Pakistani engineers shored up river defenses in Hyderabad, the country’s sixth-largest city, as flood waters poured south, leaving behind a trail of unprecedented destruction.
“Our protective arrangements are all in place,” said Abdul Qadir Paleejo, executive engineer at the Kotri Barrage, a dam spanning the Indus River 8 kilometers (5 miles) northwest of the industrial city of 1.6 million people in Sindh province. "We have strengthened our embankments and protective walls."
City officials began evacuating residents from low-lying areas yesterday. The Kotri Barrage is the last dam along the Indus as it makes its way to the sea.
Officials say the flood’s worst damage may be done at Hyderabad, the biggest population center directly on the 3,200- kilometer long Indus River. The city is home to textile mills and assembly plants for motorcycles and cars.
“The barrage has the capacity to withstand a flow of 875,000 cubic feet per second, while the incoming tide is carrying a flow of 800,000,” Paleejo said from his office at the dam. “We are hoping it will pass without causing any damage.” The most dangerous period will be between Aug. 13 and 15, he said.
More rains are expected in the next 24 hours in central Punjab province and in the northwest, the worst-hit region and from where a wave of water has descended on Pakistan’s economic heartland, Muhammad Riaz, the chief meteorologist in Karachi, said by phone.
Flood Respite?
“These showers will go on for an hour, and only if they continue for several hours, would they cause more floods,” Riaz said.
Pakistan said yesterday it will waive farm loans and help rebuild homes for victims of the floods as the government and aid agencies acknowledged they are unable to reach or assist many of the 14 million uprooted so far.
The government will announce a sweeping rehabilitation package once it completes a survey of lives lost and damage to property, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan cited Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani as saying. A cross-party committee will coordinate relief activities, he said, after visiting camps in Muzaffargarh and Layyah.
The World Bank said today it will assess needs and draft a reconstruction plan for affected regions.
About 1,600 people are known to have died in Pakistan, and hundreds more in India and Afghanistan, from flooding caused by heavy monsoon rains. The death toll may jump as more inundated areas become accessible, rescue workers said.
Last Barrier
“God forbid that the dam should break because we have two to two-and-a-half million people in and around Hyderabad who are at risk,” said Aftab Ahmed Khatri, the city administrator. “We are shifting people from the riverside to relief camps,” he said in a telephone interview yesterday.
The flood has submerged an area as large as Lebanon, overwhelming relief efforts by the government and UN agencies. In Baluchistan province, “our stockpiles are nearly exhausted,” and trucks hauling tents have been blocked for a week by flooded roads, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said in an e-mailed message.
With more than 10,000 square kilometers (4,000 square miles) of Pakistan under water, the agency has delivered tents to people that have no dry land on which to pitch them.
War Zones
The United States and Islamic militant groups, both pushing for influence in the world’s sixth-most populous country, have sent teams to help homeless villagers in areas of the ethnic Pashtun northwest that for two years have been combat zones.
The Pakistani Taliban urged the government not to accept any foreign aid, Associated Press reported, citing spokesman Azam Tariq. The Taliban would provide money if the government stopped accepting international help, the report said.
Along with Karachi, the port city and financial capital 175 kilometers to the southwest, Hyderabad has been repeatedly damaged by floods, in part because of poor urban drainage systems, according to a February report by the National Disaster Management Authority.
Still, the annual monsoon flooding has been relatively minor in recent years, said Khatri, leading impoverished residents to build cheap mud-brick homes on the Indus flood- plain that officials are now evacuating.
Cotton, rice, sugarcane and maize crops have been damaged and fruit orchards have been washed away, putting at risk the government’s farm output growth target of 3.8 percent for the year that started July 1.
The U.S. yesterday pledged an additional $20 million in emergency aid, bringing its total promised to $55 million, State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley told reporters.
Australia said today its air force will send two C-17 Globemaster aircraft this week to deliver emergency supplies.
The floods first struck the western province of Baluchistan on July 22 before inundating the worst-hit Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and then entering Punjab and Sindh.
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