Hospitals & Asylums
Care Pakistan: The
Seeds of Flood Relief HA-21-8-10
By Tony J.
Sanders
Over
the course of July and early August 2010, Pakistan experienced the worst
monsoon-related floods in living memory. Heavy rainfall, flash floods and
riverine floods have devastated large parts of Pakistan since the arrival of
seasonal monsoon rains on 22 July. The five rivers that drain northern Pakistan join to form
the Indus River that drains into the Arabian Sea. The water flow is expected to
reach 1 million cubic feet per second, nearly double the flow of the
Mississippi River. This is 10 times the normal flow of the Indus. Much of the nation’s 170 million people live in the
floodplain. About one
million homes have been damaged, twenty million people have been displaced and
the loss of life is estimated at anywhere from 1,300 to 1,600 lives. 160,000
sq. km of land have been submerged, a fifth of the country. Villages and villagers were reportedly washed
away by walls of water, entire districts submerged, cropland inundated,
drinking water contaminated, communications down, bridges destroyed, roads
gone, schools gone, homes gone, thousands of them in the more severely affected
districts. An estimated 6 million people
need food, 2 million are homeless and 750,000 homes have been destroyed or are
in need of repair. The World Bank has pledged $900 million and the
Asian Development Bank has given $3 million for immediate needs and committed
at least $2 billion over the next two years for reconstruction. The United Nations is asking for another $450
million to deal with immediate humanitarian needs and as of August 17, 2010,
$125 million had been contributed.
Monsoon flooding has been extremely severe this year. Flood surges sweep down from mountainous
areas in the north reaching more highly populated areas in days. Once the peak passes, another
flood forms in the mountains, and then a third. Fresh flows of water are
caused by rainfall in the mountains. The
southwestern summer monsoons occur from June through September. The Thar Desert and adjoining areas of the northern and central
Indian subcontinent heat up considerably during the hot summers, causing a low
pressure area over the northern and central Indian subcontinent. To fill this
void, the moisture-laden winds from the Indian Ocean rush in to the
subcontinent. These winds, rich in moisture, are drawn towards the Himalayas,
creating winds blowing storm clouds towards the subcontinent. The Himalayas act
like a high wall, blocking the winds from passing into Central Asia, thus
forcing them to rise. With the gain in altitude of the clouds, the temperature
drops and precipitation occurs. Some areas of the subcontinent receive up to
10,000 mm (390 in) of rain. Most of the
heaviest rainfall fell over three days in late July (28th-30th), particularly
in the Gilgit Baltisan /
Azad Kashmir and Khyber Paktunkhwa regions. The
Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) recorded July rainfall totals of 179.5%
above normal. Even recording stations in northern Punjab received heavy
rainfall, with some parts of Islamabad totaling more than 250mm on 30th July.
It is important to realize that Pakistan expects to receive monsoon rains
during the months of July and August.
Source: Weather and Climate Discussion Blog
So what have been the
causes? The Weather and Climate
Discussion blog found there is evidence in the theta on PV2 animation of
23rd-30th July suggesting a persistent upper level trough located over northern
Pakistan, particularly during the latter stages of that week. By examining the stream function at this
level, an interesting picture emerges. Over the
tropical Pacific Ocean anomalously cool ocean temperatures are developing -
known as a La Nina event. Such cool conditions can often be associated with
heavier than normal monsoon rains over the South Asian region,
however there is no reason to blame it for this particular event just
yet. The suggestion is one of an omega-shaped (Ω) blocking
pattern centered near the Ural Mountains in Russia, implicated in recent soaring temperatures and wildfires
during the persistent heat wave in Moscow and other regions. A pair of
troughs is noted to the south-west and east, appearing as perturbations to the
stationary wave running along the 35-45°N latitude band. A monsoon low is currently centered
over southern Pakistan. This low will continue to steer moisture into the
mountains of northern Pakistan for at least the next week. This pattern could
hold sway through mid-August. Rainfall
over the next week will exceed 10 inches in some mountainous areas of northern
Pakistan. There is the potential to double the rainfall received since the
monsoon began in mid-July. Pakistan Rainfall in July was high, 22.8
inches in Murree, 22.8 inches in Muzaffarabad,
22.4 inches in Garhi Dopatta,
20.8 inches in Mianwali and 19.7 inches in Islamabad
(10.1 inches on July 30 alone).
Cloud seeding, a form of weather
modification, is the attempt to change the amount or type of precipitation that
falls from clouds, by dispersing substances into the air that serve as cloud
condensation or ice nuclei, which alter the microphysical processes within the
cloud. The most common chemicals used
for cloud seeding include silver iodide and dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide).
The expansion of liquid propane into a gas has also been used and can produce
ice crystals at higher temperatures than silver iodide. The use of hygroscopic
materials, such as salt, is increasing in popularity because of some promising
research results. Seeding of clouds requires that they contain super-cooled liquid water—that is, liquid
water colder than zero degrees Celsius. Introduction of a substance such as
silver iodide, which has a crystalline structure similar to that of ice, will
induce freezing nucleation. Dry ice or propane expansion cools the air to such
an extent that ice crystals can nucleate spontaneously from the vapor
phase. Seeding of
warm-season or tropical cumulonimbus (convective) clouds seeks to exploit the
latent heat released by freezing. This strategy of "dynamic" seeding
assumes that the additional latent heat adds buoyancy, strengthens updrafts,
ensures more low-level convergence, and ultimately causes rapid growth of
properly selected clouds. Cloud seeding
chemicals may be dispersed by aircraft (as in the second figure) or by
dispersion devices located on the ground (generators, as in first figure, or
canisters fired from anti-aircraft guns or rockets). For release by aircraft,
silver iodide flares are ignited and dispersed as an aircraft flies through the
inflow of a cloud. When released by devices on the ground, the fine particles
are carried downwind and upwards by air currents after release.
Vincent Schaefer (1906–1993) discovered the principle of
cloud seeding using dry ice in July 1946.
Within the month, Schaefer's colleague, the noted atmospheric scientist
Dr. Bernard Vonnegut (brother of novelist Kurt Vonnegut) is credited with
discovering another method for "seeding" supercooled
cloud water using silver iodide. The first attempt to modify natural clouds in
the field through "cloud seeding" began during a flight that began in
upstate New York on 13 November 1946. Schaefer was able to cause snow to fall
near Mount Greylock in western Massachusetts, after
he dumped six pounds of dry ice into the target cloud from a plane after a 60 mile
easterly chase from the Schenectady County Airport. From March 1967 until July
1972, the U.S. military's Operation Popeye cloud-seeded silver iodide to extend
the monsoon season over North Vietnam, specifically the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The
operation resulted in the targeted areas seeing an extension of the monsoon
period an average of 30 to 45 days. The 54th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron
carried out the operation to "make mud, not war". In 1969 at the
Woodstock Festival, various people claimed to have witnessed clouds being
seeded by the U.S. military. This was said to be the cause of the rain which
lasted throughout most of the festival.
An attempt by the United States military to modify hurricanes in the
Atlantic basin using cloud seeding in the 1960s was called Project Stormfury was discontinued. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
of the Department of Interior sponsored several cloud seeding research projects
under the umbrella of Project Skywater from 1964 to
1988, and NOAA conducted the Atmospheric Modification Program from 1979 to
1993. The sponsored projects were carried out in several states and two
countries (Thailand and Morocco), studying both winter and summer cloud
seeding. Reclamation sponsored a small cooperative research program with six
Western states called the Weather Damage Modification Program, from 2002–2006.
About 24 countries currently practice weather
modification operationally. The largest cloud seeding system in the world is
that of the People's Republic of China, which believes that it increases the
amount of rain over several increasingly arid regions, including its capital
city, Beijing, by firing silver iodide rockets into the sky where rain is
desired. There is even political strife caused by neighboring regions which
accuse each other of "stealing rain" using cloud seeding. In Australia,
CSIRO conducted major trials between 1947 and the early 1960s: in the Snowy
Mountains, on the Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, in the New England
district of New South Wales, and in the Warragamba catchment area west of Sydney. Only the trial conducted in the Snowy
Mountains produced statistically significant rainfall increases over the entire
experiment. In Tasmania seeding resulted
in increased rainfall by 30% in autumn and seeding has continued ever
since. Russian military pilots seeded clouds over Belarus after the Chernobyl
disaster to remove radioactive particles from clouds heading toward
Moscow. The Russian Airforce
tried seeding clouds with bags of cement on June 17, 2008,
one of the bags did not pulverize and went through the roof of a house. In October 2009, the Mayor of Moscow promised a
"winter without snow" for the city after revealing efforts by the
Russian Air Force to seed the clouds upwind from Moscow throughout the
winter. In India, Cloud seeding
operations were conducted during the years 2003 and 2004 through U.S. based
Weather Modification Inc. in state of Maharashtra. In 2008, there are plans for
12 districts of state of Andhra Pradesh.
Since Pakistani independence in 1947, river managers have expanded the
canal system. Now, instead of the natural flow from the Himalaya in the north
to the Arabian Sea in the south, the Indus is diverted, piecemeal, east or
west, wherever it is needed to support farming. Such river diversion is a
common sight around the world as populations and food production boom. During its early years, Pakistan
experienced severe floods in the years 1955 and 1956 in the Indus Basin Rivers.
These floods however, could not initiate a national drive for flood protection
as the land-use pattern till then was not so flood prone. Contrived river boundaries and
tributaries in essence prevent the Indus River Basin from holding as much water
as it once did during heavy and prolonged rains. Until a few decades ago, there were typically
mild floods each summer—the time when the monsoon rainfall hits, and the melt
from the snowpack in the Himalaya and Karakoram Mountains is at its peak. But
now, because humans have sculpted the river and the surrounding natural
floodplain and wetlands for farming and other needs, there are fewer floods,
but when they hit, they are far worse.
The Indus and its canals are the largest irrigation system in the
world," says Tahir Qureshi,
a forestry expert with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature
(IUCN) and a former government forest officer and game warden. Pakistan's irrigation system has turned this
arid country into an agricultural powerhouse, but it has had its downside as
well, experts say. "The major river engineering is basically a Faustian
bargain," says Daanish Mustafa of King's College
London, recalling the fable in which a man sells his soul to the devil in
exchange for a life of luxury. Mustafa is a geographer who has studied the
history of Pakistan's river management. Economic growth
and population pressure continued building up till it faced the disastrous
floods of 1973 and then of 1976. Both these floods resulted in heavy losses to
life and property. The Federal Flood
Commission (FFC) was created in January 1977.
During 1988 Pakistan suffered two
major flood events, the first in July/August and the second in
September/October. The first flood involved the Indus, Swat, Kabul and Jhelum
Rivers. This flood caused only minor damage in Punjab, but resulted in
significant damage in Sindh, Balochistan and NWFP,
where exceptionally heavy rains coincided with the high river flow period. The second flood was caused by heavy rains in
the catchments of the Chenab (Pilot Study Area), Ravi and Sutlej Rivers. In
response from an urgent request from the Government of Pakistan for emergency
assistance to restore public sector infrastructure a loan was sanctioned worth
USD 44.0 million. Following the severe
1992 floods the Asian Development Bank approved the second Flood Damage
Restoration (Sector) Project to re establish and
restore the pre-flood capacities of critical public sector infrastructure in
irrigation, drainage flood control, roads, health and education, damaged by
these floods. The Government of Pakistan, World Bank and other donors planned
to co-finance this USD 396 million project. This project was scheduled to be
completed by June 1996, but was extended to December 1997. Flood management is a multifunctional process
involving organizations. The Government Organization, which plays major role in
the flood management the PIDA, WAPDA, Provincial Relief Organizations, Pakistan
Army, WIW, Emergency Relief cell, FFC and FFD.
The Provincial Irrigation and Drainage Authority (PIDA) that is
responsible for flood forecasting, flow monitoring as well as flood
mitigation. The WAPDA is responsible for
the maintenance of telemetric system of river and rain stations. Provincial relief Organizations are
responsible for disaster preparedness, emergency response including
post-disaster response to disasters including floods. The Pakistan Army corp
of engineers is responsible for providing civilian authorities necessary
assistance in the performance of rescue and relief operations. The Commissioner for Indus Waters (CIW) is
responsible for many dams and control structures as well as flood monitoring
but its authority is limited to communicating with India. The Emergency Relief
cell is controlled by the Cabinet Secretary to plan for emergencies, stockpile
supplies, respond to disasters and coordinate international relief. The Federal Flood Commission (FFC) provide the infrastructure for flood mitigation
programs. The Flood Forecasting Division
(FFD) of the Pakistan Meteorological Department disseminates flood control data
and disseminates it to national organizations.
Pakistan is an agricultural country. Eighty percent of its agricultural
output comes from the Indus Basin.
Shortly after independence, on April 1, 1948, India stopped the supply
of water to Pakistan from every canal flowing from India to Pakistan, after an
interim agreement in 1948 the Indus Basin Water Treaty was signed in 1960. Because
of Indus Treaty agreement between Pakistan and India a structural measure plan
has been prepared by each district authority to monitor discharge data of the
Indus and its tributaries. "There's
not very much space in the river channel to absorb all the rainfall," says
Asad Sarwar Qureshi, a water resources expert at the International
Water Management Institute (IWMI) branch in Lahore, Pakistan. "We
need to get it back into shape, so that it can carry its original
capacity." Wetlands along the river’s course used to take up some
floodwaters, and the government also used to divert excess water into "no
man's land" during the monsoon season, he says. But those areas have been
converted to farmland, he says. "There was absolutely a mad rush to settle
in these floodplains," says Mustafa. Another part of the problem is that
the Indus River and its tributaries carry some of the highest levels of silt of
any river system. More silt equals less room for water as monsoons and
snowmelt inundate the now-confined riverbed and canals. "Most of our
rivers and canals are already silted up".
Allowing the river to flood more regularly, and naturally, could help
temper the floods and make them more tolerable, say Mustafa and other experts.
"They need to give the rivers room to expand," Mustafa says.
"Not along the whole way, but they should restore some of the wetlands
along the way." At the same time, many of the levees should be kept in
place, but maintained better, one way of doing this, he says, is to plant trees
along the riverbanks. "When I was in the forestry department in the 1970s
and ’80s," Tahir Qureshi
says, "we used to broadcast seeds of Acacia nilotica,"
a native tree species. "They are soil binders, and a physical barrier to
the flood flow. They are the flood guards, a biological means of
protection." In the past couple of decades, however, many of the
embankment forests and trees have died or been chopped down. Managing
Pakistan's floods is a delicate balance between giving the river more room, and
building barriers to protect people and their land.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood
Qureshi has repeated his appeal for urgently needed
aid to the more than 20 million victims of massive floods that have submerged a
fifth of his country under water. Speaking ahead of a special session to be
held in the U.N. General Assembly, Qureshi said the
scale of the crisis is beyond the government's capacity. It is the largest flood in Pakistani history.
The United Nations appealed for $460 million to cover immediate humanitarian
needs over the next three months. Slightly more than half that amount has been
pledged or received. Minister Qureshi attributed that
in part to what he called a "trust gap" and assured donors that their
aid would be handled in a completely transparent manner. "We are willing to put into place
mechanisms that are transparent and are accountable, so that people of Pakistan
and international contributors have the confidence that their money that they
are contributing will be well spent. We will do whatever is required to fill
that gap," Qureshi said. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited
Pakistan to prepare a report for the General Assembly and encourage donor
countries to step up the speed and scope of their assistance saying, "3.2
million people were affected during the earthquake; over 20 million are
affected today. Thirty thousand square kilometers was the area that was
devastated [in 2005]. Now people are talking of 135,000 to 150,000 square
kilometers. Nine districts were affected [in 2005] and now 74 districts are
affected," he said. "Fortunately, the casualty rate is much, much
lower, but the economic loss is huge."
The United Nations Education,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO), have jointly launched an International Flood Initiative
(IFI). Floods bring
many benefits to floodplain areas, including, inter alia, the role that small
floods play in the maintenance of floodplain fertility and the importance of
regular flood flows to in-stream ecosystems. However, at the same time, floods
can have devastating consequences for the communities at risk. Floods affect an estimated 520 million people
across the world yearly, resulting in up to 25,000 deaths in a single year.
Along with other water-related diseases, they cost the world economy some US$
50 to US$ 60 billion per annum. At the same time, both developed and developing
countries have benefited from economic development in and around water bodies.
Close to one billion people -- one-sixth of the global population, the majority
of them among the world’s poorest inhabitants – now live on flood plains.
Developing countries with mainly agricultural economies depend largely on their
fertile flood plains for food security and livelihood generation. The deltas of
many river systems favor low-tech agricultural practices and provide
livelihoods for millions. The wetlands in flood plains contribute to
biodiversity and provide a number of essential ecosystem services to
communities, as well as creating employment opportunities through recreational
activities.
An
estimated 96 percent of deaths related to all natural disasters, including
floods, in the past decade occurred in developing countries. The greatest
potential flood hazard is in Asia, where, between 1900 and 2006, over 1200
floods claimed an average of 5300 lives per event and caused up to US$ 207
billion in economic losses. The adverse effects of flooding are not restricted
to the least developed nations. The 2002 floods in Europe claimed 100 lives and
caused US$ 20 billion in damage – but it is the least developed nations that
suffer most from the adverse economic impact on development and the high human
toll. Integrated flood management builds
the necessary in-country capacity to gain and advocate for a better
understanding and handling of hazards, vulnerabilities and benefits associated
with floods, by promoting all measures through the following guiding
principles: Living with floods, Equity for all stakeholders, Empowered
participation, Inter-disciplinarity and trans-sectorality, International and regional cooperation. The distribution of both the costs and
benefits of flood management must receive special attention since it has both
ethical and legal dimensions. Equity issues arise because of national borders
and jurisdictions (trans-boundary flood management), upstream and downstream
riparian rights, rural and urban interests and more broadly, between those
bearing the costs and those receiving the benefits. Integrated flood management
must therefore promote policy processes and outcomes that strive to be fair and
legitimate to all stakeholders. Since these also include future generations,
flood management strategies must also promote intergenerational equity.
The
Biblical account of the Great Flood and Noah’s Ark in Genesis Chapter 6-9 is
the Judeo-Christian standard for flood relief.
The Lord’s heart ached from the wickedness of men and told the faithful
Noah to build an Ark because he was going to bring the floodwaters to destroy
all life he had already condemned to a paltry one hundred and twenty years,
exactly as long as the three computer frauds evicting the author of the $20
billion oil spill settlement would not be sentenced deducting the 15 years of
actual damages from the 55 year country highway, not including Google’s
resurgence in mid-August nor disregarding the mother stealing fingerprint of
the mano muerto on the
calendar, now devil to same sex partnerships.
The Lord commanded Noah to collect two of each kind of animal and food
that is to be eaten and bring it with him.
On the 600th year of Noah’s 900 year life it rained for forty
days and forty nights, whereupon his family entered the ark and for forty more
days the floodwaters raised the ark.
Every living thing perished. The waters flooded the earth for 150 days
and then receded. While at sea Noah sent
out a raven that that flew away and then a dove that on its second weeklong
flight returned with an olive branch in its beak. The ark came to rest on Mt.
Ararat. Then
Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and
clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The Lord smelled the pleasing
aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because
of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And
never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done” (Genesis
8:21).
War
is defined as an armed conflict in which more than 1,000 people die. This flooding in Pakistan has taken the lives
of around 1,500 people. For insurance
purposes, and also to avoid the intergenerational conflicts and high potential
that Pakistani intelligence will be heard by the colonial occupying powers as a
failed State, floods are generally construed as Acts of God. Cloud seeding is however a patented human
intervention that could cause the extraordinary monsoon rainfalls seen this
year. It would seem that the wicked
drone bombings, Schedule I psychedelics and suicide
vests so illegally distributed by the Defense
Supply Center of the Defense Logistics Agency, have gone in for cloud seeding
to honor the fraudulent computer scientist whose grandiose delusions to save
the world could not be communicated through his sado-masochism. Can this Act of God be sufficient to expel
the international DEA offices, U.S. and N.A.T.O. military transshipment offices
and warehouses and drone airfields and strikes and other non-peaceful
over-flights? The U.S. shamefully
commits Acts of War on Pakistani soil frequently, and malicious U.S.
involvement is more suspicious than even official Indian cloud seeders. U.S. bombings in Pakistan seem to be
triggered by intergenerational torture back home and these intelligence
failures by the colonial occupying power translate into a grave threat of
failed State in both Pakistan and the United States. The U.S. really needs to forfeit all military
installations and aggression to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of
Pakistan. The cash strapped U.S. will
save considerable funds completely terminating all DEA offices and war
contracts in Pakistan. The U.S. Treasury
can recover from the billions of dollars of freely traded surplus from Afghan
operations to immediately pay the outstanding $250 million, without dipping
into the General Fund, for the immediate humanitarian needs of flood victims in
Pakistan.
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