KARACHI: Seventeen years ago, Muhammad Khalid made a decision he now regrets, as he sought to escape from the cramped confines of Pir Ilahi Buksh Colony in central Karachi by pooling his savings with his brother to buy a new residence in Saadi Town, a burgeoning housing society in Malir Cantonment.
The Rs3 million ($10,653) they spent on their small house was all they had, but they thought it was an investment in a safer, more spacious future.
That future was submerged under floodwaters just four years later in 2012 — and again this week when a rare episode of riverine flooding inundated their home.
“In 2012, when the flood struck, it felt like we were living on the bank of the Indus River,” said a weary Khalid, now 62, as he stood in a street still slick with mud two days after the waters receded.
The recent deluge, he said, has reopened old wounds.
While urban flooding from heavy rainfall is a familiar hazard for Karachi, the recent inundation in the city’s eastern part was different since it was caused by a massive surge of water in streams coming from the nearby Thado Dam and the Kirthar mountain range.
The surge also swelled the Lyari and Malir rivers to capacity, though both fortunately flowed through the city without breaking into residential areas.
In Khamisoon Goth in Gadap Town in the northeastern part of the city, seven people were swept away by the floods, while settlements near Sohrab Goth and private housing societies like Saadi Town and Saadi Garden in Malir Cantonment were among the hardest hit.
Experts described the event as a rare and dangerous consequence of unchecked urban expansion.
“The way the flooding has occurred, and the extent of people’s losses raise big questions about Karachi’s town planning,” said Yasir Husain, Director of the Climate Action Center. “Where the city wasn’t supposed to be developed, they developed it by doing encroachments. And this is illegal.”
Husain explained that while rivers naturally expand and contract, zoning laws are meant to keep floodplains clear. In Karachi, these laws have been widely ignored.
“The way the Malir Expressway is built, it sits right inside the Malir River,” he said. “Such a massive project…is literally in the middle of the river.”
For Khalid, the consequences of this unplanned growth are painfully personal.
“When the rain came and the floodwater followed, we tried hard to keep safe, but we couldn’t stop it,” he said, recalling how water inundated his house.
“Much of the wooden furniture was ruined... The entire house was covered in slippery mud, and it became almost impossible for the women to move about.”
His wife, a schoolteacher, said she even found it difficult to get to work with sewage water still standing everywhere.
“Yesterday, in this same water, my brother slipped and fell,” Khalid said, pointing toward his sibling in a wheelchair with bandages on his legs and arms.
Naseem Akhtar, another resident of the area, spent the morning cleaning mud that coated her floors and toilets.
“Water inside the house, water in the [sewage] tank, everywhere there was just water,” the 58-year-old housewife said. “When Thado Dam fills and is released, all that water comes here.”
The Sindh administration spokesperson, Sadia Javed, highlighted the complex layers of authority in Karachi, seen by many as a major reason for its chronic urban problems, when asked about the situation.
“That area is not under the jurisdiction of the Sindh government or the mayor of Karachi,” she told Arab News, adding that Saadi Town, Saadi Garden and adjacent neighborhoods were part of the Malir Cantonment.
The management of the area was not available for comment despite repeated attempts.
For other areas on the eastern side of Sohrab Goth, Javed said those housing societies were built before her party came to power 16 years ago.
Asked how the provincial authorities plan to address the problem, she said all stakeholders — government agencies and political forces — must sit down to decide on removing illegal encroachments to prevent such issues in the future.
“Tomorrow, if, as now climate change is [intensifying] and a disastrous situation is created because of weather, [and] we do not act, then it can also give birth to a human tragedy,” she added.
Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah acknowledged during a recent media interaction that encroachments along riverbeds were a “major reason for urban flooding.”
“No government has permitted construction of permanent housing societies on riverbeds, but blocking the natural course of rivers is against nature itself, and unfortunately, that has been done here,” he said.
Shah noted that his government, with the World Bank’s support, is working on a comprehensive master plan for the city while asking relevant officials to accelerate dewatering operations and find “human-centric solutions” to flooding.
But for Khalid, who has lived through this before, such promises ring hollow.
Standing in front of his home, where the third step of the staircase and the ramp outside were completely submerged just a day earlier, the memories of the 2012 flood and this week’s disaster have left him with one thought.
“Now we just want to sell [this house] and leave,” he said. “The mistake was ours that we got stuck here.”
