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COVER STORY |
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COVER STORY |
LANDSLIDE AND
FLOOD This yearís torrential
monsoon rains have so far taken their toll not only in human lives, but also in
infrastructure, by destroying roads, power plants, and agricultural land. The
governmentís response continues to be the annual launch of rescue operations and
rehabilitation and reconstruction programs. However, once the monsoon season is over,
everyone will gradually forget about the potential in Nepal for disaster until the monsoon
returns next summer. At intervals of two or three years, Nepal is subjected to violent
cloudbursts and consequent heavy damage to public property, but the countryís policy
makers and planners do not seem to have learned much from experience. Until the government
establishes a reliable system of hazard forecasting and mapping in areas known to be
vulnerable, landslides and floods will continue to pose a major threat to this Himalayan
Kingdom By KESHAB POUDEL On the dreadful night of July 31, Ram
Bahadur Thapa, 56, a resident of Manakamana Village Development Committee, lost his entire
family when a landslide swept away his home, his wife and his son and daughter. Thapa was unconscious when he was rescued
and taken to Bir Hospital in critical condition and when he came round early the following
Sunday morning, he was shocked and traumatized by the unbelievable news.†Thapa's
three relatives were not the only ones who died, however. A major land slide also occurred
at wards no 1 and 4 of Mankamana village in the district of Gorkha, 80 kilometers west of
Kathmandu, killing 23 people and destroying 10 houses, thus displacing many other
villagers. "Oh God! Why did you save me and take
away my whole family?" Thapa wailed.
"Whom do I have to live for
now?" he sighed. "It was midnight when I heard a huge noise. I didn't realize
that the landslide had claimed three members of my family, my property and everything
else. I have nothing left," the traumatized Thapa told SPOTLIGHT in the emergency
ward of Bir Hospital. Thapa, who was lucky to be rescued and
treated by the Royal Nepalese Army, was not the only victim of this yearís heavy monsoon
rain. The rains on July 30 and 31 also washed away a portion of the Mugling-Narayanghat
section of Prithvi Highway and different sections of Tribhuwan-Rajpath highways, two major
roads linking the capital with rest of the country. It also swept away many other bits of
infrastructure in Royal Chitwan National Park, 130 kilometers south west of Kathmandu. As
a result of the destruction of the highway, the Kathmandu Valley is cut off. The Mugling
section is said to be so badly damaged — in as many as fourteen places - that it may
take another week to reopen the artery linking the capital with the rest of the country. According to the Department of Narcotics
Control and Disaster Management, 127 people were killed following the onset of the monsoon
rains in the second week of June. The department said that 45 people are still reported
missing and that 3281 families have been directly affected by land slides and floods. The
landslide also killed 168 domestic animals and destroyed 1475 houses in 47 districts in
the central, western and mid-western regions.
Along with the damage to personal
property, the rain has also destroyed roads and power supplies. The flood has badly
damaged Nepal's second largest power plant, at Marsyangdi, 115 kilometers west of
Kathmandu, on the banks of the Marsyangdi River. The damage to the 72 Megawatt power plant
caused disruption to the country's electricity supply. "Since the landslides have left large
amounts of debris on many parts of the road and the culvert has been swept away, it will
be impossible to reopen the road for another week. Heavy rain continues to disrupt our
clean-up process," the director general of the Department of Roads said. Disasters of this type are nothing new in
this rugged and happy-go-lucky Himalayan Kingdom but it is the governmentís inability to
learn from history about how to minimize the damage and prevent the destruction that is
becoming the problem. Every couple of years, the country suffers
similar disasters after a cloudburst; but no one seems to have learned lessons from past
monsoons. The Department of Road already spends a huge amount of money purely to maintain
the road. Had the government managed its budgets correctly, it would have adequate funds
with which to build alternative roads into Kathmandu. Human Factor As most of the rainís victims are the
families of marginalized farmers, it takes years to recover from such disasters. Once the
landslides have swept away their dwellings, families have to start from scratch. Landslide victim Ram Bahadur has to face
not only the psychological trauma of the loss of his family but the loss of his livelihood
as well. In a country where over fifty per cent of the population live below the poverty
line, such tragedy and loss are unbearable. The government pays the initial medical
expenses of the victims and the district administration provides a further Rs.10,000, but
this amount of money is not enough to make much of a difference to the victimsí families.
However, not everyone is lucky enough even to secure government support and many other
villagers who live in more remote areas receive nothing.
Besides taking a headcount of victims
and compiling a report detailing the loss of property, the government must develop a long
term strategy to minimize the effects of such natural disasters. "Our support is just for temporary
rehabilitation. The support given by the District Administrative Office to the victim's
family will help to stabilize the situation," said a senior officer at the Home
Ministry. However, the rehabilitation and rescue
program should not just be about the collection of data regarding the human loss and the
destruction of public property. Vulnerable Infrastructures In addition to the devastation inflicted
during the Maoist insurgency of the past seven years, the recent flood has put additional
pressure on the government, which is financially weak. Although the government is yet to
publish the extent of damage wrought by the floods, it is estimated that the country will
have to spend a minimum of 150 million rupees to repair the sections of road that have
been washed away, so that the highway can be functional once more. ìWe are not currently in a position to
release details regarding the damage. It will take couple of days to evaluate the damage
caused by the floods and rains," said a senior official at the Ministry of Works and
Physical Planning. As most of the settlement and encroachment
of land occurs on and around the banks of the highway, most of the road infrastructure is
permanently vulnerable to destruction and damage. Deforestation on hillsides as well as
the construction of settlements and villages on the top of mountains along the highway
have increased the likelihood of disasters. Although the Kathmandu-Mugling and
Tribhuwan Rajpath highways are the capitalís lifeline, the government has never made any
efforts to prevent or discourage settlement along the side of the road. The impact of
heavy vehicles and the tendency of the local population to terrace the land make the
highway a weak spot for landslides. But since most of the land encroachment is backed by
political parties and local land mafias, no government can make the harsh decision to
remove such settlements.
"We cleared some settlement
areas by the side of the highway during the period of emergency but the people started to
encroach on the land again," said a senior official at the Department of Road.
"It is impossible to protect the road if the government does not clear the settlement
areas on both sides of the highway." Studies have shown that population pressure
continues to rise on either side of the Kathmandu-Mugling highway. "There are small
huts and settlements in almost all the parts where the road widens. If the road sides are
safe, then people build huts right on top of the mountain," said a senior official at
the Department of Road. The Department of Road has the capability
to carry out all types of work but the problem is that it does not receive an adequate
budget for the maintenance of roads. "Once the disaster has occurred, the government
releases emergency funds and holds discussions regarding the safety of the roads. However,
as soon as the last truck has rolled off the highway and the monsoon season comes to an
end, we all forget these troubles until next year's rain," an official said. Regular Phenomenon Experts argue that violent tectonic
movement creates unparalleled geomorphic activity. Landslides, debris torrents and floods
are everyday occurrences and result in a very high rate of natural erosion. "The
Nepalese have learned to live with a degree of uncertainty that would be impossible for
people in other parts of the world. Over time people have developed a certain sense of
risk management, in order to survive normal and accelerated geomorphic events," says
an expert. With the increase in deforestation on the
hillsides and the clearance of hillside forest for agriculture, even reasonably stable
mountain areas face the perennial threat of landslides. The increase in the number of
landslides in the hill areas proves the need to protect the forest cover areas in the
hills. Since the local people's livelihood depends on the forest and agriculture, it is
not easy to make changes.
Apart from the great disaster of 1993
in which 1336 people lost their lives to water-induced disasters, available records from
1995 to 2000 reveal that on average 250 people have died annually in such disasters. For
the most part, damage to infrastructure such as road, irrigation systems and water supply
lines is rarely systematically recorded, owing to the lack of studies conducted in the
aftermath of the 1993 floods, landslides and debris flows. The time has now come to think beyond the
traditional mindset of rescue and rehabilitation. In the last two decades, the government
has spent enormous resources on carrying out rescue and rehabilitation operations but does
not seem to have learned much in the process. Damage to Infrastructure Every year Nepal loses billions of rupees
worth of infrastructure, namely bridges, roads, irrigation canals, drinking water sources
and most importantly, valuable agricultural land - complete with crops — belonging to
farmers. The Department of Narcotics Control and
Disaster Management has already recorded the loss of property of common people amounting
to Rs.60 million (about USD 1 million). "The figures for damage will increase
significantly once all the reports from different sectors have been received," said
Lekhanath Pokharel, a Department official. "We are collecting the data regarding the
loss of infrastructure and property." Floods and Landslides
Various water-induced disasters such
as debris flow, landslide, floods, gully erosion and so on occur annually in Nepal due to
its rugged mountain topography, high intensity monsoon rainfall and the fragile geology of
young Himalayan Mountains. Landslides and floods affect life during
the main rainy season or the ësummer monsooní (June to September), which brings around
80 per cent of the total annual rainfall. The remaining rainfall occurs between December
and February (5 per cent) and the rest of the year (15 per cent) Studies have shown that the landslide
density in Nepal range from 0.2 landslides per linear kilometer on stable land under
calm conditions, to 2.8 landslides per linear kilometer on more vulnerable land that is
fully exposed to human influence. Available data indicate that about 12,000 landslides or
ëslope failuresí occur each year in Nepal. A large number of landslides and debris flows
go unnoticed if they occur in uninhabited areas. "This year the monsoon came at the
normal time during the second week of June and was relatively active throughout the
country. The sudden changes and violent cloud appeared at the end of July," said a
senior Divisional Meteorology expert at the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology. The
level of precipitation and the distribution of rain was higher in the central and other
parts of the western region with rainfall recorded as high as 300 mm in some
districts." Normally the monsoon lasts for 106 days in
Nepal but sometime it lasts a little longer. According to the meteorologist, there is
still the possibility of heavy rainfall in the remaining days of the monsoon. "The
monsoon is still active and the rain will still affect the country," said a
meteorologist. Hazard Mapping With the establishment of the Department of
Water-Induced Disaster Prevention (DWIDP), Nepal has taken major steps to identify and
analyze the vulnerable places in different parts of the country. Nepal is known for its
mountainous areas in which unstable natural environments, steep slopes, weak and fragile
geology and heavy monsoon rainfall combine to make the young mountains one of the most
hazardous environments in the world. "Due to its topography and geological
characteristics and the torrential rain during the monsoon season the country frequently
suffers from different kinds of water-induced disasters like soil erosion, landslides,
debris flow, floods, glacial lake outbursts and flooding," said a senior official at
the Department. ìThe department initiated the preparation of the Disaster Information
System (DIS) to review the disasters occurring every year and to record the damages and
other related information." The National Action Plan on Disaster
Management 1996 approved by His Majestyís Government of Nepal contains, among other
things, measures related to geological, hydrological and meteorological hazards,
assessment programs, training, disaster management information system, national land use
and land cover plan.
The devastating flash floods of July
30 are attributed to the abnormal heavy precipitation. Although cloudburst is a regular
monsoon phenomenon in Nepal, the countryís infrastructure and traditional hill settlement
are vulnerable to disaster and landslide. According to experts, rising population
pressure, encroachment upon marginal lands for subsistence, farming on high slopes,
deforestation, over-grazing and the unsustainable extraction of bio-mass for energy in the
rural areas are the factors blamed as the human-induced factors leading to land
degradation and natural resources depletion, increasing the risk of disaster. Other malpractices include the
indiscriminate quarrying of stones, the mining of riverbeds for sand, and poor engineering
design and alignment of roads. Canals also play a part in the growing occurrence of
landslides. Preventive Methods With the support of the Japanese
International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the DWIDP is implementing the Disaster Mitigation
Support Project. The Department of Narcotics Control and Natural Disaster Management
(DNCNDM) has also been working towards the coordination of efforts regarding disaster
management. Whereas the DWIDP is working on assessing
risk and vulnerability related to water (scarcity, drought and excess, extreme weather
events, and factors induced by global warming),†the DNCDM is involved on the
rehabilitation and rescue side. With the implementation of a Water
Resources Strategy and the National Action Plan on Disaster Mitigation, some actions have
already been taken to prevent the disasters. "Floods, landslides, debris flows and
snow avalanches are common water-induced disasters in Nepal. The fragile geological
structures of the terrain combined with torrential monsoon rains and intense tectonic
activity, result in high sedimentation in the rivers," said Damodar Bhattarai, a
senior official at the DWIDP. "We have already identified the areas for the
prevention of disasters but it is not possible to bring about the change in a matter of
months." With the monsoon season in full swing since
June, landslides and floods are here to stay until September, and that means we can expect
more households to be washed away, and more human tragedies. The people of Nepal, it
seems, have more than their fair share of hostile conditions. |
Send your feedback to the
editor: spotligh@mos.com.np |
