Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday termed as 'baseless', Union Home Minister Amit Shah's claim that the state government did not heed the Centre's warning regarding a possible natural calamity in Wayanad due to heavy rains.
Heavy rain continued to lash Chennai and other parts of Tamil Nadu on Wednesday, bringing residential neighborhoods and roads under knee-deep water and leading to traffic congestion besides affecting public transport services.
Pradhan also asserted that the fumes that were seen coming out was a 'technical' issue and there was no need to panic.
Five people were killed and about 50 missing following several incidents of cloudburst in Himachal Pradesh where rains washed away many houses, bridges and roads, officials said on Thursday.
The conditions that lead to landslides, including soil texture, soil moisture and slope are known, and it is important to put all this knowledge into an operational system, he said.
Two persons were rescued after the incident that occurred at 4.50 am in Shahbaz village, they said, adding that before the building collapsed, the authorities managed to evacuate 52 residents.
The operation went on for 66 hours after a giant 120 feet x 120 feet hoarding collapsed on a petrol pump in the Chheda Nagar area during gusty winds on Monday evening, the official said.
The police said that it cannot be ascertained whether the girl was raped until her body is found.
The death toll in the Ghatkopar hoarding collapse in Mumbai rose to 16 on Thursday with rescue personnel retrieving the bodies of a retired general manager of Air Traffic Control (ATC) and his wife, officials said.
At least five people were killed in separate rain-related incidents on Tuesday in Bengaluru, which has been reeling under incessant rains for the past three days causing widespread flooding in several residential areas and turning roads into virtual rivers.
The death toll in the devastating landslides in Kerala's Wayanad district rose to 167 on Wednesday, while 191 were missing even as the rescue teams intensified efforts to find survivors trapped under the debris on the second day of the search operations.
Swollen water bodies changed their course and flowed through inhabited areas, resulting in more destruction.
Two more bodies have been located under the debris at the site of a giant hoarding collapse in Mumbai as the search and rescue operation continued more than 40 hours after the incident, officials said on Wednesday.
As Cyclone Dana barrels toward the coasts of Odisha, threatening to impact nearly half of the state's population, the government is racing against time to execute a massive evacuation plan aimed at relocating about 10 lakh people in several coastal districts to safety. In West Bengal, the cyclone is set to bring heavy rainfall in several southern West Bengal districts, including Kolkata, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has said.
The cyclone, according to an IMD report early Sunday, is developing into a severe cyclonic storm over the Bay of Bengal and can potentially become a very severe cyclonic storm in the next 24 hours, S N Pradhan, the chief of NDRF said in New Delhi.
A total of 1,162 essential documents have been distributed among 872 persons at the camp, the district administration in Wayanad said.
Seven bodies have been recovered in the operation that continued through the night, Sachin GIDC police station inspector Jignesh Chaudhari said.
The body of an eight-year-old boy who had fallen into a stormwater drain in Guwahati on Thursday, was recovered about 4 km downstream in Rajgarh area, police said.
The administration is geared up for more showers as the India meteorological department has warned of heavy to very heavy rains with isolated extremely heavy rains in several districts of the state till Thursday morning.
Vijayan said the news that the SDMA had directed scientific institutions and scientists not to visit the disaster-affected Meppadi panchayat in Wayanad and not to express their opinions was misleading.
Due to heavy rains and waterlogging over the tracks at several locations on South Central Railway network, as many as 99 trains were cancelled and four trains were partially cancelled while 54 trains were diverted, an SCR official said.
The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) has directed its rescue teams to ensure that the country's major medical oxygen generation plants based in Odisha and West Bengal are 'running and alive' during Cyclone Yaas that is developing in the Bay of Bengal, a senior officer said.
Rescue operations in Kerala's Wayanad district resumed on Thursday, marking one of the largest efforts to save those stranded by the landslides that have hit the region.
'It was a war-like situation, but instead of enemy fire, we fought against the vagaries of nature,' says Major Seeta Shelke.
Our men are deputed in the dedicated control rooms of states so that we are on the same page with the local authority in terms of the information, work and tasking, he added.
Intermittent, widespread rains lashed Chennai and other regions of Tamil Nadu on Tuesday and the India meteorological department said the low pressure area over the Bay of Bengal has turned into a well-marked low pressure area and it is likely to become a depression.
In one of the worst natural disasters in Kerala, at least 123 persons were killed and 128 injured in massive landslides triggered by torrential rains in Wayanad on Tuesday. With hundreds trapped under the debris, sparking fears of mounting fatalities, rescue agencies were racing against time to pull out any survivors.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Wednesday that violence in Manipur is continuously declining and educational institutes along with businesses have opened in most parts of the state.
Heavy rains lashed Mumbai and its suburbs on Wednesday, causing flooding on roads and rail tracks and disrupting suburban train services as the south-west monsoon arrived in the city.
85 rescue and relief teams have been pre-positioned in 'vulnerable' states and all its 12 battalions across the country have been alerted and asked to be prepared to tackle any flood situation caused by heavy rains.
More than 4.5 lakh pilgrims paid their obeisance at the natural ice Shiva Lingam formation inside the cave shrine last year.
The situation in rain-battered Gujarat improved slightly on Thursday as the rainfall activity subsided, but Vadodara and some other parts of the state are still reeling under a flood-like situation due to overflowing rivers while the authorities continue the rescue and relief operations.
Some areas were under 10 to 12 feet of water, said health minister and government spokesperson Rushikesh Patel.
Some people broke down at the shock of seeing the cold and injured bodies of their loved ones, while others heaved a sigh of relief that their kin were not among the deceased.
Officials said around 1,300 pilgrims are stranded in Kedarnath, Bhimbali and Gaurikund, and are safe.
Rescue operations were underway on Friday to trace over 45 people missing following flash floods triggered by cloudbursts in three districts of Himachal Pradesh, officials said on Friday.
The 100-foot-tall illegal billboard fell at a petrol pump in Ghatkopar during dust storms and unseasonal rains that lashed Mumbai on Monday.
With their near and dear ones gone and staring at an uncertain future, survivors recount their most traumatic experience ever that unfolded in the wee hours of July 30.
As the low-pressure area in the south-eastern Arabian Sea intensified into a severe depression on Friday, heavy rains lashed many parts of Kerala and huge tidal waves started hitting low-lying coastal areas.
An NDRF team has a strength of about 45 personnel and each unit is equipped with tree and pole cutters, communication gadgets, inflatable boats and a small basic medical unit.
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