Lahore:
Located on her neighbor’s roof terrace, Ghulam Bano looks down at the remains of her home, immersed in the grim, poorly sounding flood water that has shrouded much of Punjab.
Bano moved to Shahdara Town last year, on the outskirts of Lahore, to avoid the suffocating smog pollution of Pakistan’s second largest city, only to get her new beginning overturned by furious floods.
“My husband had begun to cough blood and his condition just got worse when the smog hit,” Bano told AFP and went through muddy streets.
Pakistan regularly ranks among the world’s most polluted countries, with Lahore often the most polluted megacity between November and February.
“I thought the smog was bad enough – I never thought it could be worse with the floods,” she said.
Her poor neighborhood is home to thousands of low -lying houses that are stuffed together on narrow streets.
The nearby flooding Ravi River flooded many of them and forced dozens of families to seek refuge in a public school on higher soil where doctors treated people about skin infections associated with the flooding water.
More heavy rain is predicted this weekend, including warnings of increased urban floods in Lahore bordering India.
With her husband Bedrougden from tuberculosis, aggravated by the merciless smog, Bano became the only provider in a household who struggled to breathe, survive and endure the floods.
“I ate today after two days. There is no clean water to drink. I left my daughter in a relative’s place and remained back in the hope that the water will retire,” she said.
Landslides and floods triggered by heavier than usual monsoon rain have killed more than 800 people nationwide since June this year.
