Maharashtra floods: 12 navy teams bound for Sangli
- by Lorene Schwartz
- in People
- — Aug 11, 2019
The state's busiest airport, Cochin International Airport, has been closed since Friday as the taxiway is water-logged.
Officials said at least 38 people have been killed in the states this week due to the rains and more than 200,000 have been evacuated.
Landslides and mud-slips have been reported from over 25 places in the state.
Seventy medical teams are working in the flood-affected areas, the chief secretary said. Heavy and incessant rains in south and west Odisha earlier this week claimed at least three lives, left two missing and hit over 1.3 lakh people in nine districts, officials said.
Around this time of the year in 2018, Kerala was hit by a similar disaster of much greater magnitude when rains of unprecedented intensity whipped the state.
The Pinarayi Vijayan administration in the state has reportedly set up over a thousand relief camps to house displaced people. Some people shifted but some didn't.
Meanwhile, MLA CK Sassendran said rescue teams have found nine bodies and 18 were still missing in a landslide at Puthumala in Meppadi in Wayanad district.
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Chief secretary Ajoy Mehta said if there was paucity of funds, district collectors have been authorized to do "negative debit" from the treasury to draw more funds. He also sought financial assistance for those affected in the flood-hit state, including in his constituency Wayanad.
They also said the landslides in Meppadi and Kavalapara had affected almost 100 acres of land and incessant rain was hampering the rescue operations.
Official sources said most of the towns in the Malabar region of the state are under sheets of water. Taking a cue from incidents of delayed evacuation past year, he requested people in low-lying areas to evacuate without waiting for the water to reach shoulder-high levels.
"The rains have eased in the region and we think the water will soon start to recede".
The district has lost access to all basic amenities such as drinking water, power supply, cooking gas cylinder and petrol for running vehicles, Lathe said. We are receiving heavy outflow of water from Karnataka. Relative humidity levels oscillated between 84 per cent and 67 per cent as the national capital received 0.9 mm rains between 8.30 am and 5.30 pm. This escalates the threat of floods and landslips.
With Ernakulam district also been put on "red alert", indicating extreme heavy rains on Saturday, it remains to be seen how the airport authorities can cope with a sudden flow of waters into the runway again. "So far, there is no need to shift the inmates out of the jail", Additional Director General (Prisons) Sunil Ramanand said told PTI.
The rail traffic also continued to be disrupted on Saturday due to landslips and trees falling on the tracks in many parts of the state.
