Eight people were killed and over 60 injured on Monday when a huge iron hoarding collapsed on a petrol pump in Ghatkopar area of Mumbai amid rain and gusty wind, while several others are feared trapped, officials said.
'These are people whom very few give importance and they were doing a mammoth job for the nation.'
A dozen people lost their lives in various rain-related incidents in and around Chennai while personnel on fishing boats and farm tractors were engaged in rescuing stranded people on Tuesday.
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.
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 residents informed the authorities and immediately rushed to the accident site to lend a helping hand in rescue efforts.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast 'extremely heavy rains' at a few places in Marathwada, Mumbai and other parts of the coastal Konkan region of Maharashtra in the next 24 hours.
'I saw people hanging on to the bridge and later falling into the water as their grip loosened and they slipped into the water.'
The toll due to the flood since mid-May is now 101, they said.
The train crash happened near the Bahanaga Baazar station in Balasore district, about 250 km south of Kolkata and 170 km north of Bhubaneswar, around 7 pm on Friday, prompting the Railway Ministry to order a probe.
Nearly 6,000 passengers were stranded as train services on the Konkan Railway route in Maharashtra's Ratnagiri district were suspended on Thursday after a river overflowed following heavy rains, while incessant downpour badly hit road and rail traffic in several parts of the state, including around Mumbai, as authorities called in NDRF to help the administration in rescue efforts.
The game zone had fire safety equipment but action taken to control the fire was not sufficient, leading to the tragedy on Saturday, a senior police officer said on Sunday, a day after the tragedy.
In what appears to be the last phase of the massive rescue operation, National Disaster Response Force jawans have recovered 21 more bodies from under the debris of landslide in Malin village in Pune district, which takes the death toll in the July 30 disaster to 151.
The directives came after he took stock of the situation arising from the massive earthquake at a high-level meeting attended by Ministers Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Principal Secretary Nripendra Misra and senior officials of National Disaster Response Force and Indian Metereological Department.
The flood situation in Assam deteriorated drastically on Thursday with one person losing his life and nearly five lakh people reeling under the deluge across 12 districts, an official bulletin said.
Over 600 people including more than 130 university students and an old French couple were taken to safety on Friday by a coordinated team of defence and NDRF personnel.
According to Chief Secretary P K Jena, some bodies were counted twice.
The armed forces have rescued over 76,500 people in the flood-ravaged parts of Jammu and Kashmir where around 30,000 troops along with 80 transport aircraft and helicopters including the world's biggest Mi-26T chopper have been deployed for the relief operations.
At least six people were killed and dozens were missing after a massive landslide occurred at a railway construction site in Manipur's Noney district, officials said.
A portion of the Nanda Devi glacier broke off in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district on Sunday, triggering an avalanche and a deluge in the Alaknanda river system that washed away hydroelectric stations, leaving at least seven people dead and 125 missing who are feared dead.
Director of Delhi Fire Services Atul Garg said, "We received a call around 1:24 pm about a house collapse in Satya Niketan building number 173 here. Six fire tenders have been rushed to the spot."
Odisha train crash is one of the deadliest such accidents since independence.
The India Meteorological Department on Friday predicted that Delhi will likely receive light to moderate rain accompanied by thunderstorms for the next 4-5 days.
India on Tuesday enlarged its relief and rescue operations in quake-hit Nepal beyond Kathmandu to the worst-affected epicenter areas and rushed Gorkha soldiers to remote places to assess the kind of assistance required.
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.
All armed forces including the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and Indian Coast Guard have made necessary preparation to provide assistance to the local people of Gujarat.
The spokesperson said a total of 3 National Disaster Response Force teams and those from the Army, state police and local administration are working at the Tupul yard railway construction camp of the Territorial Army.
India has already sent relief materials to Turkiye in four military transport aircraft.
A Korean couple and a retired Army Major General were among 310 people rescued by Chandigarh-based 12 Wing of the Indian Air Force, which has been conducting non-stop sorties during the past three days to evacuate people from flooded areas of Srinagar.
Earlier on Saturday, six bodies were recovered and two more were retrieved a short time later, the police said.
A coordinated multi-agency search operation is underway to locate the two, even as Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath ordered setting up a three-member committee to probe the incident and submit a report in a week.
Near the temple, a group of locals shouted 'Murdabad' slogans in protest when Chouhan was on way to console the victims' families.
A wing of the building, located in Kurla, collapsed around midnight, officials said, adding that its another wing was also likely to crash and was vacated.
The death toll in Assam in the current flood rose to 30 on Wednesday with 14 bodies recovered from worst-affected Goalpara and Kamrup (rural) districts even as relief and rescue work continued round-the-clock.
The cyclonic storm is likely to move nearly westwards and cross north Andhra Pradesh-south Odisha coasts between Kalingapatnam and Gopalpur around Sunday evening, the Cyclone Warning Division of the IMD said.
"Six bodies have been retrieved from the accident site so far. The rescue teams are still on job," an NDRF spokesperson said.
'I decided to send a bat and a ball which was smaller in size so that it shouldn't get stuck in the pipe. And with that, they had a little good time.'
The avalanche hit the arterial Jawaharlal Nehru Marg, which connects Gangtok to Nathu La at the China border, around 11.30 am, trapping five-six vehicles with around 30 people under the snow, the Army said in a statement.
The toll in the incident near Talai village in Mahad tehsil is likely to rise, police said, as many areas of Maharashtra continued to face rain fury since the past few days.
Alluri Sitarama Raju district, which is yet to fully recover from last month's deluge, is once again in the grip of a massive flood threat as discharge in the river crossed 10 lakh cusecs (cubic foot of water flow per second) mark.
