Losses could easily atop $2b in Swat alone as hundreds of houses, hotels and businesses are wiped out

PESHAWAR: When the roaring floodwater came down the steep mountains in different areas in Upper Swat, many locals started recalling the devastation of the super flood 12 years ago that had washed everything away while ravaging the tourist hotspots like Kalam, Bahrain and Madyan.

Although the quantity of rain in the last week of August was less than the nearly 400 mm downpour in three days in late July 2010, the destruction caused by the recent floods is by no means lesser. Over 40,000 population of Kalam and its surrounding villages including Ushu, Matiltan, Utror and Gabral are cut off from the rest of the country as dozens of bridges and several kilometres of road were washed away.

The destruction in Bahrain, meaning two rivers referring to Daral and Swat River that meet in this picturesque town, is unbelievable. The beautiful and modern-looking Bahrain Bazar remains swamped by muddy water. A village in Bahrain called Jail, situated far away from the Daral River was hit by the flood water with such intensity that 26 houses were completely destroyed while another 40 were partially damaged. The river changed its course and ravaged the village. According to a local source, some well-furnished houses were worth between 40 to 50 million rupees.

It will take many months to assess the losses caused by the recent floods. However, community activist and researcher Zubair Torwali in Bahrain estimates that the losses could easily atop $2 billion in the Swat district alone.

Talking to Bol News, Torwali informed that hundreds of houses and many hotels and businesses were completely wiped out. “Chail valley in Madyan suffered badly as the floodwater washed away many houses and trout fish farms and hatcheries. Similarly, the villages between Bahrain and Kalam, including Kedam, Chamgarhi, Mankiyal, Pushmal, Laikot and Haryana have all suffered heavy losses. Furthermore, Ushu, Mankial, Utror and Gabral have also suffered heavy losses,” Zubair Torwali detailed.

“Similarly, nearly 80 per cent of the newly constructed 35 kilometres Bahrain-Kalam Road was on the riverbed. In many places, it was hardly 4-5 feet above the river’s usual flow. Many kilometres of that road have been destroyed by the floodwater,” Torwali further said.

According to Dr Asif Khan, a Ph.D in water and climate change from Cambridge University (UK), increased encroachments on the riverside, deforestation and lack of climate change inclusive designs in the construction of buildings near the waterways are the main reasons behind the increased damages caused by the floods.

“The first issue in the recent floods is the increased encroachments on the river portion in Bahrain, Kalam and Upper Dir. All the hotels and buildings that were washed away in the floods were built in the path of the river and flood channels. Furthermore, the designs of these buildings also invited destruction. Poorly designed buildings and encroachment have caused failure to main structures,” Dr Asif added.

Zubair Torwali on the other hand argues that domestic constructions near the riverside in Bahrain are due to the narrow valley between mountains on both sides of the river. “The only land is near the riverbed, so the inhabitants are forced to do domestic construction on their tiny pieces of land near the water. The main issue is the commercial constructions, which started around the 1980s when tourism increased in Upper Swat,” he claimed.

Torwali opined that commercial construction should have stopped completely after the 2010 floods but allegations of corruption, use of contacts and references, and influence have stained the performance of the government and the bureaucracy, which are either least interested, lack the will or are allowing it on purpose.

“No one knows why and who allowed it again. There is talk of corruption and people using their approach to get NOCs. It is reported that the National Highways Authority (NHA) had planned to construct a major bridge in Bahrain. However, the common belief here is that influential outside investors and locals used their contacts to stop the construction of that bridge because it would have utilized local land. Investors in Bahrain and Kalam are mostly influential outsiders. The honeymoon hotel in Kalam was washed away in the 2010 floods. I don’t understand why was it allowed to reconstruct. Many other hotels also suffered the same fate. No one is sure if these constructions are done due to lack of government will or if the bureaucracy allowed it on purpose,” Zubair Torwali lamented.

Forecasting similar future events, Dr Asif Khan claimed that there are increased chances of similar rains and floods due to climate change.

“Rains have increased, prolonged, and intensified which has resulted in intense floods. We must expect similar rains and floods in the future. We published a research paper in 2018 in which we predicted the expectation of floods of 350,000 to 400,000 cusecs floods in the Kabul River basin. This is exactly what happened. There are predictions of a further increase in the intensity of these floods in the future. The only way to counter this are the climate inclusive infrastructure designs which if strictly implemented could save ourselves from such harms,” Dr Khan informed.

The historic 2010 floods were recorded at 9,000 cumecs (317,832 cusecs). Compared to it, Dr Asif says, the future flows between 2031 to 2050 are expected to be twice or even higher while the floods could go three to four times high in 2081-2100.

The capacity of Munda headworks was 175,000 cusecs when it was washed away in 2010. After reconstruction by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Irrigation Department, the capacity of the headworks reached 225,000 but again the floodwater destroyed nearly half of the structure last week.

“We still have time to go for climate change inclusive designs in our future flood protection infrastructure schemes on Kabul River. Considering the projections, modernizing the constructions will provide us safety against high expected floods in the future.

Rapid deforestation is another factor behind the intense floods. Dr Kashif Saeed, PhD in Development Studies from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Oslo, Norway argues that in the last 40 years, significant levels of deforestation took place in Swat and Dir districts. “In the conflict in 2008-2010, large-scale deforestation took place when the Taliban overrun those areas. This deforestation is happening even now. Rapid deforestation has resulted in a weakened resilience by the ecological system,” Dr Kashif claimed.

“The mountains in Bahrain, Kalam and Kumrat are very steep and they had forested slopes. Many of those thickly forested slopes are now barren and when it rains heavily, the soil and rocks come down swiftly along with the floodwater, destroying watersheds which allow the rainwater to trickle down instead of running down as it happened in the recent floods,” Dr Kashif Raza opined.

“We really need to work on afforestation programs and we need to save the existing ecosystem. It has to be a multiple-step strategy, there should be check-dams on different streams to retain the amount of soil that is dragged down. Similarly, flood mitigation or flood control measures must be put in place,” Dr Kashif opined.