Pakistan: The night the river roared in ‘like a demon’
By NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD of ClimateWire
Published: October 12, 2010 The first in a four-part series on Pakistan’s flood disaster. NOWSHERA, Pakistan — “Allah was angry with us when the rain came.” Sumaira Bibi unhesitatingly leans on theology to explain what happened here on the night of July 29, when her world was drowned. Her husband was out of town for work. The 37-year-old mother was left with her five children and sister-in-law to settle in for the night. Then the incessant rain began to swamp this city in northwestern Pakistan, about 50 miles from the Afghan border. It didn’t take long for the water spilling over the doorways to send her family on a desperate bid for survival. “After six hours, we managed to get out with many of our neighbors, wet and scared,” said Bibi, who now takes refuge with her husband and children at a camp run by an Islamic charity group. “The rain still did not stop, but we followed the rest of people who had got a boat.” The sounds she remembers most were the anguished cries of frightened children, women screaming for their loved ones, and the unending rain that caused the Kabul River here to sprawl far outside its banks. She and her children made it to higher ground, but not before losing her home and her brother-in-law, who hasn’t been seen since. “The river Kabul was like a demon, swishing with so much water and overflowing the whole of Nowshera. It is something I have never seen in my life,” recalled her neighbor Zunaira, 34, who was pushed out of nearby Risalpur village by the floods. “We had to put a hand on our children’s eyes, as they were getting more and more scared with each moment.” …
