Floods sweep 108 lives, render 334,700 homeless
... Excerpt
Floods sweep 108 lives, render 334,700 homeless
August 20, 2013
OUR STAFF REPORTER | THE NATION
ISLAMABAD - Heavy rains and flood have engulfed as many as 108 human lives, injured 104 persons and made 334,700 people homeless across the country since August 1.
According to the data collected from National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), 25 people including women and children were killed in Khyber PakhtunKhwa, 12 in Federally Administered Tribal Areas, 30 in Punjab, 22 in Sindh, 16 in Balochistan and three people died in Azad Jammu and Kashmir in the floods and rain-related incidents.
Heavy rains and flood damaged 2,482 houses partially while it razed 2,374 houses completely. According to official figure compiled by NDMA, torrential rains and heavy flood made as many as 334,700 people homeless across the country.
The NDMA spokesperson told media on Monday that there was nothing to be worried about the current situation as it had already made elaborate plans to take care of flood victims. The spokesperson said that it started preparations for relief operations five months prior to the floods on the basis of past experience. “Natural disasters could not be prevented as those are the result of global climate change. However, we have tried to minimise the damage as a result of natural disaster such as flood and heavy rain,” an official of NDMA told The Nation on Monday.
According to him, NDMA teams had started preparations to cope with flood-like situation in March and have distribued camps and edible items in the flood-affected areas before the flood. When asked what caused recent flood, the officials said that poor drainage system was the main cause of floods in urban areas as drains were choked and water entered residential areas, but fortunately there was no major outbreak of diseases.
According to date collected by The Nation, 60 relief camps had been set up and 2,800 people have been shifted to these camps. The NDMA alone has distributed 22,808 tents among flood victims, including 4,530 in Balochistan, 728 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 8,800 in Sindh and 8,750 in Punjab. It has also distributed 500 blankets among the flood victims, including 300 in Balochistan and 200 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.