Millions displaced in ‘worst floods’

NEW DELHI: As the heavy rains on Sunday continued to wreak havoc and misery for millions of people across four states - Assam, Bihar, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh - the UN described the current floods in northern India, and neighbouring Nepal and Bangladesh as the “worst in living memory.”

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) said in a statement that some 20 million people are believed to be affected in India, Nepal and Bangladesh in “the worst flooding in living memory”.

Heavy rainfalls in Pakistan, India and northern England and heatwaves in Greece, Italy and Romania are indications of what might happen more frequently and more severely across the globe as a consequence of global warming, Salvano Briceno, director of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction was reported to have said recently.

The UN body is trying to convince governments to give greater priority to reducing the risks from natural disasters and increasing their populations’ resilience to potentially deadly storms, floods or heatwaves, as no country will be immune to them.

It is a similar story around the globe. Parts of China had the heaviest rainfall since records began, killing more than 400. Hundreds of thousands were displaced by flash floods in southern Pakistan.

More than 50 people were killed in Sudan. Hundreds had to flee homes in northern England as the water rose. In Colombia, slums disappeared under rising floodwaters and some 50,000 people were displaced. Texas in the US has also been severely affected by these floods.