The Indian army and navy stepped up efforts yesterday to rescue hundreds of thousands of people marooned by floods, while rising river levels also rang alarm bells in Bangladesh.
In India’s impoverished eastern state of Bihar, villagers have been living on rooftops for days, while others are eating plants and leaves after exhausting food stocks.
Aid agencies said the Bihar government should have done more to anticipate the disaster and plan relief operations in a region hit by monsoon flooding every year.
PHOTO: EPA
“Lessons from the past disasters should be kept in mind while planning response,” ActionAid said in a statement. “A long-term comprehensive response is necessary to deal with relief, recovery and disaster preparedness.”
Three million people have been displaced from their homes and at least 90 killed by floods in Bihar, officials say, after the Kosi river burst a dam in Nepal, swamping hundreds of villages in Bihar and destroying 100,000 hectares of farmland.
In Bihar, hundreds of boats are being used to evacuate people but more are needed, while heavy rains over the past few days have hampered rescue and relief operations, officials said.
“Such is the extent of devastation that the forces deployed are proving too small,” Pratyay Amrit, a senior state disaster management official, said yesterday.
The army, which had already deployed five columns of around 120 men, sent in another 14, officials said yesterday, while three naval companies were also asked to help.
The situation on the ground was getting desperate.
“We don’t have any more food grain stocks left and me and my family are all chewing plants and leaves to stay alive,” Mohan Sharma said by telephone from Supaul district.
TV pictures showed people fighting to get places in boats, as soldiers in life jackets tried to restore order.
More than 467,000 people have been evacuated so far, but there are thousands still marooned. Activists and local media say the death toll could be many times higher than official estimates.
Some specialists have blamed the floods on heavier monsoon rains caused by global warming, while others say authorities have failed to take preventive measures and improve infrastructure.
The UN warned that “the heat, combined with limited supplies of safe drinking water and poor hygiene conditions, poses a great risk of water and vector-borne diseases.”
In one camp set up at a school in Saharsa district — one of the worst hit of the five flooded districts in Bihar — a nurse was trying to treat the sick armed with just one packet of paracetamol tablets.
In India’s northeastern state of Assam, rising rivers broke mud embankments and swamped more than 100 villages, forcing 50,000 people from their homes.
Two people drowned overnight, raising the death toll in the northeast region to 34.
In Bangladesh, about half a million people were marooned after several rivers in the north and central districts broke their banks and swamped villages and farmlands.
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