![]() It's been hard hit by the economic crisis that Pakistan has been battling for years now. Susannah: A lot of it has to do with the fact that children in this part of the country, I think I mentioned it earlier, this is a very poor part of the country. Melissa: Why are children so hard hit in this disaster? It means you often have to walk and these are large families often traveling with small children. The government is providing two cooked meals a day if you're able to make it to a government camp, but there are very few camps compared to the amount of need and getting to those camps is very difficult. People who have stayed or have heard the horror stories of people who make it to dry land, only to find that there's no shelter, there's no humanitarian aid. Some of these villages have been flooded for over two weeks and so people are going back, they're renting a boat and going back to check on their homes to make sure that they're not looted. Susannah: Well, they've heard stories from other people who have been moving back and forth between dry land to their homes in these flooded villages. Melissa: It is hard for so many of us to even begin to imagine the idea that this family would see the alternative of living on dry land even in a displaced circumstance to be more troubling than staying in that flood. They also said that they didn't trust the Pakistani government to take care of them once they reached dry land. This is a rural province, people are incredibly poor and they said that these are the most valuable belongings they own and without them, they said that they saw no future for them, even if it meant them living on the roofs of their houses in this sea of water. Other boats were rescuing people who were stranded at their homes, but the family that we stopped to speak to said that they didn't want to leave their livestock behind. We made it up to the furthest we could go along the highway yesterday before the floodwaters enveloped the road and then we went out on a boat for some people who were refusing to leave their homes. It's more densely populated so there's a lot more human suffering here. It's one of the worst hit provinces along with Baluchistan. Susannah: We've been going up and down Sindh province over the past few days. Melissa: Can you tell us where you've been reporting during the past few days and what you've seen? Susannah George: Thank you so much for having me on. For more on this, I'm joined by Susannah George, Washington Post Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief. By some estimates, more than 30 million people are displaced. More than 1,300 people have died from the floods since mid-June. Also, last week, the country's climate minister said that one-third of the country was underwater, and officials have blamed climate change for this disaster. Melissa Harris-Perry: That was UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last week, talking about the worst floods that Pakistan has seen in over a decade. The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids, the relentless impact of epical levels of rain, and flooding. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres: Pakistan is awash in suffering. ![]() Entire buildings, homes, roads, and bridges washed away. ![]() Melissa Harris-Perry: You're listening there to the sound of devastating floods that have wreaked havoc in Pakistan.
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