Heavy rain lashes parts of India; bridge collapses in Jaharkhand; death toll rises in Wayanad, HP

PTI, Aug 4, 2024, 8:18 AM IST

Image Credit: PTI

Heavy rains lashed large parts of the country on Saturday, especially in Gangetic West Bengal and Jharkhand where showers due to a deep depression affected normal life, while two children were killed in Madhya Pradesh after a house collapsed on them following incessant rains.

In Himachal Pradesh, flash floods and landslides due to cloudbursts and heavy rains have led to the closure of 114 roads, while the weather department warned that heavy showers would continue until August 7. The state’s road transport corporation has suspended its bus services on 82 routes.

The hunt for 45 people, who went missing after a series of cloudbursts in Kullu’s Nirmand, Sainj and Malana; Mandi’s Padhar and Shimla’s Rampur subdivision on the night of July 31 resumed on Saturday morning.

As many as 410 rescuers from teams of the Army, NDRF, SDRF, ITBP, CISF, Himachal Pradesh Police and home guards are involved in the hunt with the help of drones. The death toll in the calamity rose to nine on Saturday with the recovery of one more body from Kullu district.

Moderate to heavy showers continued to lash parts of the state, with Jogindernagar receiving the highest rainfall of 85 mm since Friday evening.

In the south, Tamil Nadu’s Namakkal district remained flooded as the Cauvery River flowed above the danger mark, inundating low-lying areas. Chief Minister M K Stalin said that 11 relief camps have been set up in the district and about 1,086 people have been shifted there.

Meanwhile, the death toll in the Wayanad landslides increased to 218 while Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the search and rescue operations that began on July 30 have reached the final stages. He also said that 206 people are still missing.

More than 1,300 rescuers, heavy machinery and sophisticated equipment have been deployed to look for survivors from the ravages of the landslides. However, huge boulders and logs deposited in the residential areas of Mundakkai and Chooralmala following the landslides are posing a significant challenge in the rescue efforts.

In Madhya Pradesh, a three-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy died in their sleep and five others were injured after their house collapsed following incessant rains in a village in Narsinghpur district.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has warned of extremely heavy rainfall in Maharashtra’s Palghar, Pune and Satara districts on Sunday and issued an orange alert, forecasting heavy rains, for Thane, Mumbai, Raigad, Sindhudurg and Nashik.

Several areas were inundated, roads got washed away, trees uprooted, houses damaged and a bridge collapsed due to incessant rains in Jharkhand for the past two days, forcing the state government to order the closure of all schools on Saturday.

However, no death was reported from any part of the state, a disaster management official said, adding that NDRF teams were deployed in Ranchi on Friday to rescue people from low-lying areas.

In adjoining West Bengal, incessant rain lashed Kolkata and its neighbouring districts as a low-pressure area turned into a deep depression. Waterlogging was reported from several parts of the state’s capital, including the airport but flight services were not affected.

“The low pressure over Jharkhand and Gangetic West Bengal turned into a deep depression. It is gradually shifting towards Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. This, accompanied by an active monsoon trough over the southern districts of West Bengal, resulted in the rains,” an official said.

The southern districts of Howrah, Paschim Bardhaman, Birbhum, Purba Bardhaman, Hooghly, Nadia, and North and South 24 Parganas districts will continue to experience showers over the next 12 hours, he said.

Flight operations at the Kazi Nazrul Islam airport in Paschim Bardhaman district continued to be suspended for the second consecutive day on Saturday as the airport is yet to be ready for operations.

The operations at the airport were shut down on Friday due to water logging in and around its premises.

An irrigation department official said 36,000 cusec water was discharged from Panchet dam and 70,000 cusecs from Durgapur barrage after heavy rains.

Accusing the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) of discharging water to “engineer a man-made flood”, TMC leader Kunal Ghosh, in a post in Bengali, on X said, “When water level rises in Jharkhand, DVC aggravates the situation in Bengal by releasing water. But never releases water in summer when the state needs the most for irrigation and farming activities.”

Voicing apprehension that the water level might rise during high tides next Monday, Ghosh said Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is keeping a close tab on the situation.

Heavy rains also lashed Rajasthan with Kolai Magra in Bikaner district receiving the maximum rainfall of 195 mm. In a 24-hour period till 8.30 am, Masuda in Ajmer recorded 180 mm of rain followed by 170 mm each in Beawar’s Nayanagar and Ajmer’s Pisangan, 150 mm in Mangliawas.