Workers began a massive cleanup and rescuers searched for survivors under mountains of debris in western India after record monsoon rains claimed 920 lives, officials said yesterday.
Soldiers, police and rescue workers used bulldozers, cranes and their bare hands to remove boulders and rubble from areas hit by landslides as 130,000 city workers set about repairing pot-holed roads, clogged drains and electricity and drinking water services.
R.S Pardeshi of the Police Control Room in Mumbai said the bodies of 37 people were recovered from the city overnight, taking the financial hub's death toll from the floods to 407 and that of Maharashtra state to around 920.
PHOTO: AP
"The total death toll in the state, including Mumbai city, is more than 900," said S. Jadhav, a senior police official with the Police Control Room.
State deputy chief minister R.R. Patil on Friday, however, put the toll at 696 but did not explain why his figures differed from those of the police.
Soldiers used their bare hands, spades and shovels in the southern Mumbai region of Konkan to recover bodies and clear debris in one of the worst-hit areas, Jui village.
Rescue workers were searching for more bodies in Kotiwala in western Mumbai where flash floods left more than 40 dead.
Mumbai received 944.2mm of rainfall in a one-day period ending mid-morning Wednesday, the most rainfall ever recorded in a single day in India.
Heavy rains accompanied by strong winds continued to lash the city yesterday and hampered recovery operations.
Flights from Mumbai's airport, India's busiest, were impacted for a few hours yesterday after an Air India Boeing 747 from Bangalore skidded off a wet runway, officials said. None of the 333 passengers were hurt.
Johny Joseph, the municipal commissioner of Mumbai, said he hoped the city would recover completely within a few days.
"This disaster is unprecedented in the history of Mumbai," he said. "The crisis worsened due to a combination of high tide, flooding and continuous rainfall. Rail and road traffic was disrupted totally and is almost restored now."
"The biggest challenge of `Operation Recovery' now is to the clear the mud, muck and garbage that has been piled on the roads and pavements. It must be removed on a war footing," he said.
Thousands of bloated animal carcasses also littered the streets of Mumbai, fuelling fears of disease with estimates saying the carcasses of 17,000 goats and more than 1,000 buffaloes and cows were scattered throughout the city's western and eastern suburbs.
S.G. Danle, deputy municipal commissioner of Mumbai, said 30,000 health workers spread out into the city and its suburbs to prevent the outbreak of water-borne diseases: "The key words here are prevention, education and communication."
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