Battering rains

Heavy spells of rain and storm-like weather continue to batter parts of Pakistan with a ferocity that the country's infrastructure and institutions have repeatedly proven unequal to. Since March 25, K-P alone has recorded 50 deaths and 111 injuries from rain-related incidents, with 26 of the dead being children. Balochistan has recorded 12 fatalities, including eight children, with 160 homes damaged and flash floods severing road links between entire districts and the rest of the country. Nationwide, weather-related deaths have climbed past 70 since mid-March, with Karachi recording its highest-ever April rainfall in a single day. These events have consequences that outlast the weather. Flooded farmland and destroyed crops set back rural livelihoods that were already precarious. Severed roads isolate communities from markets and supply chains, inflicting severe economic damage. With the meteorological department warning of yet another western disturbance expected to persist through April 9, Pakistan finds itself braced for the next blow before it has finished counting the cost of the last. It is consistently the poorest who die - those living in mud-brick housing in flood-prone districts, in areas where the state's presence is felt merely through a relief truck. The institutional response has been visible, and that much deserves acknowledgement. PDMA in K-P activated its Emergency Operations Centre, Rescue 1122 was deployed, and Frontier Corps personnel joined relief operations in cut-off areas. But reactive mobilisation after 50 people are dead describes the ceiling of Pakistan's disaster management architecture, not its floor. The state continues to arrive after the collapse rather than before it. Reactive relief has become the permanent substitute. Resilience is key, and building it requires more than a well-run emergency operation. As long as preparedness remains an afterthought, it is the same communities that will keep paying the price.