August 31, 2006

Said a woman who had just moved to Karachi from Lahore when rain submerged her new neighbourhood -––– the quiet leafy locality of Gulshan-e-Faisal in Bath Island,“After the first bout of rain there was knee deep water in the entire area. For four days we had no gas, no electricity and hence no water. Rats came into the flats on the ground floor while sewerage water seeped into the underground tank

Many years from now Karachiites will use the torrential rain that hit the metropolis on August 17 this year, as a point of reference. “What were you doing when rain drowned the city?” “How did you get home?” “What happened?”

The possible answers would be death, damage, delays and theft. The evening when the rains hit Karachi, brought much misery and distress -–– and not all of it was inflicted by the downpour.

For some the two-hour, 56 mm deluge changed lives. In certain cases, the transformation was forever. After a fortnight, Karachiites still remember their experiences, surreal and unreal. These are some of the experiences of people trapped in the deluge.

Before Adeel Gulzar left his office, a public limited company located on Sharah e Faisal, his colleague warned him that rain would ruin his good pair of shoes. No one could have anticipated what fate had in store for the 30-year-old civil engineer. A colleague narrates: “Adeel left the office after 6` o clock in his car. He took the Sharah e Faisal to drive to his home in Block 4, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, but near a petrol pump on Tipu Sultan road, water started coming inside his car so he got out and started walking on the pavement. There was a live wire there that was not visible and he was electrocuted. For several minutes he called for help but none of the passersby could do anything.

“No one at Adeel's s home or the office knew about his death, till one of his colleagues who was staying the night at the office, stepped out to go to the nearby hospital to pick up something to eat. A member of the hospital staff saw his employee card ––– which Adeel also had ––– and asked him if he had come to claim Adeel's body. The colleague immediately went inside and identified his body and his family was contacted. It was very traumatic for everyone.”

That same evening, in another part of the city Mohammed Muslim Shahab and his 37-year old son Khurram, who worked together, left the office for their home on Khayaban-e-Hilal in DHA. They never reached. The police contacted their family to inform them that the electrocuted bodies of the father and son had been found close to their home, on Khayaban-e-Hilal.

“What can I tell you? We just don't know what happened to our loved ones. We are all still in shock and very angry. The tragedy is very recent and we have to pull ourselves together before we can decide what action we should take and against whom,” said a close member of the family speaking on condition of anonymity.

Rishad Mahmood who has been living in the low lying PECHS Block 6 for the past 30 years says his locality had flooded in the past, but that it had never been as bad as it was after the August 17 rains. “There is a drain, very lyrically named Ibn Sina Nallah, near our locality. It was badly choked and before the first shower this year we asked the Jamshed Town Nazim to have it cleaned. Two days before the first rain we saw some workers clearing out the drain. Two days later after the shower, however, the area was submerged.”

“When it rained again on August 17, there was two feet of water inside my house. This was unprecedented. We literally had to put one sofa on top of the other to save the furniture but it is all ruined. Our cars were floating in the driveway and water had come up to the level of the steering wheel. Everything from my wife's wedding clothes, our photo albums to my late father's music collection, was damaged by the water. Our lives have turned upside down.”

Rishad joined a group of residents who approached their area's Town Nazim, Arif Ajakia, who said the CDGK is not cooperating with him because he belonged to the opposite camp. Apparently the Union Council Nazim did not feel obliged to do anything because he did not get votes from the streets that were flooded in our locality. Nobody is taking any responsibility and everyone is just busy shifting the blame. The Water and Sewerage Board said that a sewerage line in our street is damaged and that they would start repair work the next day. But that still hasn't happened. Water is still seeping into the street.

“I have heard too many lies and am now thinking of shifting from here, despite the fact that I live in a well-built house and my mother is, understandably, very attached to it.”

After the rain Rishad showed his car to a mechanic for repair, “The back wheels were jammed. When I complained to the mechanic about the situation in the city, he said that his business was thriving thanks to the rains.”

Pop singer Faakhir landed in Karachi from New York on that chaotic night. “I was coming back on August 19 but on a whim I decided to come on the 17. I was on a high from a very successful tour of the US, but my nightmare started the minute I landed when my driver called. He was in the DHA and said that there was no way he could reach the airport to pick me up because of the rain. I rented a car and went on Sharah e Faisal. Seeing the mad traffic jam I asked the driver to take a detour from Karsaz Road through Numaish to get to Clifton. I covered the distance in two hours and thought I had outsmarted the rain.”

The rain, however, caught up with the pop star when he crossed the Clifton Bridge and reached Teen Talwar. “The water level had come up to the car window in that area! From Teen Talwar to Schon Circle the driver couldn't apply the brakes because the car was floating! Water started coming into the car and there was lots of stinking water everywhere. We managed to get the car to a slightly higher ground and I opened the door to ask some people to help me get the car nearer the KPT underpass which was relatively dry.

“They said they wanted to be paid three hundred rupees to push the car. I was so desperate that at that point I could have paid them anything they asked.” Eventually Faakhir called for his own car. “We managed to transfer my things and get out of that area. But my laptop, mobile phone, my clothes, shoes and the presents I had bought for everyone were ruined in the filthy water. I had to throw everything away.”

Faakhir, who escaped the Mumbai deluge and flood by a few hours, last year said, “Arriving from America, the contrast couldn't have been bigger. So many people got electrocuted, and whole lives changed in a matter of moments. So compared to that my loss is nothing. I really should be counting my blessings. But I have to live here and I have been wondering about what can be done to improve things in the city.”

Saba Shaikh had another story to tell. “My mother's house is on Popular Avenue near Khayaban-e-Shahbaz in DHA and that area had become like a cup overflowing with water after the August 17 rain. There was so much water there that it started coming into the house. My mother had to have all the furniture moved up to the second floor.

“In the meantime my husband and I rolled up our trousers and put bricks outside the gate to make a path through the water. Then we sealed the gate with sand bags to keep the water out. We called the DHA office continuously, but they took their sweet time in coming. They arrived one day finally and took a tankerful of water out and started to leave. When my mother asked them where they were going, they said that water needed to be pumped out from in front of the Corps Commander's house and that they would be back the next day. Of course, they never came back and we had to rent a pump to take the water out. The problem was that there was nowhere to throw the pumped water so it just went from one side of the road to the other.

“To make matters worse, on the night of 17th August my brother had to catch a flight to the US. The flight was at one`clock in the morning and till 10.30 pm we were calling the PIA office to find out if it was delayed. The national carrier just would not tell us what was happening. My brother didn't want to take a risk so he hired a yellow cab to take him to the airport.

“The cab driver charged him Rs2, 000 for a route on which they normally charge around Rs300! It was appalling how people took advantage of others’ plight. In any case when my brother got to the airport he discovered that the flight was leaving at six in the morning!”

As parts of the city sank, some chose to make hay in the mayhem that ensued. Osama Hashmi, a student of the AMI was driving home with two of his friends after weathering rain and high water when he got stuck in the water and endless traffic jam that had developed near NIPA Chowrangi in Gulshan-e-Iqbal. “It was around 8.30 pm. We were waiting for our car to inch forward, when a man approached and gestured to us. I didn't know what was happening till he took out a gun and waved it in my face. He asked for our mobile phones. We immediately handed them over and the man quickly disappeared in the rush of traffic, as we watched on helplessly.”

Hajra Mumtaz had just moved to Karachi from Lahore when rain submerged her new neighbourhood -––– the quiet leafy locality of Gulshan-e-Faisal in Bath Island. “After the first bout of rain there was knee deep water in the entire area. For four days we had no gas, no electricity and hence no water. Rats came into the flats on the ground floor while sewerage water seeped into the underground tank.

“There is next to no garbage collection where we live, and the garbage piles around the area began to dissipate in the water on the street. Every time we tried to get out we ended up stepping on soiled diapers or banana peels. Everybody in our building left, except our landlady.”

Not knowing what to do about the infrastructure meltdown, Hajra left for Lahore. She arrived back in Karachi after the first spell of rains ended, thinking the worst was behind her. “When the rains struck again on August 17 there was so much water in Bath Island that for two days we couldn't drive through the Teen Talwar area to get home. We ended up staying with friends and relations.

“Eventually the fire engines came to pump out the water from our street, but the water level only went down by something like two inches. I felt like Rapunzel waiting for the City Nazim, Mustafa Kamal to come and rescue me!” she quipped.

Hajra's landlady, Mrs Khursheed refused to abandon her building. “I have lived here for twenty years. It was never this bad. I believe that the water from the KPT underpass was pumped into Bath Island. I had nowhere to go so I stayed back, the only person in the building, to work the phones and get the basic necessities restored.

“Choked drains, plastic bags, illegal construction ––– the attitude is just apathetic and negative. They have all become 'dheets' (indifferent). It's been almost ten days and the parking lot of our building still has water.”

Mansoor Bakht who works on I. I. Chundrigar Road recalls the bizarre encounter he had with water in the heart of what is frequently referred to as Pakistan's Wall Street. “I was heading back from a visit to Sultanabad when it started drizzling. The road that connects Queen's Road and I. I. Chundrigar Road was blocked so we took the KPT bridge and entered I. I. Chundrigar Road from the Mereweather Tower. I was stuck in a traffic jam on I. I. Chundrigar road from 5.15 pm to 10.00 pm.”

People were driving in eight lanes and the traffic inched forward at a snail's pace. “For instance it took me forty five minutes to get from the Cotton Exchange to UniPlaza, which is a stone's throw away. Most people just stopped their cars and stood outside talking. A person driving the other way told us that there was a lot of water up the road and that the police had stopped the traffic because of an incident of electrocution near the Shaheen Complex. Cars were stalling everywhere and no one could call home because mobile phone services had stopped working.”

Eventually after waiting endlessly and running dangerously short of fuel, Mansoor parked his car near a bank, took off his shoes, rolled up his trousers and waded through the water. “We flattened ourselves against the wall as we waded and water came up to my waist in some parts of the road. It was like being on the beach. The buses that passed by created huge waves, drenching us with the filthy water. It was dangerous as well, as one didn't know where one was stepping. I nearly fell into a manhole.

“That night I stayed in the office. Sadly one of the building security guards was electrocuted that night.” The next day he discovered that all the locks in his car had been forced open. “Luckily nothing was missing, but that's only because there was nothing to steal in my car,” Mansoor laughs.

While some stayed in the office overnight, others, rather naively, chose to traverse the dangerous waters and nightmarish traffic to get home. Raheel Qadri who also works on I. I. Chundrigar Road set out at 7.30 pm when he felt 'that the rain had tapered a bit.' His home is in North Nazimabad. “Some of my other colleagues had attempted to go home but returned after getting stuck. When they said I couldn't do it, five of us took it as a challenge, oblivious to the problems and dangers we would face.

“Initially we tried to avoid the water, but soon realised it was futile. You could either save yourself or your clothes. We walked to MA Jinnah road to catch a bus or taxi, but the traffic was chock-a-block. The water in some places came to my waist. Knee-deep water was ‘normal’."

As Raheel and his group of friends discovered, the swamped roads were pockmarked with invisible manholes. “Some blessed souls were standing around with torches telling us where not to step. In any case the five of us formed a chain so that if someone stepped into a manhole the others could pull him out.

“All the rickshaws were overloaded ––– carrying five or more people -––– and they were charging Rs 600 for the trip. Some rickshaws just refused to take customers. We reached Quaid-e-Azam's Mazar thinking we would get a bus from there, but there the buses were also overloaded. Finally when we did get onto a bus, it moved about 10 feet in 15 minutes.

“We got off and walked to Golimar and then to the Teen Hatti bridge thinking we would get public transport somewhere on the way. But that wasn't possible as the traffic was bumper to bumper everywhere we turned. My shoes were destroyed by the time I reached the Haidry market. Desperate to get home, I took a lift from a guy on a motorbike. He dropped me near my house and I finally reached home past midnight after covering some 15 kilometres of waterlogged roads on foot.”

Raheel summed it up for a lot of Karachiites when he ended with, “It's unforgettable.”

 

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)