Southern Pakistan braces for flood surge (Roundup)

Aug 5, 2010, 12:34 GMT

Islamabad - Authorities in southern Pakistan were Thursday preparing for the arrival of flood waters that have left hundreds dead and large areas devastated on their way through the north-west and centre of the country.

'Up to 1 million cubic feet (28,300 cubic metres) per second of water will pass through Guddu Barrage at Indus River in Sindh province sometime in the evening,' said Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, the head of Pakistan's meteorological department.

'At the moment, it is raining in that area but it is predicted to stop before the surge of flood reaches its maximum level,' he added.

Officials said they fear that after passing through Guddu barrage, which has a maximum discharge capacity of about 34,000 cubic metres per second, the flood will submerge large swathes of land in low-lying areas in six districts of the southern province of Sindh.

Six more districts were threatened near Sukkur Barrage in Sindh.

The army has been called in by the civilian administration to evacuate people to safer places 'with the help of 40 helicopters and 450 army boats,' a military spokesman said.

Army engineers have been deployed at Guddu barrage, Sukkur barrage, and Kotri barrage to assist the irrigation department, as authorities said they feared the barrages may be damaged by the floods.

Authorities are racing against time to relocate people from near the river before it floods.

'So far we have evacuated more than 350,000 people from the areas we believe will be worst affected,' said Saleh Farooqi, a spokesman for Provincial Disaster Management. 'Altogether up to 1 million people might be affected by the floods.'

The floods that were triggered by last week's heavy monsoon rains wreaked havoc in the north-western province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, killing more than 1,600 in the province alone.

Troops and aid workers are still struggling to access the remote, mountainous areas, especially in the Swat valley, where thousands are inaccessible by road and living in the open air.

Helicopters are the only means to ferry much needed food and medicines to those in need.

Even on the plains, such as around the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa capital Peshawar, people are angry over the sluggish relief efforts by the government. Hundreds of flood victims held protest rallies and blocked roads in Nowshera and Charsadda districts on Wednesday.

Further south in the central province of Punjab, the water breached the banks of the Indus River and swamped more than 400,000 hectares of land.

Those evacuated are at the risk of water-borne disease, with diarrhoea emerging as the most reported health condition in multiple locations.

'Thirteen thousand consultations, including for acute diarrhoea, (were) reported in Peshawar, Mardan, and Charsadda and Nowshera districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,' the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

A statement from the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs on the same day said that 1.4 million people were affected by the waters in Punjab, with 25,000 houses destroyed and 48,000 damaged. Dozens drowned and 525,000 hectares of agricultural land were inundated.

The United Nations, the World Bank and several countries have announced millions of dollars in aid to help the flood victims in Pakistan, whose economy has been devastated by rising Islamist militancy and previous political instability.