1 MILLION FLOOD KERALA RELIEF CAMPS
50,000 homes destroyed, 410 killed in deadly monsoon floods
MORE than one million people have packed relief camps to escape devastating monsoon floods that have killed more than 410 people in India’s southwestern state of Kerala, officials said yesterday.
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.
Here, one of the worst-hit 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 had battered the state.
Rescue teams here 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,” he said.
Many roads and homes around Pillai’s house remained inaccessible.
“Twenty-six people moved into the first floor of our home” to take refuge from the floods, he said.
Tens of thousands of people here and surrounding towns and villages are relying on community kitchens for meals, after water from hilly districts in Kerala’s north poured down into lowland regions.
Top Indian environment experts, who predicted devastating floods would hit Kerala state, said yesterday their warnings went unheeded by politicians eager to fasttrack money-making projects.
Muralee Thummarukudy, a United Nations disaster response expert, and ecologist Madhav Gadgil, warned in reports back as far as 2011 that a mega-monsoon was inevitable and that the state was ill-prepared.
Critics say Kerala and the national government have ignored environmental concerns as they push power plants and coal mines, hotel resorts and new housing.