Over a million left homeless in Kerala
Relief camps are packed to the brim as over 50,000 homes are destroyed in floods in the Indian state.
CHENGANNUR:
More than one million people have packed relief camps to escape devastating monsoon floods that have killed more than 410 people in India’s south-western state of Kerala, officials said.
About 50,000 homes have been destroyed, according to one Kerala legislator, and people are flocking to the camps as the scale of the desolation is revealed by receding waters.
A total of 1,028,000 people were now recorded in about 3,200 relief camps across the state, a state government spokesman said.
Six more bodies were found on Monday, he added, taking the toll to more than 410 since the monsoon started in June.
At Chengannur, one of the worsthit towns, more than 60cm of water still blocked many roads as more rain fell yesterday.
Army teams said several thousand people in the town remained in homes inundated by 10 days of torrential downpours that have battered the state.
Rescue teams in Chengannur yesterday finally reached the house of retired army officer K.G. Pillai, who said up to 2.4m of water had engulfed the house where his family had lived since 1952.
“In the past there has never been more than one foot of floods and people are not used to this,” he said.
Many roads and homes around Pillai’s house remained inaccessible. “Around 26 people moved into the first floor of our home” to take refuge from the floods, he said.
A senior army officer involved in the rescue operation in Chengannur said authorities believed most of the people left in town did not want to be evacuated and were instead seeking food and water.
“We received a distress call late yesterday to rescue a disabled child and will be going in today on boats to check if there are others who need assistance,” he said.
Thousands of army, navy and air force personnel have fanned out across the state to help those stranded in remote and hilly areas.
Dozens of helicopters and even drones have been dropping food, medicine and water to cut-off villages.