(NEW YORK) — Seventy-five people have died and 59 have been injured in Pakistan over the last 24 hours due to severe weather, further devastating a country that’s experiencing historic rain and flooding, according to the country’s National Disaster Management Authority.
About one-third of Pakistan is under water, the country’s federal minister for climate change, Sherry Rehman, wrote on Twitter Monday, saying in an interview that Pakistan is experiencing a “climate catastrophe.”
Rehman said that Padidan, in Pakistan’s Sindh Province, received an “unheard of” nearly 70 inches of rain in one day.
In the last day, 59 people were injured and more than 58,000 homes destroyed due to monsoon rains and flooding, the National Disaster Management Authority said. Since June 14, 1,136 people have died, 1,634 people have been injured and more than one million homes have been destroyed because of flash floods, the agency said.
The monsoon rains occurred a month early this year, causing rivers and dams to overflow and impacting all four of Pakistan’s provinces.
In a statement, the climate minister called the flooding a “climate-induced humanitarian disaster of epic proportions.”
“Frankly, no one has seen this kind of downpour & flooding before, and no one country can cope alone with the multiple, cascading effects of extreme weather, climate events,” Rehman wrote.
The rains have impacted 33 million people in Pakistan and have forced thousands of people to evacuate.
Pakistan’s government deployed soldiers to help with search-and-rescue operations, with army helicopters airlifting people to safety.
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