As gushing waters tore through Chisoti village on August 14 at noon, leaving pilgrims, priests, and stall owners dead, 32-year-old Shahnawaz of the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) clung to hope.
Hours into the devastation, he spotted a small hand sticking out from the debris and changed the story of tragedy into one of a miracle.
Hours after the devastation, Shahnawaz, 32, a resident of Balesa in Doda district of Chenab Valley, noticed a small hand emerging from the debris. “At first, I thought she was lifeless, but when I cleared the rubble, I saw her struggling to crawl out,” he recalled.
The 14-month-old girl had been buried for nearly eight hours under heaps of mud, tin sheets, wooden logs, uprooted trees, and bricks. Shahnawaz gently pulled her out, wrapped her in a blanket, and tried to warm her frail body. “When she finally cried, I cried too,” he said, his eyes moist. “Handing her over to doctors and paramedics felt like Allah had shown us a miracle.”
The child’s mother, a paramedic from Paddar posted on duty at the Machail Mata Yatra base camp in Chisoti, had fractured her leg in the floods but never stopped searching for her daughter. Her father, a government employee, rushed 35 km from Gulabgadh in despair.
“They had almost given up. When I handed their daughter to her father, he hugged me with tears in his eyes,” Shahnawaz said. “Her mother also thanked me later. They were Hindus, I am a Muslim — but humanity is above caste, creed, and religion.”
Shahnawaz, who joined the SDRF in 2020, said this rescue will stay with him forever. “I may have rescued hundreds so far, but I will never forget this one,” he said.
The flash floods struck suddenly around noon on August 14. “It all happened in 20–30 seconds,” recalled Amit, an eyewitness from Jammu who had set up a makeshift shelter at the base camp. “Birds began chirping strangely, animals grew restless, and then a massive cloudburst sent down uprooted trees and debris. The temple, priests, kitchens — everything was swept away in a blink.”
Locals and rescue teams managed to save about 100 people, including several children and women, but most survived in the first moments. After that, teams like Shahnawaz’s were retrieving mostly bodies.
For nearly eight hours, his team pulled only the dead and critically injured — until the miraculous rescue at 8 pm.
A day later, another miracle followed. A team led by ASI SDRF Arun Tripathi rescued a 14-year-old girl from Jammu who had been trapped for almost 24 hours under the rubble. Badly injured, she was later identified by two aunts traveling with her on pilgrimage and taken to a nearby hospital. She, too, survived.
“Life and death are in Allah’s hands,” Shahnawaz said softly, while warning villagers with a loudspeaker to stay away from the swollen stream.
Father of two young boys, Shahnawaz admitted he tries to keep emotions away from his work, but this time was different. “When that girl cried in my arms, I felt both relief and pain,” he said. “This rescue was not mine — it was Allah’s miracle.”
Afterward, he called his mother, Arsha Begum, 48, who often worries during his rescue missions. “She was relieved, especially when I told her about the girl’s miraculous survival,” he said. His wife Khadija and father, Muhammad Sabir, 50, offered thanksgiving prayers.
Earlier, Shahnawaz had rushed with 10 SDRF colleagues from Gulabgadh to Chisoti after the tragedy struck. Another six members were already stationed at the base camp.
“It took us nearly an hour to reach, clearing landslides, boulders, and mudslides. We had to walk a kilometer on foot. There were no signs of life — only devastation, shrieks, and cries,” he said. Bodies lay everywhere, some gasping, others buried beneath debris after a nearby hillock collapsed.
“As I waded through mud, rocks, logs, and remnants of temples, kitchens, shelters, and stalls, I found only destruction,” Shahnawaz recalled. “Blood was oozing from the bodies.”
The streets were covered in mud, dirt, and blood. Many victims were swept away by Bud Nala, a tributary of the Chenab River, which eventually flows into Pakistan’s Sindh and Indus rivers. (Agencies)
