ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province braced for heavy monsoon rains and more cross-border flooding from India on Monday, as officials put the death toll at 33 from deadly deluges that swept the province since last week and triggered mass evacuations.
Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous and rich province, has been dealing with unprecedented floods fueled by abnormally high rains and excess water released by India into the country’s low-lying regions, according to Pakistani officials. The deluges that began last week have killed at least 33 people and displaced 2 million across the province, washing away livestock and crops on large swathes of land. Nationwide, the downpours and floods have killed 854 people since June 26.
Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) warned on Sunday of the possibility of the floods intensifying with more rains likely in the flood-affected areas of Punjab, urging local administrations to take protective measures in vulnerable areas.
“All relevant departments are on alert due to water being released into the Chenab by India,” Irfan Ali Kathia, the director general of the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) Punjab, said in a statement. “Punjab is monitoring the situation in the rivers round the clock.”
Kathia reiterated that this was the “largest rescue and relief operation” in Punjab’s history, adding that authorities are providing food and basic necessities to people at flood relief camps across the province. He said 33 people were killed by the floods since last week while eight were injured.
Punjab Relief Commissioner Nabeel Javed, who visited the PDMA provincial control room to monitor the situation, said in a statement shared by the disaster management authority that 506 flood relief and 352 medical camps have been set up in the province’s affected areas.
He added that more than 17,000 citizens have been provided with health care services.
“More than 500,000 livestock have been moved to safe locations,” Javed said, stressing that rescue and relief efforts would continue until the complete rehabilitation of flood affectees.
RISING WATER LEVELS
Briefing the flood commissioner on the rising water levels in Punjab, Kathia said a flood wave in river Chenab is moving toward the Trimmu Headworks, where the water flow is currently at 479,000 cusecs. He said by evening, this flow was expected to surge to 700,000 cusecs.
The PDMA Punjab chief warned of an “extremely high flood level” at Balloki in river Ravi, adding that the water level there had surged to 168,000 cusecs. He said the water level at river Sutlej had surged to 253,000 cusecs while at Panjnad, the confluence of the five rivers of southern Punjab, the water level was expected to reach approximately 1 million cusecs between Sept. 2-3.
Separately, the Pakistan commissioner for Indus Waters released a letter informing several government departments on Monday that the Indian High Commission has warned of the possibility of “high flood” at Harike and Ferozepur sites alongside river Sutlej.
India routinely releases water from its dams when they get too full, with the excess flowing into Pakistan, as the two nations share rivers.
Pakistan, which ranks among the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, has experienced increasingly erratic, frequent weather events, including heat waves, untimely rains, storms, cyclones and droughts, in recent years, which scientists have blamed on human-driven climate change.
On Sunday, NDMA chief Lt. Gen. Inam Haider Malik said the country is facing a climate emergency as major natural hazards have been hitting every two months and now pose a grave “national security threat.”
“After every two months, Pakistan is facing a big disaster, in which the winter hazards are yet to come, after that, the early heatwave will come, and whatever will be triggered by the early heatwave, in which there are forest fires, and the next heatwave, and after that, another monsoon,” he said.
“Unfortunately, this is a part of reality, as we just talked about, in climate change, this is intensifying in the coming years... now climate change is being taken as a national security threat.”
The ongoing flood situation has revived memories of the 2022 cataclysmic floods, when a third of Pakistan was submerged with more than 1,700 people killed, over 30 million affected and damages totaling $35 billion reported.
