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Abstract

Pakistan experienced a devastating flood in the summer of 2010. Almost all the major rivers of the country as well as the streams and seasonal torrents in the mountainous areas were in flood. This is attributed to heavy rainfall and snowmelt. The flood destroyed agricultural land, standing crops and infrastructure throughout the country. The number of affected districts was 78, with 2,000 human casualties, 0.55 million housing units destroyed and 6 million people displaced. The present study is focused on the lower Dir district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Northern Pakistan. The whole district is drained by Panjkora River. Data for this study were collected from the official sources. To cross check the official data field survey was also conducted in the affected areas. The floodplain of river Panjkora is very fertile and suitable for the cultivation of different crops. Findings of this study reveal that maximum losses were in agriculture sector followed by infrastructure and communication network. Almost all the bridges over the Panjkora River were destroyed by this flood.

Keywords: Socioeconomic disruptions; Dir Lower; 2010 Floods;

Introduction

Hazards may be in the form of earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, drought and floods etc. Flood is one of the most frequent natural hazards (Verworn 2002; White et al. 2010), often cited as being the most lethal of all natural disasters (Alexander 1993; Wheater 2006). Flood catastrophes have increased almost three times from 1980 to 2009 (Munich RE 2010). The impacts of floods on a global scale are enormous (Coates 1999; Jonkman et al. 2008; Chang et al. 2009; Te Linde et al. 2010; Lehner et al. 2006). In the past few years many rivers flooded all over the world, such as the Jamuna River in Bangladesh, the Yangtze in China, the Oder and the Vistula in Poland, the Moldau in the Czech Republic and the Elbe in Germany (Vuren et al. 2005). During twentieth century, floods killed 8 million people (Jonkman, 2005). From 1980 to 2010, 13393 fatalities and 149600 million US dollars losses were recorded in 10 costliest floods (Munich RE 2010). In Asia alone floods annually destroy about 10 million acres of crops and affect the life of more than 17 million people (Atta-ur-Rahman 2003). According to Mirza et al....

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