ENVIRONMENT: Nepal Battles Flood Chaos

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Surendra Phuyal

KATHMANDU, Jul 30 2004 (IPS) - It’s been more than a week since 43- year-old Pushkali Devi Kapadi’s family started living in a makeshift camp on the banks of the Baldi River just outside Damauli town in west Nepal.

Last week’s flash floods triggered by torrential monsoon rains washed away her house in the nearby village.

Now she, her husband and children are waiting for relief support from the authorities. The plastic-sheet-covered camp is just a temporary shelter for Kapadi’s family.

The family will eventually need a new house. And so will hundreds of other poor families rendered homeless by recent floods or landslides across the length and breadth of this Himalayan kingdom

But there are no signs of that happening anytime soon.

While officials are still assessing the actual damage caused by routinely occurring natural disasters, the death toll, however, keeps rising.

So far at least 181 people have been killed, in less than a month, by floods and landslides – leaving a trail of destruction across the hills and plains.

As of this week, 35 people had gone missing, while the disasters have displaced 37,000 families and destroyed about 70,000 houses around the country, according to figures made available by Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS).

To date, floods and landslides have affected well over 250,000 families in 25 of the country’s 75 districts.

Yet, concerned authorities have not been able to bring much- needed help and relief to all the people rendered homeless – due to their inaccessibility and the mountainous terrain that make the transporting of essential goods a horrendous task.

Adding insult to the injury, several highways and bridges, too, were damaged by monsoon floods.

A case in point is the 36-kilometer Mugling-Narayanghat highway in central Nepal.

This crucial highway artery was damaged during heavy rains last year. There are rocks and debris from over 100 landslides along the road that needs to be cleared.

Apparently, the ongoing monsoon activities have hampered efforts to repair that important highway, considered as the lifeline of not just the capital Kathmandu, but also of other bigger towns like Pokhara and Gorkha in western Nepal.

People in the affected areas have criticised the rescue and relief measures initiated by the government, but authorities say they are doing their best.

”We have mobilised local staff in the affected areas mainly in the eastern and central parts, who are taking help and relief to the people affected by floods and landslides,” Gopendra Bahadur Pande, spokesperson at the Home Ministry told IPS.

Also involved in the rescue and relief works are volunteers with the local Red Cross and other organisations.

Heavy monsoon rains started lashing Nepal from the first week of this month.

Three weeks on, the natural disasters have wrought so much havoc across the hills and plains of this mountainous country that the NRCS has termed it the worst monsoonal disaster in ten years.

The NRCS has gone on to appeal to the international community to provide help to the needy populations.

”We are still not sure how much relief assistance we need for the affected populations,” Khem Aryal, information officer at the NRCS told IPS.

”There are still dozens of settlements in the south that are marooned. And we are assessing the actual damage,” said Aryal.

Sprawling right on the Himalayan slopes and valleys, this part of South Asia traps the region’s annual monsoon rains.

The monsoon is heaviest between June to September, with 80 percent of rain falling during that period.

The accompanying monsoonal floods and landslides kill between 350 to 500 persons every year in Nepal, making monsoon-related disasters the largest killer after epidemics, according to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) – – a Kathmandu based organisation that works in the Hindu-Kush Himalayan Region.

Between 1983 and 2000, a total of 6,464 people lost their lives to monsoon floods and landslides in Nepal, an ICIMOD analysis says.

The flood damage is exacerbated by the havoc wrecked on human settlements and basic infrastructure in a country where most of the mountainous districts and valleys are linked only by air transport.

This year, the most affected among Nepal’s 75 districts are Makawanpur in the central mountainous region and Okhaldhunga in the east. In Makawanpur, 22 people were killed in landslides and floods while 22 lives were lost in Okhaldhunga.

In Thakse and Toksel villages in Okhaldhunga, monsoon disasters last fortnight rendered more than 60 families homeless and damaged whatever little road infrastructure the inaccessible district boasted of.

Also, nature’s fury did not spare the precious rice fields belonging to poor farmers there, according to Gauri Baskota – one of the affected locals and former village chief of Thakse Village Development Committee.

No less affected are the southern plains bordering India, where hundreds of hectares of cultivated lands, towns and villages are submerged after snow-fed Himalayan rivers as the Koshi, Kamala, Bagmati and Gandak overflowed their banks.

For long-term relief and rehabilitation, ”the government, working in tandem with different line ministries, is preparing a long-term working plan,” said Pande of the Home Ministry.

But until that happens, thousands of flood-affected Nepalis like Kapadi will have no option but to fend for themselves.