Displaced residents navigate waist-deep waters outside Nowshera, Pakistan, on Sun., Aug. 1.Adrees Latif/Reuters
The worst flooding in a generation has claimed more than 1,000 lives and displaced a million in Pakistan, with predictions for another wave of monsoons Monday potentially making it worse.
The scale of the disaster remains unknown, as rescuers in boats and helicopters are only beginning to reach people stranded on rooftops and patches of high ground. Some villages have disappeared and the United Nations estimates that one million people are affected.
The crisis has already created a political storm, as opposition leaders call on President Asif Ali Zardari to cancel his official visit to Britain this week. It also renewed Pakistan's bitter internal feuds over water infrastructure, which has badly deteriorated during years of political stalemate.
"We should have spent years preparing for this," parliamentarian Marvi Memon said.
Ms. Memon toured the flooded areas and described them as a "tribal war zone," because of rising banditry and kidnappings amid the chaos of people fleeing their homes. She said the government has broken promises to raise embankments, maintain canals and build small dams that could have kept the waters at bay.
Canada said on Sunday that it was working with Pakistani authorities and would offer support to affected families.
"We are monitoring the situation very closely and working with local authorities," Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said in a statement.
Pakistan's capacity to hold monsoon rains has fallen as its dams fill with silt, reducing their storage to 12 million acre-feet from 18 million in the past half-century. An acre-foot is the volume of one acre of surface area to a depth of one foot.
A new dam, Kalabagh, was announced five years ago, but the project stalled because people downstream worried it might be used to steal their water.
The dam's supporters said that Pakistan should learn from this disaster.
"Kalabagh dam would have helped prevent flooding," the Governor of Punjab province, Salmaan Taseer, wrote on his Twitter feed last week.
One of the country's most experienced water experts, Bashir Ahmad Malik, agreed that Kalabagh and other infrastructure are needed to prevent such catastrophes.
"It's very silly that we don't understand these things, as a nation," said Mr. Malik, an engineer who has served as a technical adviser to the UN and World Bank. "It's really quite sad."
Reports from the worst-affected areas suggested that food vendors were profiting from the disaster, selling basic necessities to stricken people at 10 times their usual prices. The UN said about 30,000 people remain stranded by the waters, while thousands of others have escaped and are now sleeping in camps, in schools, or on raised highways.
Those fleeing the waters suffered from snakebites, diarrhea, asthma and other medical problems. Pakistan's Information Ministry also confirmed a cholera outbreak in the Swat Valley, northwest of the capital.
"It's like we're back in the Stone Age," said Zebu Jilani, president of the Swat Relief Initiative, who noted the valley lacked electricity and drinking water.
"One mother tried to save her child and they were both swept away and drowned," she said.
The death toll is expected to rise, with some aid workers saying triple the official estimate may be dead.
Several countries besides Canada pledged aid, including a $10-million package from the United States that includes helicopters, boats, bridges, food rations and water-filtration units.
The largest rescue effort was mounted by Pakistan's army, which sent 30,000 troops and claimed to have rescued more than 19,000 people. The air force also evacuated more than 500 people by helicopter, including six foreigners.
In a country that often alternates between civilian and military governments, many television reports showed flood victims thanking the army for its help while denouncing civilian leaders' response.
All of the affected rivers feed into the Indus, which flows into the southern province of Sindh. A large surge of water is expected later this week in Sindh, where officials have been trying to persuade residents of low-lying areas to evacuate.
"A super flood of this magnitude will be the first in 18 to 20 years to hit Sindh," a spokesman for the provincial government told Reuters.
But some people are refusing to move until the government gives them temporary shelters, Ms. Memon said. "They have no places to stay, so where are they supposed to go?"
Pakistan's weather bureau said an "unprecedented" 312 millimetres of rain hit the northwest in 36 hours last week, followed by a weekend of sunny weather that helped rescue efforts.
The forecast in Islamabad calls for rain every day until Friday.