Flooding Kills Hundreds In Pakistan, Kashmir, and Nepal

by Stefan J. Bos, Worthy News Chief International Correspondent

NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD (Worthy News) – Desperate people searched remote areas for bodies swept away by weekend flash floods in Pakistan, neighboring India-administered Kashmir, and Nepal, which killed hundreds and displaced thousands.

More than 150 people were still missing Monday in Pakistan’s mountainous north after Friday’s flash floods and rain killed at least 337, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.

Additionally, heavy rains and flooding likely killed scores of people in India-administered Kashmir, located across Pakistan’s northeastern border, after rains triggered more flash floods in two villages in the Kathua district, officials said.

Authorities confirmed seven deaths on Sunday but added that rescuers in Chositi village were still looking for dozens of missing people after the area was hit by flash floods last week during an annual Hindu pilgrimage.

At least 60 people were killed, and some 150 were injured, but over 300 others were rescued, according to officials.

NEPAL SUFFERING

Also, a total of 126 people lost their lives in disasters across Nepal in the past four months, a government agency said on Sunday.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said “23 people remained missing and 585 others were injured in 2,853 disasters between April 14 and August 16.”

Lightning strikes claimed 28 lives, followed by floods with 19 deaths and landslides with 16 deaths, respectively, the Nepali agency said in a report quoted by China’s state-run Xinhua news agency. It noted that 5,041 families were affected by the disasters during the period.

Yet most victims were still being found in northwestern Pakistan, where witnesses said the smell of rotting corpses hung in the air on Sunday in the remote village of Bayshonai Kalay. Locals were seen waiting for heavy machinery to arrive to remove debris in this devastated village.

The village is located in Buner District, a mountainous area in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where torrential rains and cloudbursts triggered massive flooding on Friday.

Muhammad Sher told reporters that five houses had once stood where he was standing, and some 30 homes had been lost.

VILLAGES SWEPT AWAY

Sher said that about 40 of the villagers’ bodies had been found, including his cousin’s, which had been washed up around two kilometers away. “This was a natural disaster that came and wiped out our entire village,” Sher said.

“Some people were taken away, some were saved, and there was a lot of chaos,” he added.

Elsewhere in the area, Mohammad Suhail, a spokesman for Pakistan’s emergency service, said 54 bodies were found in Buner, a mountainous region in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where torrential rains and cloudbursts triggered massive flooding on Friday.

Suhail said villagers remain missing, and search efforts are focused on areas where homes were flattened by torrents of water that swept down from the mountains, carrying boulders that smashed into houses like explosions.

Aziz Ahmed, a local schoolteacher in Buner, told Reuters news agency that the thunder accompanying recent torrential rains was so loud he thought the “end of the world had come.”

FAMILIES TRAUMATIZED

Water, rocks, and trees were swept down the mountainside after two days of intense monsoon rains, burying people and homes in their path. “You can say that those who survived have gone mad,” noticed Ahmed, pointing to a house where just one family member still lived.

Rescue teams said they evacuated more than 3,500 tourists trapped in Pakistani areas hit by the floods since Thursday. Over ten villages were destroyed by the flooding, and landslides and devastated roads kept workers from reaching communities, Worthy News learned.

Ali Amin Gandapur, chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, who visited Buner on Sunday, vowed to rebuild infrastructure, compensate victims, and move those living in dangerous places to safer homes. “We can’t bring back the dead, but what we can do, I pledge will be carried out,” said Gandapur.

Home insurance is rare in Pakistan, Nepal, or Indian-administered Kashmir, especially in impoverished rural and disaster-prone areas. Families losing their homes in most cases rely on government compensation, aid agencies, or family and community support after disasters.

However, residents in Buner have accused officials of failing to warn them to evacuate after torrential rain and cloudbursts triggered deadly flooding and landslides. There was no warning broadcast from mosque loudspeakers, a traditional method in remote areas in this mainly Muslim nation.

The government said that while an early warning system was in place, the sudden downpour in Buner was “so intense” that the deluge struck before residents could be alerted.

CLIMATE CHANGE BLAMED

Lieutenant General Inam Haider, chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority, blamed the situation on “climate change.”

He told reporters in Islamabad that Pakistan was experiencing “shifting weather patterns,” adding that since the monsoon season began in June, “Pakistan has already received 50 percent more rainfall than in the same period last year.” Haider warned that more intense weather could follow, with heavy rains forecast to continue this month.

Some countries have reached out to Islamabad offering help, but Haider said Pakistan has sufficient resources and does not require foreign assistance at this time.

Asfandyar Khan Khattak, director-general of the Provincial Disaster Management Authority, said “no forecasting system anywhere in the world” could predict the exact time and location of a cloudburst, a sudden and intense downpour.

Climate activists say Pakistan is “highly vulnerable to climate change” despite emitting “less than 1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions” that they link to global warming. Officials say the vulnerability is evident in the country’s increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as devastating floods and heatwaves.

Other experts, however, link the high death toll to increased urbanization near disaster-prone areas and question whether climate change is the main reason for the number of victims.

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