A number of hundred villages and 1000’s of acres of land inundated when the Sutlej River burst its banks on Sunday.
Households waded by way of water and cattle had been loaded onto boats in a mass evacuation of round 100,000 folks in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
A number of hundred villages and 1000’s of acres of land within the province had been inundated when the Sutlej River burst its banks on Sunday.
Rescue boats have travelled from village to village over the previous a number of days, amassing individuals who had been pressured to attend on the roofs of their homes because the water degree rose round them.
Others pushed bikes by way of shallower waters or held belongings above their heads till they discovered dry floor.
“The flood waters got here a few days in the past and all our homes had been submerged. We walked all the best way right here on foot with nice problem,” 29-year-old Kashif Mehmood, who fled along with his spouse and three kids to a aid camp, informed the AFP information company on Tuesday.
“There may be 5 – 6 ft (1.5 to 1.8 metres) of water over the roads,” Muhammad Amin, an area physician volunteering at a aid camp, mentioned.
“The one route that might have been used is now underwater.”
Muhammad Aslam, Pakistan’s chief meteorologist protecting floods, mentioned the river degree was at its highest in 35 years.
“We’ve rescued 100,000 folks and transferred them to safer locations,” Farooq Ahmad, spokesman for the Punjab emergency companies, mentioned.
Mohsin Naqvi, the caretaker chief minister of Punjab, mentioned monsoon rains prompted Indian authorities to launch extra reservoir water into the Sutlej, inflicting flooding downstream on the Pakistani aspect of the border.
India has skilled extreme monsoon rains this yr, with greater than 150 killed in rain-related incidents since July.
‘Sufficient warning time’
Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, a local weather and water skilled primarily based within the Pakistani capital Islamabad, mentioned the water ranges within the Sutlej had grow to be so excessive that they had been past India’s storage capability.
“There was no intention or maliciousness on India’s half. The water needed to finally movement downstream to Pakistan,” he mentioned.
“In Pakistan, we had been monitoring the Indian monsoon fairly intently, we had been anticipating and anticipating it, and due to this fact Punjab and Pakistani authorities had sufficient warning time to evacuate communities and to plan emergency response,” he mentioned, including that each nations had been dealing with a local weather catastrophe.
The summer season monsoon brings South Asia 70 to 80 p.c of its annual rainfall between June and September yearly.
It’s critical for the livelihoods of tens of millions of farmers and for meals safety in a area of roughly two billion folks – but it surely additionally brings landslides and floods that result in frequent evacuations.
Greater than 175 folks have died in Pakistan in rain-related incidents because the monsoon season started in late June, primarily as a result of electrocution and buildings collapsing, emergency companies have reported.
Pakistan was devastated by weeks of unprecedented floods final yr that inundated practically one-third of the nation, however the central province of Punjab was largely spared the worst of the flooding.
Massive components of Sindh and Balochistan are nonetheless recovering from the harm.
Pakistani authorities have struggled to beat the harm attributable to huge floods final yr, which affected 33 million folks and killed 1,739. They brought about $30bn in harm to the nation’s financial system.