DISASTERS - FLOODS

THE WORLD

DISASTERS

Living on the edge
              More than half the people on Earth live in places where floods are a constant danger. It's not as crazy as it sounds, because land regularly flooded by revers is particularly fertile for farming. But the price can be terrible. The flood-plains of the Ganges River in Bangladesh and the Yangtze River in China are two of the world's most heavily populated areas. In 1998, over two-thirds of Bangladesh was submerged and 10 million people were made homeless. Calamity came too in China where the Yangtze stranded millions more.

A nation under water
     Bangladesh's population has grown from 80 million to about 140 million since independence in 1971. Most people live in the flood-plains and deltras of tha Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, where fertile soil means good harvests, but floods regularly cover half the entire country.