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Tsunami-level aid needed in flood-hit India

Flood-hit northern India is in dire need of international aid on the level of that seen after the 2004 Asian tsunami, a state official said yesterday.

A large swathe of the already desperately poor state of Bihar is likely to remain under water for several months, leaving authorities coping with at least a million people who have lost everything, officials and aid workers said.

“We will definitely need the support of international organizations and agencies, the same as after the tsunami [in 2004] or the Gujarat earthquake” in 2001, Bihar Disasters Minister Nitish Mishra said.

“It is not possible for just the government to have a complete rehabilitation policy on its own. Whatever more is available, we need it,” he said.

The flooding started on Aug. 18, when a river burst through defenses upstream in Nepal and changed course to cut across a large rural area in Bihar state.

Officials said work to fix the floodwalls and divert the Kosi river back to its normal course cannot begin before the rainy season ends next month, and may not even be completed before early next year.

About 600,000 people have already been evacuated from the flood plains, but 350,000 more still need to be plucked from roofs or isolated high ground and brought to safety, they say.

However aid workers said that in some areas the currents were still too strong, and that much of the food being dropped by air had landed in water.

MASSIVE NEED

“All the wells and water sources are gone. We foresee a scarcity of water, milk, food. Crops have been destroyed. Land will not be fit for cultivation for six to seven months after the waters recede,” said S.P. Singh, Red Cross chief in Bihar.

Aditi Kapur of the British aid group Oxfam said authorities were still struggling to come to terms with the disaster.

“The magnitude is greater than what the state has been able to handle. No one was prepared. More needs to be done,” she said.

UN agencies say a total of 3 million people have been affected by the disaster.

“A population of at least a million will be homeless and they may not get their homes back,” said Mukesh Puri, emergency specialist with the UN children’s agency UNICEF.

India lost more than 16,000 people in the 2004 tsunami, which killed a total of around 220,000 people, and suffered damage estimated by the UN at US$2.5 billion. The death toll from the latest floods is far lower — so far estimated at 100 plus dead — but the number left homeless is comparable.

SOS IGNORED

But the tragedy is not entirely nature’s doing. Experts and aid agencies blame government ineptitude for not only failing to warn people but also for mishandling relief.

In the most shocking example, SOS fax messages sent by engineers at the Kosi dam warning of impending disaster were ignored in Patna, the Mail Today newspaper said.

The faxes piled up on the designated bureaucrat’s desk because he was on leave and no deputy had been appointed. No one reacted even when warnings were sent to other officials, the paper said, calling for prosecutions for criminal negligence.

“We have come across such reports, and we will definitely look into this issue once all this is over,” Mishra said. “There should definitely be some accountability.”

Anger is mounting and stick-wielding victims have resorted to looting food warehouses and trucks in some areas.

The threat of disease is also rising, but the government says it could take months before people can return home from camps.

The monsoon comes every year and also caused severe flooding in Bihar last year, but authorities admit they were not prepared for the scale of the disaster.

“Neither us nor the people thought such a devastation could happen so suddenly,” Mishra said.

Aid agencies are unimpressed by the speed of the relief effort.

“On the ground, preparedness is missing in the current response,” ActionAid’s P.V. Unnikrishnan said. “Preparedness cannot be a knee-jerk reaction and currently preparing against disasters is not on the radar of the government.”
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