THE TIMES 8/10/11

Breaking news!!

Page 1

Can Bangladesh climb out of the pits?

Bangladesh has once again had severe floods, like the ones in 1998. This time they are much more serious, because as Antarctica is melting at a much faster pace there is enough water to make the sea level rise to more than 40m, and 90% of Bangladesh is only 1m above level. This is because in the Ozone layer there is a hole above Antarctica, The diagram below shows the places this is bad because the Ozone layer controls that were affected severely in the 2004 flood. the amount UV radiation (the suns rays), and hence if Antarctica gets to much heat it will start to melt. Sharma was one of the survivors of the 2004 flood, whom we interviewed. When asked how the flood affected his family he said, The flood is absolutely shocking, I am grief stricken, now that my whole family has been claimed by God, and now I am left alone and have to try and live with my brother who also managed to survive the terrible flood like me. The scenes here were horrific a mother was wiped away with a baby. I am definitely going to the government and make them think of defenses for these floods. With further research, according to government sources, the 1998 flood covered about 100,000 km2. The 1998 floods affected 68% of the country, and seriously impacted the livelihoods of 30 million people. Overall damage was estimated at two to three billion U.S. dollars. Final estimates showed that 51 districts were flooded, about 1400 people were killed, 1.77 million houses were damaged, and 23,45,8713 people became homeless. The 1998 floods lasted for over 10 weeks. These stats really show us how badly it has affected Bangladesh. And in the 2004 floods 11million children and adults have been affected, and it is estimated that 100 people died. This means that Bangladesh need to be prepared. The most vulnerable are the rural poor. They are the poorest of the poor and the government is doing its utmost to reach them, Siddiqui (director-general of the countrys Disaster Management Bureau in Bangladesh) said. Ainun Nisha (Vice chancellor of BARC university) said, Bangladesh is natures laboratory on

natural disaster. We have floods, we have droughts, we have heat waves, we have river bank erosion, we have storm surges, and we have cyclones. This tells us that the Bangladesh government is doing what they can, but are they physically doing any thing, to stop the floods from coming? But really they cant because by the time they recover from one flood (or cyclone or tropical storms etc) another one comes and sometimes it takes a lot of time to recover from. Because after the 2004 flood the 2007 flood has hit. The 2007 flood has damaged Bangladesh catastrophically because Bangladesh has only just managed to recover from it and is know trying to climb out of the massive debt it has. And now it is at the brink of having another natural disaster.