More than 60 millimeters (2.3 inches) of rain fell on Karachi on Sunday night, the equivalent of a month’s worth of precipitation in just a few hours.
Pakistan has been battling heavy monsoons for months each summer, but in recent years, experts say climate change is accelerating current weather patterns.
According to the National Disaster Management Authority, more than 300 people have died due to heavy rains across Pakistan since the start of the monsoon season last month.
In Karachi, the capital of Sindh state and home to nearly 16 million, entire neighborhoods were partially submerged. The photos show people walking up to their knees in muddy flood waters in vehicles stranded by the flood.
Infrastructure including bridges, highways and roads was damaged, disrupting traffic and disrupting the lives of millions across the city. Many stockpiled fuel for their generators in case of a power outage.
Afia Salam, a climate change advocate in Karachi, said: “Climate change is a threat. We are a coastal city. This is happening very fast and we will bear the brunt of it.” “People need to see the situation beyond individual events like a bridge falling or a road flooding.”
The climate crisis and weak infrastructure
Pakistan usually experiences heavy rains from July to September, but experts say the rains are only increasing in both frequency and intensity.
“The pace of these events is accelerating and our response is not keeping up,” Salam said. “We react to individual events. Strategies need to be laid out.”
According to the World Bank, “Karachi’s infrastructure is highly vulnerable to climate-related disasters”.
Experts say the crisis is exacerbated by poor flood management and ineffective disaster response.
Other provinces, including Balochistan in the southwest, have also received heavy rainfall in recent days. At least 87 people have died in the state due to “heavy rainfall, flooding and infrastructure collapse” this month alone, according to a report from the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA).
Two people, a woman and a child, died when a roof collapsed in the state’s Jaffarabad district on Sunday, according to PDMA chief executive Naseer Nasar.
According to the PDMA report, at least eight dams in Balochistan were breached while nine bridges were damaged. More than 700 animals perished due to the flood.
Karachi’s main streets, where financial institutions and bank headquarters are located, including Pakistan’s central bank, were flooded, and rescue services were using boats to reach stranded people.
Extreme weather affects millions
Extreme weather events in South Asia are becoming more frequent due to climate change, with temperatures in parts of India and Pakistan reaching record highs during a heatwave in April and May.
Residents of Pir Koh, a remote mountainous town in Balochistan province, did not have access to clean drinking water. Local resident Hassan Bugti said the lack of rain has caused nearby ponds to dry up, and their only source of water is a pipeline that “corrodes and pollutes the water supply.”
A 2022 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said they have moderate confidence that heat waves and moisture stress will become “more intense and frequent” and that “annual and summer monsoon precipitation will increase”.
Asim Khan from CNN contributed to the news.
