At least 12 passengers were killed and two others missing after a Maharashtra state transport bus fell into the Narmada river from a bridge in Madhya Pradesh's Dhar district on Monday, officials said.
Torrential rains pounded several parts of Chennai triggering a deluge completely disrupting normal life as army was deployed tonight in two suburban areas to undertake rescue on a war footing.
"This is our most massive deployment in any flood disaster till date. Now we have close to 1,600 personnel with 21 officers and 200 rubberised inflatable boats. We have rescued over 16,000 people to safer locations till now," the DG said.
The Centre on Friday assured all help to flood-ravaged Assam in dealing with the crisis situation in the state where over 8.5 lakh people have been rendered homeless and 22 lives lost so far.
The rescue personnel had launched an operation to reach Sujith Wilson and pull him out of the borewell into which he had fallen on Friday evening while he was out playing nearby. More than six crews of the National Disaster Response Force as well as the State Disaster Response Force have been working to rescue the two-year-old but are yet to reach him.
A total of 86 metres have to be drilled vertically to prepare an escape passage. Pipes of 1.2 metres in diameter have to be laid vertically through the top of the tunnel on which work began on Sunday as a second option to reach the stranded labourers.
As many as 21,080 villagers from Vasai, Palghar, Dahanu and Talasari talukas, which are likely to be affected by the cyclonic storm, have been shifted to safer places, district collector Dr Kailas Shinde said.
Three teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were sent to provide help to the quake-hit region on February 7 following Prime Minister Modi's directive to offer all possible assistance under 'Operation Dost'.
The incident took place around 2.20 pm when a part of Bohala Apartment, a residential complex near Khar Gymkhana, caved in.
Flash floods triggered by incessant rains have claimed 26 lives in Gujarat in the past 48 hours while four lives have been lost in Rajasthan, authorities said on Wednesday.
The five-storey building -- Tareq Garden -- in Mahad town, around 170 km from Mumbai, collapsed on Monday evening. According to a police official, the rescue operation was called off around 11.30 am on Wednesday.
Missing reports of 205 persons have been registered at Joshimath police station so far.
They have been deployed to foil suspicious activities at the border in Punjab.
Four persons were arrested on Monday in connection with the collapse of the cable suspension bridge on the Machchu river in Morbi in Gujarat in which 134 people were killed, the police said.
The Army on Sunday deployed four columns and two medical teams in the rescue of people affected by a massive flood in the Dhauli Ganga river after a part of the Nanda Devi glacier broke off at Joshimath in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, officials said.
The Centre said that there was no legal provision to declare a disaster as a national calamity, amid demands for declaring the floods as a national disaster.
In an unprecedented measure, the Maharashtra government requested defence officials to arrange airlift of the stranded passengers of the 17412 Mahalaxmi Express.
Local train services came to a halt between Badlapur and Ambarnath section in Maharashtra's Thane district adjoining Mumbai due to water-logging on railway tracks after heavy rains, officials said.
Heavy downpour continued in various parts of Gujarat on Tuesday and six people died in rain-related incidents in the last 24 hours, raising the toll to 69 since June 1, officials said.
The Yamuna surged to a record 208.48 metres at 8 am, the Central Water Commission said on Thursday, adding that it is likely to rise to 208.75 metres by 4 pm.
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.
"On August 16 night, just as we reached an abandoned government hospital for rest after four days of non-stop work, the local police officer, villagers and NDRF (National Disaster Response Force) officials came to us, asking to save the life of a woman who had just given birth," he said.
The DG said the maximum of four teams of the NDRF have been positioned in Kutch district and the Gujarat government has done an in-depth evacuation exercise as part of which fishing boats have been anchored, big ships have been sent to the high seas so that they are not affected by the tidal waves, more than 4,000 hoarding have been taken down so that they don't become deadly flying objects as strong winds blow.
Cyclone Biparjoy made landfall near Jakhau Port in Gujarat on Thursday evening with a wind speed of 115-125 kmph gusting to 140 kmph as heavy rains lashed the coastal region, where several areas plunged into darkness due to power cuts and a large number of trees, electric poles and hoardings got uprooted.
Rescue teams from India and 33 other countries were on Saturday asked by Nepal to leave as it prepared to launch massive operations to rehabilitate millions of uprooted victims of the devastating temblor that has killed at least 7,365 people, including 41 Indians.
The 15-member team, equipped with specialised diving equipment including a re-compression chamber and remotely operated vehicles capable of searching underwater, went straightway to the mine site in the remote Lumthari village in East Jaintia Hills district.
Three more bodies were recovered from the National Thermal Power Corporation's flood-ravaged Tapovan-Vishnugad hydel project site on Saturday taking the toll in the February 7 glacial disaster in Uttarakhand to 65, officials said.
The injured -- 130 -- cannot go back to work nor do they have homes to return to. Many of them refuse to leave the hospital while some of their relatives sleep in the hospital corridors. Apart from their physical injuries, the trauma of seeing their family members swept away haunts them as does the loss of all their possessions. But the BJP-Sena government remains indifferent to this human crisis.
The Indian Army has been called for rescue operation and four people have been rescued till now.
More than 170 personnel have been tested till now after they returned to their base in Cuttack, Odisha, from the cyclone-affected West Bengal.
'You don't know what you are going to encounter every 10-20 metres.' 'These mountains are unpredictable.'
The SDMA said the ill-fated private boat was carrying 73 passengers, including eight crew.
While two lives were "tragically" lost before the landfall of the cyclone, not a single human life was lost post the landfall in Gujarat.
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 number of those rescued has gone up to 25, with five more persons being pulled alive out from the debris since Monday night, police said. The dead include 11 children, aged between two to 15 years, an official said.
Many villages were cut off as several roads connecting them were inundated.
Rescue workers waged a grim battle with a hostile weather and difficult terrain, looking for signs of life under the monstrous heap of mud and stones on Thursday at the landslide-hit Malin village, where 41 bodies have been pulled out till now amid fading hopes of more survivors.
Nine more people have died as heavy rains lashed Uttar Pradesh for the third day, taking the death toll to 28, while a red alert has been sounded on Tuesday in six districts including the worst-hit Barabanki and Gonda.
While Ekta Bhardwaj, 31, died Thursday night, the body of Sunita Srivastava was recovered on Friday, officials said, adding that operations by rescue personnel at the incident site are still on.
Incessant downpour battered several states, including Kerala, Maharashtra and Karnataka, on Friday, with landslips and floods throwing normal life out of gear.
