NEW DELHI: India’s annual monsoon rains have swept across the country about two weeks ahead of schedule, breaking a 108-year-old record and causing floods that have killed at least 25 people, officials said yesterday.
Widespread rainfall cooled northern India, with the region’s high temperature for yesterday pegged at 93 degrees Fahrenheit (34 degrees Celsius) — 11 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) — below normal, Subhash Chander Bhan, the director of the India Meteorological Department, told The Associated Press.
The monsoon hit New Delhi on Sunday — the earliest arrival of the rains in the city since record keeping began 108 years ago — and would soon cover almost the entire country, Bhan said.
He did not think the early monsoon was linked to climate change. The early rains were due to an unusual weather system pulling moisture off the Bay of Bengal and dumping it on India, he said, adding that rains had hit the Indian capital as early as June 16 in 1998 for similar reasons. The monsoon usually begins sweeping across the subcontinent in early June, but rarely reaches New Delhi and the rest of northern India before the beginning of July.
The annual monsoon rains feed the farms that provide a livelihood for more than 60 percent of India’s 1.1 billion people. But they can also be deadly with some of the first fatalities in this year’s monsoon being reported in recent days in India’s remote northeast.
Indian Army troops worked to rescue marooned villagers as floods and landslides caused by monsoon rains in northeastern region killed 25 people and displaced over 310,000 others over the weekend, officials said yesterday.
While reports from affected areas were still trickling in yesterday, at least 50,000 people in one district in Assam were taken over the weekend from flooded areas to higher ground by rescuers using motorboats and row boats, said Bhumidhar Barman, the state’s revenue ministering the state capital of Guwahati. Authorities said the army was on standby in case soldiers were needed to help rescue trapped villagers elsewhere in the state.
According to the Flood Control department in the Assam state, six people drowned overnight in the Lakhimpur district, some 360 kilometers northeast of state capital Guwahati.
“We have reports that six people were washed away by the swirling waters of Ranganadi River in the district; 311,420 people have been displaced from their homes in Lakhimpur and its adjoining district of Sonitpur in the first wave of monsoon floods,” senior Flood Control department official Anamika Tiwari said.
In Assam’s neighboring state of Arunachal Pradesh, 19 people were killed and 30 injured in mudslides near state capital Itanagar.
While 14 people were killed on Saturday, three others died in a hospital on Sunday and two bodies were removed from under a collapsed house yesterday.
The army and paramilitary Border Security Force were working to relocate people from 500 flood-hit villages in Lakhimpur and Sonitpur districts. “Hundreds of villagers who were trapped in the homes have been moved to makeshift camps. We are providing food water and medicines and other relief to the people,” S.R. Islam, another official in the Flood Control Department said.
“The government has sounded a flood alert in the districts following the breach in embankments of the Ranganadi hydropower project. The regional weather officials have warned about heavy rains over the next few days and the flood situation could turn critical,” he added.
Assam, one of the Indian states which is generally worst-affected by the monsoon havoc, received heavy rains last year that claimed 87 lives and left 11.2 million people homeless.
