How Do We Stop People Dying in Floods?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 15 September 2017
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Do we have the power to avoid the natural forces of intense rainfall? With rising sea levels and the threat of climate change, the risk of death due to floods seems an insurmountable challenge. But there are some surprising facts in the figures on flood deaths. In developed countries like the US, more men die in floods than women and it is 30% of white men who are of particular concern.
We hear from four expert witnesses from across the globe, who share different options for change. Their ideas are both obvious as well as innovative, both low cost for use in developing countries like Bangladesh and high-tech like in the Netherlands. We also hear from the one place in the world which seems to be saving more lives in the face of devastating floods and storm surges than anywhere else on the planet.
Presenter : James Fletcher Producer: Nina Robinson
(Photo: Officials distribute medicine to villagers affected by the monsoon flooding across India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Credit: Biju Boro/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.1 | Welcome to the inquiry on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:33.0 | Each week we bring you four expert witnesses, |
| 0:35.6 | answering one pressing question from the news. |
| 0:38.2 | Last month, swollen by heavy monsoon rains, the Mahananda River in India's Bihar state burst its banks. |
| 0:50.0 | Local villages were flooded and Kunti Devi and her family were caught up in the disaster. |
| 0:56.0 | Her husband set off to get provisions for the family, wading through knee-deep water, |
| 1:02.0 | when a sudden surge swept him away. |
| 1:04.4 | I'm done a little bit. |
| 1:07.4 | I can't go and go to work. |
| 1:11.4 | Now he's gone. What do I do? Who will I talk to? Who will share my pain? Sometimes I wish I had been washed away with him. |
| 1:22.0 | Kunti Devi's husband was one of more than 1,200 people killed in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, |
| 1:30.0 | in the worst flooding to hit South Asia in a decade. Barely had that terrible story reached |
| 1:36.1 | the news when Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, leaving Houston submerged and more than 70 people |
| 1:42.1 | dead, and dozens more were killed by water and |
... |
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