After Midnight Escape From Historic Floods, Pakistani Villager Forced to Start Life Anew

MOSCOW (Sputnik), Tommy Yang - As heavy floods claimed the lives of thousands of victims and affected millions of others in Pakistan, a local resident in one of the worst hit areas shared with Sputnik his family’s first-hand experiences in recent weeks.

After more than two months of historic monsoon rains, a 45-year-old farmer from the Muhammad Hanif Yousuf Bhatti Village in the Shikarpur district in the southern Sindh province in Pakistan understood that his house made of mud and bricks was probably no longer safe for his family.

"Because of the rain, my uncle was awake and walking around to monitor the situation. While the family was sleeping, my uncle realized that his home was being destroyed. Then he woke his wife and children up. They went out at once. It was 2 a.m. at night," Adi Khan, the farmer’s nephew, told Sputnik.

Khan's uncle and his family first went to a neighbor’s home located on higher ground but it also started to be flooded as the water level kept rising.

"After a while, their neighbor’s house was also destroyed. They just had to move again immediately," Khan said.

A car sits in flood waters covering a closed highway in Dallas, Monday, Aug. 22, 2022.

© AP Photo / LM Otero

Fortunately, Khan’s uncle and his family were able to reach a main road going through the village that same night. As the road was built on higher ground, they could avoid the floods caused by the heavy rainfall.

The Muhammad Yousif Bhatti Village was flooded on August 21. Khan’s uncle and his family have been living in a tent on the main road since then. In response to the heavy flooding in the area, the Pakistani government and various organizations have distributed tents as temporary shelters for the displaced families.

Village Wiped Out

While many parts of the Northern Hemisphere experienced severe drought this summer, Pakistan began to experience unprecedented monsoon rains on June 14. The heavy rainfall was about three times more intense than the 30-year average, according to the latest situation report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

While Khan’s uncle and his family were able to evacuate in time, heavy floods caused serious damages to other villagers.

At least 1,061 people, including almost 360 children, were killed during the heavy floods in Pakistan, while another 1,575 people were injured, the OCHA report said. The floods affected the lives of more than 33 million people, or about 15% of the total population.

Army troops evacuate people from a flood-hit area in Rajanpur, district of Punjab, Pakistan, Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022. Officials say flash floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains across much of Pakistan have killed nearly 1,000 people and displaced thousands more since mid-June. (AP Photo/Asim Tanveer)

© AP Photo / Asim Tanveer

The Sindh province in southern Pakistan was one of the worst hit areas. Almost 85% of the 300,000 destroyed houses and 692,000 damaged homes were located in the Sindh province, the OCHA report said.

Khan and his family live in Shikarpur, the capital of the district of the same name in Sindh. They also experienced the historic monsoon rains first-hand.

"Currently, we live in the Shikarpur city. Our home was a little bit damaged. But we have relatives who live in the countryside. Their village has been completely destroyed," he said.

As Khan and his family lived in a two-floor house, they could go up to the second floor when their home was being flooded.

"When it was raining very hard, some water started to come into our house. Maybe it was one foot or two feet deep. Our house was flooded for about 8 hours last Thursday. We live in a two-floor house. My family was able to go up to the second floor," he said.

Better Preparation

As a 19-year-old student studying civil engineering at his university, Khan believes a better drainage system could help his city handle the heavy rainfall more effectively.

"Rain isn’t the only reason for the flooding. Our drainage system is one of the worst. This was not flooding water in our city. This was rain water because of the poor drainage system," he said.

Based on his studies about construction standards in other countries, Khan pointed out that Pakistan could learn from the experiences of those countries.

"You know in foreign countries like the United States or Saudi Arabia, they have the best road construction standards. There’re many RCC [reinforced cement concrete] structure buildings. They have roads that are built with small holes. When it’s raining, there’s no water on the road because the holes allow the water to move through. But here we don’t have that," he said.

Forefront of Climate Change

Pakistan was not the only country that experienced the devastating impact of climate change this summer.

The United Kingdom, known for its notorious wet and cold climate, faced unprecedented heatwaves when temperatures topped 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Meanwhile, extreme drought caused China’s largest freshwater lake to shrink by 75% and the western Sichuan province had to introduce serious power cuts due to its reliance on electricity produced by hydropower plants.

Khan believed Pakistan could do more to prepare for the impact of climate change.

"It rained too much because of the climate change. You know, there’s a lot of pollution in Pakistan. Especially in the Sindh province, there’re not enough trees. As students, we’re trying to plant as many trees as we can. There used to be many trees in the countryside. But they cut it," he said.

Khan’s uncle and his family, who lived in the same village where Khan’s family came from, stood at the forefront of such catastrophic consequences of climate change.

A villager uses cots to save usable items after salvaging from his flood-hit home, in Jaffarabad, a district of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province, Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022.

© AP Photo / Zahid Hussain

The size of Khan’s uncle’s farm was only one acre, which was far from enough to feed his whole family. His uncle opened a small convenient store to help the family get by.

Unfortunately, the heavy floods destroyed both his uncle’s home and the store.

Losing all sources of income and having to feed his wife and five children, Khan’s uncle could only try to move with his family to the country’s largest city of Karachi and start a new life there.

“You know, one acre [of land] is not enough for living. In six months, his farm could only produce about 15 40-kilogram [about 88 pounds] boxes of wheat. He made some additional money from his small shop and he used to do some part-time work in the village. But now, everything is gone and destroyed. He’s planning to go to Karachi and find a job to support his family,” Khan said.

Khan’s uncle has two daughters and three sons, with the oldest one only at 15. As a result, the whole family would have to rely on his uncle’s income.

Khan added that his uncle did some road construction work before and hoped to find a manual job at a factory in Karachi.