13 million hit by floods, India swamped
Pastor Dale Morgan
13 million hit by floods, India swamped *
AHMEDABAD, India, Aug 10 (AFP) Aug 10, 2006
Thirteen million people across west and south India were still hit by
floods Thursday, officials said, but water levels in one city which had
faced total inundation were beginning to recede.
Border guards joined the army in a huge rescue effort in Surat city.
Officials said the number killed since the floods hit western Gujarat
and Maharashtra and southern Andhra Pradesh states nine days ago was now
240 with 179 missing.
The home ministry said it rushed units of the Border Security Force and
some 1,000 personnel of the National Disaster Rescue Force to Surat in
Gujarat Thursday in a bid to help its 3.5 million residents marooned in
the inundated city.
The air force rushed a flotilla of helicopters to support border guards,
soldiers and the coastguard in plucking people from rooftops and
dropping supplies in Surat.
Conditions were beginning to ease Thursday afternoon and authorities
were able to reduce the amount of water they have been releasing from
the nearby Ukai dam into a river flowing through the city, an official said.
"The situation is improving as the waters have started receding due to
less release of water from Ukai and the completion of high tide in the
sea," said Surat administrator Vatsala Vasudevan, who estimated that 50
percent of the city remained under water.
Air force spokesman Wing Commander Tarun Singha said helicopters were
working round-the-clock in Surat, which accounts for 70 percent of
India's polished diamond exports and boasts some of the country's
largest textile houses.
"We are losing count of sorties or tonnage of relief sent as we are
throwing in every aircaft that we are getting," Singha said from the
city of Bhavnagar, across the Gulf of Khambhat from coastal Surat, from
where the rescue is being coordinated.
"In fact, the entire armed forces is now in action out there," Singha
told AFP as Gujarat state sought 20 billion rupees (444 million dollars)
in emergency federal government handouts.
Gujarat Revenue Minister Kaushik Patel said 10 million people were
"seriously affected" by floods in the rain-soaked state and more than
5,200 Surat residents have been saved from imminent death, the Press
Trust of India news agency reported.
Hundreds of thousands of residents managed to move out under their own
steam from Surat before it was cut off from the rest of Gujarat, where
floods have shut down gas extraction since Tuesday.
"Papa, help... water is gushing into our house," read a desperate SMS of
a Surat schoolgirl identified by a television scroll only as Rumni, as
the first of around 1,000 medics sent to the disaster zone made their
first foray into the waterlogged city.
A military powerboat alerted by the frantic SOS rescued the child and
her mother just in time, the army said.
According to Nanubhai Vasani, ex-chief of the Gujarat Diamond
Association, the industry was daily losing 1.3 billion rupees as most
diamond merchants were perched atop their homes and their premises
submerged by swirling floodwaters.
In adjoining Mahrashtra, more than 350,000 flood-hit people had been
evacuated from 15 of its 35 districts and thousands of others were
living off food dropped by the air force, officials said.
The military was also out in southern inundated Andhra Pradesh state,
where 3.1 million people have been hit by the floods, provincial chief
minister Rajshekhar Reddy said.
With the latest deaths, the national flood-related toll since the
monsoons first struck India mid-May has risen to 617, according to an
AFP tally.