Rescuers fled to Kashmir, India after landslides buried
innocent people who were fleeing their homes due to flooding caused by “unseasonal
rains” (Bukhari). On Monday, March 30th police announced that the
incident had killed 6 and left another 10 missing.
In a small village a hillside collapsed early on Monday
morning, where three families resided, all of whom were sleeping at the time of
the incident. Rescuers were forced to use shovels and diggers to locate survivors.
The area police superintendent stated that the death toll
was probably only going to rise further.
This incident can be linked to India’s extreme rainfall as
of lately, which studies say is caused by climate warming, a man made cause.
Additionally, March 2015, this month, has been the wettest month in India in
more than one hundred years, “wrecking millions of hectares of winter crops” (Bukhari).
This has also been cited as the cause of many recent cases of farmer suicide.
So, this especially rainy season has caused flooding,
landslides, wreckage of crops, as well as deaths.
This incident should absolutely be considered a disaster due
to its far reaching consequences which provide a huge hazard for the people of
Kashmir, because as the superintendent said, the death toll is only predicted
to rise. Also, because this area does not have stellar infrastructure, the
people are extremely vulnerable to flooding and due to the unpredictability of
the storm it is also especially hard to manage.
Another similar ecological disaster occurred in the 1920s
and 30s. The infamous Dust Bowl was, like the Kashmir floods, caused by man.
After World War I farmers turned to new farming equipment, which led to overproduction.
But at the same time the Great Depression led to reduced market prices. Because
farmers could not make profits from their crops, they expanded their fields.
Instead of bringing financial success to the farmers, “plow-based farming in
this region cultivated an unexpected yield: the loss of fertile topsoil that
literally blew away in the winds, leaving the land vulnerable to drought and
inhospitable for growing crops” (Trimarchi).
Like the Indian floods, the Dust Bowl caused land to become
ruined and death of farmers and their families, and thus should also be
considered an ecological disaster propelled by man. The Dust Bowl was
impossible to manage and control the exposure of.
While these two ecological disasters occurred in very
different time periods, they have many
similarities and should both be considered disasters in their own respect.
Sources
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/dust-bowl-cause.htm
what do you think should be done to prevent these natural disasters since they are aggravated by humans?
ReplyDeleteI am also driven to ask the question in the above comment. Though I find the connection between the Kashmiri floods and the Dust Bowl highly intriguing, I also find it a bit strained. What other similarities are there between these two disasters (i.e. overlaps in manageability, exposure, vulnerability, etc.)?
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