Rawalpindi and Islamabad woke up to chaos on Tuesday morning. The rain started around 3:20am and didn’t let up until about 8, and by the time the sun was properly up, roads across both cities had basically turned into rivers. Schools shut their gates. Emergency crews were out before most people had even finished their morning tea, trying to keep pace with water that was rising faster than anyone had really planned for.
How Bad Was the Rain, Really
The numbers alone tell you this wasn’t your average monsoon shower. Rawalpindi pulled in close to 200 millimetres of rain, its heaviest downpour in three years, if you can believe that. Shamsabad took the worst of it with 197mm, New Katarian wasn’t far behind at 185mm, and Golra recorded 157mm. Pockets across H-8, Saidpur Village, Pirwadhai, I-12 and Chaklala all got soaked pretty badly too.
Nullah Lai took the brunt of it, as it usually does, this is the same stream that’s flooded Rawalpindi before, more than once. Water at Katarian climbed to 29 feet. Near Gowalmandi bridge, it hit 24. Officials said a major flood surge was moving through the nullah, with more water potentially on its way from Islamabad into Rawalpindi, which, honestly, says a lot about just how tangled the two cities’ drainage systems really are.
Streets Turned to Rivers
This wasn’t a one-neighbourhood problem, either. Water swallowed low-lying pockets across Safdarabad, Sadiqabad, Dhoke Khaba, Pirwadhai, Fauji Colony, Javed Colony and Arya Mohalla. Rawalpindi’s Deputy Commissioner explained that water from smaller tributary drains was backing up as Nullah Lai kept rising, pushing floodwater straight into nearby homes.
Islamabad wasn’t spared either. The city’s Deputy Commissioner said the rain had pushed Rawal Dam’s water level past its set limit, forcing officials to open the spillways at 2pm. There was a strange, almost avoidable twist in Sector E-11 too, record rainfall there caused drains to overflow, and water ended up seeping into illegal basements that had already been sealed off once before. Part of the problem, apparently, was that residents in a nearby housing society had blocked a drain with concrete slabs.
Traffic more or less collapsed across both cities that morning. Commuters sat trapped for hours as roads disappeared under water.
A Life Lost
And then there’s the part that’s hardest to write about. In Sector G-14 of Islamabad, a house roof gave way under the weight of the rain, killing one person and seriously injuring another. It’s a painful reminder of how fast this kind of rainfall can turn from an inconvenience into a tragedy, especially in older neighbourhoods where the housing and drainage just weren’t built to handle rain like this.
The Emergency Response
To be fair, the authorities didn’t just sit back and watch this happen. Rawalpindi declared a rain emergency, putting WASA, Rescue 1122, Civil Defence and Solid Waste Management all on high alert. The Army and Rangers pitched in too, backing up the district administration on the ground. An emergency centre went up, along with flood relief camps, and the cantonment area was split into six zones for a faster response.
Rescue teams stayed busy well into the afternoon. Rescue 1122 managed to safely evacuate 60 people from various parts of Rawalpindi, though plenty of residents remained stuck inside their homes while evacuation efforts continued around them. Both cities called off school for the day, and officials kept urging people to skip unnecessary travel and stay well clear of the nullahs.
What Comes Next
Unfortunately, this probably isn’t over yet. The Met Office had already warned that more rain was on the way for the country’s upper regions until September 5, with a real risk of urban flooding not just in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, but also in Mardan, Swabi, Gujranwala, Gujrat, Sialkot and Lahore.
For a city that’s been here before, Nullah Lai caused catastrophic flooding back in July 2001, killing dozens and wiping out thousands of homes, Tuesday’s storm is an uncomfortable echo of a problem that’s never really been solved. The emergency response this time may have kept the worst of the damage in check, but the bigger question still lingers over both cities: can their drainage systems actually handle monsoons like this, or is this just what every September is going to look like from now on?
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