Hi readers!
You must be (especially the people of my age group) familiar with George Harrison: an English musician and the lead guitarist of the world famous English musical band the Beatles. Listen to his one of the most famous songs of 2009 (Let it be) and you will remember the whole era.
George Harrison once said “A cloud burst doesn’t last all day” which is another famous song of his album of 1970 (All things must pass) and then comes 1976 when I heard the word “cloud burst” and saw its devastation for the first time in Muzaffarabad, AJK., where cloud burst created a lake like situation.
When clouds carrying lots of moisture do not cause rainfall due to upward movement of extremely hot air (very common in the months of June, July and August: the most hot and humid months of the subcontinent) then the raindrops eventually becomes bigger and instead of falling down as rain, it continues moving up. When these high-altitude clouds, especially the thunder clouds (thunderstorms are very common in high summer season) release the stored amount of water rapidly in a specific area, it is called cloud burst and is the same configurational method that organizations uses when they run out of computing resources in their internal data centers and they burst the extra workload to external third-party cloud services.
Cloud burst is difficult to predict because it occur suddenly at a very high speed and imposes urban flooding. Indian meteorologists define a cloudburst as an event over a concentrated area of 30sq km or less with rain falling at a rate of 100mm or more per hour. It’s now raining with the same speed in KPK and GB (you must have watched the floating of BILLION TREEs in the TSUNAM of flood water in KPK and GB’s rivers and streets).That’s how we are and yet we say
“Government is not helping us?
Urban flooding is accumulation of water in urban areas especially of heavy rainfall irresistible or unable to be accommodated by drainage systems because water exceed its capacity. The water then start accumulating on streets, properties and inside the buildings thereby inflicting heavy losses on them. Urban flooding is therefore a consequence of no, or faulty drainage systems and its inability to manage excess water: all these factors are most common in our beloved country. Look at Islamabad and Karachi where illegal societies blocked the water course or the houses are built inside the drainage channels, respectively. Have we ever realized that when we mistreat our surroundings, the surroundings will reciprocate accordingly? No law exist in this God Gifted country having no dearth of traitors, looters and plunderers where all and every high ranking post is priced and those who pay, recover it from the poor’s of this country with exorbitant profit and the vicious circle goes on. The result is that:
Nature is taking its own course now.
Cloud burst can be partly avoided by improving flexibility of and building flood resistant infrastructure. For example, buildings which can withstand floodwaters to minimize damages, incorporating water-resistant materials, adopting elevated structures, creating flood barriers (e.g., increasing tree planting and avoiding forest cutting), effective drainage systems and choosing appropriate foundational material. Tree planting and forest cutting are two important phenomena which decreases or increases, respectively, the incidence of flood recurrence and help lowering the air temperature (a factor that induced the cloud burst and global warming).
Nevertheless, cloud burst also gives us opportunity to handle unexpected situations and demands and prohibit us from putting up too many buildings in an area. Performance instead of optics and empty sloganeer should take a hit. Hope NDMA is listening and if not, no one can guarantee who will see the next episode.
See you again with some more interesting happenings.
Till then, take care, Bye.
