Flood and rain-induced landslips have claimed eight lives across the northeast in the past 36 hours. While five persons died in Meghalaya, two drowned in Mizoram’s Lunglei district and one in Assam’s Dhemaji district.
At least 16 people, including two 10-year-old girls in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang, have died in floods across the northeast in less than a week. A person each is reported missing from East Khasi Hills district of Meghalaya and West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh after being swept away by strong water currents.
Officials of the Assam State Disaster Management Authority said the number of flood-affected people jumped overnight by 5.57 lakh to 14.07 lakh by Saturday afternoon. “These people are from 2,168 villages from across 25 of Assam’s 33 districts,” an official said.
Western Assam’s Barpeta, with 5.22 lakh victims, continues to be the worst-affected district followed by Dhemaji with 1.38 lakh persons.
Morigaon district is third on the list with 94,627 people forced to leave their homes.
The district officials have opened 234 relief camps where 20,047 people have taken shelter.
Kaziranga inundated
A bloating Brahmaputra has flowed into the Kaziranga National Park (KNP), inundating 95 of the 200 rhino anti-poaching camps. Such camps, all on stilts to escape average flooding, are used by forest guards to watch over the 430 sq. km UNESCO World Heritage Site.
“We have imposed speed restrictions on the highway skirting the southern edge of KNP because animals of the park invariably move from the flooded park to the hills across the highway,” the park’s divisional forest officer Rohini Ballave Saikia said.
A hog deer was, however, run over early on Saturday by a speeding vehicle.
