At least 15 people were killed in different parts of Saharanpur district as flash floods, caused by heavy rains in neighbouring Uttarakhand, wreaked havoc in the area while the meteorological department issued a heavy rainfall warning for some parts of the state.
"At least 15 people have lost their lives in incidents of house collapse and cars being washed away in parts of Saharanpur due to the situation in Uttarakhand during the last 24 hours," IG, law and order, RK Vishkarma said.
"Some 40 to 45 persons, left stranded due to the flash floods, were airlifted from Sarsava airbase to safer places by the air force helicopters," he said, adding that Shakumbhari Devi, Nakur and city areas have been badly hit.
An alert has been sounded in districts adjoining Uttarakhand, Vishkarma said.
The official said that 14 flash flood companies of disaster management have been deployed in places like Varanasi, Bareilly, Kanpur, Etah, Hapur, Agra, Faizabad, Gorakhpur, Bijnore, Sharanpur and Mirzapur.
Meanwhile, the met department has issued warnings of heavy to very heavy rainfall in the next 48 hours.
"Heavy to very heavy rain would occur at many places over west Uttar Pradesh and at few places over east UP with extremely heavy rain at isolated places over Western part of the state during next 48 hours," it said.
{{/usCountry}}"Heavy to very heavy rain would occur at many places over west Uttar Pradesh and at few places over east UP with extremely heavy rain at isolated places over Western part of the state during next 48 hours," it said.
{{/usCountry}}With monsoon becoming vigorous over the state in the past 24 hours, moderate to heavy rain/thundershowers occurred at most places in the state while very heavy rain occurred at isolated places over western region.
According to the met office, chief amount of rainfall recorded in cms are: Saharanpur-20, Narora, Hapur-16 each, Nakur-15, Anupshahr, Sawaispur(Hardoi)-14 each, Meerut-11 ,Dharurahra, Mawana 10 each, Paliakalan, Kasganj, Aligarh 9 each, Sidhauli, Deoband, Jalesar 8 each, Ankinghat, Akbarpur, Basti 7 each.