Telangana Floods: Rescuers Help Thousands, Rains Ease, Relief Efforts Intensify

Hyderabad: With rains providing respite across Telangana on Friday, the government stepped up rescue and relief efforts. Government officials involved in the rescue and relief operations said that as of Friday evening 12 people had died, and between 25,000 and 30,000 people were provided assistance and moved to rescue centres in different flood hit districts.

Compared to the rainfall of between 23 cm and 65 cm on Wednesday and Thursday, the maximum rain recorded at any single location on Friday was 3.3 cm, at Mandalapally in Dammapeta mandal of Bhadradri Kothagudem district.

The weather forecast for Saturday promises even less rain, which officials said would be welcome after the deluge over the past few days. “This will help us in further stepping up our efforts to help the flood hit,” an official said.

Officials said that eight teams of the National Disaster Response Force were active in rescue operations while two more teams were on stand by. Indian Air Force helicopters continued to assist in these operations and on Friday joined in dropping food and water supplies to people stuck in locations where rescue teams were unable to reach quickly.

With the rains subsiding, or at least giving a break to the state, the government said it will step up efforts to prevent outbreak of any waterborne diseases and placed the entire health department on active duty.

Most of the efforts for rescue and relief are focused in the worst hit Mulugu, Jayashankar Bhupalapalli, Warangal, hanamkonda, Bhadradri Kothagudem and Nirmal districts. The official added at roads suffered serious damage in at least 38 locations, and in addition to partial to severe damage to a few hundred houses, till reports last came in on Friday, 5,034 cattle and other domestic animals were reported to have died in the floods.

Meanwhile, inflows into the Godavari river continued but irrigation officials said the situation at Kadam dam in Nirmal district was stable with less water coming in. The officials said that though flows were still continuing strongly all along Godavari in the erstwhile unified Adilabad district, the anxious moments that arose late on Thursday night over safety of Kaleshwaram lift irrigation scheme (KLIS) pumphouses experiencing flooding receded on Friday.

As of now, the three KLIS barrages – Parvati, Saraswati, and Laxmi —were in a free flow state with all their gates open allowing the inflowing water to flow out without threating the river banks or the project structures.