Reported by MPOI/MEK
Iran, Feb. 10, 20108 – Heavy floods have surrounded the city of Bostan, Khuzestan province, and cut off its roads to Susangerd. Kiamars Hajizadeh, the head of Khuzestan’s crisis management group, had warned about the dangers of floods to the cities of Rafi and Bostan.
“The capacity of two basins of Karkhe and Dez have been completed. If we want to manage flood waters in the current situation, we must have plans to release the waters,” state-run Fars news agency quoted Hajizadeh a few days earlier.
“According to estimates, there will be heavy rains Feb 13-22 and the warnings have been sent to Dez and Karkheh,” Hajizadeh said.
The floods in Khuzestan began in late January, encircling villages, submerging roads and destroying farmlands. The inhabitants of the region continue to reel under the damages caused by the floods. On Saturday and Sunday, schools in several towns in Khuzestan were shut down because of the continued flooding of the region.
Government mismanagement is worsening the situation
Hajizadeh also admitted that the dam of Dez is worn out and doesn’t have the capacity to contain the flow of flood waters.
“More than 50 percent of the rivers of Khuzestan have not been dredged and the country’s Water and Power Organization has not been able to address the issue,” Hajizadeh said.
The natural disaster resembles very much floods that happened in 2016 and hit more than 20 provinces, destroying water networks, shutting down factories, causing landslides and killing several people.
At the time, Iranian regime officials had warned that the region was not immune to the resurgence of floods. According to expert evaluations, the main cause of such heavy damage was the poorly managed infrastructure of the affected areas.
“The floods in western provinces showed that the repeat of these disasters is the result of years of ignoring this issue, and if we don’t have a precise plan, the damages can repeat themselves,” one expert wrote at the time in Iran Online website.
The regime has still not published any full report of the damages caused by the latest floods. According to Asr-e Iran website, until now the floods have caused more than 254 billion rials (approx. $60 million) in damages to farmlands in Khuzestan alone. The 2016 floods caused an estimate 6-trillion-rial damage to the country, which according to experts could have been prevented had the government allocated 40 billion rials to setting up proper infrastructures and safeguards.
But the Iranian regime did not take the necessary measures to strengthen dams and take measures to prepare the region to counter the effects of heavy rainfalls and floods. While the public services of Iran remain underfunded and shorthanded and the Iranian people remain exposed to natural disasters, the Iranian regime is not finding any shortage of money to fund, train and arm its proxies in the Middle East region.
The people of the region have been protesting to the lack of government services and relief efforts in the aftermath of the floods. Regime officials have yet to take any serious measures to mitigate the situation.
