When Republica met Rajendra Sharma, Chief of Flood Forecasting Section at the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, in his office, he was monitoring water flow in our major rivers on various computer screens. He could not take a break lest he missed an important alert. But if we have such a sophisticated system to monitor floods, what explains such widespread death and destruction witnessed in the past few days in the Tarai? The senior hydrologist shared his insights with Mahabir Paudyal.