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Indian rains kill 24, life hit in flooded Mumbai

Posted on: Tuesday, 4 July 2006, 01:12 CDT

KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - Heavy rains triggered floods and landslides in eastern India, killing 24 people overnight and disrupting life in the financial hub of Mumbai for a second day on Tuesday, officials and residents said.

The bad weather was caused by a depression over the east coast and a revival of the June-September annual monsoon rains which had hit a lean patch, leading to a dry spell across large swathes of the subcontinent.

At least 22 people were killed in the eastern states of Orissa and Jharkhand and several were missing in neighboring West Bengal after torrential rains caused rivers to break their banks and triggered landslides, officials said.

Nine of the 22 died when their country boat capsized in the Kanhar river in Jharkhand, about 135 km (85 miles) west of the state capital, Ranchi.

Two people were washed away in flood waters, 10 fishermen were missing and thousands displaced in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh as hundreds of villages were inundated.

"Four flood gates of a reservoir were also swept away in the swirling rain waters," said V.N. Vishnu, administrator of Srikakulam district in Andhra Pradesh.

Navy boats and helicopters had been pressed in to rescue marooned people from rooftops and also to drop food, medicine and water packets, authorities said.

"We have evacuated 15,000 people from waterlogged villages in the district to the safety of relief camps," Vishnu said.

In Mumbai, the country's commercial capital, schools and colleges were shut and emergency workers flushed muddy waters from submerged streets as the bustling city struggled to cope with a second day of monsoon rains.

The city's more than 150-year-old drainage system failed to tackle about 10 cm (4 inches) of rains over the past 24 hours and several areas remained under knee-deep water.

"The water level hasn't gone down a bit since yesterday morning. We are forced to wade through dirty water," Santosh Singh, a resident, told a local TV channel.

Emergency workers used sticks and crowbars to prise open clogged manholes and gutters to allow rainwater to pass.

Last July, two days of heavy rain exposed Mumbai's poor infrastructure and dismal emergency response in India's richest city. The floods killed hundreds of people in and around Mumbai and shut down the city for almost a week.

Weather officials said a depression on the east coast was weakening and was heading toward Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital.

This would bring more rain to Mumbai and the central state of Madhya Pradesh over the next few days, they warned.

Source: REUTERS

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