Humanity’s light in the dark of Chisoti: ‘When she cried, I cried’

Chisoti (Padder), Aug 17: As gushing waters tore through Chisoti village on August 14 at noon, leaving pilgrims, priests, and stall owners dead, 32-year-old Shahnawaz of the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) clung to hope.

Hours into the devastation, he spotted a small hand sticking out from the debris and changed the story of tragedy into one of a miracle.

“I immediately moved towards it. Only a hand was visible,” Shahnawaz, 32, a resident of Balesa in Doda district of Chenab Valley, said. “I thought she too was lifeless, but when I cleared the debris, I saw her trying hard to crawl through.”

The 14-month-old girl had been buried for nearly eight hours beneath the mounds of debris, tin sheets, wooden logs, uprooted trees, bricks, and mud.

Shahnawaz delicately pulled her out, wrapped her in a blanket, and tried to warm her frail body. “When she finally cried, I was in tears,” he said, his eyes moist. “I handed her to doctors and paramedics, and it felt like Allah had shown us a miracle.”

The child’s mother, a paramedic from Paddar posted on duty at the Machail Mata Yatra base camp at Chisoti, had fractured her leg in the floods but never stopped searching for her daughter.

Her father, also a government employee, rushed from Gulabgadh, Paddar, in despair, traveling 35 kilometers.

“They had almost given up. When I handed their daughter to her father, he hugged me with tears in his eyes,” Shahnawaz said. “Her mother, too, thanked me later. They were Hindus, I am a Muslim, but humanity is above caste, creed, and religion.”

Shahnawaz, who joined SDRF in 2020, said the rescue will stay with him forever.

“I might have rescued hundreds so far, but I will never forget this one,” he said.

The flash floods struck with little warning around noon on August 14.

“It all happened in 20 to 30 seconds,” said Amit, an eyewitness from Jammu who had set up a makeshift accommodation at the base camp. “Birds started chirping strangely, and animals made noises.

Then a huge cloudburst uprooted trees and mounds of debris came down. The community kitchen, the temple, the priests, everything was washed away in a blink.”

Five children and several women among 100 were initially rescued by locals and rescue teams, but most of those who survived did so in the first few moments.

After that, rescue teams like Shahnawaz had been pulling mostly bodies from the rubble.

For nearly eight hours that day, Shahnawaz and his team retrieved only the dead and critically injured.

Then came the miraculous rescue at 8 pm.

A day later, another miracle happened.

The team headed by ASI SDRF Arun Tripathi found another 14-year-old girl, accompanying the pilgrims from Jammu.

She was badly injured but alive after nearly 24 hours under rubble.

She was later identified by two women pilgrims, her aunts, and taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.

She, too, survived nature’s fury.

“Life and death are in the hands of Allah,” Shahnawaz said quietly, as he carried a loudspeaker to warn villagers to stay away from the swollen stream.

Shahnawaz, father of two young boys, says he tries not to bring emotions into his profession, but this time was different.

“When that girl cried in my arms, I felt both relief and pain,” he said. “This rescue was not mine. It was Allah’s miracle. After the rescue, I called my mother, Arsha Begum, 48, who remains worried during my rescue missions and keeps calling and inquiring about my well-being. She felt relieved listening to me and more so when I informed her about the miraculous escape of the girl.”

He said his wife, Khadija, and his father, Muhamad Sabir, 50, also felt happy and decided to offer thanksgiving prayers.

Earlier, Shahnawaz, who was camped at Gulabgard in Padder, rushed to Chisoti village with 10 other members of the SDRF after the tragedy struck.

His colleague, Zaheer Abbas from the same village, said, “We hardly get time for breakfast or dinner. Most of the time, we survive on water.”

Six of their colleagues were already stationed at the base camp.

It took the team nearly an hour to reach the scene as they struggled to clear road blockades – massive rocks, boulders, landslides, and mudslides near the village.

“We had to walk about a kilometer to reach the spot where there were no signs of life, only devastation, shrieks, and cries,” Shahnawaz said.

He said bodies were lying everywhere, some still gasping for breath and others buried under mounds of debris after a nearby hillock collapsed in a cloudburst.

“As I waded through the debris – mud, rocks, logs, trees, the remains of temples, Yatra Bhawans, community kitchens, makeshift accommodations, and stalls, I found only destruction, with bodies buried in the rubble and others washed away by the raging stream,” he said. “Blood was oozing from them.”

Mud and dirt covered the streets, stained with blood.

Bodies were buried under debris or swept away by the gushing waters of Bud Nala, a tributary of the mighty Chenab River that ultimately flows into the Indus River and Sindh River in Pakistan.

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