dpa
Islamabad
Pakistan’s second-largest city was lashed by its heaviest rainfall in more than four decades on Thursday, leaving streets, houses, shops and hospitals inundated.
Rescuers were scrambling to move people out of impacted neighbourhoods in the eastern city of Lahore while sanitation workers were employing heavy machines to drain water from hospitals and residential compounds, local official Farooq Ahmed told DPA.
Police and other agencies were also removing cars that were abandoned by motorists as roads and underpasses became flooded, Ahmed said.
More than 350 millimetres of rainfall was recorded in some parts of the city in less than three hours, something that last happened in 1980s, the metrological department said.
At least one person died, taking the deal toll from rain-related incidents in the central province of Punjab during this monsoon season to 39, the provincial disaster agency said.
“It was like a river flowing down from skies. I got scared. I thought it will never end and sweep away everything,” said Mohamed Shakoor, a resident of the city’s Gulshan Ravi neighbourhood. Heavy rains hit most parts of Pakistan and other South Asian countries, including neighbouring India and Bangladesh, during the Himalayan monsoon season from July to September, causing deaths and destruction.
But climate change has intensified the monsoon seasons in recent years and rapidly melting glaciers in Himalayas often cause massive flooding in rivers. More than 2, 000 people died in flooding and a subsequent outbreak of diseases in Pakistan two years ago.
