Chapter 162 National Crisis

Chapter 162 National Crisis

In an instant, a large black object "smashed" over along the rapid flood.

Even though Gu Ji shouted in advance, the rubber boat still didn't have time to dodge. It was hit hard by the black mass on the stern, and the hull began to shake violently.

"Everyone, hurry up!"

The rescue commander and Gu Ji shouted in unison.

Fortunately, the black object was just a pile of branches entangled by the water flow. The hull quickly stabilized under the control of the driver. If it had been replaced by the glass that smashed the train before, I am afraid that the entire rubber boat would have been overturned.

Suddenly, a dazzling white light flashed across, like a giant python leaping on the clouds, several bursts of thunder sounded, and the rain increased.

The formation commander picked up the waterproof loudspeaker and urged the boat troops to evacuate as soon as possible.

This made Gu Ji feel lucky. If he had urged the central cabinet government to slow down a little more, the transport plane would have been unable to land at this time. While chatting with the lifeguard, he learned that a total of 9 IL-76s had been dispatched from the Indian Air Force base. and the C-17 strategic heavy transport aircraft introduced at a sky-high price.

Since it is so willing to spend money, the cabinet government cannot waste such a good publicity opportunity.

Gu Ji noticed that among the boat force, at least four or five rubber boats were equipped with professional photographers responsible for capturing rescue details.

"Vidi, look!"

Fatima suddenly tugged on his sleeve and pointed to the water not far away where the light of the rubber boat was shining.

It turned out that it was covered with dead branches and weeds similar to the ones just now. Occasionally, a stone could be seen splashing out. Even the edge of the kayak was already covered with mud from the turbid flood water.

Gu Ji glanced back, thoughtfully.

"It appears there was a mudslide along the river bank."

From the beginning, he felt that the flood was extremely turbid. Opening his eyes in the water was like being rubbed by sandpaper. The conditions for the formation of mudslides are often steep terrain, abundant loose sediments, sudden or continuous heavy rains or large amounts of debris. The outflow of melted ice water, among which the viscous mudslides, erupts suddenly and fiercely, carrying up to 80% of solid matter, is extremely destructive and much more terrifying than floods.

The shape in front of you is more like a rare debris flow, with water as the main component, little clay content, and solid matter accounting for 10-40%. It is highly dispersed, but the sediments will also damage the ecology and traffic.

Gu Ji immediately found the rubber boat commander and asked them to try to avoid the train tunnel and hills ahead.

"In addition, I suggest that you turn off and lift the outboard motor in time, and use paddles and pennies to row instead. We are in a mountain and forest environment, with narrow passages, low water levels, and too many solid objects in the water, which is very difficult. It is easy to entangle the external propeller or clog the injection pump. Once the power system is damaged in large quantities, subsequent rescues will be difficult!"

He had proposed to the Cabinet Secretary from the beginning the use of detachable external power.

On the one hand, it facilitates disassembly and transportation and saves space; on the other hand, considering that flood sediments usually contain high amounts of sediment and other impurities, the underwater visibility is low, and there is a lack of basic data on the waterway and guidance of navigation marks and navigation lights, resulting in a large number of floods. Obstacles such as wires and cables, tree trunks, and mounds under the water, as well as a large number of debris floating on the water, make the water environment extremely complex and have a great impact on boat navigation.

The commander is an Indian boy in his twenties with a square face.

After hearing the suggestion, he was slightly startled, as if he was a little surprised as to why Gu Ji knew so much, and subconsciously asked: "Are you..."

“Vidhi Daly, Deputy Disaster Commissioner, Assam Emergency Management Command!”

After hearing Gu Ji's identity, the commander suddenly realized that he was an expert in disaster management.

But what he didn't know was that Fatima beside Gu Ji was also an expert and specialized in meteorology and flood disasters, but she didn't understand the knowledge of water boat search and rescue.

In fact, looking at the entire state disaster management department, even Minister Anurag is not as "erudite" as Gu Ji.

Meteorological analysis, formulation of emergency response strategies, on-site command, crisis medical first aid, and now an additional water rescue.

It can be described as a monster.

While the commander reported to the commander-in-chief of the formation, Gu Jize pretended to be deep in thought and secretly began to study meteorological rewards and mission objectives.

He clicked on the reward with his mind.

Instantly, a translucent dynamic light screen appeared in front of me, which displayed a partial map of the world. The Bay of Bengal was condensing a large amount of colorful smoke-like gas on the ocean. The outermost layer was white, and the pink became darker towards the center. until it turns pink.

"As expected of military data, it's so detailed."

Gu Ji was surprised by the complexity of the Navy's forecast model. The model dynamically covers the weather forecast for the next 10 days, including ocean surface air temperature, cloud formation, cloud movement prediction, low-altitude wind prediction, atmospheric heat flux, etc.

These meteorological data are not just for weather forecasting.

For example, low-altitude wind is very important for the precise flight and guidance of military aircraft, missiles, and drones; ocean surface air temperature involves calculating atmospheric waveguides in electronic warfare; predicting cloud movements is to support offensive and defensive intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions.

The only thing that's more troubling is the accuracy.

The unit pixel accuracy of the latest weather model developed by the United States can reach 3.5 kilometers. Xia Guo partially achieved 100-meter ultra-high accuracy in the Winter Olympics. Although the Indian Navy forecasts the macro-bay area, the accuracy is only a dozen kilometers is still at the level of the United States seven or eight years ago.

However, this does not affect Gu Ji's analysis of the future trend of tropical depressions.

Judging from model predictions, the tropical depression landed near Bangladesh and radiated up and down to Assam in northeastern India and West Bengal in the west. It is also the main reason for the current heavy rains in Assam.

As time passes, the tropical depression begins to deflect.

Affected by the high mountains on the mainland, the low-pressure belt in Assam gradually weakened, and the precipitation was expected to disappear completely in two days. But what he did not expect was that the tropical depression that had lost its "right arm" would return to the Bay of Bengal during the deflection process, and again It accumulates strength on the sea and has the potential to evolve into a tropical storm.

Tropical storms belong to the second level of the classification of tropical cyclones. They are already considered typhoons or hurricanes. Not only do they have stronger precipitation than "infant stage" tropical depressions, they also have stronger winds, which can reach 17.2 to 24.2 meters/second.

Anyone who has studied geography in high school knows that once a tropical cyclone makes landfall, it will basically weaken quickly or even disappear.

On the one hand, this is because the typhoon loses sufficient water vapor supply from the ocean after it makes landfall. On the other hand, there are too many obstacles on the land, undulations, and high friction, which will quickly lose the typhoon's energy.

But there are some more special examples.

For example, Yutu, the famous "King of Typhoons", weakened after hitting Saipan in the United States, and then significantly strengthened again, returning to the throne of Category 17 typhoons. The main reason was the phenomenon of "eyewall replacement". As long as the eye reorganization is completed, it will After the new eye is constructed, the typhoon will intensify significantly.

This is exactly what happened with the tropical depression in the Bay of Bengal.

Based on weather forecasts, Gu Ji calculated that the tropical storm that has re-intensified is likely to hit West Bengal.

This is also consistent with his initial deduction.

Assam is backed by the Himalayas and has many mountains that easily consume cyclone energy. However, Assam is located in the Ganges Delta, the world's largest, and its terrain is flat all the way. It cannot stop the strong winds and rains of tropical storms. Hurricane disasters in the United States are far more serious than in other countries. Because of this, there are no mountains blocking the central plains.

Gu Ji seemed to have thought of something and hurriedly called up the satellite map on his mobile phone.

However, due to poor signal and heavy rain, he spent a lot of effort to find the topographic map of West Bengal. According to the topography, it is divided into two parts. The northern part has the high-rise Teesta River, Tor Stara, Ranjit and Mohanenda rivers, while the southern region has Ganga, Hooghly, Rupunararam and Damodar rivers.

This is enough to prove that the water resources of West Bengal are not worse than those of Assam, or even better.

Especially in the northern region, hundreds of large and small dams have been built on many rivers. According to the routine of urgent agricultural irrigation in the delta plain in autumn and winter, they must be full of water. If a tropical storm makes landfall and the dams break, West Bengal will There will be floods worse than those in Assam!

West Bengal has a population of 100 million, three times that of Assam!

Among them is the third largest city in India:

Calcutta!

Just when Gu Ji was caught in a huge whirlpool of crisis, the rescue boat team finally reached the edge of the land safely. Although there was still water here, due to the obstacles of hills, the water could only touch the ankles.

It was already past one o'clock in the middle of the night.

It is hard to imagine that they were hit by floods starting at 9:30 and were trapped alive in the train for nearly four hours.

I have to lament that human survival instinct is really a miracle.

The victims jumped out of the boats with joy and rushed to the nearest disaster evacuation center on foot according to the arrangements of the soldiers. Some old, weak, sick and disabled people were taken away directly by transport vehicles sent by the army.

"Great, Vidi, we are setting foot on this land again!"

Fatima was about to share the joy of surviving the disaster with Gu Ji, but the other party just lowered his head with a solemn expression and did not respond, "Vidi, Vidi! Why don't you seem unhappy? What happened? What?"

"Fatima, this flood disaster is far from over. We have to find Minister Anurag and the Meteorological Bureau quickly."

Gu Ji cannot yet state clearly that the tropical storm will hit West Bengal, because in the eyes of outsiders, he has no access to data from the Indian Naval Meteorological Center, and naturally has no basic arguments to support his argument.

Disaster evacuation centers supported by the central government are much more organized than before.

Looking around, in addition to the densely packed tents, there are also specially set up material centers and command centers. The materials include tents, blankets, clothing, medicines and the most important food, mainly rice and noodles.

Senior officials of the state government had already come out of the tent at the command center to greet the victims.

Gu and Ji hurried through the crowd and found Anurag.

"Thanks to the blessing of Lord Shiva, you two are finally back safe and sound."

Anurag couldn't help but feel excited when he saw the two of them. One was his most proud subordinate, and the other was a talent with unlimited potential that he had just recruited. He would have been reluctant to let go of anyone else, "If I had known, I wouldn't have let you go. The car is under escort!”

"Minister, you should be grateful for sending the two of us on the train. Otherwise, without Vidi here, what will be the final outcome of this train, I'm afraid..."

Fatima did not tell everything, but everyone knew that the successful rescue of these victims was all thanks to Gu Ji!

But Gu Ji himself was not immersed in the flattery, but asked with a serious face: "Minister, what is the real reason for the sudden flood in Assam this time? Was it because the dam's water storage exceeded the standard, causing the embankment to burst? "

This is the answer Gu Ji wants to know most right now.

If this is the reason, West Bengal will surely repeat the same mistake.

Just didn't expect it.

The answer given by Anurag was not like that.

"The flood broke out very suddenly. During the period when your train was trapped, the Minister of Agriculture and I conducted a preliminary investigation into the cause of the disaster. The real place where the flood broke out was in the northeastern part of Assam, at the lower end of the Himalayas. The middle and upper reaches of the Brahmaputra River.”

"Fortunately, many on-site witnesses survived the incident. Based on oral accounts of personal experience, they described hearing a loud noise, and then the river water level suddenly began to rise sharply. The water became so fierce that it destroyed the original The dam was filled with water and was overwhelmed, causing continuous dam breaches in the middle reaches, triggering this major flood that has been rare in decades."

According to international hydrological information standards, floods are divided into four levels: small floods, medium floods, major floods and extremely severe floods according to the return period of flood elements: less than 5 years, 5-20 years, 20-50 years, and more than 50 years.

But what Gu Ji was curious about was the "loud noise".

What kind of movement can cause rivers to suddenly surge before a tropical depression hits landfall?

He thought carefully for a moment.

"The glacier breaks?"

"earthquake!?"

Gu Ji and Fatima spoke at the same time.

Anurag nodded with satisfaction, "It seems that both of you are very experienced. Assam is backed by the Himalayas, and the loud noise caused river abnormalities. These two possibilities are the most likely. However, when the incident occurred, local residents, Neither the military base nor the state seismic monitoring center has noticed any seismic activity. I think the 'glacial rupture' mentioned by Vidi is more likely!"

The reason why the glacier broke off makes sense.

After all, the Himalayas are covered with snow all year round, and the glacier coverage is very thick. If large glaciers break off and fall down, it will indeed cause a sudden surge in river water levels.

only……

"Minister, shouldn't river and dam matters be under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Water Resources? Why do we need the Minister of Agriculture to cooperate?"

"The Minister of Water Resources, like the Chief, also disappeared when the flood broke out. There is currently no news about them from the Police Department and Fire Department. I'm afraid..."

Anurag sighed and did not dare to continue talking.

It has been more than four hours since the flood broke out, and no one can be found at this time, so it is obvious that they have been killed.

"Who is Viddy Daly?"