Surviving the floods in Pakistan

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2025

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Many parts of Pakistan have been experiencing intense rainfall in recent weeks. Since June, at least 800 people have been killed, homes and businesses lost, and thousands forced to evacuate their communities. In our conversations, we bring together people affected by this year’s monsoon to share their experiences. They include Saad, from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in northern Pakistan, who lost his family home and business: “Many of the houses of the people are completely destroyed and those remaining are full of mud and water,” he tells us. Although it only produces a small fraction of greenhouse gas emissions, scientific evidence suggests that Pakistan is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Three journalists share their stories of the flooding and their perspectives on the challenges the country faces. This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from BBC OS Conversations, bringing together people from around the world to discuss how major news stories are affecting their lives.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Luke Jones. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. In BBC OS
0:08.4	conversations, we bring people together to share their experiences. This time, we hear from survivors
0:14.7	of the intense rainfall and flooding in Pakistan. For the villages in the Swat Valley in northern Pakistan, the floods came almost without warning.
0:25.5	They had no time to leave their homes, and the first many of them knew about the impending disaster
0:30.1	was the sound of water rushing towards them.
0:33.2	Mental health of our families is not the same as they were before.
0:37.7	Because the sound that was hit at the flood, I will never forget that sound, that wavy,
0:42.8	that flashing flood, that massive flood.
0:45.4	That's Sard, describing the devastating flash flooding in Hyber Pactungwa province in northern Pakistan
0:50.8	early this month, which killed hundreds of people and destroyed his family
0:55.1	home and business. We'll hear much more from him in our conversation with some other people
0:59.3	affected by that flood in a few moments. We're recording this program on Friday lunchtime here in
1:05.0	London, and flood alerts are currently in place across Pakistan as the country endures
1:10.1	another season of monsoon rains,
1:12.6	with some of the highest rainfall on record. Since June, floods have killed at least 800 people
1:18.5	in Pakistan, and many more have lost their homes and businesses. In the past couple of days,
1:23.9	some 200,000 people have been evacuated in several areas of the country. In Punjab province,
1:30.2	rescuers have embarked on one of the largest operations in years, they say, traveling back and
1:34.9	forth across the Ravi River to help anyone still stranded after hundreds of thousands of residents
1:40.6	were evacuated. The growing intensity each year of the monsoon is being blamed on
1:46.3	the effects of climate change, while officials in Pakistan have faced criticism for the lack of
1:51.4	adequate weather warnings, flood protection and the emergency response. For our first conversation,
	...

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