News from flood-hit Pakistan

It is quite difficult to land in a country where the whole nation is grieving because of the flood that has affected the life and livelihood of over 20 million people in 2 weeks. It is bit grim and bleak while we head to the most affected area in Nowshara district of Kyber Pakhtoun Khwa (KPK) province. Immediately, we head towards Bir Sabaq village along the Kabul River to distribute some relief supplies. But when we get close to distribution location, we notice a large group of people heading towards us. They are trying to flee from the latest wave of rains and the flooding that follows. Due to torrential rains, the region was declared an emergency zone. The village was again experiencing flash floods and access to the camp by vehicle was not possible. The village consisted of 225 houses of which 200 were destroyed by the flood on 29 July 2010.

The average household size in the village is 8 persons. The residents of the destroyed houses live in spontaneous IDP (internally displaced people) camps, seeking refuge in homes that have survived or continuing to live in their destroyed homes.

See Islamic Relief Pakistan for more photos.

One of the main challenges of working in an emergency is that you plan for one thing but then you have to have the flexibility to change it when the situation on the ground changes. We realised that our original plan would not be possible because the people that we were going to distribute to were no longer there as they had fled their homes and villages. There was thus a discussion whether to go back and postpone the distribution or to redirect the trucks to a different destination, which was not an easy task either. Watching the people flee the area, we realised that there weren’t many women in the group. We realised that there may be women and elderly that may need evacuating from the area. The decision was to cancel the distribution and walk through the water to the other end of the village trying to rescue some vulnerable people to the other end.

Our trucks immediately returned back to the warehouse to unload the hygiene kits and return back empty, ready to evacuate the most vulnerable from the flooded area. We rescued 200 people women, children and elderly. I was up to my waist in water, I was wet and cold, but I felt great and it was more rewarding than distributing some hygiene kit or even a food pack. The following verse from the Quran came to mind: "whoever saves the life of one, it would be as though he had saved mankind" (Quran 5:32).

It is quite common for the death toll from a flood to be much less than from an earthquake. However, the impact on the livelihood on the people in immense, as people lose their house, livestock, food stock, savings thus their sources of incomes. Also, in cases of floods, the risk of the spread of water-borse diseases is significant if no immediate measures are taken This explains why the response of the world in this disaster is quite disappointing compared to Haiti or tsunami or even the Pakistan earthquake 2005.