Poonch man goes out to save his SUV, returns to dig through rubble for his family during cloudburst

Poonch: Mohammad Latief left his home in the darkness before dawn for what should have been a routine task lasting only a few minutes. That decision would ultimately save his life — while leaving him to confront an unimaginable loss.

At around 3.30 am, with relentless rain pounding Lower Muran village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district, the elderly man stepped outside to move his SUV away from an area he feared could become unsafe.

He could not have known that within minutes, the home he had just walked out of would be gone.


A powerful cloudburst sent a violent surge of water, mud and rocks rushing through the remote village in Surankote tehsil. Latief’s three-storey house, built along the bank of a stream, stood directly in the path of the deluge.

The structure collapsed, trapping eight members of his family beneath tonnes of concrete and debris.

Latief survived because he happened to be outside. His elder son was also spared because he was away in Jammu when disaster struck.

For those who remained inside the house, the family’s desperate wait for news soon turned into tragedy.

A home reduced to rubble before sunrise

When daylight finally revealed the scale of destruction, there was barely anything recognisable left of Latief’s three-storey home.

Broken slabs of concrete, twisted metal and piles of mud covered the spot where the house had stood only hours earlier.

In a haunting contrast, the nearby stream that had turned ferocious during the cloudburst appeared calm again by morning.

But all around it were signs of what had happened overnight.

Roads had been damaged, houses flattened and access to several villages disrupted as flash floods and landslides tore through parts of the region.

For Latief, however, there was little time to process what he had lost.

Rather than standing on the sidelines, he joined villagers and rescue personnel searching through the ruins of his own home.

Father joins desperate search for his family

With shovels, ropes and whatever equipment they could gather, rescuers and local residents worked through the debris for hours.

Every section of rubble cleared carried the hope that someone might still be found alive.

As the day wore on, that hope began to fade.

Two bodies were eventually recovered from beneath the collapsed structure — 60-year-old Bano Bi and two-year-old Sofian Yasar.

The search continued for six other members of Latief’s family: his wife Noor Safia, his sons Sajad Ahmad, Haqnawaz, Shahnawaz and Mohd Akram, and his daughter-in-law Khalida Kouser.

Even as rescue teams continued their operation, villagers gathered to perform the last rites of those whose bodies had been recovered.

A few minutes that made the difference

A relative, Mohammad Aslam, recalled the sequence of events that kept Latief away from the house at the crucial moment.

According to Aslam, heavy rain was falling when Latief decided to move his Bolero to a safer spot elsewhere in the village.

After shifting the vehicle, he went to the nearby home of a relative.

His wife then reportedly advised him not to venture back through the downpour and instead wait until daylight before returning home.

That seemingly ordinary exchange became the difference between life and death.

Before Latief could return, the cloudburst struck.

The sudden rush of water and debris gave families in the area almost no opportunity to escape, according to villagers.

Within a short span, the landscape had been transformed as floodwaters and landslides damaged homes, swept away stretches of road and severed access to several settlements.

Another family swept away in Sangla

Lower Muran was not the only village left counting its missing.

In nearby Sangla, another family was caught in the powerful floodwaters.

Abdul Hameed, along with his wife, daughter and sister, was swept away by the current as the disaster tore through the area.

Rescue teams searched throughout the day and eventually recovered the body of one of the women downstream.

The force of the flood was such that Hameed’s house had disappeared altogether, leaving rescuers with little indication of where the structure had once stood.

Efforts continued to trace the remaining missing members of the family.

A night that changed everything

Across the affected villages, the disaster left behind a landscape of damaged roads, destroyed homes and families waiting anxiously for news of missing relatives.

For Latief, the catastrophe was devastatingly personal.

Only minutes separated him from the eight family members inside his house when the cloudburst struck. A decision to move his vehicle — followed by his wife’s advice to wait until morning before returning — meant he was not inside when the building collapsed.

By daylight, he was back at the same spot, not returning to his home but digging through what remained of it in search of his family.

His experience has emerged as one of the most heartbreaking stories from the Surankote disaster — a night in which an ordinary decision made at 3.30 am determined who was outside when the mountain of water and debris arrived.

(With PTI inputs)