Battle to evacuate 100 000 stranded by floods in India

AUTHORITIES in eastern India are struggling to evacuate more than 100 000 people stranded in villages after floods intensified, killing more than 300 and driving hundreds of thousands from their homes, officials said yesterday.

The heavy monsoon rains have caused rivers including the Ganges and its tributaries to burst their banks, forcing more than 200 000 people into relief camps in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand.

The deluge has submerged thousands of villages, washed away crops, destroyed homes and roads and disrupted power and phone lines, affecting millions of people across the five states.

In India’s eastern Bihar state, one of the worst-hit regions, disaster management officials said villagers in some areas were not willing to be evacuated, reluctant to leave their homes, possessions and livestock for fear of looting.

“We are asking them with folded hands, please come to the relief centres. Those who do not want to leave homes, their number is very large, probably more than 100 000 people,” Bihar disaster management principal secretary Vyas Ji said.

“The water is rising downstream and we do not want people in those areas to stay in their houses.”

Since the monsoons began in June, more than five million people across 26 out of Bihar’s 38 districts have been affected and at least 127 people have died, mostly due to drowning.

In the past week, 2.3 million people have had their lives disrupted and the death toll has reached 28. At least 107 000 people have taken refuge in government relief camps.

News reports said one person died and nine others were missing in Aurangabad district after a boat carrying 18 people sank in the Punpun river, a tributary of the Ganges, on Tuesday.

In neighbouring Uttar Pradesh state, at least 53 people have died and more than 1.8 million people across 29 out of a total of 75 districts have been hit by the disaster.

Television pictures showed people wading neck-high in water in Ballia district, while others took shelter on roof tops of multi-storey buildings.

Uttar Pradesh’s relief commissioner Dinesh Kumar Singh said rescue and relief teams had evacuated thousands of people in boats and the Indian Air Force was dropping food packets. – Reuters