Massive floods across Pakistan | Thousands Killed

[Patriot]

US Dispatches Elite DART team to Pakistan:
U.S. Dispatches Disaster Assistance Team (08/09/2010) - U.S. Embassy Islamabad, Pakistan

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BTW where the hell is the civilian rescue services of Pakistan. Where are our fancy rescue teams that are soo eager to come on tv?

If it was a normal event then some Mullahs and many Pakistanis would allege that US have sent blackwater/CIA and US Marines and their cover is that they're rescue teams!

 

[Solomon2]

BTW where the hell is the civilian rescue services of Pakistan. Where are our fancy rescue teams that are soo eager to come on tv?

...When it came to the flood warnings, Mazari adds, local politicians tried to play down the scale of the impending disaster. "I don't know why politicians lie, but they did. If we had known how bad it was going to be, we could have evacuated people in time, but now we have women and children hanging in the trees, waiting for rescue." For the most part, local residents have been trying to help one another, volunteering money to buy boats and food. "The army only turned up on Sunday," he says. "As for the government, there's no sign of it." (Read a story about army power in Pakistan.)

Although its response has been limited, the Pakistan army at least has been visible. Television images prominently showed soldiers plunging into high waters to rescue the stranded, though critics said the footage was courtesy of camera crews dispatched there on helicopters that could have been used for further rescues. Some 30,000 soldiers are currently at work in the affected areas. In the country's major towns and cities, men in fatigues have set up makeshift tents to gather donations. In sharp contrast to Zardari's summer sojourn, Army General Ashfaq Kayani was the first of Pakistan's prominent leaders to hasten to see flood victims. He announced that every soldier in his force would donate a day's pay to flood relief — a gesture that shamed lawmakers who refused to do the same.

"The reality is that the army really doesn't have to do very much to look good," says Farzana Shaikh, a Pakistan expert at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs and the author of Making Sense of Pakistan. "When things go badly with the civilian government, people in Pakistan often fall back, sit around themselves and say, 'Well, at least the army's there. It knows what to do.' Even if this isn't the case, the public perception is that the army has risen to this challenge — a perception that has, of course, been helped by its friends in the media."

Read more: Army, Islamists Ride High in Submerged Pakistan - TIME

 

[GentlemanObserver]

...When it came to the flood warnings, Mazari adds, local politicians tried to play down the scale of the impending disaster. "I don't know why politicians lie, but they did. If we had known how bad it was going to be, we could have evacuated people in time, but now we have women and children hanging in the trees, waiting for rescue." For the most part, local residents have been trying to help one another, volunteering money to buy boats and food. "The army only turned up on Sunday," he says. "As for the government, there's no sign of it." (Read a story about army power in Pakistan.)

Although its response has been limited, the Pakistan army at least has been visible. Television images prominently showed soldiers plunging into high waters to rescue the stranded, though critics said the footage was courtesy of camera crews dispatched there on helicopters that could have been used for further rescues. Some 30,000 soldiers are currently at work in the affected areas. In the country's major towns and cities, men in fatigues have set up makeshift tents to gather donations. In sharp contrast to Zardari's summer sojourn, Army General Ashfaq Kayani was the first of Pakistan's prominent leaders to hasten to see flood victims. He announced that every soldier in his force would donate a day's pay to flood relief — a gesture that shamed lawmakers who refused to do the same.

"The reality is that the army really doesn't have to do very much to look good," says Farzana Shaikh, a Pakistan expert at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs and the author of Making Sense of Pakistan. "When things go badly with the civilian government, people in Pakistan often fall back, sit around themselves and say, 'Well, at least the army's there. It knows what to do.' Even if this isn't the case, the public perception is that the army has risen to this challenge — a perception that has, of course, been helped by its friends in the media."

Read more: Army, Islamists Ride High in Submerged Pakistan - TIME

Although its response has been limited, the Pakistan army at least has been visible.

Says it all. Compare that to the civilian admin attitude of "Look busy, do nothing".

---------- Post added at 06:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:47 PM ----------

PAF continues relief efforts in flood-hit areas

 

[Xeric]

Associated Press Of Pakistan ( Pakistan's Premier NEWS Agency ) - Athar Abbas lauds army’s active role in providing relief to flood affectees

Athar Abbas lauds army’s active role in providing relief to flood affectees

ISLAMABAD, Aug 10 (APP): DG ISPR Maj. Gen Athar Abbas has said that more than seven thousands Pakistan army officers and jawans are actively working in relief operation and evacuation of stranded people to save places timely.According to a private news channel, he said that so far 175,000 people have been rescued by the Pak army from flood hit areas. Army has provided more than 9000 tons of food to the flood affected people in camps out of its ration supplies.

Besides Army has also provided 32,000 tons of MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) to the flood affected people.
He said, on the whole, more than 45 helicopters of army aviation and 12 other helicopters are taking part in the rescue operations. Fifteen field hospitals of army and more than one hundred mobile clinics are working in the flood hit areas.
Athar Abbas said army engineers are also taking care of barrages and headworks and to protect them they create breaches in embankments in collaboration with the civil administration. Army engineers are also reconstructing the broken bridges in Swat and other areas. Alternate passages are being constructed where flood waters have made way through the roads. Four pedestrian bridges at Madian, Kalam, Bahrain and Takhtaband have also been opened. Similarly bridge of Ali Masjid on the Torkham road has also been opened for the pedestrians.
Abbas explained that the Guddu, Sukkur and Kotri Barrages are being closely watched as there is fear of extra pressure on these barrages. In case the water flow exceeds bunds will have to be breached to divert water flow which will inundate several other villages.
Replying to a question he added that the flood monitoring center has been stablished under the supervision of DG Engineers at GHQ Rawalpindi where Army Chief is briefed about it daily. Similarly the corps headquarters at Rawalpindi, Multan, Gujranwala and Karachi are acting as flood monitoring centers. Helicopter bases have been established at Chaklala, Abbottabad and Tarbela for delivering aid to the affected areas.
“We are focusing on the areas close to Karakuram Highway (KKH) and people stranded in these areas are being evacuated. The COAS also visited barrages and he was briefed on the measures being adopted to save them”, he maintained.

 

[Xeric]

Supercharged jet stream contributing to floods – The Express Tribune

Supercharged jet stream contributing to floods

Several areas of Sindh have been flooded and more are under threat as barrages reach their capacities.

Meteorologists have said that a highly-charged jet stream is contributing to the worst floods Pakistan has seen in decades, reported telegraph.co.uk on Tuesday.

The jet stream, a massive ring of high speed winds, is moving quicker than usual over north western Pakistan, causing wet monsoon air to be sucked faster and higher into the atmosphere.

The stream, which is normally too high to affect everyday weather but does influence large scale weather patterns by shifting the atmosphere around, is ‘supercharging’ the monsoon, leading to some of the heaviest rainfall ever, telegraph reported.

The stream has split in two with one section heading north over Russia and the other going south over the Himalayas into Pakistan.

Experts say it is very unusual for the stream to head that far south

 

[Xeric]

Army, Islamists Ride High in Submerged Pakistan - TIME

In Flooded Pakistan, Islamists Ride High As Government Sinks
By Omar Waraich / Islamabad

The floods are unrelenting. Nearly a month since heavy monsoon rains began to devastate remote regions of Pakistan, intensifying in force as they spread, the picture of the damage wrought only worsens. Over the past week, the number of people thought to be affected by the disaster has soared to 13 million, according to an estimate provided by the Pakistani government to the U.N. If so, that is far larger than the number who required humanitarian assistance after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake combined (though the death toll in Pakistan so far is much smaller than in each of those disasters). Meanwhile, infrastructure damage will require billions of dollars for rebuilding that the country just doesn't have. The crisis has dealt yet another blow to the Pakistani people's faith in their civilian government; it has enhanced the standing of its national army; and, most worrisome to the government, it may have given hard-line Islamists an opening they have long eyed.

People in all four Pakistani provinces have lost their homes, their schools, hospitals, workplaces and the farmland that provides them with food. Clean drinking water is scarce. Not only are the rescue and relief efforts proving inadequate, there is little prospect of life in the worst-hit areas returning to normal anytime soon. (See what Pakistani flood victims carried away from the rising waters.)

Given the sheer ferocity of the floods, even the best-prepared government would have struggled to cope. Bad weather has made it impossible in many cases to mount relief efforts or transport relief goods. But the government has not helped itself with its inept bureaucracy and advice for the victims. Popular fury has settled on President Asif Ali Zardari, who has been criticized for abandoning his people to tour Europe. As television channels carried images of waters washing away buildings and homes, Zardari was seen racing off on a private plane, sporting blue jeans and his trademark high-voltage smile. As flood victims anxiously awaited the arrival of a rescue helicopter from the Pakistan military's limited fleet or the half-dozen Chinooks supplied by the U.S. military, Zardari was seen floating across northern France in a private helicopter to visit his family's château in Normandy. And when he made a nationally televised speech, while addressing a gathering of party supporters in the British city of Birmingham, there was only a glancing reference made to the tragedy unfolding at home.

During the Birmingham speech, a protester who had managed to sneak into the hall hurled his two shoes at Zardari, missing by some distance. Zardari's supporters insist that his visit was necessary to secure aid for disaster relief. Opponents counter that such aid could have been appealed for from home and that even the $150 million that has been received, $35 million of which was donated by the U.S., is barely a fraction of the amount needed. (See pictures of the flooding in northwestern Pakistan.)

One of Zardari's ministers was less fortunate. In a sign of the rage that has built up in recent days, crowds pelted the junior economic-affairs minister Hina Rabbani Khar's convoy with stones as it arrived in southern Punjab on Sunday, Aug. 8. It was the first time, enraged constituents said, that she had ventured there since the floods had hit. Had she arrived a week earlier, they said, they could have urged her to ask the civilian administration to fill a hole in a nearby embankment, possibly saving many homes and acres of agricultural land. Punjab is Pakistan's breadbasket, and the agricultural sector is more than a quarter of the nation's economy and employs half the province's workforce. Now, more than 1.4 million acres (about 570,000 hectares), about 5.6% of the region's total, have been submerged. Critics say the flood damage could have been mitigated were it not for decades of bureaucratic negligence and petty corruption.

Shehryar Mazari's home and 200 acres (80 hectares) of cotton- and wheat-growing land in the Rajanpur district of southern Punjab, one of the worst-hit areas, are all underwater. "Everyone's lost everything," the farmer says. Only the Umarkot area of the district endured the deluge — because, he says, the local provincial lawmaker diverted the civilian administration to protect his own land. "The rest of the areas are now a part of the Indus River," says Mazari. While the area is susceptible to flooding, the government has never built any embankments there. Attempts at building new ones met resistance from the local administration, which allegedly demanded hefty bribes. When it came to the flood warnings, Mazari adds, local politicians tried to play down the scale of the impending disaster. "I don't know why politicians lie, but they did. If we had known how bad it was going to be, we could have evacuated people in time, but now we have women and children hanging in the trees, waiting for rescue." For the most part, local residents have been trying to help one another, volunteering money to buy boats and food. "The army only turned up on Sunday," he says. "As for the government, there's no sign of it." (Read a story about army power in Pakistan.)

Although its response has been limited, the Pakistan army at least has been visible. Television images prominently showed soldiers plunging into high waters to rescue the stranded, though critics said the footage was courtesy of camera crews dispatched there on helicopters that could have been used for further rescues. Some 30,000 soldiers are currently at work in the affected areas. In the country's major towns and cities, men in fatigues have set up makeshift tents to gather donations. In sharp contrast to Zardari's summer sojourn, Army General Ashfaq Kayani was the first of Pakistan's prominent leaders to hasten to see flood victims. He announced that every soldier in his force would donate a day's pay to flood relief — a gesture that shamed lawmakers who refused to do the same. (Comment on this story.)

"The reality is that the army really doesn't have to do very much to look good," says Farzana Shaikh, a Pakistan expert at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs and the author of Making Sense of Pakistan. "When things go badly with the civilian government, people in Pakistan often fall back, sit around themselves and say, 'Well, at least the army's there. It knows what to do.' Even if this isn't the case, the public perception is that the army has risen to this challenge — a perception that has, of course, been helped by its friends in the media." The army's enhanced standing, says military analyst and retired lieutenant general Talat Masood, "will mean that it will occupy more political space and strengthen its dominance over political institutions."

Also standing to benefit from the disaster are Pakistan's hard-line Islamist groups, pushed to the sidelines by elections and weakened by military offensives. Unlike the civilian government and the army, which took days to marshal aid, Islamist groups boasted of efficient networks of volunteers. This is especially true in the volatile northwest, where the bulk of the devastation is taking place. The Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, a charity and alleged front group for the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) — which was blamed for the 2008 Mumbai massacre — has for days been feeding tens of thousands of affected people. Drawing on a similar popularity achieved during the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, members of the group say they receive donations from the urban middle class of Punjab, who are turning increasingly to religious conservatism.

Such aid will make it difficult for the government to crack down on the do-gooders, no matter how malevolent Islamabad alleges their motives to be. "The government now finds itself in an awkward position," says Shaikh. "If there is any pressure for it to move against these groups, it's going to find itself in much the same position as Gen. Musharraf, who during the Kashmir earthquake said, 'We need all the help we can get from whatever source.' Given the circumstances, for it to now act against groups who are seen to be doing a sterling job in terms of helping people will be absolutely suicidal."

Working alongside the LeT-affiliated charities are the social-welfare wings of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the hard-line Islamist political party. It and other Islamist parties have lately been polling poorly in elections, perceived as having been too close to former dictator Pervez Musharraf and too indulgent of the Pakistani Taliban in the northwest when they controlled the provincial government there. But observers warn that with the failures of the current civilian government, the Islamists could seize the opportunity to rebuild local support. More worrying, the devastation wrought by the disaster might give armed militants — chastened by a Pakistani army offensive last year — an opportunity to stage a comeback, seizing advantage of a government in crisis, an army overstretched and a local population enraged.

 

[Solomon2]

UN warns of Pakistan calamity

THE humanitarian crisis of the Pakistan floods is now greater than the combined impact of three of the world's worst recent natural disasters.

They include the 2004 tsunami, the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir and this year's Haiti earthquake.

The dire assessment came as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed to international donors to aid the stricken nation.

About $US102 million ($112m) in international aid has been pledged so far, but only $US20m has been delivered, the Dawn newspaper reported.

About 1700 people have died and 14 million people have been hit by the floods, which were threatening yesterday to inundate two more major cities: Muzaffargarh in Punjab and Hyderabad in Sindh province, further south.

Thousands of people streamed out of Muzaffargarh, a city of 250,000 people, after the authorities issued warnings through mosque loudspeakers.

"There is chaos," police official Mohammed Amir told reporters.

Officials watched nervously as water levels at two barrages along the Indus River threatened to exceed capacity and flood Hyderabad, Sindh's second-largest city.

Rescuers in the flood-stricken Indian Himalayan district of Ladakh recovered more bodies yesterday, raising the death toll from flash floods to 165, as the Indian government continued to evacuate visitors from the worst-affected areas.

Three Australians were among 81 tourists evacuated by the Indian air force from the Zanskar Valley, which was hit by flash floods and mudslides, but six remain unaccounted for.

The Australian high commission in Delhi said a consular official was being sent to the region today to search for the six missing Australian tourists, among 200 people still unaccounted for.

In Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari returned from his much-criticised tour of Europe to visit some of the affected areas.

But his show of concern was too late for many flood victims, who have blamed him for the government's failure to respond adequately to the crisis.

The unpopular leader was jeered at events in Britain -- and was targeted by a shoe-throwing protester -- over his failure to return home for the crisis.

In one London newspaper, Mr Zardari's estranged niece, Fatima Bhutto, described the floods as "Zardari's Katrina" -- a reference to former US president George W. Bush's disastrous handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Officials in the US, which counts Pakistan as a key ally in its war to end the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, are increasingly concerned at the hostility towards Mr Zardari and his government's weak response to the floods.

As of yesterday, up to 600,000 people remained stranded in the northwestern Swat Valley, the centre of last year's battle between Taliban insurgents and the Pakistan military, as bad weather continued to hamper rescue flights. The greatest problem facing emergency workers is access to the worst-hit areas, where ******** have washed away road networks and most bridges in the northwest, as well as more than 252,000 homes across the nation.

The flooding has caused extensive damage to Pakistan's power infrastructure, and has destroyed millions of hectares of crops in the country's breadbasket of Punjab -- a fact already cynically reflected in the skyrocketing price of foods and other essentials.

Maurizio Giuliano, a spokesman for the UN office for the

Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the disaster was now affecting almost 14 million people across Pakistan -- "more than the world's three recent disasters combined".

More than three million people were affected by the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, another five million by the 2004 tsunami and three million by the Haiti earthquake in January.

The International Monetary Fund has warned that the floods would cause "major harm to the economy" and has called for international relief.

Pakistan was granted an emergency $US11.3 billion loan in November 2008 to avert a balance of payments crisis, and has since struggled to satisfy major loan conditions, including a demand that it raise taxes on an already impoverished population to finance government spending.

 

[Solomon2]

Pakistani Evacuates Flood Zone as 14 Million Uprooted

Aug. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan’s most destructive flood in memory surged south toward Hyderabad, the biggest city in its path, as the government and aid agencies said they are unable to reach or help many of the 14 million uprooted so far.

Officials in Hyderabad, an industrial city of more than 1.6 million people, evacuated residents from low-lying areas as the Indus River threatened to breach the Kotri Barrage, about 8 kilometers (5 miles) northwest from the city center. About 1,600 people are known to have died in Pakistan, and hundreds more in India and Afghanistan, from the flooding caused by heavy monsoon rains, officials in the three countries say.

“God forbid that the dam should break because we have two to two-and-a-half million people in and around Hyderabad who are at risk,” said Aftab Ahmed Khatri, the city administrator. “We are shifting people from the riverside to relief camps,” he said in a telephone interview.

The flood has submerged an area as large as Lebanon, overwhelming relief efforts by the government and UN agencies. In Baluchistan province, “our stockpiles are nearly exhausted,” and trucks hauling tents have been blocked for a week by flooded roads, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said in an e-mailed message. In the northwest, the death toll may rise sharply as more bodies are discovered, Mujahid Khan of the Edhi rescue service said by phone from Peshawar, the region’s main city.

With more than 10,000 square kilometers (4,000 square miles) of Pakistan under water, the agency has delivered tents to communities that have no dry land on which to pitch them, UNHCR said.

‘Worst Disaster’

The flood is “Pakistan’s worst natural disaster” since the country’s creation 63 years ago, and has set back the nation’s development by many years, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said yesterday. The United States and Islamic militant groups, both pushing for influence in the world’s sixth-most populous country, have sent teams to help homeless villagers in areas of the ethnic Pashtun northwest that for the past two years have been combat zones.

The Pakistani Taliban urged the government not to accept any foreign aid, Associated Press reported, citing spokesman Azam Tariq. The Taliban would themselves provide money if the government stopped accepting international help, the report said.

Pakistan’s Qadirpur gas field, 190 kilometers (118 miles) north of Hyderabad, was shut down after being submerged in floodwater, deepening Pakistan’s electricity deficit by 1,500 megawatts, Power Minister Raja Parvez Ashraf told reporters in Islamabad today.

Crops Damaged

Officials say the flood’s worst damage may be done at Hyderabad, Pakistan’s sixth-largest city, and the biggest population center directly on the 3,200-kilometer long Indus River. The city is home to textile mills and assembly plants for motorcycles and cars.

Along with Karachi, the port city and financial capital 175 kilometers to the southwest, Hyderabad has been repeatedly damaged by floods, in part because of poor urban drainage systems, according to a February report by the National Disaster Management Authority.

Still, the annual monsoon flooding has been relatively minor in the most recent years, said Khatri, the Hyderabad administrator, leading impoverished residents to build cheap mud-brick homes on the Indus flood-plain that officials are now evacuating. The Indus may risk breaching the Kotri Barrage today or tomorrow said a warning on the website of the Pakistan Meteorological Department.

Donor Pledges

Cotton, rice, sugarcane and maize crops have been damaged and fruit orchards have been washed away, putting at risk the government’s farm output growth target of 3.8 percent for the year that started July 1.

The floods have destroyed 30 percent of the cotton crop, according to Khursheed Ahmed Khan Kanjo, president of the Pakistan Kissan Board, a farmers’ group. The government will miss its target of producing 14 million bales of cotton and may need to increase imports, he said.

Flooding also damaged 20 percent of the rice crop in Sindh, said Abdul Majeed Nizamani, president of the Sindh Abadgar Board. Half the red chilli and tomato plantations and 70 percent of the onion crop were also damaged.

The UN Children’s Fund is planning to deliver 4.2 million packets of oral rehydration salts and 2.1 million doses of zinc to children in Pakistan to prevent a potential outbreak of measles, the UN said. Donors have so far provided $38.2 million to the UN and its partners and pledged a further $90.9 million, the world body said.

Floods have left many areas beyond outside help or communication, knocking out cell phone towers and ripping away roads. Thousands are without electricity after grid stations and transformers collapsed, Pakistani television reported.

The floods first struck the western province of Baluchistan on July 22 before inundating the worst-hit Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and then entering Punjab and Sindh.

To contact the reporter on this story: Khurrum Anis in Karachi at Kkhan14@bloomberg.net; Farhan Sharif in Karachi at fsharif2@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: August 10, 2010 11:14 EDT

 

[Xeric]

What's funny is that if you follow the news stream over this flood crisis, the most glaring side (which is obviously deliberate) of the news pieces and Op-eds is the 'concern' shown in them as regards to the (political) 'strengthening' and popularity of the Army, which infact juts out because of the govt's tardiness and nothing else.

 

[sparklingway]

Reports are suggesting that nearly half a million people are emigrating out of Muzaffargarh and the highway is jammed with traffic.

This has become by far the biggest disaster ever in our history. The magnitude of the disaster isn't being realized by the public at large.

Mapping the floods has made me realize the magnitude.

 

[Patriot]

yep, no one is talking about floods like people were talking about earthquake.I guess it's because floods are not dramatic like earthquake and Pakistanis like dramatic stuff so they can create conspiracy theories.

 

[GentlemanObserver]

Reports are suggesting that nearly half a million people are emigrating out of Muzaffargarh and the highway is jammed with traffic.

This has become by far the biggest disaster ever in our history. The magnitude of the disaster isn't being realized by the public at large.

Mapping the floods has made me realize the magnitude.

Have a look at the maps here, they are eye watering to say the least!

ReliefWeb » Map » Updated Flood Waters in Charsadda and Nowshere Districts, Pakistan - Flood Analysis with RADARSAT-2 Satellite Data Recorded on 5 August 2010

 

[GentlemanObserver]

yep, no one is talking about floods like people were talking about earthquake.I guess it's because floods are not dramatic like earthquake and Pakistanis like dramatic stuff so they can create conspiracy theories.

Exactly, people need drama. We are too use to drama serials and action packed nonsense.

 

[AbuSalam]

Exactly, people need drama. We are too use to drama serials and action packed nonsense.

Instead of blaming and finding fault..pls think of something positive or at least PRAY !!!

 

[GentlemanObserver]

Instead of blaming and finding fault..pls think of something positive or at least PRAY !!!

We are thinking of POSITIVE Things, perhaps you should ASSUMING too much? Yes!

We are all here because we care about Pakistan and its people, just because we are not making a fan-fare of what or how we are contributing towards the effort does not mean we are sitting idle and making gossip.

Who would know the Pakistani mindset better than a fellow Pakistani? Did you see how people reacted in 2005 compared to now? one would have thought Pakistan was at war, everyone was mobilised.

It is a bit timid at the moment due to the recession, financial + socio/economic crisis and ramadam = increased prices etc... There is a lot on the minds of the average citizen.

Do not confuse constraints as in-action or in-ability.