Pakistan floods: ‘The water came and now everything is gone’

The mammoth, unrelenting rains in Pakistan have destroyed homes and belongings, impacting tens of millions plus leaving more than one, 000 people lifeless. Two BBC correspondents, on the ground in the northern and south of the country relay the particular devastation they’re viewing.

Wading through the flood-ravaged streets of the suburbs of the northern town of Nowshera, residents are starting to try and return to their particular homes to inspect the damage and see what they may salvage.

A few used black rubber tubes to help drift along the muddy brownish water, which sometimes reached up to their chests, others walked gingerly through this.

Imadullah, a chef, together with his young son perched above his shoulder blades, had just was able to reach his family house. All their belongings had been piled up, covered in mud and mainly unusable.

“We’ve got nothing remaining, ” he told the BBC, “We couldn’t save everything, just our little one’s lives. ”

Further down the water-logged road, two females held onto each other for support as they tried to push ahead to their home. However the water was as well deep.

“We don’t know if it’s nevertheless standing or offers fallen down, inch said one, “I don’t know how we would rebuild it. We are living in a camping in a school. God is my witness, we don’t have any money. ”

Thousands and thousands of houses are destroyed or partly damaged across the country, leaving millions homeless. Pakistani authorities estimate around $10bn worth of damage continues to be done, raising worries about food disadvantages with crops worn out.

Most are now living in alleviation camps. Not definately not Nowshera, hundreds of other people have set up tents alongside the freeway, from where she or he is able at least to help keep an eye on their homes, hoping to be able to return as soon as the water recedes further.

“It’s so painful I cannot show it in terms, ” says Rozina, as her seven children mill about beside her.

Heavy monsoon down pours are an annual incidence, but not on this scale. Parts of Pakistan have experienced many times the amount of rainfall as during a common year.

The summer rain is the largest recorded in a decade and government ministers say the country will be paying the price with regard to global climate change, despite only contributing to a small proportion associated with global emissions.

Speaking to the BBC at a briefing kept for foreign media, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif dismissed critique that officials had been slow to respond once the floods first started earlier this summer.

“We will certainly learn from our experience, ” he said, “but the global community need to stand by us these days, it’s a yawning gap between our specifications and what we are getting till this point in time. ”

The particular rains have halted in parts of Pakistan – but the damage is nowhere near over. Heavy water damage in the north will be travelling to the southern parts of the country where big swathes of land are already uninhabitable.

Hundreds of thousands of homes have been destroyed – and millions of people made destitute. In Saeedabad, in Pakistan’s Sindh province, hundreds of people are residing on the side of a tiny rocks road – where the road ends the particular waist-deep water begins.

In the range you can see their houses, in some the oceans reach as high as the window.

I met Banul in a tent with 15 children : some hers, others her nieces plus nephews. She is delighted they are all alive great worried about that they will feed the children.

“We have been living here for weeks, no house, just one tent for all of us. We need help. We’re able to only save existence, ” says Banul.

“Back home we were farmers. We had natural cotton, we had maize. Everything was ready – the water came and now everything is gone. We have nothing and no food. ”

On this dirt road to nowhere, people can go for days with out eating sometimes. If a food truck comes by, the food operates out quickly rather than everyone is fed.

Local workers are usually overstretched and state they don’t have enough assets. Relief efforts are unpredictable, especially in far-flung communities where the untarred roads have been swallowed up by the seas.

One of the biggest issues aid workers can face when or if international help arrives, will be ways to get it to everyone that needs it : when the roads are usually undrivable and a large number of people still trapped by water.

But for those people, help is their last hope of enduring the tragedy gowns visited and taken so much from them.