Non-coastal districts more vulnerable to floods

Expressbuzz, Oct 30, 2009

BHUBANESWAR: If you think coastal districts have high relative vulnerability to flood, then you might be wrong. For, tribal dominated non-coastal districts like Gajapati, Kalahandi, Boudh, Koraput, Kandhamal, Jharsuguda, Nabarangpur and Sundargarh are with higher risk index because of the low exposure to the population.


On the other hand, lower relative vulnerability is found in developed districts like Kendrapara, Jajpur, Balasore, Bhadrak and Puri as majority of the population is exposed to flood.

On an average about 16 lakh people are found exposed every year to flood risk, according to a report, ``Orissa Natural Hazards and Disasters: Vulnerability Analysis and Risk Management.’’ During the last 38 years more than 11 crore people were affected and nearly 50,000 killed by natural disasters. In Orissa, for every person killed about 2,224 are exposed to the disasters like flood, cyclone, fire and health hazards and for every one lakh exposed population, the number of houses fully destroyed is 1,250 and that of partially damaged ones is nearly 3,000. For every one lakh population, the loss of property is nearly Rs 8 crore, it said.

While four major hazards are responsible for 88 per cent of the total number of deaths, the report has found that human casualty being the only major impact parameter, data regarding other parameters like loss of property, population size, loss of property seems to be partial and less dependable.

Principal investigator Prof. GK Panda of the department of Geography, Utkal University, said while up to 4 lakh people were found exposed in a year to tropical cyclones, about 26,700 were exposed to fire, 8.5 lakh to health hazards and 70-80 casualties occurred due to lightning and heatwave.

While high relative vulnerability was found in Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara, Ganjam and Angul districts for tropical cyclones, Nuapada, Mayurbhanj, Koraput, Kalahandi, sambalpur and Rayagada and Jagatsinghpur experienced maximum risk from fire, he said.

On an average health hazards kill 700 persons in a year and Rayagada, Jagatsinghpur, Koraput, Boudh, Malkangiri and Kalahandi districts show higher risks.

Likewise, more deaths due to lightning were reported from districts like Cuttack, Mayurbhanj, Khurda, Dhenkanal, Jajpur, Bhadrak, Ganjam and Kendrapara and due to heatwave from Jajpur, Sambalpur, Nayagarh, Jagatsingpur, Angul and Cuttack.

The report was prepared in collaboration with Orissa State Disaster Mitigation Authority and the UNDP.