Survivor Thanks God He Escaped Afghan Torrent

Obaid Ur Rahman believes divine intervention saved him and most of his pupils from a raging torrent of water, mud and rocks that swept through this bustling market village.

Obaid, 27, is headmaster of the elementary school at the village mosque, which sits on a riverbank. He said his pupils were studying when the 30-foot wall of water roared down the Shutul River valley into Gulbahar early Wednesday.

“We heard the waters coming, so we climbed up the wall and got up on the roof,” Obaid said.

Part of the mosque and two pupils, both 9, were swept away, he said. “By the grace of God, the rest of us were spared.”

Hundreds of other Gulbahar residents and nearby villagers were not.

Although rescue workers have just started to dig through six feet of mud to recover bodies, rescue workers from the British relief agency, Halo Trust, estimate that the death toll in all the flooded valleys could reach 3,000.

Heavy rains, along the headwaters of the Shutul and the neighboring Salang and Ghorband valleys, triggered the flash flood.

“In every house that was washed away at least four or five people were lost,” said Obaid. His own family escaped, but his house was destroyed.

“Those who were up and about and those who heard it coming were able to escape,” said Ghulam Jilani, the local amir, or administrator. “In the houses that were lost, people who were still asleep were swept away.”

He said at least 400 people from the village had drowned, and that more than 100 shops and 200 houses were destroyed.

Perhaps the worst property damage was to agriculture, the foundation of the local economy. The flood washed away riverside crops, drowned livestock and clogged irrigation canals, which typically run for miles along the canyon walls watering the terraced hillside wheat fields.

The flood occurred at the end of the monthlong monsoon season, when rivers overflow easily in a barren land that lacks dams and other flood-control devices.