Rain troubles: Heavy downpour claims four lives

Four others injured with loss to property reported

PESHAWAR: At least four people were killed and another four were injured in rain-related incidents across Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) over the past few days, officials said on Tuesday.

As a westerly wave hit the province with heavy rains and thunderstorm, the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) said that incidents were reported from Nowshera, Upper Dir and Kohat on Sunday and Monday.

In the Kamar Dhand area of Kohat, Ghulam Niaz was killed and three others were injured in an incident involving lightning. The local district administration said that the victims were riding on motorbikes when they were struck by lightning on Sunday.

In Nowshera, a heavy downpour caused the roof of a house to collapse on Monday evening. It killed a woman while her daughter was rescued from the debris in an injured condition. The girl was shifted to a hospital for treatment.

Similarly, in the Alpuri Tehsil of Shangla, a man died after being struck by lightning.

Meanwhile, in the Barawal area of Upper Dir Upper, a teenaged girl died when lightning struck a house. Another lightning strike claimed the life of cattle.

In the Jingerate Drosh areas of Chitral, torrential rain damaged around a dozen houses.

The heavy downpour also caused land sliding in hilly areas of Malakand Division particularly in Shangla District causing roadblocks.

In Peshawar, low lying areas near the Budni Nala were inundated by rainwater.

Rains also brought traffic on Peshawar’s roads to a crawl. On Monday evening, traffic on GT Road, University Road, Saddar and Khyber Road were choked after rainwater inundated the thoroughfares.

Construction material, brought for the ongoing Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Project only exacerbated the problem since they choked the drains along the BRT corridor while vehicles got stuck in dug up service roads.

PDMA Spokesperson Taimur Ali said that they had issued a weather advisory based on data communicated by the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) and had alerted the district administration about the situation.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 11^th, 2018.