The flash floods that tore through Rajouri and Poonch on July 19 have left at least ten people feared dead, dozens of homes destroyed, and hundreds of families displaced. In Rajouri town, the Darhali river breached a flood protection wall near Bela Colony, inundating the new bus stand and sweeping away vehicles; more than fifty families near Abdullah Bridge fled rising waters with little more than what they could carry. In Lower Murrah in Surankote, houses were simply washed off the map. “Everything we had has been washed away,” one resident said. That sentence, in its quiet devastation, should be read as an indictment.
For this was not a bolt from the blue. Barely ten days earlier, on July 8, intense evening showers triggered flash floods, mudslides and landslides across Poonch, Rajouri, Reasi, Doda, Udhampur and Ramban, devastating parts of Doda and forcing suspension of services on the Vaishno Devi track. Last August, a cloudburst in Kishtwar’s Chositi village killed 68 people; weeks later, relentless rain pushed the Tawi and Chenab into flood, killed pilgrims on the Trikuta Hills, and brought Jammu division to a standstill. In 2021, it was Hunzar. The Pir Panjal and Chenab valley belts are now visited by catastrophe with the regularity of the monsoon itself. What was once described as a freak cloudburst is now the predictable signature of a warming climate meeting a fragile mountain geography. To continue treating each event as an isolated misfortune is no longer negligence by oversight; it is negligence by design.
The questions that must be asked are uncomfortable but unavoidable. Why did a flood protection wall in Rajouri, built precisely for a day like July 19, fail at the first real test? Who sanctioned, and who regularised, the construction that has steadily colonised the floodplains of the Darhali, the Suktoh and the Tawi, placing bus stands, markets and colonies in the natural path of rivers? Why, despite the India Meteorological Department’s forecast of heavy rainfall through July 23, did evacuation begin only after the waters entered homes? Doppler radars and rainfall alerts mean little if the last mile — the loudspeaker in the mohalla, the patwari with a list of vulnerable households, the pre-identified relief centre — does not exist.
Relief has moved with commendable speed: the Chief Minister has monitored the situation from the first light of July 19, the Union Home Minister has promised full central assistance, and rescue teams have worked in punishing conditions. They deserve gratitude. But relief is the response of a state to failure; resilience is the measure of a state that has learnt. Jammu and Kashmir needs a comprehensive, district-wise flood vulnerability audit of the Jammu division; a ruthless review of every flood protection work built in the last decade, with accountability for those that crumbled; a moratorium on fresh construction in mapped floodplains and nallah beds; dense automatic weather stations and cloudburst monitoring in the Pir Panjal; and community-level early warning drills before every monsoon, not after every tragedy.
The mountains have sent the same message every year, in 2021, in 2025, and twice already this July. Each time, the administration has responded with condolences, compensation and committees. The people of Rajouri and Poonch are entitled to something better: a government that reads warnings written in water before, and not after, they are written in lives lost.
