INEVITABLE DISASTERS OF SUMMER
- More rain expected this month -
It took only one particularly rainy month for Mongolians to realize just how vulnerable the country is to disasters, with billions in estimated damages and a whole host of unforeseen risks arising in the aftermath of heavy downpour across the country.
Ironically, in a way, Mongolians got exactly what we wished for at the beginning of the year -- rain. In late spring, people were beginning to fear another year of drought when it started to feel a little too hot and dry. After three years of drought, which resulted in dzud in the winter, herders and farmers were praying for rain. But when the long-awaited rain finally arrived, it came too fast and hard, damaging road networks and bridges, cutting power to dozens of rural settlements, causing floods that swept away homes of hundreds of families, and severely degraded infrastructure and buildings.
Most recently, from July 14 to 17, Bayan-Ulgii Province’s Ulgii soum was hit by flash floods, affecting over 2,500 people in the soum after a week of downpour. To this day, emergency workers and local authorities are working to minimize damages from the flood and support the families that were affected.
Another severely flood-hit region is Khanbogd soum in Unmugovi Province. After only 10 minutes of rain on Friday, one family in the soum lost their home in a flood. Currently, the province cannot be reached from Ulaanbaatar due to extensive road damage in the region. The Tavan Tolgoi to Ganshuunsukhait road, which crosses through Khanbogd, is also closed. The road is the main export path for miners and traders in Mongolia. The Khanbogd to Oyu Tolgoi road has also been ruined, and the authorities have advised travelers to not be reckless and wait out the rain and flood to reach the province.
Khanbogd’s Mayor Sh.Erdenejargal said, “In general it has been raining every day. After the heavy rain yesterday (August 3), our soum cannot be reached through road from Ulaanbaatar or the province center since Undain River, 50 km from our soum, has flooded. The soum center and Tsagaan Khad are in dire condition.”
The floods are also presenting dangerous health risks nationwide. In some ger areas, pit latrines have overflown as a result of floods, with some streets and property sprawling in its contents. This presents serious risks of infectious disease outbreaks. District hospitals across Ulaanbaatar have reported a rise in stomach diseases, especially among children, related to soil contamination in ger areas as a result of flooding and the use of pit latrines.
Although district authorities in the capital have been trying to address the aftermath of flooding by patching up potholes on roads and setting up dams, weather experts say more downpours are expected later this month, which means the repaired roads will likely be damaged once more and will need further repair before the coming cold season.
If the aftermath of the downpour taught us anything, it is that Mongolia seriously needs to put effort into strengthening the resilience of existing infrastructure as well as cities in general to ensure safe and healthy living conditions for residents. To do this, Mongolia needs to learn from other countries which have succeeded in minimizing damages from disasters and built resilience, such as Japan. But unlike Japan, which experiences earthquakes and tsunamis, the disasters that usually occur in Mongolia – wildfires, drought, flash floods and dzud – are more predictable but often last several months, which also means there is more opportunities to mitigate their impact. It should also be noted that the amount of rain experienced this summer would not have impacted other countries that have a wet season as harshly as it did in Mongolia as they have better infrastructure to manage increasing water levels.
As of now, the authorities have not made a full report on the extent and cost of damages caused by the heavy rain. but preliminary estimates suggest that road repairs alone will amount to billions of tugrug.
Mongolians are beginning to feel dreary as the nation battles one disaster after another each year. Last year, Mongolia fought widespread wildfires all across the nation caused by dryness
and drought, but this year, we are battling the opposite, floods and downpour.
So far, all we have been doing to fight the inevitable natural disasters was to cope with them as they came. But we should really be taking preventive measures, building more resilient cities with effective drainage systems and damns to mitigate the disproportionally high impacts of common natural phenomena such as rain. Part of the problem is poor city planning and unregulated disposition of public lands to organizations and individuals that build on land that would otherwise have been used for drainage systems and dams, which hurts the livelihoods of locals as it makes their neighborhood vulnerable to floods. The sad reality is that very few roads in Mongolia have drainage systems in place as the government tendering process for road projects is riddled with corruption. Road projects are notoriously costly, yet the quality never catches up to the expenses as contractors that fail to meet their obligations are met with impunity.
Still, the public must continue to push and actively engage with the authorities to improve the resilience our cities and ensure a healthy and safe living environment.
Hosting the 2018 Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Ulaanbaatar last month was a good start at finding solutions to improve the resilience of settlements across the country by learning from effective practices of other nations. But we need more than just talks to eradicate vulnerability to common natural phenomena. Otherwise, we will continue to be damned if it rains, and damned if it doesn’t.
...We need more than just talks to eradicate vulnerability to common natural phenomena. Otherwise, we will continue to be damned if it rains, and
damned if it doesn’t...