Surviving the floods in Pakistan

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1:17Hello, I'm Luke Jones. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. In BBC OS Conversations, we bring people together to share their experiences. This time, we hear from survivors of the intense rainfall and flooding in Pakistan. For the villages in the Swat Valley in northern Pakistan, the floods came almost without warning. They had no time to leave their homes, and the first many of them knew about the impending disaster was the sound of water rushing towards them.

1:47Saad:Mental health of our families is not the same as they were before. Because the sound that was hitting the flood, I will never forget that sound, that wavy, that flashing flood, that massive flood. That's Saad, describing the devastating flash flooding in Haibapak Thungwa province in northern Pakistan earlier this month, which killed hundreds of people and destroyed his family home and business. We'll hear much more from him in our conversation with some other people affected by that flood in a few moments. We're recording this programme on Friday lunchtime here in London, and flood alerts are currently in place across Pakistan as the country endures another season of monsoon rains, with some of the highest rainfall on record.

2:30Since June, floods have killed at least 800 people in Pakistan, and many more have lost their homes and businesses. In the past couple of days, some 200 ,000 people have been evacuated in several areas of the country. In Punjab province, rescuers have embarked on one of the largest operations in years, they say, travelling back and forth across the Ravi River to help anyone still stranded after hundreds of thousands of residents were evacuated. The growing intensity each year of the monsoon is being blamed on the effects of climate change, while officials in Pakistan have faced criticism for the lack of adequate weather warnings, flood protection and the emergency response.

3:12For our first conversation, we're going to focus on the devastating floods of the 15th of August in Haiba Paktumwa, which washed away entire villages, and also the flooding a few days later in the southern coastal city of Karachi. Earlier this week, we brought together Mohamed Rafiq, who was involved in the rescue effort in his community, Mohamed Aslan, who works at the university in Karachi, and Usman and Saad, who are both in the Swat Valley. And just to warn you, they do talk about the bodies they had to recover during the rescue.

3:43Saad:It was a sound that I will never forget. a roaring sound and a roaring wave of mud and water crashing through the valley. We had only minutes to run for our lives. Everything we've built, our generations, our homes, our businesses, everything destroyed in a few minutes. I think I will never be the same again. We will never be the same again because the flood has destroyed us. My home, my business, and my story is not unique. It's a story of thousands of people here in Mingora and Swat. Our small and big businesses as well as our homes, Everything is destroyed. Nothing is left here. I believe that the Almighty and the NGOs and the government will look after this matter.

4:24Saad:We will not be the same again because this disaster has badly affected all lives. And Sadwar, when you say everything is destroyed, what do you mean? What does your home look like to look at now? We are living in our homes like refugees. We don't have any kind of shelters in our homes. The homes were broken, the walls were broken, and everything inside the home had left because it was 10 or 12 feet of water hitting badly us. So nothing is left in our homes. Many of the homes, many of the houses of the people had completely destroyed. And the remaining is full of mud and full of water. Still now, it's been 13 or 14 days.

5:02Saad:Still we are suffering. It was very devastating for us, the 15th of August. It was like hell. It was like hell broken loose because the level of water was so high. We have never seen that level of water before. We lost about, I can say that our family business, which was running from the last 40 years, 40 or 45 years. It was swept away. It was the biggest industry of crop processing, and it was swept away by the flood. And we lost a huge amount of stock from that flood. along with other entities. So our family was badly affected by this flood. On the first day, I was wake up and shouting that there is a flood in the bazaar which is on 10-minute walking distance from our home.

5:55Someone informed my father about the flood that 27 family members in the situation sent us rescue. and we ran away from the home and reached my uncle's home and we removed the boundary walls on the top floor and rescued all of them safely. Alhamdulillah. There was the level of five feet when I entered but from the first floor I looked at and I thought it was like about nine feet. All the rooms fell out from the mud and the roots of the trees. The house was full of mud. And I see that there is a lot of things and stones and some branches of trees entering through the doors to our home. So after the flood, we started the rescue operation.

6:54And that was, we received 35 dead bodies that day. And I personally baked into the mud and put bodies of the children and also the bodies of the females. And I seen more young boys and dead bloods and dead bodies that time. That's awful. I'm so sorry you had to go through that. But Mohamed Aslan, you're in Karachi, so at the other end of Pakistan and the south in the coast. I wonder what you've made of the response and the ongoing response to try and get on top of the damage and destruction. Well, I'm thankful to BBC for giving us the chance to have our words and to say our stories. I'm really sorry about what has happened in Khaybar Pakhtunkhah and other regions such as Gilgit-Baltistan.

7:50A lot of my students live there. A lot of students of us are from Buneer. So we know the situation is worse in these parts. But yes, Karachi is one of the areas which has never been able to escape from the havoc of rains because of two reasons. One is our management. We have very poor management. The city is almost 30 million people city with no management at all. And local bodies are not active. The second thing is obviously, you know, the climate is changing. Climate change is happening and nobody's recognizing. We experienced our second spell of rain in the monsoon. But that was the paralyzing one because it continued to rain for four hours and it was heavily raining.

8:30And then we suddenly, you know, experienced huge urban flooding. This is something I've never seen in my life because I'm almost five feet and a half, six inch. So water is my chest high. And since I was in my university, so we decided to leave. First, I took out my car, but I know that my car could have been sunken and I would have been, you know, more in trouble. So I decided to park my car back. And then I and another teacher, I started walking. And then what I saw was horrible. I was, I could see a lot of children coming from the schools, their vans were stuck. And we left at two in the afternoon.

9:12But I reached my home at 12. So I had to walk for 17 kilometers. And everywhere was water. And even, you know, we witnessed two people got electrocuted. in one of the areas and we saw that their bodies were lying. It was really painful to see them. It's so unfortunate that Karachi is the coastal area, but we do not have complete system. We are losing our mangroves. We are losing our natural habitats, particularly right from the seaside. And also, you know, a lot of building encroachment, land grabbers, land mafias is there. So I would not completely blame it to the weather conditions, but we have made it worse by our activities.

9:55Saad:I think the main reason to this devastating and destructive situation is the climate change. Because the topmost layer of the soil is happening soil erosion, which is badly affecting us. Nothing has been left in the houses. After when the disaster happened, you have to look to the disaster management system. you have to divide this thing into two phases in the first phase you must have to provide food you must have to provide water clean water because the kids and all the families are drinking contaminated water which is very badly affecting us us more and this is this is not the story of only me this is the story of millions of the people they are drinking contaminated water they don't have food to eat they don't have shelters to live in i swear by god i have i'm I'm sitting in Mingora city.

10:44Saad:I didn't receive a single penny from the government official. It's been 13 days. I'm eating by myself. I don't have electricity in my home. I don't have light. I don't have gas. I have nothing. But I still manage. I'm still trying to manage things. I have kids in my family. My family, everything in my home. I try to manage things. The homes are full of mud. The streets are full of mud. The businesses are destroyed. that they don't have the power to tackle the situations. Saad, Usman and Mohamed Rafiq in Khaybapak Tumwa and Mohamed Arslan in Karachi. We will hear more from them later on in the programme.

11:24I'm Luke Jones and this is BBC OS Conversations from the BBC World Service.

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12:40In Pakistan, the monsoon is inevitable. In fact, we made an edition of this programme about flooding in the country back in September 2022. But each year, the effects of the monsoon seem to get worse. More people die, more are made homeless, and the economic cost for a country with a struggling economy runs into the tens of billions. We heard our guests mention climate change, and although Pakistan only emits a tiny proportion of global greenhouse gases, scientific evidence suggests that the country is particularly vulnerable. It not only faces increasingly heavy rains, but extreme temperatures and drought, with melting glaciers also contributing to the risk of floods.

13:24In response, Pakistan's Meteorological Department says it's developing new short-term weather forecasting models and pioneering warning systems for remote areas to try and help save lives. The government also wants to increase the country's resilience to floods. They say they've planned to plant more trees and restore natural flood barriers. But laws restricting building in floodplains or protected areas are often ignored. We'll pick up on some of those points in our next conversation with three Pakistani journalists who have been covering the floods. Noreen is a journalist in Karachi. Ali works for digital platform NUKTA, speaking from the capital, Islamabad.

14:05And Azizullah is from the BBC's Urdu service, speaking from Peshawar. A couple of villages were totally swept away that we have visited. Buneir village, Bishonai, is a village that is surrounded by the lush green hills. We were struck at that time when we saw that area. There was a small stream going in between the village and inside of the village there were no houses over there, just stones and rocks were there. We have talked to a couple of people and they say that everything happened within minutes. They have no time to go out of their houses. Many of their family members have been swept away in the floods.

14:44We talked to some eyewitnesses as well and they say we saw one of my brother, he was in the school at that time and he ran from that school and he was crying, Go out of your houses. Go out of your houses. There's a flood over there. He managed to save some people, but the flood was very, very fast from that person. And that have, I think, totally washed away that village. There are so many stories, but a couple just got stuck to my head. And one of them was we went to this area where they don't have proper houses. It was a small housing scheme of like 25 houses built with mud and bamboo. for fairly like very low-income people.

15:27And one of the house I went and I saw this girl, her name was Rahmat. She was 10 years old. Her father passed away last year. And then she also had a couple of younger sisters and a brother who were all younger than her. And one of the brother, his arm got broken during the floods. And there was still like after like 24 or 28 hours, there was still like three to four feet of water inside her house. I saw like two dead goats floating inside her house. And she with her younger siblings, they were trying to get the water out from the bucket. It wasn't helping at all. And another story, I met a guy like who lost eight of the children of his family in those flash floods.

16:10And three of them got recovered. Eight children from one family. Exactly. Gosh. They got swept away with water and they recovered three of them. A dead body of one was found and then four kids were still missing. So, I mean, it was like total devastation. It really, I mean, took a toll. And on both sides of that market, people had lost like millions of rupees worth of stuff inside their shops because the flood left like seven to eight feet of sand like after it went. So the whole thing happened within two hours. Aziz Alam, what have you heard from people about what they make of the response, the rescue efforts and the authorities getting on top of this?

16:51Actually, the immediate response was the local people. They started themselves. Then the local people around their village, they came over there and they heard that there is a catastrophe, there is a flood in that area and they thought that they might need the help. So people from Mardan, from Deer, from Swar, they rushed to that area. and they started helping those people. Later on, the rescue people and other relief workers, they also reached over there, but initially local people helped themselves. This was very astonishing for me when I talked to some people and their clothes were in the mud and they said, I talked to them that if you have lost their house, they said, no, we are not from here.

17:35Why are you here? They said that we came from other areas like Deer and other cities of the Malakkan division. and only to help these people. So initially that was the thing. Secondly, when the rescue workers were going over there, at that time, because of the flood and the mud, the road was almost blocked. So it created hurdles for the workers, the relief workers and the rescue workers as well. But the local police, they tried to manage their way. Secondly, I alluded to that the VIP movement was one of the main hurdles in the way of the relief and the rescue. but they have many local people. This is that initially they have very little time to save their loved ones because those who are out of their houses, they are on work, they are in the field because this is kind of the agriculture.

18:25This is a lush green village. Mostly people work in their fields like the maize crops are there ready. The gardens are there ready. Some people work in the mining sector of that area. But they say that they have very little time to rescue their people. I mean, the places I went, like Aziz was saying, what I observed was unity. There was unity among the people. They were helping each other. Within 24 hours, there were like 1 ,500 volunteers of different parties or organizations. They were there helping each other out. When we went to the markets, people who lost millions of rupees, they were saying, like, we don't want government help right now.

19:08Right now, we just want government to go to people who have lost kids or their loved ones are under the rule. We want to go there first and then come back to us so we can stand back on our feet again. So, I mean, I saw unity over there, people. I mean, these areas like Buneir or the other districts, these are like hilly mountaineering areas. So, I mean, you can't expect government help or cranes or whatever get there real quick. So, I mean, it took time, but the unity people had during that disaster or those like 48 to 72 hours was amazing. Noreen, what have you heard from people in Karachi about how they feel the authorities are handling or mishandling what's been going on?

19:54Karachi is very frustrated at the moment because this is not something that, you know, it's like a natural calamity that happens not very often, but it has been happening for like past two, three years. And we see the same amount of frustration that people are pouring, whether it's on the street that you speak to people that are stuck in the water or the people, you know, sharing their miseries over social media. So every time, maybe it's like 2020 and then 2022 floods happen, the Karachi face the same dilemma. It's very interesting that my other friend was telling about the Puneer and those remote areas condition.

20:35But Karachi is like the biggest, largest city and economic hub, but we are no different from them. so even those streets are turning into swimming pools of savage waters and city infrastructure is very overwhelmed by just this heavy rainfall and it's not the first time and it's not just the water as soon as we see the rain in Karachi the power failure happens and of course like there are 24 hours outage of power with no water with no power and with no batteries on their devices how do we connect with the people with each other so people are very frustrated and the governance there is not just like one challenge that we see it's so many things that rapid urbanization population growth poor planning and governance issue so every time people and Karachi they feel like an orphan city that nobody cares about even its provincial government I just want to add that Pakistan produced one percent of carbon of the whole world and still we are among the most vulnerable cities in the world because of the global warming.

21:45So, yes, that's why these things, the cloudburst, I mean, it happens all over the world, but this is new phenomena. I mean, deforestation and then population, as Noreen said, all the other factors matter, but we're not a developed country. Like, our economy is not that good. So we can, you know, like, take the hit of those disasters. We're just producing 1 % of carbon emissions. That's it. Ali, Azizullah and Noreen, journalists all covering the floods in Pakistan. Let's return to our first guests now. Mohamed Rafiq had assisted in the rescue efforts to save lives, but also recover the bodies of young children.

22:24I asked him what effect the disaster has had on him and his mental health. So I will share that I feel not very well. I'm not feel very well my sleep is also effect after this blood situations and I'm not mentally stable and I don't feel to control my emotions Is there any help that you're able to get for that or are you just having to deal with that by yourself? I have visited yesterday to the doctor to the psychologist and i made some conversation with him and i'm trying to come back to my normal life because i'm working with an organization in the health sector so i want to come back to my life routine but when i see to my people are suffering when i see my The peoples are hungry.

23:38So I'm trying my best to visit it to the different organizations, visit it to the different NGOs.

23:48Saad:I'm sending my condolence to all the victims, to all the families. I would say that my mental health is good, but mental health of our families is not the same as they were before. because the sound that was hit the flood and the sound of the flood, which has come on the 15th of August, I think I will never forget that sound, that wavy, that flashing flood, that massive flood which hit the boundaries, which hit the walls. And I personally will never forget the day because at that day I was in my home and I received a phone call from my friend who is living in a hilly area where the cloudburst happened.

24:33Saad:He called me that, Saad, the flood is coming towards the city. You must have to save yourself and your family. I consider myself as a responsible person, not from the government official, but as a social worker. So I tried to rescue people. I climbed to the roofs and tried to rescue people. I was busy in rescuing them. Then I received a sudden call that my business, my only business of my family, that was my only income from that business, my restaurant and my water park, which was completely destroyed by the massive flood. That time was very, very much difficult for me, but I don't know how the Almighty gave me that nerve to handle their situations and to tackle their situations.

25:17Saad:And I have forgotten everything. I have told myself that the Almighty had given this thing to me, the water park, the restaurant and the home. and the Almighty will give this me again. And Sal, it sounds like you did very well with it as well and we appreciate you telling us about it. Thank you so much. And my condolences to everyone in the Buneer and other parts of Pakistan. Same from my side. Same from my side. Same from Satkan from Swat. Thank you. And we also wish all our guests well too. Thank you so much to them for sharing their stories with us. I'm Luke Jones and you have been listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

25:58Thank you.