LAHORE: Torrential monsoon rains swept across several upper parts of the country and battered Lahore division for 18 hours on Tuesday, causing flooding in many parts of the city and claiming eight lives in various rain-related incidents.

The city’s submerged stre­ets and widespread power breakdowns exposed the lack of preparedness of civic departments to deal with the monsoon downpour.

A portion of The Mall, near the recently dug underground station of the Orange Line Metro Train, caved in because of heavy rainfall, forming two large craters on a newly-constructed stretch of Mall Road, near the General Post Office intersection.

Rainwater kept draining into the yawning gaps that opened up, threatening the foundations of the multi-billion-rupee underground rail station and the adjacent historic buildings.

Amid the record downpour, 200 power feeders tripped and most of them remained non-functional throughout the day. Two young men died after the roof of their house inside the Walled City collapsed, and six others died from electric shocks in various parts of the city. As many as 10 people were reported injured in rain-related incidents.

The Flood Forecasting Division in Lahore said the rain spell was likely to subside today (after 24 hours) in upper parts of the country and after 48 hours in south Punjab. Scattered winds and thunderstorms, with isolated heavy rainfall, are expected over upper catchments of all major rivers along Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Lahore, Sargodha, Sahiwal, Multan and Dera Ghazi Khan divisions over the next 24 hours.

The downpour varied in its intensity across various parts of the city, but the eight-hour long consistent rain shower starting late at night and continuing into the early hours of the day was so fierce it broke previous records of highest rainfall recorded in a single day in July. It was, nevertheless, less than the heaviest rainfall ever recorded at the airport. Before Tuesday’s downpour, the heaviest rainfall during a 24-hour period in the month of July was 332.5mm, recorded at the Lahore airport in 1980.

According to the Flood Forecasting Bureau, the monsoon spell had affected several cities in the upper parts of the country, including Mangla and Brarkot, with 74mm (of rainfall each), Jhelum, 49mm, Malam Jabba, 41mm, Islamabad (Golra 39mm, Zero Point 32mm, Bokra 29mm, Shamsabad 22mm, Kotli and Gujrat 36mm (each), Gujranwala 33mm, Chakothi 31mm, Balakot 28mm, Murree 20mm, Kasur 19mm, Sialkot 6mm, Kakul 13mm, Chakwal and Mandi Bahauddin 11mm (each) and Muzaffarabad 6mm.

The River Kabul at Nowshera recorded a low flood. According to the Forecasting Bureau, low to medium floods were expected in the nullahs of the Rivers Ravi and Chenab, and urban flooding in Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Lahore and Sargodha divisions on Wednesday. Flooding is also expected in the hill torrents of Dera Ghazi Khan division from today (Wednesday) up till Friday.

Lahore submerged

Commenting on the craters that appeared on The Mall, an independent civil engineer, requesting anonymity, said: “Depressions on roads appear due to improper or substandard earth-filling, compaction and asphalt laying works. The sinkholes on The Mall reveal this and reflect the competence of those who have recently rebuilt it.”

Similarly, the city’s age-old sewerage system couldn’t handle Tuesday’s extraordinary rainfall. Water pumps installed at various known low-lying areas like Lakshmi Chowk did not work. Other low-lying parts of the city fared no better – the Walled City, Misri Shah, Old Anarkali, Samanabad, and Gulberg remained flooded throughout the day. Most people had to wade through knee-deep water to cross roads and streets. And for the first time in the city’s history, Rescue-1122 ran a boat service at Lakshmi Chowk to help people cross the flooded square. The pictures and videos of Rescue-1122 personnel ferrying citizens, as well as of hundreds of cars, motorcycles and auto-rickshaws that had broken down in the middle of the streets made the rounds on social media platforms, while several people made memes pointing out that Lahore may not have become Paris, like former chief minister Shahbaz Sharif liked to claim, but rather Venice.

Rainwater entered houses in many localities like Samanabad’s P&T Colony, damaging household effects and furniture. The Water and Sanitation Authority that was blamed for the flooding on roads took a remedial step that further angered the people. They switched off all tubewells (over 550) in the city to stop water supply, which they believed that people could use to add to the already troubling rainwater.

Published in Dawn, July 4th, 2018