interventions, and disaster risk management has to be embedded into development programmes for effective disaster risk reduction.

Mandira Shrestha is a senior water resources specialist at ICIMOD, where she coordinates regional programmes on transboundary flood risk reduction in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region and the application of satellite based rainfall estimates for flood prediction. A longer version of her report is available here.

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