Jammu and Kashmir floods: victim recounts horror

For Fayaz Ahmad Wani (30), a Political Science lecturer, September 5 was like any Friday until it turned his world upside down as the gushing waters flooded south Kashmir and almost wiped out his entire village in no time.

On that fateful Friday, as Wani and other men in village Gulzarpora, about 10 kms from the main town here, went to a mosque for the Friday congregational prayers, rains had lashed most of the Valley and played havoc in many areas.

Just a little over 1 PM, Wani went to the mosque, situated a few paces from his home but at a higher level than the rest of the village, to seek God's mercy and forgiveness and to pray for the safety of their village and for others as well. 

At 2 PM, when the faithful came out of the mosque, the way home was nowhere.

In no time had the waters flooded most of the village and people were wailing and running helter-skelter to save themselves.

"We went for the namaz (prayers) but when we came out, there was water everywhere and our world had been turned upside down," Wani told PTI. 

Luckily, many of the residents had vacated their houses as most of the buildings in the village have been constructed of mud and they had apprehensions of such structures suffering damage due to heavy rains.

"We usually leave our houses when it rains heavily and that saved our lives. But we had no apprehensions of such a flood hitting our village.It had never happened before and we thought waters would not reach us," Wani said.

He said some of the people trapped in their houses had to use the television cables to wade through the waters which were 8 to 10 feet high.

"We had not seen such a situation before.We did not know what to do. The locals from other areas came to our rescue, while we saw no one from the government or the security forces," he said. 

Wani said for four days the entire village was under water and there was nothing they could do when the structures began to crumble.

"I saw our two-storey house collapse taking down everything we had including the clothes and food supplies and even my books. Then one by one many more houses came down and the village presented a scene of destruction," he said.

The residents said about 95 per cent of the houses in the village had been destroyed in the worst floods in over a century and the rest, including those built in concrete, had developed cracks and were unsafe.

"We have been rendered shelter-less.We do not have food too. We are now searching the debris to look for anything useful, but there is not much we can find.Most of the things have been washed away," he said, as tears rolled down his cheeks.

Almost everyone in the village has the same woeful tale to narrate and with no help whatsoever from the government, the residents have left everything to God for the floods might have taken everything from them, their faith remains unshattered.