Karachi rains: A brief history

Karachi’s latest deluge is only the most recent chapter in a long history of urban flooding.

Since 1990, Pakistan’s largest metropolis has repeatedly endured urban flooding during the monsoon season, yet little progress has been made to resolve the crisis.

For over three decades, central arteries such as Sharea Faisal and II Chundrigar Road have borne the brunt of the city’s poor drainage, with every fresh spell of rain turning them into rivers. Experts say this chronic failure reflects long-standing negligence by successive civic administrations.

In 1992, even upscale areas like Clifton and Bath Island remained waterlogged for days, while low-lying commercial hubs such as II Chundrigar Road and Sharea Faisal were paralysed.

A devastating spell in September 2011 dumped around 140 millimetres of rain, submerging major roads across the city and exposing the fragility of Karachi’s drainage infrastructure.

The city’s worst flooding came in August 2020, when more than 230 millimetres of rainfall was recorded in a single day. II Chundrigar Road and Sharea Faisal were completely submerged, more than 40 people lost their lives, and damages ran into billions of rupees.

Again in July 2022, several consecutive days of heavy rainfall forced office closures as traffic came to a halt along the city’s busiest corridors. In February 2024, unusual rains caused nearly 700 electricity feeders to trip, while the two central roads were once again drowned.

Experts consistently point to the same underlying causes: a dysfunctional drainage network, unplanned urban sprawl that has transformed Karachi into a “concrete jungle,” rampant encroachments on stormwater drains, and the growing impact of climate change.

Ahead of the 2025 monsoon, the NDMA and independent experts had already warned that unless Karachi’s drains were effectively cleared, the city risked another disaster.

On August 19, their warnings proved accurate, as heavy showers overwhelmed the city and once more left Sharea Faisal and II Chundrigar Road under water, exposing the inadequacy of the civic response.