DP-Index-Disaster-Sep07
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A section of
DOCPOST which is an
extract, executive
summary, index
rolled into one.
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FLOODS
Water,
water in many
places and a mayor who tells you not to bother
Mayor
Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya declared today that the water logging over
the last two days had been the worst Calcutta has seen in recent times.
Then
he
added "Five or six days of waterlogging in a year takes place in many
parts of India and abroad in case of unusually heavy rainfall.... So,
we should not bother too much." According to the mayor, his
counterparts and civic body officials of some other Indian cities, whom
he had met at meetings of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal
Mission in Delhi, have shared his opinion.
The
Telegraph, Calcutta, 26 Sep 2007
Downpour
Distress
Depression
shows no sign of weakening, 170 mm of rain recorded in 12 hours. Civic
officials were already warning of at least one more waterlogged day,
saying even if there was no rain after Monday evening, the streets
would not clear before Tuesday night.
The
Telegraph, Calcutta, 25 Sep 2007.
Landslips
in
Kalimpong, Kurseong
Mounds of
earth rolling down the hills after incessant rain over two days swamped
many kutcha homes today, burying alive at least five persons who were
inside. Nearly
500 houses, including 300 in the Kalimpong municipality, have been
damaged. The mudslips have blocked and cut off several roads, including
national highway
31A, the main road linking Sikkim and Kalimpong with Siliguri.
The Telegraph, Calcutta, 08
Sep 2007
Washed
away by the Brahmaputra
The
coverage in the national media has been
far from
commensurate with the
severity and
extent of
the damage and the continuing trauma of
the
flood-affected people in
the
Northeast
Jayanti Ghosh,
The Asian Age, Bombay, 22 Sep 2007
Many
out of work as 7
tea gardens are shut
Poor
infrastructure, floods and financial
crunch have
lead to closure of at least
seven tea
gardens in
Assam's Barrak valley currently reeling
under the
fury of devastating floods.
The
garden sources pointed out: "Majority
of the
gardens are not in a
position to
transport tea out of the
valley, which
severely affected cash flow
and
majority of the gardens
are now
reeling under severe
financial
crunch.
Manoj
Anand, The Asian Age, Bombay, 15 Sep 2007.
Floods:
Time for a rethink
Authorities
in
the Assam maintain that heavy rainfall in neighbouring Arunachal
Pradesh and Meghalaya caused the floods. Data of the Indian
Meteorological Department (IMD), however, shows that only one of the
three districts of Meghalaya received rainfall that was significantly
above normal.
It
also
shows that only two of the 13 districts of Arunachal Pradesh received
rainfall far in excess of the normal. In fact, the department's data
indicates that the floods were not necessarily caused by
heavy
rainfall: precipitation in Assam was less than 99 per cent of
the
30-year average rainfall in the state, and most of the flood-affected
districts in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat
received
less than normal rainfall before the floods.
IMD
has
its own explanation. "The only floods that took place this
year
were in Bihar. The others can be described as cases of water logging."
The Task Force
for Flood Management and Erosion Control Report of 2004 iterates what
the Centre For Science and Environment publication (State
of the Environment 1991) had said. It notes that the
construction
of embankments has had a disastrous impact. Though the
absence of data is a severe constraint in making an objective
assessment of the impacts of embankments.
Sumana
Narayanan, Archita Bhatia & Others, Down to Earth Magazine, 15
Sep
2007.
State to seek Rs
600-crore Central flood relief
35 people
lost their lives in floods in Gadag,
Dharwad,
Bagalkot, Haveri
and others districts of north Karnataka.
The floods
also damaged 47,000
houses and
washed away
2.6 lakh acres of standing crop.
Though the
damage caused to public
utilities
like road, bridges,
schools and
colleges and others is
extensive,
priority has been
accorded to
supply of clean drinking
water, to
avert spread of epidemic
diseases.
Hundreds
of drinking water wells have been
contaminated. "Unless the water
is
purified,people will continue to
drink the
same water and fall
sick,"
according to Principal Revenue
Secretary S M
Jaamdar.
The
Deccan Herald, Bangalore,
23 Sep 2007
Bangalore
City in deep water
Three
days of heavy downpour has thrown
normal
life completely out of
gear. The
worst affected areas are
in the
southern part of the city
where water
overflowed from 7
lakes.
The
Deccan Herald, Bangalore,
15 Sep
2007
Rain
stops, but woes remain
Battered
roads, snapped power supply,
flooded
neighbourhoods... woes
continued to
pour in
from residents of Bangalore's rain-hit
pockets on
Sunday. Grappling with the
rain
aftermath, BBMP has
taken up
damage control by
demolishing
encroachments on
storm water
drains.
P M
Raghunandan,Satish Shile, The Deccan Herald, Bangalore, 17 Sep 2007.
Under water
Two days
of heavy downpour and Bangalore's
infrastructure has collapsed again. This
was not a natural
disaster but routine monsoon rain that hits
Bangalore during these months.
Flooding of roads is the result
of poor drainage. Sewage pipes are
overflowing because little is
done in the run-up to the
monsoons to ensure that they are not
blocked.
There
have been
reports of overflowing drains
entering homes
and drinking water mixing with sewage in
various parts of the city. This is
likely to cause diarrhoea and other
illnesses in the coming weeks.
The
Deccan Herald,
Bangalore, 15 Sep 2007
.
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