BAYSHONAI KALAY, Pakistan – Aziz Ahmed, a local schoolteacher in Buner, northwestern Pakistan said the thunder accompanying recent torrential rains was so loud he thought the “end of the world had come”.
Water, rocks and trees were swept down the mountainside after two days of intense monsoon rains, burying people and homes in their path.
“You can say that those who survived have gone mad,” said Ahmed, pointing to a house where just one family member still lived.
By Sunday morning, the death toll from the rains across the mountainous north of Pakistan had risen to at least 337 people, with most killed in flash floods, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.
In Buner, a three-and-a-half-hour drive from the capital Islamabad, 207 lives were lost and others are still missing.
Officials said that Buner was hit by a cloudburst, a rare phenomenon where more than 100 mm (4 inches) of rain falls within an hour in a small area. In Buner, there was more than 150 mm of rain within an hour on Friday morning.
Syed Muhammad Tayyab Shah, who leads risk assessment at the authority, said that global warming had changed the pattern of the annual monsoon, pushing it around 100 km west of its normal path.
More heavy rain was expected across Pakistan until early September, officials said.
Ali Amin Gandapur, chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, who visited Buner on Sunday, vowed to rebuild infrastructure, compensate victims, and move those living in dangerous places to homes in safer spots.
“We can’t bring back the dead, but what we can do, I pledge will be carried out,” said Gandapur.
In the remote village of Bayshonai Kalay, the smell of rotting corpses hung in the air on Sunday, as locals waited for heavy machinery to arrive to remove debris.
Muhammad Sher said that five houses had existed immediately around where he was standing, with some 30 homes lost in total. He said that some 40 of the villagers’ bodies had been found, including his cousin’s, which had been washed around two kilometers away.
“This was a natural disaster which came and wiped out our entire village,” Sher said. “Some people were taken away, some were saved, and there was a lot of chaos.” REUTERS
