Contemporary · South Asia · Disaster

2010

Pakistan's monsoon megaflood

July 1, 2010

Unprecedented monsoon rains swelled the Indus until a fifth of Pakistan was underwater, inundating an area roughly the size of England. Twenty million people lost homes, livestock, and crops, and nearly two thousand died. Whole villages were photographed only as rooftops above brown water. The disaster previewed the climate-driven catastrophes that would batter Pakistan for years.