At least 15 people have died in heavy floods and landslides triggered by continuous rain for the last three days in Assam, where airforce helicopters, army, National Disaster Response Force and State Disaster Response Force have been pressed into service for rescue work, officials said.
Parts of Raigad, Ratnagiri districts in the coastal Konkan region and Kolhapur district in western Maharashtra, have been worst affected by the floods. Besides that, heavy rains have been pounding parts of Satara district.
Incessant showers lashed Mumbai and its neighbouring areas on Wednesday morning, leading to flooding in many low-lying areas and traffic snarls on roads.
Only traces of rainfall were recorded in a few areas of the national capital on Thursday which continued to experience sultry weather.
An Indian Navy vessel and an Air Force aircraft carrying nearly 1,000 tons of fresh water reached Male on Sunday as India mounted a major effort to help the Maldivian capital that is reeling from an acute shortage of drinking water after its lone desalination plant caught fire.
Karnataka suffered a crop loss in around 97,365 hectares out of the total bearing area of 2,26,244 hectares of coffee and spices plantations.
'There's also a possibility of the cyclonic system changing its course, thus avoiding a landfall in Odisha'
An assessments of 2,500 buildings carried out by more than 1,000 local engineers during the last four days have revealed that a fifth are no longer habitable and three-quarters need repairs before they can be considered safe.
Gale-force winds, heavy rainfall and high tidal waves swept the coastal belt of Kerala, Karnataka and Goa as Cyclone Tauktae hurtled northwards towards Gujarat on Sunday, leaving four people dead in Karnataka and two in Goa, damaging hundreds of houses, uprooting electricity poles and trees and forcing evacuation.
The MeT department warned of heavy to very heavy rainfall in Gangetic West Bengal till Saturday, ahead of Durga Puja festivities.
With flood waters receding, the armed forces have stepped up its rescue operations in Jammu and Kashmir
Restoration of road and tele-communication network in the Kashmir Valley, ravaged by floods, will take three to five days. The Centre has directed free flow of transport via Manali and Leh to Srinagar, the only available surface network, a top central government official said on Monday.
Out of 67 fishermen, 49 are from Tamil Nadu, 13 from Kerala, four from Assam and one from Andhra Pradesh, they said.
Twenty-four people, most of them attending a funeral, were killed and 17 others injured when the roof of a shelter at a cremation ground in Uttar Pradesh's Muradnagar collapsed on Sunday, police said.
Hundreds of people have logged on to social networking sites likes Facebook and twitter to share information on floods, which have created havoc in Jammu and Kashmir, and are even collecting aid for the victims.
With cyclone Phailin expected to make landfall in Odisha on Saturday, the state government mounted a massive operation to evacuate two lakh people from six coastal districts on Friday night
The location of the landfall is north of Dhamra and south of Bahanaga, close to Bahanaga block, on the coast, around 50 km of Balasore, he said.
Modi assured to extend all required assistance to the state to face the situation, the Chief Minister's office said.
Nine more bodies were recovered on Monday from debris of the under-construction multi-storeyed building in Chennai that collapsed on Friday, taking the toll in the tragedy to 20 while two persons were pulled out alive
The toll in Uttar Pradesh floods on Monday mounted to 41, with reports of 13 more deaths in the state where over 1,000 villages were affected by the flood waters of several rivers flowing above the danger mark.
The dam breach caused a flood-like situation in seven downstream villages, with as many as 12 houses being swept away.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram told reporters after the meeting that the situation in Uttarakhand is better than what it was on Tuesday and Food Minister K V Thomas is taking steps to rush more food grains to the flood-hit Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.
On his maiden visit to Beijing, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping during which the two leaders agreed to strengthen the all-weather friendship and the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
22 bodies, 13 from Kottayam district and 9 from Idukki were recovered from various rain-hit areas while National Disaster Response Force teams continued their rescue operations.
An unspecified number of people were evacuated from coastal areas of Odisha where Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara, Bhadrak and Balasore were likely to experience heavy rainfall accompanied by high-velocity winds, particularly on May 19 and 20, IMD Director General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said.
Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh visited the spot and said the rescue operation would continue till the last body was recovered.
The Indian Navy has a big role to play in support of our strategic objectives in the Indian Ocean. The increasing Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean is a matter of concern and need to be factored. Hence, the requirement of an Aircraft Carrier is a foregone conclusion, asserts Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
The situation in the state was 'extremely grave', said Vijayan, who spoke to Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and Home minister, Rajnath Singh, this morning seeking more central assistance for relief operations.
People in Srinagar trying to survive the fury of the floods, which have already claimed 200 lives, are angry and emotional. On Wednesday, four helicopters, carrying relief material, could not land after angry locals threatened to throw stones at them.
The storm is India's strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall in 20 years.
'You have to respect nature. You won't respect nature unless you see nature's fury.'
The CM announced an ex gratia relief of Rs four lakh for the deceased and Rs one lakh each to the injured and assured that the state government will bear all medical expenses.
Dhubri is the worst hit with over 8.72 lakh people affected, followed by Barpeta with more than 4.78 lakh people and Goalpara with around 4.28 lakh population.
As India's international role expands, so must our capabilities, says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
The district administration, with the help of National Disaster Response Force and Central Reserve Police Force, has intensified relief operation and rescued around 260 people.
Inclement weather badly hampered cremation of bodies and removal of debris at Kedarnath on Friday besides affecting distribution of relief in over 200 segregated villages where people have lost their homes and are faced with acute foodgrain shortage.
The death toll in the devastating earthquake that has rocked Nepal climbed to over 4,350 on Tuesday with more than 8,000 others injured, as Prime Minister Sushil Koirala admitted that the rescue and relief operations have not been effective.
The epicenter of the quake was Sonitpur and the quake occurred at 7.51 am at a depth of 17 kilometres, it said.
If the government had woken up on August 18, then a more planned evacuation was possible and most of the lakhs of people marooned today would not be there. It is clear that there has been a series of grave and criminal blunders that have led to this disaster of huge proportions. The trouble is, even now we do not know who people are whose neglect caused this disaster, and going by our track record we may never know who they are
State home minister said violation of rules has been noticed in the construction of the building.
