n Johi, Dadu, it was midnight on August 30 last year when Shabbir Khoso and his family were suddenly woken up by a deafening sound caused by the collapsing of a room in their house.

“We had not been warned by the government that the flood water level could rise so rapidly. As a consequence, almost all the households in our village lost most of their belongings,” says Khoso, a 51-year-old farmer in Wada Khan Khoso village. There is debris in the room that the family had once used as a sitting room. “Luckily, no one was in the room at that time,“ Khoso says.

Dadu, where the village is situated, is the most affected district in Pakistan due to the recent rains and floods. Hundreds of villages in Johi, Khairpur Nathan Shah, Mehar, and Dadu tehsils were submerged. By mid-September, the floodwater still stood 8 to 10 feet deep and the government officials said that it could take three to six months to drain. Boats used for fishing in nearby districts were being used as passenger boats in the submerged districts.

During a visit to Khoso’s village in mid-September, the villagers said they did not get any early flood warning that could have prevented the loss of life, property, crops and infrastructure. As a result, they said, they could not leave their villages before the water inundated the entire region. Most of the houses either collapsed or were underwater.

“We are living on an island,” Khoso said in an interview.

During a visit to the villages in Johi, this scribe passed by partially submerged homes. In some villages, only a house or two remained above the water line. In some of these houses one of the family members had stayed behind to protect the valuables.

“We were not warned about the floods in a timely manner… the water inundated our village. Then there were rains for days, and the water level kept rising. I was afraid we might drown. I wondered if our bodies would be found in Manchar Lake,” said Mustafa Lond, a resident of a village in Johi tehsil. He was staying alone at his residence to protect the valuables, cattle and the solar panels from the thieves.

“Some villagers, who are part of an extended family, gathered at the houses built high above the ground. We could not reach there because of the deep water. We saved ourselves by placing several charpoys one over another and sitting on them,” said Lond.

Dadu is one of the most climate crisis-affected regions in Pakistan. The region has been experiencing climatic extremes like floods and droughts for two decades. Early weather risk warnings can save many lives in such conditions.

Lond said that initially, he had planned to evacuate the family home because of the fear of rising water, but there was no boat to rescue them. “We were left to fend for ourselves and protect our families.

Dadu is one of the most climate crisis-affected regions in Pakistan. The region has been experiencing climatic extremes including floods and droughts for the two decades. In such situations, early weather risk warnings can save many lives.

Mushtaq Ali, a former councillor from Johi, said that it was the government’s prime responsibility to make sure that everyone in the area is aware of what is about to happen. They should receive a climate warning.

“It gives people a chance to prepare or get away,” Ali told The News on Sunday. “But our government did not learn any lessons from the past floods, particularly the 2010 floods.”

In Gilgit Baltistan, the establishing of an early warning system averted potential loss of life from the surging of the Shishper glacier in May by giving people sufficient time to evacuate, The Thirdpole has reported.

Early flood warning systems in seven locations on different rivers in Khyber Pakhtunkwa installed by the provincial government have also worked well on the monsoon contingency plan in consultation with all the stakeholders.

In Sindh, it did not work so well.

District officials admit the importance of the early warning and the failure of embankment defences. “Even with limited capacity, issuing early warnings can save lives and protect from loss of property in remote areas,” said a district official from Dadu.

An effective early warning system can be implemented by raising awareness of the threat,” the official said. He hoped that the government would invest in suitable early warning systems for floods and cyclones.

The writer is a Hyderabad-based journalist. For over a decade, he has been writing on climate change, wildlife and marginalised communities