Severe floods have affected more than 2mn people in Assam and Bihar, buried hundreds of villages and almost submerged a national park, forcing wildlife to seek refuge on roads, authorities said yesterday.
With the weather office forecasting heavy rain for at least another 48 hours, the outlook is grim for the northeastern tea-growing state of Assam, which suffered its worst floods four years ago that killed 124 people and displaced 6mn.
Floods and landslides are common in India during the June-September monsoon season and the death toll runs into the hundreds every year.
“The situation has turned from bad to worse since Tuesday and over a million people have been shifted to relief camps,” Assam’s Water Resources Minister Keshab Mahanta said.
The Brahmaputra river and its tributaries have burst their banks - affecting more than half of the state’s 32 districts.
Police and rescue workers said at least 12 people had drowned across Assam in recent days.
Animals from the state’s national parks came out onto roads built up on banks and other high ground as the flood inundated forests.
The state has five national parks, including the Kaziranga National Park, which is home to two-thirds of the world’s one-horned rhinoceroses.
“More than 80% of the park is under water,” said Suvasis Das, a forestry official in the park.
Forest officials said they have rescued a three-month-old rhino that took shelter in a backyard in a village.
At least 20 hog deer were either washed away or drowned.
Assam’s Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal urged authorities to provide safe drinking water to prevent the outbreak of disease.
In Patna, capital of Bihar, officials said nearly half a million people have been affected by floods in eight districts of the state.
According to unconfirmed reports, at least 10 people, including women and children, have died in the floods.
Vayasji, the principal secretary of state disaster management department, said the flood situation was serious in some districts following rising water level in rivers, particularly Kosi and Gandak.
“In view of this, we have already issued high alert and deployed teams of the National Disaster Response Force and the state Disaster Response Force in the flood-hit districts,” he said.
The state disaster management department has asked people living in low-lying areas to move to higher ground, Vayasji said.
According to him, dozens of relief camps have been set up in flood-hit districts, and relief and rescue operations were in full swing to help affected people.
An official of the water resources department said the worst flood-affected districts were Kishanganj, Purnea, Araria, Supaul, Khagaria, Bhagalpur, Madhepura and Darbhanga.
The flood water has entered in nearly 1,400 villages.
The state government yesterday issued flood alert in East and West Champaran, Muzaffarpur and Vaishali districts.
Major rivers in the state, including the Kosi, Gandak, Bagmati and the Ganga, are in spate following heavy rains in their upstream areas, officials said.
“With heavy rainfall in the catchment areas in neighbouring Nepal, water levels of these rivers have been rising for the last several days,” an official said.
Water Resources Development Minister Lalan Singh said: “Preparations have been made to tackle the flood situation. The state government is on alert.
All embankments are safe.”
Singh said the eastern Kosi embankment, which was breached in 2008, was safe.
In 2008, more than 3mn people were rendered homeless in Bihar when the Kosi river breached its banks upstream in Nepal and changed course.
Official sources said engineers of the water resource department have been directed to monitor the vulnerable embankments.
Meanwhile a flood alert has been sounded in Uttar Pradesh districts which border Nepal, an official said.
The water levels in Saryu and Ghaghra have gone up in the past 24-hours, leading the state government to step up rescue and relief work.
Sources said Nepal was likely to release 500,000 cusecs of water anytime, affecting districts like Shravasti, Bahraich, Faizabad and Barabanki.
Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has asked the chief secretary to personally monitor the situation and ensure there was no loss of lives owing to the impending floods and increasing water level in many rivers flowing through the state.
District magistrates in the flood prone areas were asked not to leave the district headquarters without the chief secretary’s permission.
With a population of more than 100,000 in Shivpur and Balhar blocks of Bahraich, district magistrate Abhay Singh said the administration was vigilant and taking all steps to evacuate people to safer places in case of floods.
Two children sit on the roof of a home submerged in flood waters in Batahidia in South Kamrup, southwest of Guwahati, in Assam yesterday.
