The Flood of 1973 – Our Story continued, #23

As I reminisce on my life with Mary Helen, I’m going to break into the flow of our story because of this year’s terrible floods in Pakistan. It reminds me of the floods that inundated the country in 1973. We were in the mountains with the kids for their summer semester. I was working on preparing extension materials for the kick-off of TEST, the Extension School of Theology.

That summer became not only known for record heat but record rain. The monsoon rains lashed the mountains unmercifully. The rain beat upon our tin rooves, sometimes so violently that we could hardly talk to each other. I must say, the sound of rain on a tin roof was normally soothing. But that year it wasn’t just the noise, but the impossibility of drying clothes. Everything seemed moldy and moist.

All the rivers rose to flood stage in the plains. By August 8th the radio began reporting severe floods in the north. Deaths were reported. The area around Lahore soon flooded. As the floods spread down country, the reports became more alarming. Panjab province became a giant lake. On August 11th the authorities suspended train service between Lyallpur and Lahore. The army was called in to aid in rescue efforts.

Later in August we got word that the Panjnad Barrage on the Indus River had failed, flooding the area south of Multan. Many other irrigation dams and canals were also overrun. The Indus River became a swollen torrent running 20 miles wide. Many towns in the Rahim Yar Khan district flooded, including Khanpur and Sadiqabad. When the national highway and railway were overwhelmed, the district was effectively cut off from the rest of the country. As the flood receded in areas to the north, areas to the south, even including towns in the Sindh province, flooded. That included Larkana, the home of the Prime Minister and Shikarpur where we had found refuge during the conflict with India.

There was considerable loss of life and the absolute devastation of standing crops of cotton and rice. Floods ruined millions of dollars worth of stored wheat. Fortunately, US Aid responded quickly, offering 30 million dollars in aid and 100,000 tons of grains. Word reached us that US special forces rescue teams with helicopters and inflatable boats had arrived in the Rahim area.

We daily met to plan our response. When special flights to Rahim Yar Khan from Lahore were announced, Bill Milton and I waited until the road to Lahore was clear. Then we took a minibus to Lahore and caught a flight south to gauge what we could do as a mission to help. The view from the air was grim. South of Multan a 20-mile-wide wedge of ever-widening water was visible for 90 miles to Rahim.

Fortunately, most of the town was built high enough to escape the worst. However, what really saved the town was diverting the water into the desert where it flowed south via an ancient river bed that had been dry for a thousand years. Although water circled the town, the high banks of the main feeder canal held back the water. Our house, just a mile from that canal was saved.

Clusters of rough shelters had begun to appear along any kind of high ground; desert dunes, the RR line, and the banks of the large feeder canal. Escapees from the flood improvised these shelters from anything available; string beds, sheets, bits of salvaged furniture, and tree branches. Since most of the village houses had been made of mud, the flood ate away at them until they dissolved. Any stores of grain in the houses were ruined.

The refugee villagers had to venture into the water to try and cut fodder from the drowned and ruined crops in order to feed their livestock.

Hugh Gordon and his family had a house in Khanpur. The Bastians and Lindsays, who were on furlough at that time, had also stored their things there. A party of us including Hugh, who had just returned from furlough along with Pastors Nawaz and John set out in an attempt to assess the damage to their houses and the church. A jeep took us to within three and a half miles of the town. From there we waded through the stinking waters along with streams of refugees both coming and going. Some were returning to check that their homes hadn’t been looted. Others were taking their scanty possessions and animals out to higher ground.

To avoid contamination, we carried a thermos jug of boiled water. Pastor Nawaz offered to carry the jug on his head. As we waded through the water toward town, he suddenly disappeared into an unseen hole. I grabbed the jug before grabbing Nawaz and gave thanks that our water was safe. Nawaz was quite indignant that I seemed more concerned about the jug than him.

Wading into flooded Khanpur

People often find humour even in the direst circumstances. For years to come Nawaz and others milked this scene for every shred of humour they could extract—with me being the uncompassionate Bura Sahib!

The scenes we witnessed that day were heart-breaking. Women and tiny children with burdens on their heads. Donkeys. Oxen. Swimming dogs. A water buffalo mired in mud. Two men steering big brass pots through the flood. Men pulling and pushing a donkey cart loaded with women and children. Although the water in most places was slowly receding, elsewhere it was deep and dangerously swift.

Our watery route passed the pathetic sights of collapsed mud houses, yawning telephone poles, and drowned sugar cane. The water stank of rotting grain and sewage. Here and there we passed the bloated carcasses of dead animals. As we entered the town, we saw that whole sections of the huge canal that circled Khanpur had been breached. The cuts in the fifteen-foot high canal bank looked as if they had been ruptured by a bull dozer. Two-thirds of this town of 70,000 lay in ruins.

People carrying possessions through flood

When we finally reached the Gordons’ house we saw that it stood in four feet of water. A terrible smell assailed our nostrils. Some fleeing Christian had stored four tons of grain in the courtyard—twenty-five hundred rupees worth. The rotting kernels floated everywhere. Too bad it hadn’t been deposited on the roof and thus saved. Inside, we saw that the house had not been looted thanks to a friendly neighbour, but everything was ruined. It was full of floating furniture, upturned drums of linens with clothing and books. We took what was salvageable to the roof to dry out.

With the day far spent we left the Gordon’s house and sought out some place to spend the night. We waded past drowned cars, tumbled walls, tangled wires, and haunting emptiness. On the way to higher ground on the RR embankment we finally found a tea shop. To this day, Hugh loves to remind me about my insistence that the cook at the tea shop wash the cups for our tea very carefully. The cook took great care in washing them but then dried them with his dirty apron. So much for my insistence on hygiene. Hugh roared with laughter. I was not amused.

As we pressed on toward the railroad station, the sight of hundreds of families crowding the embankment met our eyes. A Christian family stopped us to ask for prayer. Soon a crowd gathered and began to tell us of their misery and hunger. All we could do was assure them that we would inform the District Superintendent in Rahim of their plight.

At an open-air inn near the station, we secured some string beds on which to sleep. But first we had to register. We found great humour in the inn-keeper’s insistence that Hugh give the name of his father along with his own name. Like all of us, Hugh was hot and exasperated. He yelled back, “Sahib, why do you want to know my father’s name. He is dead! Such foolishness.” In Pakistan people commonly included their father’s name for identification since so many have similar names such as Mohammed. As a result, all inns have a column in their registers for the father’s name. Whenever Hugh brought up my indignation at the teawala’s hygiene, I reminded him of his exasperation with the innkeeper.

The rain that we feared might drench us that night held off but not the clouds of mosquitoes. Along with the general population, we were quite concerned about the post-flood menace of malaria, typhoid, cholera, and dysentery. Fortunately, a concerted program of inoculations was soon underway.

The next morning, we sloshed our way along the submerged road to waiting buses. Back in Rahim we heard about the US Special Forces rescue team who, with their helicopters and inflatable boats had been dropping supplies and rescuing stranded people. While Bill stayed to hold a general meeting with the pastors, Hugh and I cycled the eight miles along an intact canal road to their boat camp.

They were a great bunch of Green Berets from the US south. They had never seen destruction on this scale before. But they expressed great frustration over delays, lack of co-ordination, and how the VIPs and rich landlords had been taking advantage of their services. As a change, they were glad to take us out to survey the conditions of the poorer folk. With one of the Marwari believers, they ferried us three miles through drowned fields, protruding date palms, and submerged mango trees to Pattan Minara.

The mound of this ancient city was black with improvised shelters, piles of rescued household goods, wandering goat herds, oxen, water buffalo, camels plus the most motley assortment of human beings I had ever seen. Rich and poor, illiterate and university educated, despised Marwaris and proud Muslims, women and children all cowered under improvised shelters from the noonday sun. Two shiny, blue Ford tractors crowned the mound! It soon became apparent, however, that compassion was in short supply. Those who had food, hoarded it.

We found a group of twenty Christian families who had joined together to establish evening services. We had prayer with them and arranged to send flour, tea, and soup back to them the next day.

Meanwhile, back in Rahim, Bill had collated reports of privation at villages throughout the area. The next day Hugh and Bill set off to walk the 17 miles to Chak 116. After buying supplies, I returned with the US boat crew to Pattan Minara with tea, soup, and 720 pounds of wheat flour. The crew had also given us water purification tablets.

In the months that followed, the mission organized a three-man relief team in the Rahim area to join our Pakistani brethren in offering relief where they could. We appealed for funds, and as money became available, the team prepared relief packages with a quilt, wheat, ghi, tea, etc. Quite a number of people, many of them tribal Marwaris, gathered at the mission house in Rahim from day to day to receive aid.

It took weeks for the water to recede. How ironic and dispiriting that where the flood had not reached, the lack of water from the ruined canal system left the crops parched.

Due to the damage to the Gordon’s house they moved into ours in Rahim and we were asked to temporarily stay in Gujranwala, up-country. The mission felt that TEE course preparation was too valuable to delay. As soon as I had done what I could in the Rahim area, I traveled to Gujranwala to take up temporary residence in a spare room at the United Bible Training Centre, a women’s training school run by Vivienne Stacey. Mary Helen came down from Murree and joined me there. [Note: roll of film damaged in flood.]

(Aid for Pakistan’s current flood disaster can be sent via: Fellowship Baptist’s relief agency; FAIR’s Pakistan Flooding Relief emergency appeal will provide food packages, tents, and supports for the rebuilding process. Relief for one family costs $65, and includes a food package, tent, and mosquito net. Once the rain and flooding subside, funds will contribute to rebuilding homes, repairing the hospital, and helping community members reestablish their livelihoods.)