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.
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.
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.
More than 170 personnel have been tested till now after they returned to their base in Cuttack, Odisha, from the cyclone-affected West Bengal.
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 SDMA said the ill-fated private boat was carrying 73 passengers, including eight crew.
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.
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.
Incessant downpour battered several states, including Kerala, Maharashtra and Karnataka, on Friday, with landslips and floods throwing normal life out of gear.
While two lives were "tragically" lost before the landfall of the cyclone, not a single human life was lost post the landfall in Gujarat.
A photograph of Kumar snapped while scurrying across the bridge with the child two days ago, has gone viral on the social media with people showering praise on him.
'You don't know what you are going to encounter every 10-20 metres.' 'These mountains are unpredictable.'
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.
Six Indian Air Force aircraft carrying relief material, rescue workers and doctors landed in Leh on Saturday to provide succour to the people of the region affected by cloudburst and flash floods.
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.
A Bolero car still could not be traced, he added.
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.
'Other countries go out on a limb to save even a single life.' 'What to talk of civilian accidents and disasters, even our military does not have a priority for Combat Search and Rescue,' says Group Captain P I Muralidharan (retd).
The CISF has said it was the 'first responder' to rescue passengers on Friday as its Assistant Sub Inspector Ajit Singh was on runway patrol when the Air India Express flight from Dubai with 190 people on board overshot the table top runway, fell into a 35-foot valley and broke into two.
Four teams of the National Disaster Response Force have been deployed for relief and rescue operations in the worst flood-affected districts of Assam. The floods have affected nearly two lakh people and claimed four lives. According to the NDRF control room, relief and rescue operations in the districts of Lakhimpur, Dhubri, Sonitpur and Jorhat have been assisted by the force by deploying one team in each of these districts.
At least eight persons were killed in a cloudburst near the holy cave shrine of Amarnath in south Kashmir Himalayas on Friday evening, damaging 25 tents and three community kitchens, officials said.
'I saw people hanging on to the bridge and later falling into the water as their grip loosened and they slipped into the water.'
Many families in the affected area are finding it hard to sever their emotional ties with their homes and move out.
Teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were roped in to rescue hundreds of stranded people, they said.
The massive flood in the Dhauli Ganga river triggered by a glacial burst in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district on Sunday came as a grim reminder of the Kedarnath deluge of 2013 which led to widespread devastation in the ecologically fragile Himalayan region.
Heavy rains lashed wide parts of Jammu and Kashmir over the past couple of days, triggering landslides at many places and raising the level of water bodies.
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.
Water level of the river Kali has been continuously rising and reached the danger level.
The death toll in the Uttarkashi bus accident rose to 26 with the recovery of one more body after which the search and rescue operation was concluded, officials said on Monday.
Officials in districts bordering Maharashtra have been asked to maintain contact with their counterparts there regarding the release of water from dams, following reports of heavy rains in the neighboring states.
Ten persons were feared drowned when a boat carrying about 25 people capsized in Punpun river near Karwa village in Bihar's Arwal district on Wednesday.
'You are talking as if Patna has been the only place which has suffered on account of heavy rain. What happened in Mumbai and America when these places were battered by similar downpour?'
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.
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.
'Me and my boys had never ever thought in our wildest dreams that we would be taking part in a rescue mission of this kind.' IAF Veteran Air Commodore Nitin Sathe, a helicopter pilot himself, reports on how the air force rescued those trapped in the Deoghar cable cars disaster last fortnight.
Major rivers in Ratnagiri district, including Jagbudi, Vashishti, Kodavali, Shastri, Bav are flowing above the danger level. As a result, Khed, Chiplun, Lanja, Rajapur, Sangameshwar towns and nearby areas have been affected and residents are being shifted to safer places.
Relatively a lesser degree of damage, including those to houses marked the landfall of cyclonic storm Mandous in Tamil Nadu and at least four people were killed in rain-related incidents, authorities said in Chennai on Saturday.
The state government asked the local administration to shift people from low-lying areas in Vadodara if needed as water entered into houses in several localities.
A five-storey structure in Behrampada slum, Bandra East collapsed killing six people on Thursday afternoon.
