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Flood: Early warning system

If we could predict the flood situation and concerned bodies like DMB or DMIC could work more effectively, at least by giving the early warning messages with proper lead time, our people would not have to suffer so much.

M.MlZANUR RAHMAN
Not only Bangladesh but also many other countries like India, United Kingdom and Russia are facing floods.
Only at Kurigram, almost 66,000 families have been displaced from their homes. According to newspaper reports, floods have destroyed 37,665 homes and 15,427 hectares of cropland in around 500 villages of nine upazilas in the district. At least 74 educational institutions and 765 kilometres of roads went under water.
The observation of the common people is that now they do not get silt after flood, rather their lands get covered with sand and lose productivity in the northern part of Bangladesh. It takes almost three years for the land to come to normal productivity while a massive flood occurs after four or five years. So, people can cultivate the land for one or two years in every five years. Thus, in no way is flood beneficial for the poor people of our country.
The country needs to have disaster preparedness instead of response and relief, and it should be a major component in disaster management strategy. This makes strengthening of Early Warning System (EWS) mandatory. We have done very well in regard to cyclone EW message dissemination and it is well recognised in Asia.
The government has taken up an initiative to strengthen flood EWS, and with the lessons learnt from the piloting of this initiatives of some international NGOs the government is implementing it in 14 districts with the technical collaboration of NARRI. As a part of this, local level authorities of Gaibandha have been equipped with the EWS by the government. The initiative ensures that the early warning messages will reach the grassroots
level within a short time to allow some time to the community for tpreparation.
There are three stages in the early warning dissemination system:
• Dissemiating early warning messages from the source agencies (FFWC/DMB/DMIC) to the local DMCs (district, upazila and union);
• Disseminating early warning messages among the members of local disaster management committees, NGOs, representatives of the volunteers and communitybased organizations by local DMCs;
• Disseminating early warning
quite an unusual time for flooding in Bangladesh.
We adopted the strategy for EW dissemination quickly in Bangladesh but all the efforts turned out to be in vain. The people had to suffer severely and our aim of moving towards disaster preparedness instead of disaster relief and response was frustrated.
I visited the flood affected areas of Gaibandha to see how things were going on. Many of the community people said that they could realise that flood was imminent but they were waiting to receive the messages from television and radio.
At Gaibandha, water crossed the danger level on June 27, causing a
messages at the household and community levels by the CONGO departments and organisations and volunteers.
So, the dissemination of the early warning messages is a set of consecutive approaches and maintains a chain. Any disturbance or anomaly in this chain will destroy the entire process.
Water flow from upstream is one of the major reasons for flood occurrence in Bangladesh. Heavy rainfall in Assam forced India to let the water flow down to Bangladesh. And within 3 to 4 days a huge land area of Bangladesh was inundated suddenly in the early rainy season, which is
huge devastation. The lives of the poverty struck people of northern Bangladesh came to standstill for few days; searching for a food packet had become the only task of the victims. Hundreds of men and women kept standing in the water for hours after hour for a single packet of food, but many had to return without food for their hungry children.
A detailed investigation revealed that the Upazilla Nirbahi Officers (UNOs) received the message from the central level on June 28, one day after the water crossed the danger level. This is the first communication that the district level officers received from the government and by this
time, the entire north-west region has gone under water. Should we call this a flood early warning?
This indicates that we still need to be more proactive, not in theory but in practice. We want the message to be delivered from the central level (DMB/DMIC/FFWC/WDB) to the grassroots within a very short time. So, in the first stage, the message stopped when dissemination to the grassroots from the upazilla was the major challenge.
The second proposition is for strengthening the flood EWS in Bangladesh. We need to develop some strategies that can help us collaborate with India, which is upstream. We can have bilateral agreement with India which will ensure that India will inform Bangladesh at least one day before releasing the water so that we can disseminate the EW messages to the community level. If this is done people, especially those in the northwestern part of Bangladesh, would get one and half to two days to make preparations, and the people would suffer less.
It would be better if we could develop another collaborative mechanism with India which can complement our mainstream EWS. Besides this, it could also be predicted that our country may be flooded as there was heavy rain fall in Assam. It is obvious that when India is inundated, it will release the water to flow downstream. If we could predict the flood situation and concerned bodies like DMB or DMIG could work more effectively, at least by giving the early warning messages with proper lead time, our people would not have to suffer so much.
The writer is a development researcher and works for Islamic Relief Worldwide.
Email: mithunmds07@gmail.com