IN Danyor, Gilgit-Baltistan, seven young men were crushed to death under a landslide in the early hours of Monday. They were not engineers or state rescue workers, but local volunteers trying to restore the town’s only water supply after floods had destroyed it. Ordinary citizens were forced to shoulder the burden the government should have carried, ultimately losing their lives. Their sacrifice reminds us of both the human toll of climate change and the cost of official inaction. GB is on the front line of Pakistan’s climate emergency. Melting glaciers, unpredictable rains and increasingly destructive flash floods are remaking the region’s geography. Since late June, heavy downpours — followed by floods on July 21 in Babusar and the next day in Danyor — have swept away bridges, roads, crops and irrigation systems, cutting off entire valleys and leaving thousands without drinking or irrigation water.
Scientists have long warned that such events will become more frequent and intense. Yet the state’s response remains reactive and shallow, defined more by condolence statements than preventive planning. In Danyor, repeated appeals for the restoration of the damaged water channel were met with assurances, not action. When a temporary fix made by locals was washed away, the government still did nothing. Faced with shortages, residents took the risk themselves, working in dangerous conditions — until the earth gave way. The administration arrived only after lives had been lost, with compensation cheques and promises of medical care. This pattern cannot continue. The government must invest in climate-resilient infrastructure, building effective early-warning systems, and deploying trained disaster-response teams in GB. In the immediate term, it must restore the water supply and repair damaged links before more people are exposed to danger. The people of Danyor stepped forward because the state stepped back. Their courage should not become another statistic in a long list of preventable disasters.
Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2025