How Large is Pakistan’s Great Flood?

Posted on September 29, 2010
Filed Under >Adil Najam, Disasters, Environment
18 Comments
Total Views: 116381

Adil Najam

It is difficult, even for Pakistanis, to fully comprehend the scale and size of Pakistan’s great flood. We can all imagine what a home, a locality, maybe even a city, looks like when submerged. But it is difficult for most people – especially those outside Pakistan – to imagine just how great is the ‘great’ in Pakistan’s great flood. Here are some pictures – created from the BBC’s Dimensions website – that might help you comprehend the incomprehensible.



The first map is of the United States and shows that the area of Pakistan’s 2010 floods would stretch nearly the entire United States from upstate Florida to the Canadian border with upstate New York. The next two maps place the area affected by the Pakistan’s floods on the map of mainland Europe – From Denmark down to Spain. The final map overlays the same on a map of Japan.

The maps speak for themselves. As do the numbers.

What can I add to this that I have not already?

18 responses to “How Large is Pakistan’s Great Flood?”

  1. Tasleem says:

    Nice way to represent the area of damage. However, in this case the real number of think of is the people affected because these were some of the most populated places in the country.

  2. ASAD says:

    Humaira, the area affected is more than 160,000 square kilometers.

  3. Humaira says:

    Can someone please tell me what is the area (in sq miles or sq km) affected by the floods? Thanks.

  4. Jamshed says:

    Very good way to represent the extent of what has happened. Woudl be better if we turned the shape into a regular shape (like a circle) to get a better sense of the real size of floods.

  5. Jameel says:

    These floods have been one of the greatest catastrophe ever on a country and yet our media as well as our politicians have used even these for their own cheap point-scoring only.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*