With less rainfall reported from across the state, the flood situation in Assam improved a bit on Saturday.
Over 2.5 million people are still affected and with four more people including 2 children killed due to drowning in the past 24 hours, the total deaths since April rose to 122. On Friday, the total number of affected people was over 3.3 million.
According to a bulletin by Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA), 27 districts in the state including 79 revenue circles and 2894 villages are flood affected at present.
A total of 233,271 people displaced by flooding were still taking shelter in 896 relief camps in 22 of the affected districts. Nearly of 110 of the them were in Cachar district alone with the district headquarters Silchar recording over 25,000 persons in relief camps.
A total of 175 boats were pressed into action on Saturday NDRF, SDRF, Army and NGOs to rescue 5724 marooned persons. Cachar district alone recorded 5487 of those rescues.
Large parts of Silchar town, which has remained submerged under 5-8 feet of water since Monday, remained flooded on Saturday as well.
While normal is slowly restoring in some parts of the town but areas like Bilpar, Kanakpur, Sonai Road, Das Colony are still under water. Flood water reached in new areas like Tarapur and Vivekananda Road on Saturday.
Debolina Kar, a resident of Kalimohan Road in Tarapur said, “I thought flood won’t reach in my area but now it seems we are going to be the worst affected people in town in upcoming days.”
Officials said water level in Barak River at Lakhipur and Annapurna Ghat is flowing above danger level. At Annapurna Ghat, the river was flowing at 21.26 meters on Saturday evening while at Lakhipur it is flowing at 25.15 meters.
While only 4 cm of decrease in water level was recorded on Friday, on Saturday, 18 cm fall in Barak’s water level was recorded. According to the officials, the water level is decreasing very slowly due to floods in Bangladesh.
Amid the crisis, some locals reported thefts or attempted theft in flood affected areas in Silchar. Hrijoy Das Kanungo, a resident of National Highway Road said, “Last night we heard that people are shouting for help. I have seen some social media posts about dacoits attacking stranded persons in town. We are spending sleepless nights due to this.”
However, Superintendent of police of Cachar district Ramandeep Kaur said that these are rumours. “We have received few such complaints but it’s not true. Out teams are keeping strict vigil in most part of Silchar,” she said.
As per district disaster management authority officials, over 280,000 people in Cachar including nearly 73,000 children are still affected by floods.