Twelve persons were killed and another went missing in the torrential rains lashing the Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema districts for the third day running on Thursday.
Normal life was thrown out of gear completely as the swollen rivulets cut off road link to hundreds of villages in several coastal districts. Rail and road transport was affected badly between Andhra Pradesh and Odisha as the floodwaterwas flowing above the railway tracks and cut off roads at Srikakulam district. Farmers, who suffered heavy crop loss in the recent cyclone Phailin, were at the receiving end of nature once again as standing crops such as paddy, cotton, soyabean, maize and other horticulture crops were inundated and damaged in an extent of over 6.25-lakh acres.
Some places like Kalingapatnam in Srikakulam district recorded cumulative rainfall of 32 cm. Standing crops in several Telangana districts were also damaged.
The government pressed the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams into service for taking up relief operations in coastal districts where the heavy rains are wreaking havoc. Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy reviewed the situation at a high-level meeting attended by several Ministers and officials led by Chief Secretary P.K. Mohanty and instructed the officials to take up relief measures and send medical teams.
The Met Department forecast heavy rain at a few places and extremely heavy rain at isolated places across the State during the next 48 hours.
About 6,500 people living in the low-lying areas were shifted to 19 relief camps and all the departments were put on alert, Revenue Minister N. Raghuveera Reddy said.
Twenty-seven passengers of an APSRTC bus caught in an overflowing irrigation canal at Narasaraopet in Guntur district had a miraculous escape as local people and officials saved them with the help of ropes. In Kurnool, 50 villagers caught in the flash flood in a stream were rescued by local people near Atmakur.
