In a gut-wrenching video that has now gripped the nation’s conscience, a family can be seen stranded in the centre of a furious river in Swat, standing motionless, surrounded by water, helpless and visibly terrified. Shouts echo from the banks. A child clings to an adult. Seconds stretch like hours. Yet in that horrifying footage, there is one thing conspicuously missing: the state. There are no rescue boats. No ropes. No high-alert officials. No disaster response unit. Just ordinary people, powerless, screaming from the sidelines, watching what might become a tragedy unfold in real time. Swat Valley, with its breathtaking mountains and glacial rivers, is one of Pakistan’s most prized tourist spots. But year after year, we watch as this beauty turns deadly with seasonal floods. And year after year, we ask: where is the machinery of the state? Where are the lessons from the last tragedy?
This wasn’t a freak accident. It was foreseeable and preventable. Meteorological warnings were issued. Flash floods were predicted. Local administrations had previously banned sitting near riverbanks. But on that day, dozens of people were still picnicking beside the water, some even live-streaming, as the flood swept in. If the administration was aware of the danger, why wasn’t there any visible enforcement of the ban? Why weren’t police patrolling known danger zones? Why weren’t riverside restaurants closed? Why did no one stop these families from entering such high-risk zones? The truth is simple and tragic: the state often only arrives after the fact, when the news goes viral, when hashtags start trending, when the damage is done. The irony is that we do have the institutions. The Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) exists. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) exists. Yet their presence is rarely felt where it matters most: on the ground, during the minutes that define life and death. Preparedness isn’t just about press releases and policy papers. It’s about boots on the ground, functional emergency services, and proactive community engagement. It’s about equipping local authorities with the tools, training, and personnel to intervene before a picnic turns into a viral tragedy.
In the aftermath of the video, officials issued the usual statements, sympathy, regret, and the promise of an inquiry. But inquiries are not ambulances. Sympathy is not a rescue boat. We don’t need more televised condolences. We need infrastructure, presence, and accountability. Where were the helicopters that can lift people from rooftops in Punjab but not from a rock in Swat? Where were the sirens, the text alerts, the evacuation protocols? The painful truth is that this family, and many like them, were left alone, not by fate, but by a government that has grown desensitised to preventable disasters.
We must not let this incident fade into the background noise of online outrage. It must become a watershed moment, not just for Swat, but for Pakistan’s entire disaster response framework. We need real-time monitoring of tourist spots, rapid response teams trained in swift water rescue, and most importantly, a culture of preventive governance instead of reactive damage control. The state must ask itself: if a family can be filmed stranded in the centre of a roaring river, why couldn’t someone reach them in time? If it cannot answer that, then the next flood won’t just test our rivers—it will drown what little trust remains in our institutions.
Opinion Piece by Muhammad Jawad Rasool