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Villages turn islands, lakhs homeless
Floods continue to wreak havoc in three eastern states and Assam on Thursday. In Orissa, an estimated 10 lakh people have so far been affected by floods, report HT Correspondents.
Floods continued to wreak havoc in three eastern states and Assam on Thursday.
In Orissa, an estimated 10 lakh people have so far been affected by floods while in West Bengal lakhs of villagers have been stranded and about 55,000 rescued and placed in 150 relief camps. In Jharkhand, about 3,000 people have been affected by nature’s fury.
In Assam 22 people were killed in two districts bordering Arunachal Pradesh due to excessive release of water from a hydro electric project in Arunachal.
The flood situation in north Orissa remained grave on Thursday with the Subernarekha, Budhabalanga, Baitarani and Jalaka rivers inundating large areas in the districts of Balasore, Bhadrak, Mayurbhanj and Jajpur. A portion of National Highway 60 near Rupsa in Balasore district has been swept away, cutting off the road to Bhubaneswar and Kolkata. The death toll however remained at four.
In Narayangar in Bengal’s Midnapore West district, 85-year-old Kulebala Maity took shelter on a tree-top till she was rescued by armymen on Thursday afternoon.
78-year-old Jarnali Bera was trapped in roof top when flood water washed away their house in Amedein village in Midnapore West.
Though Maity and Bera were rescued on Thursday morning, there are lakhs of other villagers who are still stranded in flood waters in Midnapore East and West districts.
In Jharkhand’s East Singhbhum and Seraikela-Kharsawan districts, more than 3,000 families have been rendered homeless in flash floods following a record 363.07 mm rainfall on Wednesday. Two persons died while over a dozen others survived from drowning in the flood waters. In Jamshedpur, two more gharials escaped from their enclosure in the Tata Zoo. One had reportedly been swept away by the floods into the swelling Subernarekha river on Wednesday.
