Pakistan is regularly among the most polluted countries in the world, with the most contaminated megation.
School on the roof of his neighbor, Ghulam Bano looks at the remains of his house, immersed in murky and evil flooding waters that has surrounded a large part of the province of Punjab.
Monsoon Rains this week increased three cross -border rivers that crossed Punjab, the country’s agricultural heart and the home of almost half of its 255 million people.
Bano moved to the city of Shahdara last year, on the outskirts of Lahore, to avoid the contamination of Smog asphyxiation of the second largest city in Pakistan, only for his new beginning to turn it through the furies floods.
“My husband had begun to cough blood and his condition was still getting worse when he hit the smog,” Bano said AFPwalking through the muddy streets.
Pakistan is regularly among the most polluted countries in the world, often the most contaminated megacity between November and February.
“I thought Smog was quite bad, I never thought it could be worse with floods,” he said.
Its impoverished neighborhood is the home of thousands of low houses crowded in narrow streets.
The nearby Ravi Ravi river flooded many of them, forcing dozens of families to take refuge in primary school in a higher field, where doctors treated people for skin infections linked to flood water.
More strong rains are predicted during the weekend, including warnings of greater urban floods in Lahore.
With her prostrated husband of tuberculosis, worsened by the relentless smog, Bano became the only supplier in a home that struggles to breathe, survive and support floods.
“I ate today after two days. There is no clean water to drink. I left my daughter in the house of a relative and I stayed hoping that the water would go back,” he said.
There is no time to pack
Earth landslides and floods caused by heavier monsoon rains have been killed by more than 800 people throughout the country since June of this year.
While the seasonal monsoon of southern Asia brings rain on which farmers depend, climate change is making the phenomenon more erratic, unpredictable and mortal throughout the region.
More than 1.4 million people living near the rivers have been affected by floods, with more than 265,000 evacuated, said Azma Bukhari, Minister of Provincial Information.
“We simply can’t get a break,” said Amir Mehmood, a 32 -year -old merchant in the same neighborhood as Bano AFP.
“Children fall ill in the Smog due to extreme cold. Some get sick due to unhealthy conditions (everyday), he said, referring to waste batteries that routinely align the streets.
“And now there is a flood. Our houses have collapsed, the walls have fallen and everything is damaged.”
He looked at his family to the house of a relative on the other side of the city along with his 10 cows and two goats as the water approached.
More than 300 aid camps have been established throughout the province to take refuge the displaced people without a family to resort.
“The women you see here and I had to run through our lives … We didn’t even have time to get clothes for our children,” said 40 -year -old widow Tabassum Suleman AFP of the school camp.
“We don’t know when we’ll return home,” he said, looking at the dark skies. “But the worst is yet to come.”
Image of the header: The residents evacuated from their submerged houses, took refuge in a government school after the waters of the floods entered from the Ravi Ravi Ravi overflowing in Shahdara, Lahore on August 29. – AFP
