By Micheal Chukwuebuka, Reporting
SCHOOLS were closed for three days in Nepal after 151 persons were killed and 56 others were missing, following landslides and floods triggered by two days of heavy rain across the Himalayan nation.
NBC News reported Sunday that the floods brought traffic and normal activity to a standstill in the Kathmandu valley, where 37 deaths were recorded in a region home to 4 million people and the capital.
Students and their parents faced difficulties as university and school buildings damaged by the rains needed repair.
A spokesperson for the education ministry, Lakshmi Bhattarai, told our source that they urged the concerned authorities to close schools in the affected areas for three days:
“We have urged the concerned authorities to close schools in the affected areas for three days.”
Stonix News learnt that some parts of the capital reported rain of up to 12.7 inches, pushing the level of its main Bagmati river up 7 feet past the danger mark.
Govinda Jha, a weather forecaster in the capital, said there were some signs of respite on Sunday morning, with the rains easing in many places.
“There may be some isolated showers, but heavy rains are unlikely,” he said.
Weather officials in the capital blamed the rainstorms on a low-pressure system in the Bay of Bengal extending over parts of neighboring India close to Nepal.
Haphazard development amplifies climate change risks in Nepal, say climate scientists at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.
“I’ve never before seen flooding on this scale in Kathmandu,” said Arun Bhakta Shrestha, an environmental risk official at the center.
In a statement, it urged the government and city planners to “urgently” step up investment in, and plans for, infrastructure, such as underground stormwater and sewage systems, both of the “grey,” or engineered kind, and “green,” or nature-based type.
The impact of the rains was aggravated by poor drainage due to unplanned settlement and urbanization efforts, construction on floodplains, lack of areas for water retention, and encroachment on the Bagmati river, it added.
The level in the Koshi river in Nepal’s southeast has started to fall, however, said Ram Chandra Tiwari, the region’s top bureaucrat.
The river, which brings deadly floods to India’s eastern state of Bihar nearly every year, had been running above the danger mark at a level nearly three times normal, he said.
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