n July 3, hundreds of tourists returning from the annual Shandur Polo Festival were stranded due to a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) in Laspur valley in Upper Chitral.

Two suspension bridges in Garam Chashma, Upper Chitral, were swept away. In May, a similar GLOF event had washed away Hassanabad Bridge in Hunza, Gilgit-Baltistan. GLOF are sudden events that can release millions of cubic metres of water and debris, leading to loss of lives, property and livelihoods amongst remote and impoverished mountain communities.

The deputy commissioner’s office in Upper Chitral, the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) and the Provincial Emergency Operation Center (PEOC) have issued updates about the weather conditions in the area. According to the PDMA, owing to a GLOF event on July 3, the Yarkhoon Last Broghol Road was damaged and blocked for all kinds of traffic. However, no loss of lives or property was reported. Moreover, due to a high-level flood in Yarkhoon River at Brep Kuzh Link Road connecting 192 households has also been blocked.

“The district administration in Upper Chitral has directed officials to take steps for the opening of the damaged road on an emergency basis so that the movement of the people stranded in the affected area can be restored”, the PDMA report says. “On July 4, due to flooding at Power Nullah Yarkhoon, the Mastuj Yarkhoon Broghol Road has been affected. Resultantly, the flow of traffic has been disrupted,” a PEOC report says.

GLOFs are not a recent phenomenon in Chitral. They have remained a constant threat to downstream communities and infrastructure. Rasheed ul Ghafoor, the PDMA focal person in Lower Chitral, says the total numbers of glaciers in Chitral is 543, among these 116 are vulnerable.

Ghulam Abbas from Chitral says that for the last few years, the people in Upper Chitral have been facing the threat of flash floods. “The locals now prefer to travel in the early morning. Due to the rise in the temperature, they avoid travelling on roads that might become flooded due to afternoon heat,” Abbas says.

The Pakistan Meteorological Department, responsible for weather forecast and monitoring the changes in weather patterns, also issued a GLOF alert in GB and KP on June 30. The early warning helped contain the loss and damage. In light of the alert, the PDMA issued an advisory for the district administrations of Upper and Lower Chitral, Swat, Upper Dir and Upper Kohistan warning of the high probability of prevailing weather conditions triggering GLOF events, flash floods, landslides and mudslides in KP’s vulnerable areas.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), glaciers in Pakistan’s northern mountain ranges (the Hindu Kush, Himalayas, and the Karakorum) are melting rapidly due to rising temperatures and a total of 3,044 glacial lakes have developed in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). 

Federal Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman tweeted a video clip on July 1: “This is the Chitral GLOF event raging its glacial snowmelt through the riverbed. No lives were lost due to timely warning, but water levels here are too unstable. The KP administration and the PDMA teams need to stay alert. All these lake outburst floods are due to high temperatures”.

Asif Khan, a climate and water analyst, says due to climate change, weather patterns have changed visibly. “Other accompanying effects are the disturbance of rainfall patterns and a higher rate of glacial ice melt. Persistent temperature hikes lasting more than a week, followed by rainfall increase the risk of a GLOF even. It poses a serious threat to the downstream infrastructure such as bridges and power stations,” he says.

United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP) Asia-Pacific Disaster Report 2021 says the top five countries which are at the greatest increase in risk, between 2020 and 2040, are Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Cambodia. “During August–September 2020, 2.6 million people were affected by floods Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, causing losses worth $1.5 billion,” the report says.

The UN-ESCAP report states that the increase in average annual losses worst-case climate scenario is $26 million in Pakistan. “The population exposure to floods and related diseases, 2020-2059, is 10 million,” it states.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), glaciers in Pakistan’s northern mountain ranges (the Hindu Kush, Himalayas, and the Karakorum) are melting rapidly due to rising temperatures and a total of 3,044 glacial lakes have developed in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).

Of these, 33 glacial lakes have been assessed to be prone to hazardous GLOF. The UNDP GLOF-II project report says over 7.1 million people in the GB and the KP are vulnerable. The ground staff of the GLOF-II project monitors the glaciers in the three valleys of Chitral.

“Countries like Switzerland have developed a mechanism to fight off the GLOF events by reinforcing the vulnerable natural lakes through a combination of siphon tunnels and spillway construction. Similar efforts are needed in Pakistan to avoid catastrophic GLOF events.” Asif Khan says.

The writer is a multimedia journalist. He tweets @daudpasaney