Monsoon woes: Rainwater sweeps away man, body still not found

Three men were trying to remove a fallen tree from a drain when incident happened.

ISLAMABAD:

The rain on Saturday night was a welcome respite for some, but a death knell for others.

At least one man died in the storm after being swept away by torrential rainwater flowing through a drain in France Colony, Sector F-7/4.

Somi, 19, and three other men were trying to remove a tree that uprooted and fell into the drain and was blocking the flow of rainwater when the incident happened, Ishtiaq Masih, Somi’s paternal uncle, said.

The incident occurred around 11:15pm, Ishtiaq said. Somi’s body had not been recovered when this report was filed on Sunday evening.

The storm drain, which eventually joins Nullah Leh at Katarian in Rawalpindi, cuts through France Colony. Houses in France Colony that are built right on the edge of the drain got flooded soon after the rain started.

Colony residents said the men had noticed that a fallen tree was stuck against a small bridge built by locals over the drain. The tree was blocking the flow of water and diverting it to the houses. Somi and his cousin Bobby, 18, were swept away by the strong currents while they tried to the six-foot log free.

Bobby was rescued by locals, but Somi was taken away by the gushing water before they could intervene.

The subsequent search was made more difficult as a power breakdown had left parts of Sector F-7 in pitch dark during the storm.

Ishtiaq said they had immediately contacted the Rescue 1122 and Rescue 15 for help, but they were not forthcoming.

Lajer Masih, a France Colony resident, said a four-member rescue team from the Capital Development Authority (CDA) fire and rescue unit came to the scene around 2:30am but they only offered to provide light for the search party. “They were not willing to go into the water for search and rescue,” Lajer said.

However, Haider Ali, Assistant Sub-inspector of Kohsar Police, said that the police and the rescue officers responded to the call in the early hours of Sunday morning. He said that the search and rescue efforts were hampered by the fast flow of water and the darkness.

Eight CDA divers started a search for Somi’s body on Sunday morning around 11am, Ali said. He said Navy’s divers will also start searching for the body on Monday morning.

Ijazul Hassan, a representative of the CDA Flood Relief Cell, said that the CDA has cleared the drains and streams around Islamabad before the monsoon season.

However, France Colony residents and people at a 100 Quarter slum in F-6, which is also located next to a storm drain, denied that the CDA staff ever showed up to clean the drains. The residents said that they had been removing trash from the drains through neighbourhood committees.

Hassan said that most of the slums have narrowed the stream beds by building illegal structures on top of the streams. He said that they were warned every season to remove the structures and not dump trash in the streams, but “they conveniently ignore the warnings”.

Meanwhile, the Meteorological Department recorded 105 millimetres of rain at Saidpur in Islamabad by Sunday morning.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 8^th, 2013.