Monsoon rains pile misery

Editor's note: In this weekly feature China Daily gives voice to Asia and its people. The stories presented come mainly from the Asia News Network (ANN), of which China Daily is among its 20 leading titles.

We've seen these headlines before. Hundreds of lives lost, thousands displaced, homes swept away and losses that won't ever be compensated.

Pakistan is once again in the midst of a ruthless monsoon season, which began in late June, and on the radar is the country's mountainous north.

In August, unprecedented flash floods left behind a trail of wreckage in Buner, Swat, Shangla, Mansehra, and beyond. A week before that, Muzaffarabad bore the brunt of monsoon rains. Almost a month back, more than 30 villages across Gilgit Baltistan were declared calamity-hit.

Visuals coming out are terrifying; monstrous rivers unleashing their wrath and sweeping along anything in their way. According to a report by Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority, or NDMA, the monsoon floods had killed more than 800 people in Pakistan as of Aug 26. The NDMA has also reported the destruction of more than 2,000 houses.

Each flash flood occurred in just a few hours. Each occurred at a time locals refer to as "flash flood month". And each caused massive levels of deluge. In Pakistan, flash floods have almost become an annual recurrence, starting from June until September, according to the NDMA. This is primarily because of heavy monsoon rains and rapidly melting glaciers.

"We have seen floods before, but the level of destruction and the precipitancy of the disaster this time around are unprecedented; it was like a doomsday scenario," said a Peshawar-based Dawn reporter who recently covered the on-ground situation.

"Houses were reduced to rubble, shops were filled with 6 to 7 feet mud carried down by the fast-flowing water, and cars were floating," he recounted. Huge areas of millet crop fields were flooded.