Floods leave 1.5 million homeless in eastern India
Pastor Dale Morgan
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Sunday September 3, 4:35 PM Reuters
*Floods leave 1.5 million homeless in eastern India*
By Sanjaya Jena
BHUBANESWAR, India (Reuters) - Flooding triggered by monsoon rains in
the past few days have left 1.5 million people homeless and damaged
thousands of acres of paddy crop in the eastern Indian state of Orissa,
officials said on Sunday.
Over 20,000 people were evacuated after hundreds of villages were cut
off. Army troops were evacuating more villagers from coastal districts
with the authorities braced for more rain.
"We are bothered about the fresh formation of a low pressure over the
Bay of Bengal and are closely monitoring its movement," Subash Pani, the
state's seniormost bureaucrat, told Reuters.
The flood victims, with their houses submerged, were living in makeshift
tents and surviving on dry food air-dropped by relief workers, witnesses
said.
Hundreds of people are killed every year in South Asia during the
June-September monsoon season and millions displaced from their homes or
marooned in their villages.
HEAVY DAMAGE
Monsoon rains have caused widespread damage this year.
Hundreds of people have been killed in western and southern India and
millions left homeless due to flooding. At least 140 people have been
killed and thousands left homeless in the western desert state of
Rajasthan in the past two weeks.
In Nepal, at least 50 people died last week in flash floods. Thousands
of people have been evacuated to dry areas while officials are braced
for any outbreak of diseases.
Landslides and flash floods have also affected thousands of people in
Pakistan.
In Orissa, continuous rains and flash floods in the past three months
have already killed 70 people and crippled road and electricity
networks, officials said.
In restive Indian Kashmir, authorities declared a flood alert on Sunday
after the Himalayan region's main rivers flowed above the danger mark,
flooding villages and damaging crops.
Landslides triggered by incessant rains blocked a vital 300-km (186
mile) national highway linking Srinagar, the region's summer capital,
with the rest of the country, officials said.
(Additional reporting by Sheikh Mushtaq in SRINAGAR)