Construction of flood protection wall at Basho Skardu Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan ( April 2011)

In July and August 2010, Pakistan was hit by heavy rainstorms, devastating floods and landslides, with the Himalayan Karakoram Mountain valleys and Skardu & Ganche districts of Gilgit-Baltistan suffering the Region’s worst deluge in 80 years.

Khar Basho, a village of 700 people in 78 households, located in a hilly area some 53 Km from Skardu city and rich in natural forestation, is one of the worst-affected communities. The principal reason can be found in the nature of the natural ecology of steep and highly erodible mountains, visited annually by seasonal monsoons.

The livelihood of the people in this village is based on livestock farming and other agriculture. The villagers are poor, with each owning a small amount of land in this mountainous terrain. The flooding has destroyed their agriculture assets, and with it, the village infrastructure. The stream, 20 feet wide in August 2010, became a mass of water measuring some 300 feet by 6000 feet long after the deluge, destroying about 25 acres of cultivated land, demolishing hundreds of fruit and forest trees and seriously damaging the local economy.

With the flood steam banks now wider, Basho village communities were afraid that the 2011 monsoon would result in further destruction. For this reason, they appealed to the GRACE Association Pakistan to help them CONSTRUCT A FLOOD PROTECTION WALL.

Although the villagers’ original request has been for a flood protection wall 12 times as long as the current structure, resource constraints were only able to support 500 feet of construction, installed along the most critical sections of the flood stream bank.