Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi on Friday claimed that the state has achieved its 'Zero Casualty Mission' as there has been no report regarding any loss of human life or injury in the severe cyclonic storm Dana which made landfall in the coast on Thursday night.
More than 150 express/passenger trains running through South Eastern Railway jurisdiction have been cancelled in view of the severe cyclonic storm, an SER official said.
Pradhan also asserted that the fumes that were seen coming out was a 'technical' issue and there was no need to panic.
The construction of a Bailey bridge to connect the landslide-hit areas, where several people are believed to be stranded, alongside the deployment of sniffer dogs and over 1,000 rescuers from Central and state emergency response teams conducting massive search operations, constitutes one of the largest rescue efforts in the Wayanad, devastated by a deadly calamity.
They said at least four such cases are being looked into by the anti-terror agency officials.
The family members of the missing persons who have been camping at the site for the past seven days have now lost hope and are praying for the recovery of bodies to perform last rites.
Rain-related incidents claimed nine more lives in Gujarat, taking the death toll to 16 in two days, while another 8,500 people were relocated and rescued from flood-affected areas with rains continuing to lash some parts of the state for the fourth consecutive day on Wednesday, officials said.
The building had a motor workshop and warehouse on the ground floor, a medical godown on the first floor and a cutlery warehouse on the second floor.
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.
The Wayanad district authorities said people from residential areas in the affected places were being shifted to safer locations.
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.
The cyclonic storm is likely to make landfall between Bhitarkanika National Park and Dhamra Port in Odisha early Friday with wind speeds of up to 120 kilometres per hour (kmph), it said.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
The police said that it cannot be ascertained whether the girl was raped until her body is found.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Swollen water bodies changed their course and flowed through inhabited areas, resulting in more destruction.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
'It was a war-like situation, but instead of enemy fire, we fought against the vagaries of nature,' says Major Seeta Shelke.
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.
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.
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.
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