'When incidents of stone pelting at the aircraft occurred, the boys were careful that they continued with the rescue because finally we had to save lives.' A senior Indian Air Force officer, who is a veteran of flood rescue ops in Uttarakhand, Bihar, Gujarat and the Bombay deluge, tells Archana Masih/Rediff.com about the rescue operations in Kashmir, one of the first such efforts in a densely populated and urban area.
Former union minister and senior Congress leader Saifuddin Soz was hackled in one of the relief camps in Kashmir with flood victims expressing anger over alleged absence of state government officials during relief works.
The PIL filed by Aditya N Prasad also sought a direction to the Centre and other authorities concerned to prepare a standard operating procedure for rescue operations in mining.
Heavy rains lashed south and east central Gujarat causing flood like situation in localities alongside rivers flowing through Valsad, Navsari and Surat districts and killing at least five persons at two places, officials said on Tuesday.
Everyone at Chooralmala thought that the 1.30pm landslide would be the only one, and many had gone back to bed, hoping that others who screamed for help would be safe.
The prime minister telephoned Banerjee to take stock of the flood situation in West Bengal, and assured the chief minister of all central assistance to mitigate it, the bureaucrat said.
Gujarat continued to reel under the onslaught of torrential rains on Friday with the death toll mounting to 90.
Five people died in rain-related incidents in Delhi Friday as Monsoon arrived with a fury early in the morning, lashing the city with its highest rainfall in a single day of June in 88 years which brought it to a standstill with streets flooded, traffic in chaos and some commuters stranded on roads.
The T-72 tank with five soldiers on board sank due to flash floods while they were crossing the river.
The district administration has instructed tourists to postpone their visit to Dharamshala in view of the heavy rains.
Malayalam television channels aired the visuals captured on the CCTVs in some shops in Chooralmala, one of the hamlets completely destroyed in the disaster.
While Mumbai struggles with heavy rains for the past four days, torrential rain in Japan, unleashed floods and landslides resulting in the deaths of over 150 people. Rescuers in Japan are racing to find survivors after the country witnessed the country's worst weather disaster for 36 years.
After a brief suspension due to bad weather early in the morning, the rescue operations in rain-hit Uttarakhand resumed on Sunday on a war footing to evacuate 22,000 pilgrims still stranded in high altitude areas amid a MeT department warning of light to moderate rains in the region from Monday.
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.
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.
The human toll in the floods and relentless rain across the country reached almost 200 by Thursday, even as thousands in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Assam, Odisha, West Bengal, and elsewhere were forced out of their homes into temporary shelters.
The death toll is Jammu and Kashmir mounts to nearly 200 and thousands still wait to be evacuated.
Heavy rainfall is expected at isolated places in north Lakshadweep during the next 12 hours.
Anupam Kher reacts to the floods situation in Kashmir.
The Sikkim Government has confirmed that 14 people have died so far in the flash floods that occurred in Sikkim in the early hours of Wednesday.
No immediate relief appears in sight as the India Meteorological Department issued a red alert for six districts which have been already pounded by downpour, forecasting "extremely heavy" rainfall and recommending preventive actions.
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.
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.
The UNICEF said an estimated 2.4 million children have been affected by the recent floods in the country.
Rescue teams on Saturday began widening a hole drilled into an approach tunnel on the way to the possible location of over 30 people trapped inside a sludge-choked tunnel of the NTPC's Tapovan-Vishnugad hydel project after a flash flood ravaged the area on Sunday.
The National Disaster Response Force on Friday intensified its relief and rescue operations in the rain and flood-battered Chennai and its adjoining areas as it added 20 more teams for the job and rescued over 10,000 people till now.
The India Meteorological Department has said that the landfall process of Cyclone 'Biparjoy' has started in Saurashtra and Kutch regions of Gujarat. The landfall process will carry on till midnight with wind speeds reaching a maximum of 140 kilometres per hour, the IMD said.
He said scientists have noticed a trend of very deep cloud systems developing over the southeast Arabian Sea, and added that sometimes, these systems intrude into the land, like in 2019.
The SP of Chamoli district, which faced the brunt of the glacier break in Uttarakhand, provides insights about the rescue operations.
Originating from Vasudhara Tal, perhaps the largest glacial lake in Uttarakhand, the Dhauli Ganga flows in a meandering course, which takes it through the Nanda Devi National Park.
At least 28 people died in rain-related incidents Sunday as heavy downpours lashed north and northwest India, causing landslides, traffic chaos and house collapses, as well as a dam breach which inundated several villages in Haryana.
The aid will directly benefit 25,000 people from some of the worst hit areas of the state, adding a humanitarian expert from the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Operations has also been deployed to assess the situation in the state.
Flood victims have been fighting for survival and living in temporary shelters nearby railway tracks with lack of food items. They are yet to get any help from the government, reports M I Khan.
Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao announced Rs 10,000 as immediate relief to each flood-hit household in Hyderabad, lashed by incessant rains since last week, besides an assistance of Rs 1 lakh each to those whose houses were completely destroyed and Rs 50,000 for the partially damaged.
Rescuers pulled out more bodies from the muddy debris of disastrous landslide taking the toll to over 80.
Multiple teams of the force, with personnel wearing protective gear and helmets, were rushed to the Tapovan power project site from their 1st battalion base in Joshimath and the ITBP mountaineering and skiing institute located nearby in Auli to launch search and rescue works.
The Southern Naval command on Wednesday called off its 14-day long rescue operations in flood-hit Kerala, saying there were no more requests for evacuation as waters receding in affected areas.
The standing committee on water resources, tabled in Lok Sabha, said only Manipur, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand and erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir had enacted legislation, though delineation and demarcation of flood plains are yet to be undertaken.
The flood threat in Kashmir Valley on Tuesday reduced in view of the weather holding up over the past 24 hours resulting in substantial decrease in water level of river Jhelum, which is now flowing below the flood level.
Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu said efforts are on to rescue the 300 stranded people, and they could be airlifted as the weather clears. Power and water supply has been snapped in several areas.
