The devastation from floods is far from over and death toll continues to rise. In the Dadu district, a dyke of the Indus Link RD-5 drainage channel failed Wednesday night after water from Mannchar Lake flowed into the Indus Link, a private TV channel reported.
The dyke failure has put Bhan Saeedabad at risk and people have started leaving the city. Residents were also trying to erect a protection dyke on an emergency basis, SAMAA TV reported.
The Indus Link takes water from the catchment area of the Manchhar Lake to the River Indus. However, with the Indus River in flood and Manchhar Lake at the overtopping point the water flowed back to Indus Link, causing the dyke to fail. The lake is being drained through two controlled breaches performed on its dykes this week. The crisis-like situation at Indus Link came hours after a dyke failed in the Thatta district and inundated several villages. A relief train bogged down near Sehwan on the Kotri-Dadu section of the railway track, that remains submerged for weeks.
Evacuations continued in parts of Sindh on Thursday as authorities scrambled to plug a breach in Main Nara Valley Drain – also called Right Bank Outfall Drain-I – to prevent gushing water from reaching Dadu city as the death toll from the climate catastrophe rose by 12.
A breach had occurred in the drain at RD-10 on Tuesday. Initially, it was expected that allowing the outflow of water from the drain would mitigate the risk of flooding in Dadu and Jamshoro districts. The situation, however, unfolded differently on Thursday morning, as reports from the area revealed that the flow of water towards Dadu city – the capital of its namesake district – had increased.
“The water is flowing rapidly towards Dadu city” because of the breach, PPP MPA Pir Mujeebul Haq, who was elected from Dadu’s PS-85 constituency, said. Dadu Deputy Commissioner (DC) Syed Murtaza Ali Shah said additional machinery was being employed to close the breach. Moreover, he said work was also under way to raise embankments in order to protect the city.
Later, sharing an update around noon, he said that 90 per cent of the breach had been plugged and estimated that the situation would be brought under control within two hours.
In recent days, two breaches were deliberately made in Manchhar Lake’s protective dyke to divert the flow of floodwaters draining into it towards less populated areas and prevent flooding in the densely populated cities of Sehwan and Bhan Syedabad.
A Reuters report on Wednesday mentioned that country’s largest freshwater lake was “dangerously close to bursting its banks, even after having been breached in an operation that displaced 100,000 people”. And the threat has lingered even as the water level in the lake dropped, albeit marginally, amid reports of water from the lake continuing to submerge parts of the province. Earlier, the water from the lake had flooded five union councils of the Sehwan taluka after two breaches were made in its dyke at RD-14 and RD-52.
On Thursday afternoon, Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon told a press conference that the water level in the Indus River near Manchhar was at 120-foot reduced level (RL). He said that it was expected that the water level in the river would reduce by eight to nine feet in the next eight to ten hours. “Once the level reduces, a breach will be made near the river for the discharge of water from Manchhar into the river. And once the discharge starts, it will take around 10 to 15 days to clear the water,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Flood Forecasting Division’s website showed that there was a high-level flood in the river at Kotri Barrage. Sharing these details, Memon said the provincial government’s entire focus at the moment was on Manchhar and River Indus. Moreover, he said the situation was improving in Kashmore and Jacobabad and while floodwaters had also started receding in Qambar, it would take some time before the situation became better there. “The situation will now change within hours,” he added.
