CHANDPUR BHANGAHA, India: Efforts to rescue tens of thousands of villagers cut off by a monsoon-swollen river in northern India were reaching a critical stage yesterday, aid workers and evacuees said.
Those who have escaped Bihar state’s worst-hit areas say food is running out and people are drinking the muddy floodwater, while aid workers speak of “grim” conditions.
“We haven’t had anything to eat for five days,” said Murti Shah, who finally got out of her village in worst-hit Madhepura district after spending two weeks on the school’s rooftop eating through the family’s supplies of grain.
“We drank the flood waters.” Asked if she had boiled the water first, she looked amazed. “How would we boil it?” she asked. “We have no utensils. We have nothing. Everything is under water.”
Many villagers in the area, submerged after the Kosi River breached its defenses upstream in Nepal and swung east, have lost their lives trying to make it to safety. “My uncle was on a tree and when he tried to get down he was washed away by the current,” said 30-year-old Anil Kumar Bhaskar, who also made it out Wednesday on a navy boat. “Later we found his body in the reeds.”
Authorities airdropped leaflets to villagers, appealing for thousands of people remaining in their homes to evacuate as heavy rains risked more flooding. Families who had fled to makeshift camps were forced to scavenge for scarce food in conditions that aid agencies warned would expose thousands to outbreaks of disease.
State government warnings to evacuate when the river first broke through its flood walls have kept the death toll low, with some 100 people drowned so far even though the floods have affected at least three million.
Media reports say the toll is at least 10 times higher, after the Kosi River, which originates in Nepal, burst a dam last month and unleashed the worst flooding in Bihar in 50 years. “We are appealing to thousands of villagers to leave their houses and come to the camp. It has been raining all day and ... we are afraid these people could get trapped in fresh flooding,” Pratyay Amrit, a senior disaster management official, said.
Hungry villagers clashed with camp officials in Madhepura, complaining that they were not getting food. “The children are hungry, they are crying for food,” a sobbing Zubeda Khatoon said. Authorities in Bihar said yesterday they have evacuated more than half a million people from flood hit districts.
