The final flood death toll may be higher because hundreds of villages in Pakistan’s hilly north have been blocked off by flood-swollen rivers that have washed away roads and bridges, according to officials. Since June, when the seasonal rains started, 1,061 people have died in Pakistan.
On Sunday, the first medical flights from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates arrived. The Indian subcontinent’s yearly monsoon is crucial for irrigating crops and replenishing lakes and dams, but it can also cause havoc. According to officials, about a million homes were destroyed or severely damaged by this year’s flooding, which affected more than 33 million people, or one in seven Pakistanis.
Sherry Rehman, the minister for climate change, referred to it as “the monster monsoon of the decade.” The floods of this year are akin to those of 2010, which were the worst on record and resulted in more than 2,000 fatalities and submerged over a quarter of the nation. One farmer lamented the destruction wrought on his rice fields near Sukkur, a city in southern Sindh province and home to an aging colonial-era barrage on the Indus River that is essential to preventing further catastrophe. Weeks of nonstop rain have inundated millions of acres of fertile farmland, but now the Indus is in danger of overflowing due to torrents of water flowing down from tributaries in the north.
Our crop covered more than 5,000 acres, and the best rice was grown there.