This is an intro to a news story, about a similar natural dam burst on the Indus River, from 170 years ago, to what is now about to unfold in Pakistan - when the Hunza natural dam bursts. It is from the "far away" and idyllic days of 1840 - when Pakistan didn't exist and the British had not yet fully established their Indian Empire, but were in the final stages of doing so. But things may not be as idyllic in the present situation, as Pakistan's major hydroelectric dam - the Tarbela Dam - is just a few hundred miles downriver; it is Pakistan's electricity generating and irrigation mainstay. There is every likelihood it will be severely damaged, if not washed away - with consequences not only severely affecting those two infrastructural requirements, but also causing cataclysmic flooding. At 40 miles long, Tarbela Dam is the world's largest earth-filled dam, and was built for Pakistan by the an international consortium that included the Tennessee Valley Authority. Pakistan's most populous and grain producing areas, as well as industrial estates, line the banks of the Indus River, in what is known as the Indus Valley. Not only this, but some of Pakistan's key civilian-use nuclear power reactors such as the Chashma I and II are positioned on the banks of this river, and these are suspect by international observers as being of "dual use". So the situation is definitely different from that of 1840, when a Sikh army camped by the riverside was washed away...
I have decided to give the link, as well as include the story in full here:
[Hunza lake: history may repeat itself
http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=240939
Monday, May 24, 2010
Bureau report
PESHAWAR: The risk of flood in Hunza, Gilgit and the downcountry as a result of the lake formed at Attaabad due to a landslide isn’t the first time that a natural disaster of such a big magnitude is posing threat to life and property in the area.
In 1840, a similar situation arose at Boonji in Gilgit area and caused a devastating flood. History buff Ali Jan has sent excerpts from Edward W Knight’s book, Where Three Empires: A Narrative of Recent Travel in Kashmir, Western Tibet, Gilgit and the Adjoining Countries, in which he writes about the 1840 flood. The book was published by Longmans, Green & Co., 1905.
The author Edward Knight wrote that the flood started in Gilgit after a landslide as a huge chunk of mountain fell into the River Indus, blocked the flow of water and formed a long and deep lake that burst and caused devastation. The flood not only damaged land and habitation downstream but it also swept away the Sikh army camping by the riverside in faraway Attock.
Ali Jan has also posed a question: Is history repeating itself? One hopes it doesn’t happen this time. Below is the relevant excerpt from that book: “Boonji signifies fifty in the language of these parts, and the name as it is said was given to this district because there were once fifty villages and considerable cultivation in the now desert vale of the Indus between the mouths of the Astor and Gilgit streams. An extraordinary flood in 1840, which is striking example of the huge scale of the convulsions of Nature in this region of gigantic mountains, was no doubt the primary cause of the present desolation. Near Hattu Pir, a whole mountain suddenly fell into the Indus, forming a great dam across the river, and preventing all outlets. The waters rose behind this dam for six months, flooding all the plain of Boonji and the valley of the Gilgit River, till a lake was formed 35 miles in length, and of great depth. At last, the rising lake reached the top of the dam, overflowed it, forced a breach, and then, with irresistible power, the immense mass of water opened a broad, deep channel through the opposing mountain. The liberated Indus once more rushed down its gorges and the last lake was drained in one day. Hundreds of miles away, the great wave of the flood overwhelmed a Sikh army that was encamped near Attock, and the loss of life and property all down the valley of Indus was beyond computation.”]
N.B: The Indus Valley is a huge area, 1700 miles long - and straddles the whole length of Pakistan right through the center, from top to bottom (Kamilov).
Below is a letter to the editor of the same newspaper - by a former princeling from one of Pakistan's defunct royal families, who has also served as provincial governor. He is from the Taliban-infested district of Swat, which was till 1969 an independent principality. He goes by one name, Aurangzeb. He has this to say about the dam now poised above the head of Pakistan:
[Never in a hurry
http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=240831
Sunday, May 23, 2010
We are never in a hurry. It is five years since the earthquake destroyed the Margalla apartment building. Today it is as it was then and nothing has been done. The Shaheed-e-Millat building was burnt and it took CDA ten years to repair. I can go on giving examples of our inability, but right now the government is ignoring the catastrophe that is about to happen in Hunza. The huge lake formed by a landslide on the Hunza river is about to burst, the water destroying everything in its way, perhaps Tarbela dam also.
To add insult to injury, the newly appointed governor of Gilgit-Baltistan has said that the dam created by the landslide 'will not burst'. Despite what this lady says, I want to warn the government of the coming catastrophe for which no one will take responsibility -- neither she nor the minister for water and power.
Aurangzeb
Swat]
Finally, let me round this off by quoting the inevitable local two-bit conspiracy theorists who also have a say in all such things. There are rumours that the Pakistani government deliberately allowed the dam to form, so as to help "confound" US policy in the region...while I can't even for a minute stop to sense who will actually be confounded, and how laughably stupid Pakistani rumour mongers are - the idea also crossed my mind, but in a different way: that in allowing this to happen, it will help "wash away" a lot of the dirt that Pakistan's ruling classes having generated, have beset themselves with; they will be hoping with typical naïvete that this catastrophe washes away the attention from them, and gives them a breather to cling onto power anew - so as to repeat their sordid old story; but I can assure them that they needn't be so simplistic now - for this will be the catastrophe NEEDED to wash THEM away in their entirety - a biblical cleansing flood; this is actually the time-bomb that will herald THEIR demise...
