Catastrophic flooding in Pakistan leaves millions homeless

Pakistan warned of a “climate catastrophe of epic scale” and appealed for international help yesterday after flooding killed more than 1,000 people and left millions homeless.

Sherry Rehman, the climate change minister, said her country was on “the front line of extreme weather events” this summer, which included months of droughts, wildfires and flooding.

The National Disaster Management Authority said that 33 million people were directly affected across all four of Pakistan’s provinces. “[That number is] the size of a small country . . . We need all the help we can get,” Rehman said.

Authorities again warned of a “high to very high” risk of flooding from the Indus river, which runs the length of the country, after pictures emerged of waters washing away homes, livelihoods and crops. Two other major rivers, the Kabul and Swat, were also running extremely high, forcing mass evacuations this weekend.

Prolonged and heavy rainfall, which started in mid-June, has claimed at least 1,061 lives, officials said yesterday, after the country declared a national emergency on Friday. The total included at least 119 people who died in a 24-hour period.

By the time the monsoon rains finish at the end of September “we could well have one fourth or one third of Pakistan under water,” Rehman said.

Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister, who cancelled a trip to Britain to oversee relief operations at home, said he had never seen a disaster on such a scale.

“Village after village has been wiped out. Millions of houses have been destroyed. There has been immense destruction,” he said after surveying the damage in the southeastern province of Sindh by helicopter. He vowed that the Pakistani government would provide housing to all those who had lost their homes.

The unusually early monsoon season has turned typically quiet rivers into churning torrents: videos posted online showed the force of the water demolishing houses and even multistorey buildings, including a 150-room hotel, in seconds.

Soldiers were deployed to assist in relief efforts and rescue stranded people but they were being hindered by landslides and flash floods that have destroyed bridges and made highways impassable.

More than 50,000 victims had been rescued and nearly 500,000 were now housed in relief camps, officials said. The Pakistani army said that it had also airlifted 22 tourists, who had been trapped in a valley in the country’s north, to safety.

The floods are believed to be bigger than the “superflood” in 2010 that affected 20 million people and killed almost 2,000, according to government estimates.

The disaster agency said that rainfall across the country this year had been nearly three times the 30-year average and six times higher in some areas.

While Europe and the Middle East have been suffering droughts and water shortages this summer, severe floods have also taken place in northern India, Bangladesh, western China and other parts of Asia, with dozens more casualties.

In Afghanistan, 182 people have been killed and more than 250 injured across six provinces. More than 3,100 houses have been destroyed and acres of agricultural land have been reduced to mud leaving thousands without access to food or incomes.

Britain on Saturday donated up to £1.5 million to help with the relief efforts in Pakistan as the United States, the European Union and others made similar pledges. However, the authorities in Islamabad said more help was needed and the United Nations is expected to announce a worldwide emergency appeal tomorrow.

Rehman said Pakistan was “at the ground zero of the front line of extreme weather events” following “an unrelenting cascade of heatwaves, forest fires, flash floods, multiple glacial lake outbursts, flood events and now the monster monsoon of the decade”.

“Our infrastructure is paralysed and people are desperate for shelter and food,” she said in a video posted on Twitter. “The humanitarian response needs a huge push as the floods are unprecedented,” Rehman said, adding that the tasks of rehabilitation, rescue and relief for affected people was “beyond the capacity of any one administration or government”.

The provinces of Sindh and neighbouring Balochistan have experienced five times the usual level of rainfall this year, the heaviest since 1961, authorities said. About 700,000 livestock have drowned and nearly two million acres of farmland have been destroyed in the two regions.

Murad Ali Shah, the chief minister of Sindh, said that no part of the province was unaffected. “It seems like the entire Indus river has overflowed,” he told local television.

Flooding from the Swat river overnight on Saturday affected northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, prompting more than 330,000 people to be evacuated from their homes to relief camps set up in government buildings.

In the picturesque Swat district, previously a favourite with tourists, a deputy commissioner, Ibrar Wazir, said that at least 24 bridges and 50 hotels had been swept away.

Among the many displaced by the floods was Khaista Rehman, 55, who is no relation to the climate minister, who took shelter with his wife and three children on the side of the Islamabad-Peshawar highway after his home in Charsadda was submerged on Saturday night. “Thank God we are safe now on this road quite high from the flooded area,” he said. “Our crops are gone and our home is destroyed but I am grateful to Allah that we are alive and I will restart life with my sons.”

The Pope yesterday urged the international community to help Pakistan. He said that he was praying “for the many victims, for the injured and the evacuated and that international solidarity will be prompt and generous”.