BOMBAY/AHMEDABAD/HYDERABAD, 9 August 2006 — Swirling floodwaters inundated several towns and cities in western and southern India yesterday as the military deployed helicopters and boats to help hundreds of thousands of marooned people.
More than 150 people have been killed in flooding due to incessant rains over the past week in the western states of Gujarat and Maharashtra and the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.
Indian television pictures showed waist-high water in the streets of Surat, the main industrial town of Gujarat and the nerve-center of India’s flourishing diamond polishing trade.
Roadside kiosks and temples were submerged and water lapped at the walls of multi-story apartment blocks.
“I am not able to reach my house. It is completely submerged in water,” Ajay Bania, a Surat resident, said by phone.
Over 200,000 people have been shifted to safer ground in the Surat region as water entered villages and low-lying areas.
Hundreds of industrial units have been shut down and schools and colleges closed in Surat. Rail and road traffic remained suspended.
Television images of Nanded and Nasik towns in neighboring Maharashtra state showed vast areas covered in sheets of water with only a few trees standing.
In Andhra Pradesh, the death toll due to torrential rain over the past five days climbed to 106 yesterday with 12 new deaths reported from across the state.
Officials in Andhra Pradesh said they were concerned about the threat of infectious diseases as water had stagnated at many places. Nearly 1,200 villages were marooned and 1.2 million people displaced in eight districts, they added.
More heavy rains were likely in the state due to a depression over the Bay of Bengal.
“High tides in the Bay of Bengal have delayed drainage of floodwater into the sea, hampering relief operations,” said Debabratha Kanta, a disaster management official.
Rescuers are racing to get food and clean water to hundreds of thousands left homeless in flooded states, officials said yesterday. In Andhra Pradesh state, 472,000 are affected by the floods, senior administration official Priyadarshini told AFP.
More than 600 villages in three districts remained under water and a total of 296 relief camps had been set up to house those displaced by the flooding, caused by annual monsoon rains, she said.
Some 283 boats, including a naval craft, had been deployed to rescue marooned people while seven helicopters were dropping food, drinking water, milk sachets and medicines to those trapped by the floodwaters, she said.
The rains were easing and water levels starting to drop, she added.
In Gujarat state, the authorities have relocated 150,000 people from Surat, an official from the state flood control room said.
“Indian Army, air force and paramilitary personnel have been asked to assist the relief efforts, distributing food, clean water and moving people from submerged areas,” said the official.
Thousands of people in Surat were forced to move out of their houses after water was released from the swollen Ukai dam located upstream on the Tapti River, which flows through the town.
“The water level in the dam in just one foot below the danger mark at 344 feet (105 meters) and we have to do something soon to relieve the situation,” the official said.
“We have more than 300 army personnel equipped with 10 boats and life jackets to evacuate and rescue people trapped on roof-tops of submerged houses in water-logged areas,” he said.
“We also have four air force helicopters (to drop) food packets and clean water sachets to the people,” he added.
In Maharashtra, thousands left homeless by the monsoon rains in 15 of the states’ 35 districts were being airdropped food and medicines, a state official said.
In the Maoist insurgency-affected tiny central state of Chattisgarh, 20,000 people had been evacuated to 19 relief camps, an official said.
The latest deaths took the nationwide death toll linked to the annual monsoon rains since mid-May to 535, 155 of them in the past week alone, according to an AFP tally.
