Social Media Is Now a Vital Lifeline for Flood Victims

Pakistan has been battered by one flash flood after another in the past summer—but the country isn’t new to rain wreaking havoc. In 2020, its financial capital Karachi saw a historic level of flooding that killed more than four dozen people. While it was said to be the worst flood in city history, it was made even more disastrous by the apathy shown by authorities in dealing with floods over the years.

After 2020, though, people began to turn to social media in order to find better solutions.

Atiya (a pseudonym) is a marketing executive in her 30s living in Karachi. When flooding gets particularly bad, she uses social media platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook to find routes that aren’t flooded to get to work. “I could only take so many days off work before my office no longer cared about the rain. I ended up trying to see if I could find a route that didn’t work,” she told The Daily Beast.

A recent Facebook post from her was peppered by comments from people flagging different roads and areas that weren’t safe to venture on. Some mentioned areas that were not as badly flooded. Others even went as far as to offer up their homes as refuge.

Atiya isn’t alone. In a country with rampant corruption, it’s hard to find help in the government—especially since they frequently misappropriated money meant for normal everyday citizens. As such, many Karachiites turn to social media for help during the recent floods, asking questions about getting around the city safely, finding advice or help with evacuations, and procuring food and water.

Qirtas Salahuddin is one such person. After the 2020 floods, the entrepreneur began coordinating relief efforts with people through online groups. So when they occurred again this year, she already knew exactly what to do: deliver food and water to people, and connect them to private tankers that could help pump water out of their homes.

However, the reality was that a flood is too big a beast to tame with limited resources. So Salahuddin took to social media to teach people about DIY solutions for quick and effective fixes. For example, when folks were looking for sandbags to line up against their homes to stop the water, she advised buying large garbage bags and filling them with sand or mud before securing them with duct tape.

Others are also turning to the same social media sites in order to help others. Saif Niazi is a business owner in Karachi and also the founder of Offroad Club Pakistan, a group dedicated to off-road driving and the outdoors. While it started out as a hobby community, the club has been instrumental in flood relief activities since 2020, and has helped in providing food and fuel for power generators, and assisting in evacuations.

“We have a main WhatsApp group of more than 200 people who own four-wheel trucks and cars—of which, around 50 agreed to develop a sub-group for relief efforts,” Niazi told The Daily Beast.

This is the third year in a row that they have been helping people. Like Salahuddin, they’re more prepared for emergencies and disruptions than ever. In fact, the club has been fielding around 400 to 500 calls a day for flooding assistance this past summer alone.

“Our priority was to rescue patients, and we helped reach areas where ambulances couldn’t go,” Saif recalled, referencing a harrowing call where his team had to retrieve a dead body. “The family needed to get to the hospital but ambulances can’t drive into such deep waters, unlike the cars in our fleet.”

Two issues are at the heart of Karachi’s flooding woes. The first is uncontrolled development, in which new construction projects spread like wildfire in every direction with no regard for streambeds, landcovers, or natural landscapes that impact the flow of water. The flipside of the coin is the city’s sewer system—some of which has been eradicated to give way to high-end housing communities. Ironically, these areas are worse off than the rest of the city when flooding occurs.

One not-for-profit organization trying to address these issues is the Orangi Pilot Project. Their focus was on the Orangi area specifically, where they work on providing low-cost sanitation, housing, health, education and more. They have extensively researched the urban flooding issue, and have helped address it in the city as well.

However, a spokesperson from the group told The Daily Beast that there was no government funding or effort involved in the work they have done. Better collaboration is much needed, they said, between government agencies and local communities to prevent the worst outcomes of the disaster—and it’s hard for that to happen while there’s a power struggle between the city’s local-level government and the provincial government of Sindh.

“Throughout the world, cities thrive when empowered local governments can represent and act on behalf of their communities, with support from the provincial and federal governments,” an OPP spokesperson explained.

To survive then, sometimes social media is the only lifeline people have. For example, Shahleen Khero, a content creator in the city, put up a post in a consumer watchdog group on Facebook. “Our cars are drowned and [the] basement is full [of] rainwater… with no electricity,” she wrote. She got close to 200 responses, and eventually got her assistance from the Pakistan Army, which took roughly four hours to reach her. When they did, they were able to evacuate her and her neighbors, drain water, and clear the road.

On the other hand, her calls to the local governments got her nowhere. “I called multiple authorities for help before this. Some numbers weren’t functional, others were unresponsive, and I was told by one department that it’s not their job,” she told The Daily Beast.

Not all experiences end as good, though. Another Karachiite named Amir (pseudonym) told The Daily Beast that he also posted in a group looking for help. He included a picture of his flooded street, and said that there was no electricity, food, or water to be had. Despite gathering more than a hundred comments, and close to four dozen shares, he was unable to get the government’s assistance. “The water cleared out eventually, but my post didn’t help,” he said.

The people of Karachi have always been resilient. When faced with water shortages, they resorted to buying water from tankers. When faced with electricity shortages, they resorted to buying power generators. Now it seems they must wade through floods on their own too—using their cell phones and computers to keep them afloat.