Adilabad stood on the brink of a disaster on Thursday with the Penganga river poised to breach its banks and all local streams in spate following incessant rainfall. The streams swelled further following huge inflows released from local dams that cut off hundreds of villages and inundated thousands of hectares of standing crop across the district.
The traffic movement on the inter-State bridge on Penganga river was suspended by Maharashtra authorities late in the evening following a rise in level of flow. The river is likely to overflow the high-level bridge which is the key link from Central India.
A major tributary of the Godavari on Adilabad’s border with Maharashtra, the Penganga’s level at the inter-State road bridge had crossed the 16-metre mark by evening which warranted a flood alarm.
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The discharge at this stage was about 4 lakh cusecs and slated to increase as water is being released into it from several dams in Maharashtra.
The mandals affected due to flooding of Penganga are Tamsi, Jainad, Bela and Sirpur (T) while its convergence in the Pranahita caused extensive damage in Koutala, Bejjur, Vemanpally and Kotapally mandals. All these mandals remained cut off throughout the day due to overflowing streams.
“We have kept a helicopter on standby, besides bringing in three teams of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) to be deployed in Kagaznagar, Mancherial and Adilabad,” said Collector Babu A.. The administration is also operating five relief camps in the mandals in the eastern parts of the district which are affected by flooded streams.
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Power supply was also affected in the rural areas owing to the steady rainfall.