On 28 July, a family in Peshawar received a distressing call from relatives in Swat's Madyan resort town. The caller and his family had, as a last-ditch effort to save themselves from the surging flash floods, taken shelter on the roof of their house. They requested immediate evacuation by helicopter. By the time the rescue teams got there, however, the devastating monsoon rains of 29 July and the ensuing floods had already done the damage. There was no sign of house or habitation at the spot, nor of the desperate family that had been pleading for help.
Similar tales are related from others in flood-hit areas. Figures from the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) paint a grim picture of the devastation in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and the provincial government will need billions upon billions of rupees, once the flood waters recede, to reconstruct hundreds of bridges and roads that have been washed away. Moreover, around 660,000 people in Swat, Kohistan, Shangla and Upper Dir districts (of the 1.5 million people who have been rendered homeless in the province), have been left without food or shelter due to inaccessibility.
Charsadda district's Munda headwork, a 50,000-cusec irrigation channel that directed water to farmlands in the agriculture centres of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, crumbled on 29 July, unable to withstand the pressure of the 450,000 cusecs rushing through it. Before the current deluge, the highest level of floodwater that had passed through the British-built headwork was 170,000 cusecs, in August 1929. The Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) in Peshawar has put the estimated costs of damage to private and public property and infrastructure at nearly USD 2.2 billion, and warns that these figures are likely to increase.
Experts have also warned of 'critical food insecurity' in the coming months in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, due to the destruction of standing maize, sugarcane and rice crops on some 466,000 acres. A long record of militancy, and the influx in 2009 of over two million displaced people from Malakand, Bajaur and South Waziristan, had already pushed food security in the province to 'a critical stage'; the floods have now raised the level to 'alarming', according to World Food Programme spokesman Amjad Jamal. Farmers will begin wheat cultivation in October, but will need to put in massive time and hard work to undo the damage to their farmland.