Stories from a flooded planet: The impacts of floods from the perspectives of eight authors

From Bogotá to Kathmandu, authors shared how floods impacted their communities

Originally published on Global Voices

Porto Alegre, Brazil – by Giovana Fleck

“It's worse than the pandemic,” a friend told me on a call. He was phoning me between volunteering at a shelter and trying to save his own house. Our hometown, Porto Alegre, in Brazil, was hit by catastrophic rainfall between April and May of 2024. This led to extensive flooding, affecting over two million people, displacing hundreds of thousands, and causing over 160 deaths. Even though the pandemic caused a much higher number of deaths, the destruction of the floods was tangible — you could see the level of the water rising by the day.

The impact of the floods in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul region, where Porto Alegre is the capital, was exacerbated by decades of negligence from the public administration, as well as the lack of agency for various alerts around the impacts of the climate crisis.  When the rainfall first stopped, and we could assess the damage, I remembered a conversation I had had with a Pakistani colleague a few years before. “I’ve been having PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder) every time it rains in Karachi,” he said. He was also dealing with the aftermath of floods that have now become a yearly issue for many Pakistanis.

We are more interconnected with the world than we realize, and a multitude of global influences shapes our experiences. Sometimes, that happens through culture — whether culinary, musical, or artistic. But oftentimes, they are related to catastrophes. There was a surge of devastating floods worldwide in 2024. Europe was particularly hard hit as heavy rains inundated countries from Spain to Romania, causing deaths and widespread damage. Asia faced its own challenges, with deadly floods in Afghanistan and Indonesia, for example, while Chad in Africa experienced its worst flooding in decades. Beyond Brazil, in Latin America, Uruguay and Argentina also grappled with severe floods, culminating in a year marked by the destructive power of extreme weather events across the globe.

I tried to connect some of our experiences by asking members of the Global Voices’ community from all corners of the world about their experiences with natural disasters. This story is a tapestry of events from 2022 to 2024, with notes of fear and hope for the future. Their accounts were collected to give a sense of how our lives are affected by floods and how the differences between our experiences might mainly be their latitude and longitude.

Karachi, Pakistan – by Ali Osman

The monsoon rains of 2022 brought Karachi, a city of more than 20 million, to a halt, with the metropolis facing some of its worst urban flooding in history. The rains started around late morning and continued for most of the day into the evening. The rate of rainfall in Karachi usually hovers between very heavy to extremely heavy, and at times, even two hours of rainfall can cause great inconvenience to the populace due to poor drainage infrastructure.

In 2022, the city was hit by a major storm, with around 200 mm (8 inches) of rain falling within a few hours. Living in one of the better parts of the city, I had to endure four days without electricity with my entire neighborhood flooded. With the city experiencing severe urban flooding and the electricity supply disrupted, I ran out of food by the end of the second day, and drinking water became scarce on the third day. The only way to procure food or water was to walk through the flooded streets and roads and hope the nearest convenience store had not run out. Unfortunately, most stores were out of essential supplies due to supply chain disruptions. A walk, which usually takes me 10 minutes, took me almost an hour and a half, and only then could I procure a bottle of drinking water and a couple of packs of instant noodles.

The nights were the worst, with no electricity, stifling humidity, and mosquitos constantly feeding on any exposed skin if one was outside. The weather-induced trauma has stayed with me, and every year during the monsoon months, I pray that I never have to go through what I endured in 2022.

Lahore, Pakistan – by Umaima Ahmed:

Over the years, floods have played a huge role in damaging the livelihood and economy of Pakistan.

Earlier, it was only the rural areas that faced the brunt, but now we see urban centers severely being impacted, too. In 2024, when Lahore witnessed heavy rainfall, I woke up to find my kitchen swamped with water, no electricity for hours, and was bound to my house as the roads were flooded with water. Schools had to be shut down, and people were distressed.

This experience made me recall the stories I heard last year from Faizan, a doctor in Dera Ghazi Khan (D.G. Khan) in southern Punjab, located on a strip between the river Indus and the Koh-e-Suleman range of mountains separating it from the Baluchistan Province. He was part of a group of volunteers who stepped up to help people who were migrating because of floods in D.G. Khan. While speaking to Global Voices on a call, he said:

Floods are not a new phenomenon in Pakistan but the intensity is increasing over the years and so is the damage. The people living in this area are usually peasants working on agricultural land on minimum wage or earning through their domestic animals but due to floods they lost their animals and had to move out. For months they survived in camps where we, the volunteers, provided them with basic health facilities and midwives were available in case of childbirth cases.

He left the discussion on a very serious question, “With climate change, these floods will increase; how long will the poor people pay for the lack of vision of our leaders?”

Thessaly, Greece – by Asteris Masouras

In September 2023, Storm Daniel became the deadliest “Medicane” in recorded history. Before devastating Libya, it inundated the Thessaly Plain in Greece, destroying much of the country’s agricultural capacity, among other severe impacts — all while some of the worst wildfires in recent decades were still raging.

The ever-worsening scale, frequency, and impact of these climate change-induced extreme weather events cause cascading helplessness, trauma, and resignation, but people never stop helping one another. That, at least, is a measure of hope, but humanity can still do better in curbing emissions and escalating mitigation efforts.

Emilia Romagna, Italy – by Marisa Petricca

May 24 was declared a National Day of Mourning for the victims of the flooding, and both the Italian and European flags hung at half mast outside the Chamber of Deputies in Rome

Kathmandu, Nepal – by Sanjib Chaudhary

The Kathmandu Valley saw once-in-70-year floods in the last week of September 2024. The Bagmati, Manohara, Bishnumati, and Nakkhu rivers overflowed, flooding the valley. Many houses were submerged, and at least 56 people were killed by the floods in the wider Kathmandu Valley.

I have lived in the Kathmandu Valley for the last 45 years and have never seen such floods. In my opinion, the encroachment of the rivers and the conversion of fields that acted as sponges to reduce the flood effects into concrete jungles, in addition to the incessant and intermittent rains caused by climate change, could be the main reasons behind the floods in Kathmandu.

Valencia, Spain – by Lourdes Sada and Violeta Camarasa

On October 29, Spain suffered the worst floods in its recent history. Valencia, and to a lesser extent, the provinces of Málaga, Cuenca, and Albacete, were surprised by huge floods that left 231 dead and four missing (as of December 14). The most lethal natural disaster recorded in the country to date also caused vast material damage, and thousands of families were left homeless. Despite the red alert declared by the State Meteorological Agency at 7:36 a.m., the authorities did not activate the European Public Warning System (ES-Alert) until 8:11 p.m., 12 hours later. Without official directions, most citizens went ahead with their lives as usual. Many of the victims were dragged inside their cars while driving home from work. Most, however, were elderly people living on ground floors, who were drowned inside their homes.

Although floods in Valencia are a recurring phenomenon, experts blame the virulence of recent years on climate change. In addition, Valencia’s economic dependency on tourism has led to an overexploitation of land for construction. Combined with the lack of urban regulation, this has caused five percent of the houses in the province of Valencia to be built on floodplains and floodwater courses. The tragedy has, so far, resulted in two rallies against the authorities’ inaction and calls for improving emergency protocols, public education, infrastructures, and protection of vulnerable groups.

Colombia – by Kelly Chaib De Mares

Colombia has long experienced disasters linked to the rainy season, especially during La Niña events, which significantly increase rainfall and have been a recurring phenomenon for decades. However, the first half of November 2024 brought an unusual pattern: torrential rains caused by climate variability, a confluence of several meteorological phenomena favorable for rain, such as tropical cyclones or the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). On November 11, 2024, the government declared a national emergency because of the bad weather affecting 27 of the country’s departments and warned that priority attention would be focused on the most affected areas, such as the capital Bogotá, the desert region of Guajira, and the jungle region of Chocó.

On November 6, 2024, Bogotá experienced an unprecedented downpour, the heaviest rainfall in 27 years, causing severe disruptions, including the blockage of the main northern access road. In La Guajira, Colombia’s northernmost region, over 15 days of unrelenting rain led to the deaths of two people and impacted 42,219 families. Meanwhile, in Chocó, Colombia’s poorest department, already burdened by illegal armed group conflicts, torrential rains left 30,000 families in distress, with more than 4,000 individuals displaced, 18 schools damaged, and nearly 1,500 hectares of crops destroyed; the authorities are calling for a truce among armed groups to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Written by GV Contributor