CSS Forums - Tale of a real hero: Boatman Sanaullah saved 2,500 lives during flood

After listening n reading news of killing of two innocent brothers wz feeling ashamed and dipressed wat kind of people we are we dunt have any humanity but this news wz kind of fresh air a space to breath yea still we are blessed with some good peoples.:clap

Camp Koroona village sited near the Islamabad-Peshawar Motorway suffered huge losses as all its houses were swept away by floodwaters yet there was no casualty, thanks to a 24-year-old boatman who ferried 2,500 villagers to safety in his generator-powered boat on July 29.

Sanaullah is a poor man, but on that eventful day he turned into a saviour as he saved lives without charging a single rupee from desperate fellow villagers.

Recollecting the fateful day, he said it was in the wee hours that the villagers realised they had to abandon their homes as the floodwater had inundated the whole village from two sides.

“In darkness I waded through waist-deep water and reached the other side of motorway where my 24-foot-long and 4.3-foot-wide boat was anchored. I had purchased it a month ago for Rs50,000 in Jehangira in Nowshera district to ferry goods and crops across River Kabul,” he recalled.

Sanaullah, a bearded man wearing a white cap, said the village was getting submerged and villagers were waiting for his boat to ferry them to the safety of the nearby motorway. “My boat had capacity to transport 25 to 30 persons, but I took up to 34 in every trip as my co-villagers were getting desperate. The whole day I remained busy evacuating the people in torrential rain and raging flood,” he recalled.

According to Sanaullah, he rescued over 2,500 persons, majority of them women and children. “The villagers in gratitude offered me money, but I was doing this to save lives and seek Allah’s blessings,” he stressed.

The young boatman said he couldn’t save the belongings of the villagers, though it gave him satisfaction to have saved their lives. “I don’t remember how many trips I undertook that day in the streets of my village to ferry the villagers to the motorway. “There were 10-foot high waves of water in the village and the motorway being on a raised ground was the only place where we could all survive,” he remembered.

Sanaullah survived the floods and saved lives but on the third day after performing heroics he was hit by a speeding car while crossing the motorway. He was injured and his right arm was also fractured. He was shifted to the Hayatabad Medical Complex in Peshawar where he remained bedridden for three days before being discharged from the hospital.

Talking to this writer, almost all villagers expressed gratitude to Sanaullah and his brother Jan Shah, who assisted Sanaullah in the rescue mission. They said the two brothers worked hard without seeking any financial reward to ferry them to safety.

A villager, Siddique said hundreds of stranded people would have been killed had Sanaullah not helped them out.

Jan Shah said he also carried out two rescue missions in the nearby Mohib Banda village, and transported more than two dozen persons to safety. He said that later when a military motorboat arrived in the village on a rescue mission, it collided with a building and overturned. “I saved the four soldiers from drowning,” he said.

Both brothers said their family had been keeping boats for generations. They said fishing, transporting people and goods across River Kabul to Charsadda district was their family’s profession.

Sanaullah said he was proud to have rescued his villagers with the help of Jan Shah. “We had limited quantity of petrol for our boat’s engine, but we manage to complete the tiresome job with success. That none of our villager drowned in the flood is a matter of great satisfaction for us,” he said.

A teenaged student, Shafiq from the Camp Koroona village remarked: “Sanaullah is our hero because he saved our lives.”
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