Rescuers battled to move hundreds of thousands of people trapped by floodwaters to safety on Friday, as heavy rainfall submerged 17 000 villages in the northeastern Indian state of Assam.
The rapidly rising waters of the Brahmaputra River and its tributary, the Jiadhol, trapped up to 500 000 people in Assam’s Dhemaji district, 465 kilometres east of the state capital, Guwahati, officials said.
Another 50 000 lost their homes to floods in six other eastern districts of Assam.
Assam Flood Control Minister Nurzamal Sarkar said that emergency workers were racing against time to rescue thousands of families who had lost their homes to the flash floods.
”We have put the army on alert and also told them to be ready to assist the civil authorities at short notice,” said Sarkar. ”The army is on standby in vulnerable places.”
Sarkar said the state administration was worried the rising water pressure would lead to embankments crumbling or dams bursting.
”We have asked the district administration, police and disaster management teams to adopt precautionary measures to prevent the breaching of embankments,” said the minister.
Assam Health Minister Bhumidar Barman said he had sent teams of doctors to Dhemaji and other flood-hit districts to prevent the outbreak of water-borne diseases.
”Teams of paramedics have fanned out to various parts of Dhemaji district to control diseases like stomach ailments. Adequate stocks of medicines and food supplies have also been sent to the flood-hit areas,” said Barman.
NK Vasu, the park warden of Kaziranga, home to the almost-extinct one-horned rhinoceros, said the swollen Brahmaputra River and its tributaries had flooded the low-lying national park forcing the animals to migrate to higher ground.
”There has been a steady movement of animals from the park to safer areas with the floodwaters already submerging the lowlands inside the sanctuary,” Vasu said over the telephone.
Flash floods triggered by monsoon rains in India have already killed hundreds of people in India. The worst-affected states have been Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Gujarat and Maharashtra.
The annual monsoon rains first hit the southern coast of Kerala in June and spread across the rest of the country over the next three months.
The state meteorological observatory in Bihar’s capital, Patna, forecast heavy rains over the weekend in Bihar, West Bengal and Jharkhand.
”A low-pressure area is developing over the eastern states of Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal and is likely to cause heavy rains in the next 48 hours,” said RK Mukopadhyay, director of the Patna Meteorological Observatory.
”The southwest monsoon has peaked and it will continue to lash most parts of the country.”
A squall is also expected to hit Assam late Friday or Saturday, the weather station said.
In neighbouring Bangladesh, three people were killed on Wednesday in a landslide triggered by torrential rains, as experts warned of major floods to come later in July. – Sapa-AFP