The south of Pakistan, particularly affected by the floods which have already killed more than 1,000 people in the country, is preparing for a new deluge in the coming days, caused by the flooding of the rivers.
Fed by dozens of rivers and mountain streams that burst their banks following record rains and the melting of glaciers, the Indus, a river that crosses the province of Sindh in the south of the country, continues to grow.
“The Indus is in full flood”, confirms the person in charge of the imposing dam dating from the colonial era, located near the city of Sukkur, where some 500,000 inhabitants live.
The valves were opened to deal with a flow of more than 600,000 m3 per second, said the official.
Authorities have warned that torrents of water are expected to reach Sindh province in the coming days, adding to the hardship of millions of people already affected by the floods.
Pakistani officials attribute the devastating weather to climate change, saying Pakistan is suffering the consequences of irresponsible environmental practices elsewhere in the world.
According to the latest report from the National Disaster Management Authority published on Sunday, 1,033 people have been killed by the torrential rains, including 119 in the past 24 hours.
One in seven Pakistanis affected
More than 33 million people – one in seven Pakistanis – have been affected by the storms and nearly a million homes have been destroyed or severely damaged, according to the government.
In Sindh province, tens of thousands of rural residents have taken refuge on elevated roads and railway lines. Near Sukkur, tents were erected over two kilometers to accommodate the victims who continued to arrive by boat, laden with wooden beds and crockery, the only items they were able to save.
Water has already invaded the streets of Sukkur by seeping through the walls of buildings that line the main road from Bandar along the dam.
“The city is already one meter below the level of the river,” Water Resources Minister Syed Khursheed Shah said.
The dam redistributes the water in almost 10,000 kilometers of canals which distribute the water over the agricultural lands but which, after years of neglect, can no longer handle the record volumes recorded today.
“The silt accumulated and could not be removed,” the minister explained, adding that due to a lack of equipment, the canals have not been dredged since 2010.
In northern Pakistan, thousands of people were ordered to evacuate their homes on Saturday. Helicopters and rescuers continued Sunday to shelter latecomers.
“We had to rescue children and women,” a rescue worker, Umar Rafiq, told AFP from the Swatt Valley.
In this region, a popular tourist destination for its rugged mountains, many rivers burst their banks, demolishing dozens of buildings, including a 150-room hotel that collapsed in a raging torrent.
Already hard hit by the 2010 floods, guesthouse owner Nasir Khan says he lost everything. “The part of the building that was spared 12 years ago was swallowed up by the waters,” he told AFP.
The bad weather is comparable to that of 2010, when 2,000 people were killed and almost a fifth of the country was submerged by the monsoon rains which fall between June and September each year.
” Disaster “
The government declared a state of emergency on Friday and mobilized the army to deal with this “catastrophe of a rare magnitude”, in the words of Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman.
The country is particularly vulnerable to climate change. It is in eighth position among the countries most threatened by extreme weather phenomena, according to a study by the NGO Germanwatch.
In addition, corruption and poorly established urban planning programs have led to the construction of thousands of buildings in flood-prone areas.
These floods come at the worst time for Pakistan, whose economy is collapsing and which has been in deep political crisis since the ousting of Prime Minister Imran Khan in April following a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly .
If the capital Islamabad and the neighboring city of more than 2 million inhabitants, Rawalpindi, have escaped the worst, the first consequences are already being felt: “supplies are very limited”, underlines Muhammad Ismail, a fruit and vegetable merchant in Rawalpindi.
“Tomatoes, peas, onions and other vegetables are not available due to flooding,” he told AFP, adding that prices had also skyrocketed.