As flood waters surged through the streets and submerged the houses, Bilawal Jamshed rushed to the rooftop with his family, terrified the water would swallow everyone in Mingora, Swat, in Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Everything happened in seconds, as if a dam had burst and water rushed toward us. We were lucky it was morning and we could escape to the rooftops. Imagine if it had happened at night,” says Jamshed, 36, while walking through streets still filled with foul-smelling sludge, as residents and volunteers struggle to clean up more than a week after the devastating floods.
