CNN : Monsoon floods displace 19 million

Monsoon floods displace 19 million

CNN | August 4, 2007

LUCKNOW, India (AP) -- Havoc from monsoon rains killed another 12 people in India, including two children swept away by floods and a man attacked by a rhinoceros forced out of its inundated habitat, officials said Saturday.

Helicopters dropped food to hundreds of thousands of frightened villagers perched on rooftops.

Vital to farmers, the annual rains are a blessing and a curse for the subcontinent. At least 198 people have been killed in India and neighboring Bangladesh and 19 million driven from their homes in recent days, according to government figures.

The South Asian monsoon season runs from June to September as the rains work their way across the subcontinent. It's always dangerous -- last year more than 1,000 people died, most from drowning, landslides or house collapses.

This year, estimates of total deaths vary wildly from a few hundred to well over 1,000.

Two villagers were killed in a house collapse and two children were swept away by flood waters in several districts of India's northern Uttar Pradesh state. Another person died from a snake bite on a flooded road, said Surender Shrivastav, a state official.

Helicopters dropped food to nearly 2 million people in 2,200 villages cut off by flood waters in the worst-hit eastern parts of Uttar Pradesh, said Umesh Sinha, the state relief commissioner, adding that nearly 279,223 acres of paddy rice crops have been destroyed in the region.

On Friday, six people drowned in northeastern Assam state. One-horned rhinos straying from the state's Kaziranga National Park killed one person and injured two others, said state Revenue Minister Bhumidhar Barman.

Jehir Ali, 28, was riding a bicycle near the village of Gendheli when a rhino charged at him, said Dhiren Gogoi, a wildlife official.

"Ali fell down and was badly mauled by the adult rhino. He was shifted to a hospital where he died," Gogoi told The Associated Press.

Seventy percent of Kaziranga Park has been flooded by the Brahmaputra River, forcing out several rhinos.

"Two rhinos have entered villages in the area resulting in panic among the population," Diganta Barbaruah, another wildlife official, said.

With hundreds of villages submerged across the fertile plains that stretch along the southern edge of the Himalayas, people were taking refuge wherever they could.

Women and children were spotted screaming for help from treetops in Uttar Pradesh. In parts of the state, river levels rose so quickly that villagers had no time to save any belongings.

"The gush of water was so sudden we did not get the time to react," Vinod Kumar, a resident of a flooded village in Basti district, told Enadu TV.

One woman in Uttar Pradesh who identified herself only as Savitra said she had not "eaten anything for the last two days."

Health workers were fanning out across parts of Bangladesh and India to try to prevent the spread of waterborne diseases like diarrhea, typhoid and cholera.

In northwestern Bangladesh, farmer Rahmat Sheikh and his family were among 2,000 people who fled their flooded village for higher ground in the Sirajganj district.

"The floods have taken away all I had," said the 40-year-old Sheikh. "Rice paddies in the field, two cows and my house all are gone. I don't know how we will now survive."

Some 14 million people in India and 5 million in Bangladesh have been displaced or marooned by flooding, according to government figures. At least 144 people have died in India and 54 more in Bangladesh.

India's Meteorological Department said unusual monsoon patterns this year have led to heavier than normal rains.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

NYT : South Asia Grapples With Results of Flooding

South Asia Grapples With Results of Flooding

By JULFIKAR ALI MANIK and SOMINI SENGUPTA | August 5, 2007

DHAKA, Bangladesh, Aug. 4 — Nothing tests the mettle of government in this part of the world than a fierce monsoon, as unusually heavy rains across South Asia showed this week, leaving a trail of death and ruin and raising the risk of disease.

Freak rains, which scientists describe as a hallmark of climate change, seemed to be responsible. The devastation was all the more severe because flimsy dams and embankments collapsed under the weight of floodwaters. The mud houses of the poor were the first to wash away.

Weather scientists have said South Asia is likely to get much more unpredictable rain in the coming decades, bringing greater challenges for its governments to prepare and cope with nature’s fury.

In Bangladesh, perennially inundated because so much of it is low-lying delta, more than half of the districts were under water. More than one million families were affected by flooding, according to government officials; the death toll after a week’s heavy rains stood at 58.

According to the country’s meteorological department, Bangladesh received just under 29 inches of rain in July, about double the average. Bangladesh also felt the brunt of greater rain upstream in northern and northeastern India, as swollen rivers broke through their banks on their way down to the Bay of Bengal, said Saiful Hossain, executive engineer of the Flood Forecasting and Warning Center, a government agency.

The flooding has presented the country’s army-backed caretaker government, which took power in January, with its latest and perhaps toughest challenge. Its impact has been felt far beyond the flood-affected districts. Prices of essential commodities, including food, have spiked in recent weeks because flooded roads have disrupted transportation. The government sought this week to dispel public anxiety over food shortages, saying that it was ready to bring food from abroad. As in all floods every year, nature shared blame with human negligence. A 600-mile flood protection dam was badly damaged this year.

In Nepal, unremitting rains for the last two weeks flooded swaths of the heavily populated southern plains, known as the Terai Region, on the border with India. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that up to 300,000 people were in need of water, food and other basic supplies.

Nearly 10,000 people were displaced, and 84 had been killed, said Paul Handley, a field coordinator with the agency. He added that the full scale of damage could be ascertained only in the coming days to determine how much agricultural land had been ruined and how many buildings destroyed.

Nepal, too, is accustomed to floods each year. But the unusually heavy rains this year seem to have affected more of the country, and with rainwater pooling up and refusing to recede, fragile mud buildings are threatened, and the likelihood of an outbreak of water-borne diseases like diarrhea also increases.

The United Nations and aid agencies in Nepal have already nearly exhausted their supplies of food and other goods, Mr. Handley said, although the monsoon season is not expected to end for at least another month.

In India, the monsoon’s trail of destruction traveled to the north and northeast last week. The death toll since the start of the monsoon in June stood at 1,225, according to the Home Ministry.

The military was deployed to the worst affected states, including Assam, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where more than 12 million people have been affected by flooding over the last week. The Indian Air Force air-dropped food packets to displaced people in Bihar on Saturday, where 70,000 houses were damaged, according to the Press Trust of India,

Pakistan has already had its turn with flooding. In July rains in Baluchistan and Sindh provinces, the death toll reached 329 and 90,000 families were made homeless, the United Nations said.

Julfikar Ali Manik reported from Dhaka, and Somini Sengupta from Bangalore, India. Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi.