#Thread Last month, #Junagadh was severely affected by flash floods which followed torrential rains. Though we tend to blame it on extreme rains, if we study it in detail, we would notice that our planning & construction practices aggravate the problem (1/n)

Junagadh is situated at the base of the Girnar mountains. Historically, the walled city and fort of Junagadh were positioned on the highland between the sonrekh river and the Kalva rivers (2/n)

Post-independence and particularly post economic liberalization, the city like many others in India, underwent a rampant sprawling urban growth (indicated in black here) which reduced the buffers that the rivers and the streams that rose from the girnar range had (3/n)

For context: As we all know that rivers have varying widths in varying season depending on water flowing in the respective seasons. Historically civilizations depended on these flood plains for agricultural land & higher land was used for more permanent builtup (4/n)

There is a mismatch between the scientific buffer of a river & the tenure/ownership of land in flood plains which are usually converted for non-agri purposes coz of economic aspirations. Hence, flood plains shrink, land gets filled, & capacities of the river get reduced (5/n)

Since developmental activities typically happen in summer, the effects of monsoon are largely ignored/forgotten. With reduced capacity, water level rises in river more during monsoon & heavy rainfall periods leading to more flooding. The river hence breaches in weakest spots(6/n)

In #Junagadh case for the #Kalva river, we can notice that river doesnt have any more buffer for holding excess water & a branch of the river is built on top!!! This subsequently leads to reduced capacity & river overtopping & failure in select locations leading to floods (7/n)

The wall here for example is one such weakspot. The river is on the other side with houses on either side. Cars are parked in front of the wall with false sense of safety. (8/n)

The wall gave away and subsequently the cars were also washed away [Please keep audio in mute] Note: Video is not owned by me (9/n)

In another case, the wall can be observed and the river is beyond the wall here. We can observe the presence of larger buildings on the other side of the river. This wall eventually gave away (10/n)

Video has been recorded from the other side of the river and we can see how the walls gave away in their weaker spots (11/n)

Not every place floods during heavy rains. There are reasons why some places flood and some dont. It is essential to understand which do, which dont, and the stories behind them to solve the problem (if we want to!) (12/n)

Junagadh like many other cases in India demonstrate the issues with "where we build" and "how we build". It leads us to 2 questions: 1. How do we avoid bad practices for new developments? 2. What do we do to correct past errors? Leaving these to others for answers :) (n/n)