The total number of people killed in flooding and landslides in the state this year has gone up to 76. While 50 people were killed in inundation, 26 died due to landslides.
A major fire broke out inside the industrial area of Dombivli in Thane after a boiler exploded at the plant of a chemical company.
The 41 workers trapped in Uttarakhand's Silkyara tunnel for the last 11 days are likely to be rescued in the next few hours or by tomorrow, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) member Lt Gen (retd) Syed Ata Hasnain said on Thursday evening.
About 1.82 lakh people have been evacuated to safe places by the rescue teams in last 48 hours.
Very heavy rains are expected over north Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, east Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Sikkim in the next 48 hours, with cyclonic storm Phailin now closer to the Chattisgarh-Odisha border, the National Disaster Management Authority has said.
The pictures and videos of the locals wading through waist deep water in Bawana JJ colony area, waterlogged houses, school and hospital went viral on social media even as teams of engineers from Haryana and Delhi worked on a war footing to plug the breach.
Relief Commissioner Alok Pandey told reporters that the government is constantly working to ensure that there is no loss of life due to the weather phenomenon.
National Disaster Response Force teams rescued more than 50 passengers including 16 badly trapped from the mangled bogies of Patna-Indore Express which derailed in Kanpur during the wee hours on Sunday.
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.
The storm is likely to impact Mumbai, Thane and other coastal districts of Maharashtra like Raigad and Palghar along with Valsad, Navsari, Surat, Bhavnagar and Bharuch districts of Gujarat and Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. Preparations for the impending cyclone were discussed at a meeting of the National Crisis Management Committee (NCMC), headed by Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, a home ministry statement said.
Hundreds of people are facing a shortage of food, safe drinking water and sanitation in Kathmandu following the natural disaster, according to eyewitnesses.
The Odisha government is preparing for Cyclone Phailin -- which is expected to hit the east coast on Saturday evening -- on a war footing.
In the last 24 hours, eight people have died after drowning in flood waters -- two each in Barpeta and Karimganj districts, one each in Darrang, Hailakandi, Nalbari and Sonitpur districts and eight people are still missing.
As we brace for unprecedented rates of urbanisation, it is crucial to ensure that illegal constructions and unauthorised land use are curbed, asserts Amit Kapoor.
The cyclone is expected to make landfall on Thursday evening as a 'very severe cyclonic storm' with maximum wind speed reaching up to 150 kilometres per hour, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said.
The floods have also damaged crops in 2 lakh hectares of land.
Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde led the nation in paying tributes to the twenty bravehearts, who died in Tuesday's chopper crash while rescuing stranded people in flood-ravaged Uttarakhand.
'The Weather Channel argues that India faces the gravest challenge: Climate change-induced health vulnerability.' 'This is an issue often neglected, alerts Claude Arpi: "Prolonged summers, unpredictable rains, floods, droughts, and rising sea levels are the harsh realities of climate change in the country. These factors increase the frequency and severity of illnesses, pushing people into poverty, and forcing migration".'
An alert has been sounded across Assam as cyclone 'Mahasen' is likely to hit the northeastern states on Thursday night, officials have said. All boats and ferry services on Brahmaputra have been closed for the next three days and fishermen have been directed not to venture out to the river.
Thirteen teams of the National Disaster Response Force and three of the State Disaster Response Force were deployed in vulnerable districts of the state, a disaster management department report said.
The apex court urged the central government to update the drought management manual by December 31.
The flood situation affected nearly 26.5 lakh people across 28 districts.
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.
With this, the death count in the August 2 night tragedy has gone up to 28, while 12 people are still missing.
A total of 1.79 lakh hectare agricultural land was submerged and around 90 per cent of rhino habitats -- the Kaziranga National Park and the Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary -- are under water.
The IMD director said, the cyclonic storm Tauktae in the Arabian sea is moving away from the Kerala coast and is now approaching the Karnataka coast.
Many families in the affected area are finding it hard to sever their emotional ties with their homes and move out.
The intensity of Cyclone Phailin on Sunday reduced significantly to 90-100 kilometres per hour at Odisha's Gopalpur where the cyclone hit at a speed of over 200 kmph on Saturday night.
Assam's flood situation remained critical on Tuesday with over 6.71 lakh people affected in 20 districts in the second wave of flooding this year, as the Indian Air Force (IAF) rescued 13 stranded fishermen from the severely-hit Dibrugarh district, an official said.
"The international community should get onboard so that the environmental balance is not destroyed," he said.
The death toll has climbed to 12 in the first wave of flood in Assam this year.
Since January this year, there have been 983 incidents of forest fire in the state affecting 1,292 hectares of land, they said.
The cyclone ravaged adjacent coasts of the state and Bangladesh between Sagar Island and Khepupara, near the southwest of Mongla in the neighbouring country, after its landfall process began at 8.30 pm on Sunday.
The police said the child was shifted to a hospital in Indi where he was given preliminary treatment and was later shifted to a district hospital. He is currently stated to be stable, they said.
The number of subsidence-affected homes rose to 678 while 27 more families were evacuated to safety, a bulletin from the Disaster Management Authority in Chamoli said, adding so far 82 families have been shifted to safe locations in the town.
The court also directed that the NDRF should be trained and equipped to tackle the drought-like situation.
Teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were roped in to rescue hundreds of stranded people, they said.
What happened in Bengaluru is a wake-up call, no celebration of sport should ever come at the cost of human life, asserts veteran cricket correspondent K R Nayar.
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.
