Water will not return to normal levels for three months after severe flooding in Pakistan

The chief minister of Pakistan’s Sindh province, Murad Ali Shah, has warned that it will take between three and six months to drain all the water from the severe floods that have affected the area in recent weeks and have cost the lives of nearly 1,400 people across the country.

“There are areas with 8 to 10 feet of water,” 2.5 to 3 meters, Shah has assured. “Even where the water level is going down, people still can’t go back,” he lamented, according to the Pakistani daily ‘Dawn’.

Shah explained that there are about 35 million displaced and “millions of hectares of fertile land” are now flooded. This has caused losses of 3.5 billion rupees (about 15.3 million euros) for agriculture and 50 billion rupees (218 million euros) for livestock.

In addition, Shah recalled that 10 to 11 times the usual amount of rain has fallen this year. “The whole world has come together to fight climate change,” stressed Shah, who accompanied UN Secretary General António Guterres on his visit and to whom he conveyed the urgent need for tents and medicines.

Meanwhile, the Dadu area of Sindh is now suffering from a rising water level that has left 150 villages submerged and is already threatening the city of Dadu itself.

The forecast is for heavy rains and windstorms in Kashmir, Jibber Pakhtunkhwa, Islamabad, Punjab, southeastern Sindh and Gilgit-Baltistan.

Sindh has been the province hardest hit by the monsoon rains, with 578 of those killed and 8,321 of the total 12,728 injured counted between June 14 and September 9, according to the latest official toll.