The monsoon is a time when flood defences – walls, embankments, levees, dams – are relied on the most in India. It’s also the time when those defences are put under the most pressure. We saw in Germany during the June floods there, that levees and dams can break, such as the Fishbeck dam.
River embankments in Malda in West Bengal, India have breached and around 30,000 people have been evacuated. West Bengal’s neighbouring states of Assam and Bihar have been suffering from severe floods recently. So far West Bengal had escaped relatively unscathed, but with the failure of the flood defences in Malda, as many as 15 villages are now under water. Roads, crops and homes have been washed away. Authorities have evacuated those affected to higher ground and many of the victims are now living in camps. Farmers have also suffered and large areas – estimated to be between 3000 to 4000 hectares – of farmland are now under water. Where the flood waters have passed, vast areas of the region are now buried in silt.
The collapsed river embankment, which broke on 14th July, is in the Gajol and Harishchandrapur areas of Malda district. Erosion has caused previous damage to existing embankments. In the last few weeks the monsoon rains had increased water levels of the Fulohar River, and built up pressure on the embankment. In fact there had been so much rain recently some residents had expected flooding. One resident of the area, Pabitro Pal, said:
“The water level in the river was rising abnormally in the last week. We had warned the district officials that a calamity was about to happen if immediate measures are not taken to strengthen the embankment, but no one bothered to take any action,”
Authorities are now working to restore the flood defences. Malda’s District Magistrate Kiran Kumar said,
“Officials of our Engineering and Irrigation Department are working together. Wherever it is possible they are making temporary embankments. The officials are also engaged in rescue and relief operations. We have also urged both the state and federal governments to send a team of disaster management experts so as to speed up the rescue operations.”
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