Flood-hit Pakan works to prevent overflow of biggest lake

Pakan was scrambling on Tuesday to widen a breach in its biggest lake and prevent the waters from overflowing to swamp near towns, so worsening unprecedented floods that have inundated a third of the South Asian nation.
Waters brought record monsoon rains and melting glaciers in Pakan’s northern mountains have affected 33 million people and killed at least 1,325, including 466 children, national disaster officials have said.
“We have widened the earlier breach at Manchar to reduce the rising water level,” Jam Khan Shoro, irrigation miner in the southern province of Sindh told Reuters late on Monday, referring to the lake, whose waters authorities seek to drain.

Already 1,00,000 people have been displaced from their homes in the effort to keep the lake from overflowing, an outcome that authorities fear could affect hundreds of thousands more.
“Till yesterday there was enormous pressure on the dikes of Johi and Mehar towns, but people are fighting it out strengthening the dikes,” drict official Murtaza Shah said on Tuesday, adding that 80% to 90% of townspeople had already fled.

Those who remain are attempting to strengthen exing dikes with machinery provided drict officials.
The waters have turned the near town of Johi into a virtual island, as a dike built locals holds back the water.
“After the breach at Manchar, the water has started to flow, earlier it was sort of stagnant,” one resident, Akbar Lashari, said telephone, following Sunday’s initial breach of the freshwater lake.

The rising waters have also inundated the near Sehwan airport, civil aviation authorities said.
The floods have followed record-breaking summer heat, with the government and the United Nations both having blamed climate change for the extreme weather and the resulting devastation.