Right,
Gulnesa
Beg the only girl to survive a landslide in a village of 750 people in
the remote Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan, in 1996. The monstrous
landslide killed over 350 residents, mainly women and girls. Gulnesa is
with her Father, her only relative to survive. Photo: Bob McKerrow.
Landslides are silent killers throughout the mountain ranges of Asia from the high mountain ranges of Iran through to the eastern Himalaya.
I have been involved in many landslides rescue operation from Nepal in 1975 to more recent ones in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
The recent landslide in Afghanistan has killed at least 2,700 people according to the Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration (IOM)
But what of the history of landslides and why are they increasing?
Almost 100 experts from 14 nations, representing scores of global
institutions and governments, gathered at UN University in Tokyo January
18-20 in 2005 to set international priorities for mitigating human and
financial landslide losses and to promote a global network of
International Programmes on Landslides.
The meeting marks the first anniversary of the landmark UN World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan.
Asia suffered 220 landslides in the past century – by far the most of
any world region – but those in North, Central and South America have
caused the most deaths and injuries (25,000+) while Europe’s are the
most expensive – causing average damage of almost $23 million per
landslide.
And experts attending the Tokyo conference warned that climate
change-related increases in the number and intensity of typhoons and
hurricanes will produce in tandem a rising danger of landslides in
future.
"Increasing rainfall intensities and frequencies, coupled with
population growth can drastically increase landslide-associated
casualties, especially in developing countries, where pressure on land
resources often lead to slope cultivation and slope agriculture which
are very much prone to landslide disasters," according to the
International Consortium on Landslides (ICL), United Nations University,
Kyoto University and UNESCO scientists organizing the three-day
international meeting on landslide prevention and damage mitigation.
Climate change may promote landslides in other ways as well. A December
landslide that claimed 60 lives in Yemen was blamed on mountain boulders
shifting due to changes in temperature. Other landslide inducements
include earthquakes, volcanic eruption, poorly planned developments, and
mining.
Among natural disasters, landslides are the seventh ranked killer, after
windstorms, floods, droughts, earthquakes, volcano and extreme
temperature, claiming 800 to 1,000 lives on average in each of the last
20 years. An average of 940 people annually were killed by landslides in
the decade 1993 to 2002, most of those victims from Asia.
Large-scale landslides along coasts or in oceans can cause tsunamis; the
deadliest on record was caused by a landslide in the Unzen volcano in
1792 which killed 16,000 Japanese, due to landslide debris and the
resulting tsunami. Landslides occurring at the top of a volcano can
trigger eruptions, most famously that of the USA’s Mount St. Helens in
1980.
Landslides also threaten some of the world’s most precious cultural
sites, including Egypt’s famous Valley of the Kings, home to the
Pharaohs Tombs; Lishan China, site of the Huaqing Palace, built in the
Tang dynasty (618-907); and Machu Picchu, Peru, the mountaintop fortress
city of the ancient Incas.
"While all regions experience landslide disasters, the harm they cause
is most acute in developing countries, where the knowledge base required
to identify landslide prone areas is often either non-existent or
fragmentary," says Badaoui Roubhan, Chief of the UNESCO's Disaster
Reduction section.
But back to the recent landslides in Afghanistan.
Afghan officials have given up hope of finding any survivors from a
landslide in the remote northeast, with the number killed or missing
put at between a few hundred and as many as 2,700.
The United Nations said the focus now was on helping more than 4,000 displaced people.
International organisations and Afghan officials said at least 300
mud brick homes were buried on Friday, but precise information on the
number killed was hard to come by in the impoverished province
bordering Tajikistan.
Reuters
HOLDING OUT HOPE: Afghan villagers gather at the site of a landslide at the Argo district in Badakhshan province.
The UN mission in Afghanistan said more than 350 people were killed,
but a spokesman for the local governor put the number in excess of
2,100. The Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration (IOM)
said 2,700 were dead or missing.
"The scale of this landslide is absolutely devastating, with an
entire village practically wiped away," IOM Afghanistan Chief of
Mission Richard Danziger said. "Hundreds of families have lost
everything and are in immense need of assistance."
The United Nations said the focus was now on the more than 4,000
people displaced, either directly as a result of the landslide or as a
precautionary measure from villages assessed to be at risk. The IOM
said over 14,000 people were affected.
Their main needs are water, medicine, food and emergency shelter,
said Ari Gaitanis, a spokesman from the United Nations Assistance
Mission in Afghanistan.
Officials expressed concern the unstable hillside above the site of
the disaster may cave in again, threatening the homeless as well as
the UN and local rescue teams working there.
Villagers and a few dozen police, equipped with only basic digging
tools, resumed their search when daylight broke but it soon became
clear there was no hope of finding survivors buried in the deep mud and
rubble.
"Seven members of my family were here, four or five of them were
killed ... I am also half alive, what can I do?" said an elderly woman,
her hair covered in a pink shawl.
Dotted with villages of mud-brick homes nestled in valleys beside
bare slopes, Badakhshan province has been hit by several deadly
landslides in recent years.
PLEA FOR HELP
The side of the mountain above Abi-Barak collapsed at around 11am
on Friday as people were trying to recover belongings and livestock
after a smaller landslip hit a few hours earlier.
Hundreds of homes were destroyed in the landslides that were
triggered by torrential rain. Officials worry another section of the
mountainside could collapse at any time.
The Afghan military flew rescue teams to the area on Saturday, as
the remote mountain region is served by only narrow, poor roads which
have themselves been damaged by more than a week of heavy rain.
"We have managed to get one excavator into the area, but digging
looks hopeless," Colonel Abdul Qadeer Sayad, a deputy police chief of
Badakhshan, told Reuters.
He said the sheer size of the area affected, and the depth of the mud, meant that only modern machinery could help.
NATO-led coalition troops are on standby to assist but on Saturday said the Afghan government had not asked for help.
"I call on the government to come and help our people, to take the
bodies out," said a middle-aged man, standing on a hill overlooking the
river of mud where his village once stood.
"We managed to take out only 10-15 people, the rest of our villagers here are trapped."
FREEZING
Hundreds of people camped out overnight in near freezing
conditions, although some were given tents. Officials distributed food
and water.
Seasonal rains and spring snow melt have caused devastation across
large swathes of northern Afghanistan, killing more than 100 people
before this latest disaster.
US President Barack Obama said American forces were on standby to
help. About 30,000 US soldiers remain in Afghanistan, although that
number is falling as Washington prepares to withdraw all combat troops
who battled Taliban insurgents by the end of this year.
Police said they had provided a security ring around the area,
which has been relatively free of insurgent attacks. The Taliban said
they were also willing to provide security.
Here is my first hand account of a landslide rescue operation I was involved in, in 1996 in Badakhshan, Afghanistan, when I was working for the International Federation of Red Cross.
Gulnesa
Beg the only girl to survive a landslide in a village of 750 people in
the remote Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan. The monstrous
landslide killed over 350 residents, mainly women and girls. Gulnesa is
with her Father, her only relative to survive. Photo: Bob McKerrow.
It brought to mind the worst landslide I have seen which occured
in Afghanistan in 1996. Here are the notes from my diary on that tragic
day.
Recently I accompanied Abdul Basir on a difficult field trip to the
mountain village of Qarluk in Badakshan. It took us four days to reach
this village from Kabul by plane, landcruiser and the last day on foot
or horse. The village of 750 people in the remote Hindu Kush had been
hit some days before by a monstrous landslide that killed over 350
residents. All except three of the women in the village had been killed,
along with a number of children, as they were in their homes while male
members of the household were out tending animal and crops. The killer
landslide silently swept down the hillside engulfing the whole village.
Gulnesa Beg, the only girl to survive, was picked up by a dust and mud
cloud, and hurled to safey, breaking her arm as she fell.
As we arrived in Qarluk, the survivors of the landslide, mainly men,
were huddled together in an atmosphere of grief and bewilderment. Basir
and I hugged them one by one and then he spoke to them with compassion
and dignity. He told them that we in the Red Cross Movement were
grieving with them and that they must take heart. Basir, in his humble
way, gave those men hope at a time when their whole lives had been
plunged into darkness and despair.
The
men who survived the landslides sit outside their tents. The village
covered in mud is the light flatish area to the left of centre in the
photo, Photo: Bob McKerrow
The next day, after distributing relief supplies to each surviving
family, Abdul Bashir mounted a borrowed horse and rode over a high
mountain pass to two other villages in the next valley of Teshkan, where
7,000 people were under threat from a tottering mass of rock and mud
high above their homes.
Abdul Basir (left), Zalmai my interpretor (centre), and village
chief (right), riding over Teshkan Pass in Badkhshan Province in
Afghanistan. Photo: Bob McKerrow
Basir gave the village leaders support and encouraged them to evacuate
immediately. Then he walked two hours along a path on the precipitous
mountainside before regaining the track and his horse.
Land or mudslides are killers, especially in mountainous lands where
over-grazing, improper terracing, inappropriate irrigation and,
deforestation, are destroying the natural run off of water. These
modified mountain water catchment areas, are further being affected by
climate change. Villages perched on steep hillsides, run the risk of
slumping, or being hit by l;andslides, as sub-terrainean water courses
destablise hillsides. Often an earthquake is the trigger.
"Increasing rainfall intensities and frequencies, coupled with
population growth can drastically increase landslide-associated
casualties, especially in developing countries, where pressure on land
resources often lead to slope cultivation and slope agriculture which
are very much prone to landslide disasters," according to the
International Consortium on Landslides (ICL), United Nations University,
Kyoto University and UNESCO scientists
The high Hindu Kush mountains of Badakhshan from Teshkan Pass. Photo: Bob McKerrow
Tacloban was the worst affected area and was hit again in December by torrential rain.
The Philippine Red Cross distributing shelters materials funded by Swiss Red Cross on Bantayan in November. Photo: Bob McKerrow, Swiss Red Cross.jpg)
The type of core shelter the Philippine Red Cross is building in the rural areas of the typhoon affected belt. This is a typhoon resistant house that will withstand 200 plus km an hour winds.
