I wrote a bit the other night about the response to the floods in Pakistan. I live in Pakistan, and let me tell you, in as short a space as I can, what are the effects. I’m not sure how well people grasp this, but with 20 million people affected and no signs that the crisis is ebbing, I don’t know if people understand exactly what this means; This thing is HUGE. Until you’ve seen a really big flood, it is hard to grasp what it does. It challenges your knowledge of synonyms for destroyed.
Everything is gone or ruined, all that is left is mud, dirt, silt, sand and ruined houses. Let’s start with the houses. Foundations are rarely very deep, people often build on cinderblocks to save money. Sometimes they don’t use much cement, or any at all, in their mortar. Many houses are just mud and stones. Those houses will literally dissolve. Many will be undermined and all houses will be unstable. Anything inside is ruined. Upholstered furniture, anything made of wood, paper or cloth is probably ruined beyond repair. That nice set of books you saved a year to buy? Ruined. Rugs, carpets, cabinetry, electronics, all ruined. Pictures, photos, snapshots of your family, your long dead father, your children’s baby photos? All ruined beyond recognition.
The engines of vehicles that were inundated are probably salvageable, but the upholstered seats, floor mats, etc. all gone. And the engine will require more than just drying out, they will need to be cleaned and scrubbed and have all the rust removed from the insides, timing fixed with a tune up, etc. But who’s going to do your tune up? The gas stations, with their tanks of fuel, are all inundated, their tools and machines ruined.
Stock in stores and other commercial buildings is ruined. Often in Pakistan, all your savings is not in the bank, it’s in the stock of your store. A fire or flood will ruin you, since you have no money to restock. All food that isn’t canned or in tetrapaks is ruined: flour, sugar, anything wrapped in paper, which is just about everything, is destroyed. Everything else is covered in mud. Of course, anything requiring refrigeration, whether in a warehouse or a store, is fouled and unusable.
Let’s talk public infrastructure. The roadbase has become waterlogged and is likely to be undermined, macadam and asphalt will fall apart once heavy trucks start to roll, since the base layer is compromised. Bridges are washed out, isolating large areas of the country. Water wells are inundated, their pumps shorted out or full of silt, the wells themselves have filled with silt and rocks rendering them unusable. As the water recedes and the dirt washes away, local water distribution pipelines are exposed and will need to be buried again so they are not broken.
Schools and government buildings are either inundated or being used as collective centers. These are being used in a way that puts incredible stress on the buildings. It is not the fault of the people who are using them, schools are just not built for this sort of thing. They will ALL need, at a minimum, plaster, paint, new furniture, new plumbing and wiring, blackboards, etc. And books. All the books will have been ruined by the water. And that’s only if they haven’t been inundated, in which case they are much worse.
Larger public infrastructure, things like power plants and electrical substations, irrigation water pumping stations, even streetlights and stop lights, all are no longer working. The bases of electric transmission pylons have also been undermined and/or are washing away, so generation and transmission of electricity, to say nothing of the “last mile’ distribution network are out of commission.
Then there’s the government buildings. These contain all the birth, death and marriage records, land title records, cadaster records, tax records and on and on. In Pakistan, all public records are on paper, and they are all now ruined, waterlogged and in some cases where cheap paper was sued, dissolved. Even if you could dry them out, they are covered with mud and dirt and mildew will set in soon. Not to mention the furniture, electrical service, plumbing, carpets, etc. in those buildings.
Medical facilities? Let’s not forget, MEDICAL records were destroyed as well. The whole medical infrastructure was destroyed as well. Whole massive stocks of medicines are ruined, records are destroyed, equipment ruined. Medical equipment is often surprisingly simple, but a dental drill or a simple EKG is ruined when a lot fo fine grained silt gets into the works.
Now, let’s leave the cities and go to the countryside where things are imeasurably worse. There are many thousands of farmers whose working capital, which wasn’t much to start with, has now been washed away or is so waterlogged it is destroyed. Their animals are dead, their crops have been destroyed and their houses are gone. Their crops. This is what they were going to live on, and as important, what they were going to produce. Despite the Randian right wing’s assessment of human nature, people actually like to be productive, they like to work and they like to see their work turn into something of value. Something that will feed their children and their families. What are these people, these 20 million people, going to DO? How will they spend their days? Even if you give them enough food, which is unlikely to happen, how will they spend their time?
They had very little, now they have nothing, save the clothes on their backs. These people are going to need food assistance for more than a year, they are going to need help to rebuild their houses, roads, schools, shops and communities.
So much of the “pipeline” of the modern methods of food production and distribution, the growing, processing, packaging, marketing, etc. with a transport and storage step in between each of those steps have been wiped out. The pipeline, the supply of food for millions of people is just gone, evaporated, disappeared into the ether.
And there’s more. This tragedy keeps getting bigger. I have only scratched the surface with this diary. Every system that people relied on has been decimated. This is going to take years to recover from.
It's getting late, but I'll try to stick around to answer questions.
Peace and love to you all.