Tragic Side Of Monsoon

Over a month into the monsoon season, floods, landslides and other natural disasters, triggered by heavy rains, have claimed at least 105 lives and injured 109 people as of Friday evening. Of the total deceased, 39 have died in Gandaki province, 23 in Lumbini, 19 in Koshi, seven in Sudurpashchim, six each in Madhes and Bagmati provinces, and one in the Kathmandu Valley. A total of 182 people have gone missing in the disasters, with 3,547 families being displaced. As time passes, the hopes of recovering the missing people alive are diminishing.

Annual monsoon disasters are common in Nepal, as are losses and damages they cause. But this year's grim numbers of the deaths, injured and missing are usually high even by our standard. At least 62 passengers have gone missing on a single day after two night buses were swept away by a landslide into the Trishuli River at Simaltal along the Narayangadh-Mugling road, also called Madan-Ashrit Highway, on Friday morning. In another landslide in Chiwan, a bus driver died after being hit by a falling rock. On Thursday night, 11 people died in a landslide in Pokhara of Kaski district. 

Following the landslide, the government has announced plans to prohibit buses from travelling at night in designated districts with poor weather forecasting facilities, deciding that the risk signs would be put in the areas prone to landslides and flooding. Moreover, transport operators, passengers, and drivers are now required to gather information about blocked roads and stop their vehicles at safe places with facilities like food, toilets, among others, before they continue their journey ahead. We welcome this decision. Equally important is its strict enforcement. 

Madan-Ashrit Highway is known to be a risky road section during the monsoon. It being blocked for hours by falling landslides has been a common occurrence, making night-time travel dangerous. If the landslide had struck the place during daytime, hopes are that the disaster would probably have been averted. That's because, with full visibility of surroundings, the drivers would have been alerted by the signs of imminent landslide, prompting them to take the urgent steps. In this context, banning the late-night bus travel during the monsoon seems to be the need of the hour, though belated.    

That the monsoon death tolls are rapidly rising at a time when political situation of the country is currently passing through a power transition, but no situation should result in lesser measures regarding search, rescue, relief and rehabilitation to those affected by the tragic disaster. There should be no dillydallying about urgent steps that will send a wrong message to the people. Such political transition by no means should interfere with the management of disasters. The government must send a strong message that saving people's lives is of overriding importance and it is mobilising all its resources in all needy places to this end no matter how the new political developments proceed, or even change of the government takes place.  

Another issue that is really concerning is the rescue effort. There's no doubt that the security personnel tasked with rescuing are putting their all-out efforts, saving many lives from harm and getting the vulnerable to safety. Yet days after the major disaster, neither whereabouts of the missing have been traced nor have the bodies of the deceased been retrieved, suggesting that they are ill-equipped to deal with the disaster of this magnitude. There's no denying the fact that the availability of state-of-the-art rescue equipment is as important as the training the personnel acquire to give their best in the event of disasters. Sound preparedness makes a big difference.