Poonch cloudburst buries 8 of family as man moves SUV
Night turns to tragedy in Lower Muran
Mohammad Latief stepped out near 3:30 am.
The elderly man lived in Lower Muran village under Surankote tehsil of Poonch district in Jammu and Kashmir.
He wanted to shift his SUV to safer ground as heavy rain pounded the remote settlement that night.
Minutes later, a cloudburst sent mud, rocks and floodwater crashing into his three-storey home by the stream.
Eight relatives were trapped under the fallen structure as the building collapsed without warning.
Latief lived because he was outside during the burst of nature’s violence.
His elder son was in Jammu then, away from the deadly event that struck the family.
Dawn reveals the scale of loss
When morning came, the scene was one of crushed concrete and bent iron.
A mound of debris filled the space where the family had slept hours before the rains turned fierce.
The stream looked quiet again by first light, hiding the force that swallowed the house.
Latief did not sit with his grief as the sun rose over the broken village.
He stood with villagers and rescue workers, digging through rubble for those still missing below.
They carried shovels and ropes, working without pause through the daylight hours.
The group hoped someone would be pulled out alive from the wreckage of the three-storey building.
Search ends in sorrow
The day’s effort brought no relief to the waiting relatives and neighbours.
By evening, two bodies were recovered from the broken remains of the home.
Bano Bi, aged 60, and Sofian Yasar, a two-year-old child, were found among the debris.
Six others stayed under the rubble as the search went on past nightfall.
Noor Safia, wife of Latief, was among those not yet retrieved from the site.
The missing sons were Sajad Ahmad, Haqnawaz, Shahnawaz and Mohd Akram from the household.
Khalida Kouser, his daughter-in-law, also remained trapped beneath the collapsed rooms.
Mohammad Aslam, a relative, said Latief left before dawn to move his Bolero inside the village.
The heavy rain had pushed him to act, but the cloudburst followed within a short span.
The rescue continued with local hands after official teams reached Surankote tehsil by day.
Lower Muran bore the shock as a small community faced a sudden wall of water and stone.
On July 19, Jammu recorded the grief of a family torn by a single night’s storm in Poonch.
The survivor’s choice to park his vehicle safe became the reason he lived to see the ruin.
Village grapples with grief
Residents of Lower Muran spoke of the stream they had lived beside for many years.
None expected the cloudburst to take a whole section of one family in minutes.
Latief’s return to the spot showed only broken walls where eight had been resting.
The bodies of Bano Bi and Sofian Yasar were taken as the search for six went on.
Workers cleared mud from the bank where the three-storey house once stood firm.
A relative confirmed the move of the Bolero was the last act before the disaster hit.
The calm stream by morning gave no sign of the fury it had carried hours earlier.
Surankote tehsil remained cut to the event as news spread across Poonch district by noon.
The family’s elder son returned from Jammu to a home reduced to a pile of concrete.
Noor Safia and the four sons with Khalida Kouser stayed lost as light faded on July 19.
The rescue party from the village kept digging with tools borrowed from nearby homes.
A mound of twisted iron marked the end of a house and the start of long mourning.
Mohammad Latief’s step outside became the thin line between life and the rubble.
Lower Muran will remember the cloudburst that buried eight of one family in Poonch.
The search went past dark with no further recovery reported from the collapsed structure.
