The Worst Kind of Flashing

With rain lashing continuously down in parts of Assam, India, and its neighbouring country of Bangladesh, the world watches how humans living in such low-lying areas are being forced to leave their homes and start all over again.

It has inundated most of Bangladesh and North-East India, with more than 9.5 millions left scrambling, trying to gain access to food and medicines.

The monsoons usually bring heavy rainfall which leads to flash flooding in such low-lying areas within Bangladesh and India during these months. But how did all this start? Let’s jump right in.

Floods are commonly segregated into three categories:

1. River Flood
2. Coastal Flood
3. Flash Flood

River floods occur when the water level surpasses the bank level due to heavy rainfall, coastal floods occur near larger water bodies; usually when there is a high tide and finally, a flash flood occurs when there is an excessive amount of rain in a short span of time.

Flash floods are more dangerous in nature because the water level rises in no time. One second you might be enjoying the rains and in the next, the water would have seeped in through your doors.

Once it floods up, the rapidly rising water(which reaches heights of 30 feet or more) can roll boulders, tear down trees, destroy infrastructure, and carve out new channels. Furthermore, these rapid showers that give rise to flash floods also result in landslides. It has also been recorded that most deaths during floods happen during flash floods.

The flood currently traumatizing the people of Assam, Bangladesh and Nepal is caused mainly due to climate change. Experts have revealed that although South Asia’s monsoon rains follow natural atmospheric patterns, the rains will become more erratic and torrential as global temperatures continue to climb.

Bangladesh is considered one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, with the World Bank Institute estimating about 3.5 million, back in 2015, are at risk of river flooding every year. The floods experienced by them this year are considered worse than those experienced in 1998 and 2004. UNICEF has even stated that the floods in Bangladesh have left 3.5 million children with no access to clean water. It is no better for the neighbouring Indian states as well, a total of 117 people died in floods and landslides across Assam since April when pre-monsoon rains lashed the State.

The damage that remains on the society after such a calamity is huge - not only in terms of lives lost but also in terms of having to rebuild their lives from scratch. Most of them see all their life’s savings get washed away by the strong currents of nature.

The graph below shows how much a developed nation such as the USA has lost in floods over a period of 15 years. The worst year so far in their history was during the 2017 floods, which saw California alone incurring damages around the ballpark of $1.6 billion.

No land near a water body is safe from floods unless the right measures are implemented to avoid them from ever happening. Experts claim that if we were to continue on the same path of rapid urbanization without taking care of the local ecosystems and natural reserves, by 2050 some of the major cities around the world with face riverine flooding.

The above illustration captures how crucial it is for cities across the globe to take action immediately towards making it habitable for future generations.

Plan of Action (how do we survive this?)

It is time for us to collectively start thinking of ways to get our society/community to drive towards a world where fixing the urban landscape should start from within your own home. We talk about how charity starts at home, well planning for the future too starts there.

The solutions modern architects came up with are nothing but ancient practices that our forefathers had religiously followed. All modern science has done was to give a catchy name - Sponge city.

Since it was first conceived in 2013 by Professor Kongjian Yu, sponge city is a concept that helps cities act more like a sponge, absorbing rainwater, which is then naturally filtered by the soil and allowed to reach into the urban aquifers. This allows for the extraction of water from the ground through urban or peri-urban wells. This water can be easily treated and used for the city water supply. Some cities which have implemented such planning include Auckland, London, Mumbai, Nairobi, New York, Shanghai and Singapore.

China had started a pilot program under Professor Yu’s guidance to implement new integrated urban water management strategies across their most at-risk cities. This new wave of water resilience among the most populated country in the world has started a trickle-down effect on other world leaders to replicate this in their own nations. Although it requires tons of funding and manpower, the amount is negligible compared to the loss incurred due to floods.

The illustration above explains how planning a city’s landscape in this manner will not only regenerate the water sources but life, in general, will thrive and return to these urban landscapes.

Executing such big projects in developing nations is much harder due to the systematic corruption that exists to this day. Centralized authorities control the cash flow of the entire project, inhibiting societies from achieving their ‘Sponge City’ status. So, what can we do in such cases? Transform your home into a sponge.

Key-Takeaways ✍️

There are multiple ways you can set this up for your own property. One may have a kitchen garden, which could be irrigated using the grey water coming from the household. The grey water can be treated naturally and fed back into the ground if the garden is equipped with the right kind of plants. Setting up rainwater harvesting tanks and making natural channels for excess rainwater to flow through the ground allows the rapidly flowing water to be caught and retained to use within the household. This is a prime example of how a sponge city would work if it consisted of just one house.

The entire process is so organic that it will eventually lead to both flora and fauna thriving around your house. The changes will be significant and by doing so you not only do your bit but you inspire others as well to follow suit.

In the end, all I can leave my readers is this note:

Nature offers us ways to fix what we screwed up in simple ways, it is up to us to open our eyes and start believing that we can change this.

We are on a journey to change this, join the fight:

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