Talk on 'Flood: Nature and Culture'

Roll up! Roll up! To the talk I'm giving at Shoe Lane, Library, London EC4A 3JR. Thursday, 8 May at 1230. 

Monsoon flood - a man-made disaster?

Nearly 3,000 people are still stranded by the monsoon floods in India’s Uttarakhand state, while more than 800 have been killed.  The rains are believed to be the heaviest in 80 years, and have swept away entire villages, while 100,000 people have had to be rescued.

Now there are claims that this has been a man-made and not a natural disaster.  Critics maintain that the root of the problem is the unchecked building of roads, hotels, blocks of flats, and hydroelectric dams.  

This has made the floodwaters more deadly as they have become laden with thousands of tons of silt, boulders and debris, while the escape routes they took in the past down streams and ravines have been blocked.

It is said that the Uttarakhand Disaster Management Authority, formed in October 2007, has never actually met, and that that there were no emergency evacuation plans.  Similarly, modestly priced radar-based technology that could have forecast cloudbursts was never installed.

Freak rain brings Argentina floods

In the UK, we have just had the coldest March in more than 50 years.  In Argentina, they are mourning their dead after the heaviest rainstorm in a century hit Buenos Aires and La Plata.

At least 48 people were killed by flooding in La Plata, where the provincial governor said the city had ‘never seen anything like it’, and half a dozen more in the capital.   More bodies are still being found.

Thousands of people have had to be moved from their homes, including the mother of the president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, while many others are sheltering on roofs or in trees.  In some places, people blocked roads to demand more help from the authorities.

These were probably the worst floods in Argentina since the city of Santa Fe was inundated in 2003 after heavy rain made river levels rise by six feet in just three hours.   More than 150 people died, and 100,000 had to be evacuated.