Perilous
Times and Climate Change
Severe Storms kills 10 in India, 33 fishing boats missing
(AFP)
KOLKATA — Ten people died and 33 fishing boats went missing on
Friday during monsoon storms in eastern India which flattened
hundreds of homes and flooded the city of Kolkata, officials said.
Police said the deaths occurred in rain-related accidents across
West Bengal, where 33 fishing trawlers and about 500 crew were
also reported missing by a local fishing association.
Weather department official Gokul Chandra Debnath said the state
capital Kolkata, where the downpour overwhelmed the inadequate and
poorly maintained drainage system, recorded 10 centimetres (four
inches) of rain on Friday.
"The city collapsed because we were not prepared for such a
calamity at the beginning of the monsoon," Kolkata mayor Sovan
Chatterjee said, adding an emergency response centre had been set
up to help those stranded.
Senior police official Surojit Kar Purakayastha said at least 10
people were killed in the storms and heavy rains across the state.
Among those killed were four members of a family who died when a
landslide flattened their home in mountainous Kurseong region and
four others who were swept away after their boat sank in Kolkata's
Hoogly river, he said.
Local fishermen's welfare association president Bijon Maity told
AFP by telephone that 33 trawlers in the Bay of Bengal had gone
missing during the afternoon.
"Each trawler has at least 16 fishermen," he said, meaning at
least 528 men were unaccounted for.
During storms in West Bengal, many captains find themselves unable
to return to port and take refuge with their boats and crews along
the coast.
"We have urged the (state) chief minister Mamata Banerjee to take
necessary steps to trace the missing trawlers," Maity said.
India has forecast a "normal" monsoon this year that could boost
food production and ease high inflation.
The strength of the annual June-September downpour is vital to
hundreds of millions of farmers and to economic growth in Asia's
third-largest economy which gets 80 percent of its annual rainfall
during the monsoon season.