|
 Exacerbated by Cyclone Komen which struck the east coast on
Friday, the rainfall has made major rivers overflow, inundating
villages in parts of West Bengal, Odisha and Manipur states. The
rains also caused a landslide in Manipur, killing 21 people.
"In the last four years, there has been no flood like this year. So
far, we have witnessed man-made floods and we have restricted them
quite successfully. But the situation at present is rendered beyond
control," Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal, the worst
affected state, told reporters on Sunday.
Banerjee said the release of water from over-full dams in the
neighboring states of Jharkhand and Odisha had worsened the flooding
in West Bengal, where at least 49 people have died.
Around 200,000 people have been shifted to relief camps in districts
such as Burdwan, Hoogly, Howrah and North 24 Parganas in West
Bengal, and plastic sheets and dry food rations have been dispatched
to survivors, one official said.
 Television pictures showed people carrying bags packed with
possessions as they waded through knee-high water, villagers
standing on the banks of rising rivers and scores of children
sitting in lines in a camp being fed rice and lentils.
India has monsoon rains from June to September, which are vital for
agriculture. But the rains often cause damage affecting millions of
people, devastating crops, destroying homes and sparking outbreaks
of diseases such as diarrhea.
In the remote northeastern state of Manipur, many parts of Thoubal
and Chandel districts have also been affected by the rains, aid
agencies said.
"A massive landslide triggered by heavy rainfall in Chandel district
swept away one village claiming about 21 lives so far," a situation
report from Sphere India, a network of humanitarian agencies, said.
[to top of second column] |
Officials said teams from the National Disaster Management Response
Force and the army had been sent on search and rescue operations but
roads and bridges had been washed away, making it difficult to reach
stranded survivors.
In Odisha, where floods have disrupted more than half a million
people's lives, state disaster management officials said they
believed the worst was over.
"We had evacuated about 2,000 people during the floods last week but
all of them returned to their homes. The situation has improved in
most of the areas," Odisha Deputy Relief Commissioner Prabhat Ranjan
Mohapatra told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
(Reporting by Supriyo Hazara in KOLKATA. Writing by Nita Bhalla,
editing by Tim Pearce. Additional reporting by Jatindra Dash in
BHUBANESWAR and Biswajyoti Das in GUWAHATI. Please credit the
Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters,
that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking,
corruption and climate change. Visit www.trust.org)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
