2024 is a year of floods occurring in Afghanistan, Brazil, Indonesia, Kenya, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and other countries worldwide. Recently, Typhoon Yagi intensified in Asia, affecting flash floods, landslides, and inundation in China, Vietnam, northern Thailand, and partially Myanmar.

Rescue teams evacuated hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated from their houses, but hundreds of people were dead, and many others injured in the flooding. In Myanmar, a total of 2,149 buildings were totally destroyed, 3,455 buildings were par­tially destroyed, and 136,023 buildings were submerged, totalling 141,627 schools, in addition to 546 schools being flooded.

Moreover, he noted that a total of 148,643 people were affected by flooding. Addition­ally, he continued that 164 peo­ple lost life in flooding in Nay Pyi Taw, 5 in Kayin State, 2 in Bago Region, 134 in Mandalay Region, 78 in Shan State and 1 in Ayeyawady, totalling 384 with 89 persons still missing.

In the terrible incident, he added that 435 religious buildings were damaged, af­fecting 533 roads and bridges, 2,489 lamp-posts, 99 telecom towers, 144,998 animals and 735,461 acres of paddy. As such, the government is striv­ing to arrange the cultivation of monsoon paddy as much as possible, and if not, the culti­vable lands will be utilized for growing summer crops.

Recently, the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology released weather forecasts, stating that the Sittoung and Thaugyin rivers would rise; two deep depressions may occur in the second week of September, one of which may be a storm. As such, people need to take care of flooding and overflow of natural water.

Many areas of Myanmar are flood-prone yearly. Lo-lying areas of the nation are experiencing flooding and overflow of rivers and creeks triggered by storms. Terrible loss and damage are increasing in the nation due to climate change. At present, if global people cannot timely conserve forests and reduce the use of fossil fuels not to deform water circularly and cause soil, water and air pollution, the whole world will be warmer than the existing temperature, triggering worse climate change.

It is true that nobody can evade natural disasters. But they are able to mitigate the impacts of these natural disasters as much as they can. It depends on natural disaster management capacity. Only when all countries systematically implement preparedness, emergency response, and rehabilitation will those countries sus­tain a society capable of resilience against the impacts of natural disasters.