From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is a daily.

Today, in Pakistan, a once-in-a-generation flood has submerged a third of the country,

marooned entire villages, and killed a staggering 1,500 people.

My colleague, Christina Goldbaum, was there and documented what happens when the flood waters refused to receive.

It's Wednesday, October 5.

Christina, we are talking to you from Karachi, one of the largest cities in Pakistan,

and you have been reporting from Pakistan for weeks now on the floods there.

And at this point, we are very deep into the aftermath of this natural disaster,

but I want to start at the beginning with the flooding itself.

So can you roll back the clock a little bit and take us to the start?

So at the beginning of June, the usual monsoon season started in Pakistan.

And this is the three or four months long period where the country gets very heavy rains.

The season is always tough. There's always some damage, some electricity lines go down,

some homes get destroyed. And back in 2010, there were really intense rains that caused a lot of destruction and loss of life.

But within a few weeks this year of the monsoon season, it became very clear that the rains and the floods that we were seeing were unlike anything the country had experienced in a very long time.

The rains just didn't stop and they were a lot heavier than usual.

You know, week after week, they were breaking records.

And causing these massive floods.

You know, we were seeing videos of homes being washed away,

of flood water crashing through bridges.

There was this five-star luxury hotel that got swept away in seconds from flood water.

Just gone.

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