Somewhere in Sonwar, Srinagar, at the G.B. Pant Hospital in Srinagar, little children aged not more than 10 years and newborns, many of whom were restricted to their hospital beds, were battling for life as the floods hit Srinagar. There was much cacophony outside: people trapped in their houses and even on the rooftops of mosques waved frantically to helicopters hovering above for help. But once the flood water sped in, the only thing outsiders could hear were wails and cries. Minutes after, the G.B. Pant Hospital in Srinagar was afloat with dead children.

It has been 10 days since the Jhelum broke loose, destroying everything which came in its way. Within minutes, almost all of Srinagar was submerged. As most of the city recovers from the havoc created by the floods, people are slowly returning to their homes to flush out the remaining water and filth from their bedrooms and kitchens. But G.B. Hospital in Sonwar offers a haunted look. Nobody is there.

The reception area, where once doctors used to keep the inventory of the people going in, has been abandoned. In fact, all of the hospital is now desolate. Its corridors, once populated with patients, doctors, nurses and peons, remain empty. The smell of medicines has been replaced by the nauseating stench of grit left behind by the flood waters.

In Srinagar, a house of healing became a house of horror the day the flood waters rushed in. Ignored by state rescuers, trapped patients and staff endured three days of hell

The hospital beds are still connected with glucose bottles and the wires are still left dangling, dripping with muddy water. The flood water which rose up to the second floor of this hospital, has left brown marks all over the walls. Under the ceilings, medicine drenched with flood water — tablets, syringes and syrups, once meant for children, poke out from the mud filled inside the rooms. Outside, only water can be seen. And the make-shift ropes made from hospital curtains, which are left hanging from the first and second floor windows of the hospitals, from which patients evacuated.

Inside, Mohammad Ayoub, one of the caretakers of the hospital is cleaning the floors. His lowers folded up to his thighs, Ayoub sweeps the mud water from one corridor to another — his eyes wandering across the hospital walls. “This is the place where I have spent most of my life. Now it lays abandoned, as if cursed by witchcraft,” laments Ayoub.

He was inside the waiting room when water crashed through the hospital gates. Hearing a loud thud, he swiftly left to check what had happened. It was three in the morning. “It took me a few seconds to peep out of the window to see what was going on, and within those few seconds, I could feel my feet under water.”

It took me a few seconds to peep out of the window to see what was going on, and within those few seconds, I could feel my feet under water.

Wading though knee deep water, Ayoub, his fellow caretakers and some people accompanying the patients started to evacuate the building. But the force of the water flooding in was such that no one could pass through it; nobody could leave.

“It was impossible to leave the building. The water was coming inside very fast. It felt like as if I was in a mountain stream. The only smart thing to do at that time was to take the patients to the upper floors. But it was too late,” Ayoub says.

Haji Ghulam Mohammad Mir remembers the cries of the people who were trapped inside the hospital. His house, just in the backyard of the hospital, is still deeply submerged in water. He says that he felt helpless at that time.

The people inside the hospital were saved after three long days. All calls for help and evacuation were left unanswered. The only thing people could feed on were ORS packets and glucose. The hospital canteen had already been washed away.

“I couldn’t do anything. My family and I went for safer grounds. The farther we went, the fainter the shrieks of the children were getting. I just couldn’t do anything to help the drowning children,” Mohammad says.

Once the terrified people started to move to the upper floors, the water had risen drastically. Almost all of the first floor was under water. The hospital beds were touching the ceiling and those who managed to escape found themselves on the first floor. Many children were safely moved up the stairs but the worst was yet to happen. A power cut turned everything dark.

A nurse who was on duty at the time recounts the incident as the worst nightmare of her life. Patients who were on life support had yet to be moved upstairs safely, she says. “We couldn’t see anything. All we could hear were cries for help. It was mayhem and we knew death was upon us. I could barely breathe and somehow managed to take one kid in my arms and moved him to the first floor. After that I just couldn’t go back and save more lives,” the nurse said, who herself was rescued after three days by local volunteers.

Many children died that day in the hospital. However, no one knows the exact count. Mehraj-ud-din of Batamaloo was with his two sons in the hospital. Once he helped his two sons to safety, he himself saw dead bodies floating. “Children did die that day, but I don’t know many. I myself closed eyes of three children. Later on, their bodies were taken to Badambagh morgue, where their families took them along for burial,” said Mehraj-ud-din, who had come to recover his blankets and tiffin boxes from the hospital. However, he could find nothing. Everything inside that was there before the floods had been washed away. Some of it lies buried in the rubble.

The people inside the hospital were saved after three long days. All calls for help and evacuation were left unanswered. The only thing people could feed on were ORS packets and glucose. The hospital canteen had already been washed away.

Ghulam Haider, who was inside the hospital at the time of flood, recounts the incident. “The ordeal of the people who were stranded inside can be gauged by an incident when a person had nothing to eat for three days and he started to eat rotten food which was almost completely decayed,” says Haider.

Finally, it was the local volunteers who came to the rescue of the trapped. The water was still up to the first floor and people needed to be evacuated by boats.

The state’s inefficiency in rescuing people in time has angered locals; people inside the hospital and from its surrounding areas confirm that there was a complete ‘failure’ from the side of the state. “State apparatus was nowhere. People could have been rescued at the earliest if the state had swung into action at the proper time. But they didn’t do anything,” says Krishan Singh Bedi, who lives just behind the hospital.

Ishfaq, a 22-year-old, had been rescuing people for almost two days. Once he came to know about the hospital being under water, he along with his friends came to evacuate the trapped people. The scenes he saw were enough to leave him shocked. People had made ropes from the curtains of the hospitals and were coming out from the windows into the water which was at least 14 feet high.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes. People were jumping into the water in desperate attempts to leave. We rowed over to the main gate of the hospital, which was under water, and rescued people in boats. It was horrific,” Ishfaq says. That day, he and his fellow volunteers rescued almost 100 people in their make-shifts boats.

Those who could be evacuated were taken out safely and moved to higher ground in the local relief camps. But the horror inside the hospital the day the water rushed in is something which the Medical Superintendent of the hospital will never forget.

“I don’t know how many children died that day. There was no time to keep count. But I buried children with my own bare hands,” he says.

The writer is a freelance journalist. He tweets @Sheikh_Saaliq

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, September 28th, 2014