KARACHI, 28 June 2007 — Pakistani rescuers were trying their best to reach cyclone-hit villages to provide relief and rehabilitation to thousands of stranded villagers, while in neighboring India, snakes and scorpions hampered efforts to help storm victims.
Thousands of people were stranded on rooftops and tree branches yesterday as cyclone-spawned floods surged through towns and villages of Pakistan’s coastline.
In the torm-tossed Arabian Sea, Pakistan Navy yesterday rescued over hundred fishermen off Karachi coast.
Early rainy season storms in South Asia have killed nearly 400 people since late last week and more bad weather for at least parts of the region was on the way, weather officials said. Up to 60,000 people in the southwestern Pakistani province of Balochistan were affected by a cyclone that hit on Tuesday, killing at least 21 people.
“The situation is out of our hands, it’s out of control. The entire town has been inundated and people have taken refuge in tall buildings and trees,” Rauf Rind, the mayor of the town of Kach, told Reuters.
The Kach district was also in danger from an over-flowing dam, said provincial government spokesman Raziq Bugti.
Stretches of road and several bridges along the coast have been swept away while communications with worst-hit areas are patchy and much of the coast is without power, officials said.
“We are really facing difficulties in evacuating stranded residents,” said Bugti. “There’s no road links and we have just one option — that’s helicopters — but they can’t be used unless the sky is clear.” Scattered rain was expected until Thursday. Head of a provincial disaster management authority, Khuda Bakhsh Baloch, said about 35 villages had been inundated.
“Many of the houses were built of mud and they collapsed because of the water,” he said. Tropical Cyclone Yemyin hit Balochistan three days after another storm struck Karachi, killing about 230 people, many when fierce wind brought down slum houses.
Karachi was spared the full force of the cyclone but nevertheless five people were killed, an ambulance service official said.
Power was restored to most of Karachi by yesterday but up to 10 percent of the city was still without electricity, a power corporation official said. The navy rescued 146 fishermen, including eight whose boat sank, but there was no information on the crew of another boat that sank, a navy spokesman said.
A ship had been sent to rescue the crew of a foreign merchant vessel, he added.
Sindh Relief Commissioner Anwar Haider said that the local administration had helped thousands of people in the coastal areas of Karachi, Badin, Thatta, Keti Bander and Shah Bandar. “Most of them have returned to their home as the cyclone is over now,” he added.
In neighboring India, authorities have been evacuating tens of thousands of people threatened by flooding as the toll from havoc wrecked by the arrival of the rainy season topped 150.
Thousands of villages have been left without basic services in the worst-hit southern state, Andhra Pradesh, and some villagers were stranded on rooftops for a fifth day.
The town of Kurnool, 215 km southwest of the state capital, Hyderabad, was badly hit by flooding. “Rain water has entered into protected drinking water systems in over 500 villages and four towns,” said district chief M. Danakishore. Snakes and scorpions were hindering efforts by soldiers trying to clear debris from 1,200 km of roads and plugging breaches in 120 reservoirs, authorities said.
Indian weather officials forecast heavy rain on the east coast, with a storm in the Bay of Bengal due to hit Andhra Pradesh and Orissa state in the next 48 hours. Fishermen have been advised not to go to sea and danger signs have been raised at ports.
