Every province of the country, along with Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, has been struck by the unusual severity of the July 2010 monsoon. Some have been struck harder than others with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa currently bearing the brunt of fatalities and damage; but downstream troubles await Sindh as the floodwaters surge down the Indus river system. This is no localised disaster, this is going to affect virtually everybody in the country either directly or indirectly and its impact is going to be felt for months and years to come. The scale of the problem is such that in places the rescue and disaster response machinery has been overwhelmed both literally and metaphorically. Although there will be local failures to effectively organise or coordinate efforts, overall this event has to be seen in the context of a massive disaster such as an earthquake – but affecting far more people over a much greater area.

There are calls from all sides for helicopters and relief be it food, water or medicines. The number of helicopters we have that are suitable for flood relief work is probably no more than eight, ten at most. The relief that helicopters can provide is extremely limited – they cannot mass-evacuate casualties for instance, and their load-carrying capacity is too small to make a significant difference. There may be little point in relocating the majority of victims to camps because the floods will recede almost as rapidly as they rose once the monsoon abates. Camps are complex to set up and administer and would have a very short life anyway. There is no high ground for people to evacuate to in most of Sindh and Punjab, similar in much of Balochistan where the thin population is concentrated around river banks. We need fast short term help, especially helicopters, along with large quantities of water purification kits which can be air-dropped and culturally appropriate meal packs which can also be air-delivered. Mobile health teams which can be river-capable and portable health units that are air or water transportable – all of this we need soon. The real work will be done once the waters recede and the dead are buried. Homes, crops, livelihoods, infrastructure such as roads, bridges and water management systems – all are going to need to be rebuilt in all the provinces and this out of provincial and federal budgets that are already stretched. The 2010 monsoon has brought damage and loss of life on a scale beyond living memory. We need to ensure that if it happens again – and it might – we are better prepared than we were this time around.