Flash flooding sweeps away bridge in GB
HUNZA: A key bridge serving a remote corner of northern Pakistan has collapsed ater a heatwave caused a glacial lake to burst and unleash flash flooding, the country’s climate minister said.
Pakistan is highly vulnerable to climate change, ranking eighth in a table of countries most affected by extreme weather, according to a study by environmental group Germanwatch.
A spring heatwave is currently ravaging the nation of 220 million, with forecasters saying the mercury may rise to around 50 degrees Celsius in some areas this week.
On Saturday a bridge in the village of Hassanabad in the Gilgit-baltistan (GB) region was destroyed by a “glacial lake outburst flood” triggered by soaring temperatures, climate minister Sherry Rehman said.
Such flooding occurs when glaciers melt at high speed and swell nearby lakes to unstable levels.
The lakes can then suddenly burst and set loose a violent cascade of water, ice and rocks.
Video shows the bridge — on the Karakoram Highway linking Pakistan and China — buckle and tumble into a river ater its pillars are battered by the current.
Pakistan is home to more than 7,000 glaciers, more than anywhere outside the polar regions.
But Rehman has warned that glaciers in the north, including in the Himalayan and Hindu Kush mountain ranges, are “melting rapidly.”
More than 3,000 glacial lakes have formed in Gilgit-baltistan as well as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan’s northwest, she said, and 33 are at risk of unleashing hazardous floods.
Rehman has said Pakistan’s current heatwave “is a direct repercussion of climate stress.”
Earlier, the Met Office predicted in a weather report that prevailing severe heatwave will grip entire Sindh from May 11 or 12 and last till 16 May.
Karachi’s maximum temperature may also rise to 40 degree Celsius from May 12 to 14, according to Pakistan Meteorological
Department (PMD).
Daytime maximum temperatures would rise to 46-48 degree Celsius in Dadu, Sukkur, Larkana,
Jacobabad, Shaheed Benazirabad, Noshero Feroz, Khairpur, Shikarpur and Ghotki districts. While, 43-45 Celsius in Jamshoro, Hyderabad, Badin, Thata, Mirpurkhas and Umerkot districts during the period, according to the report.
Met Office had earlier forecast severe heatwave conditions across the country owing to the high pressure in upper atmosphere.