Kerala Floods 2018 (India)
Indian Military Scales Down Flood Rescue Operations
By Aijaz Rahi | AP
August 21 at 6:10 AM
KOCHI, India — The Indian military is scaling down rescue operations in the southern state of Kerala, a tropical tourist haven where intense floods killed more than 200 people and drove hundreds of thousands from their homes.
Decreasing rains and floodwaters means the navy can cut back on its rescue teams in Kerala, navy spokesman Capt. D.K. Sharma said in a statement Monday. The navy has rescued nearly 16,000 people in the state.
The annual monsoon rains were already underway in Kerala when it was hit by torrential downpours beginning Aug. 8. The rains had decreased substantially by Monday and meteorologists are expecting light-to-moderate rains in coming days.
Thousands of people have been leaving Kerala’s relief camps over the past two days, heading home to check on damage and begin the long process of cleaning up.
“There was sludge and muck nearly up to my knee,” a dismayed Abdullah Aliyar said Tuesday. The 65-year-old, who has been living with his family at a relief camp for more than a week, returned briefly to his nearby home Monday to find it uninhabitable and without drinking water or electricity.
For now, the family of five will remain at Union Christian College, a sprawling campus on high ground just outside Kochi. It is one of more than 3,000 relief camps created amid the havoc of the floods.
Volunteers at the camp estimate that up to 10,000 people were jammed into the schools’ buildings a week ago. Today, there are perhaps 1,500.
“People are going home, or to their relatives homes,” said K.H. Shahabas, a local elected official who has been working in the camp since it was created. He said thousands of people poured into the college a few days after the floods began, when other low-lying relief camps were inundated.
While water and electricity have returned to parts of Kerala, the state’s utilities were working to restore service to vast areas that still have no service, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
“In many areas the condition has improved wherein people can somehow return to their houses,” Kerala’s top elected official, Pinarayi Vijayan, told reporters Monday. “Water is receding in many places, but in some places it may take a little more time.”
Vijayan said 223 people had died in Kerala since Aug. 8.
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Aid Streams In As Flood-ravaged Kerala Commences Restoration
Faced with unprecedented odds in the wake of the disastrous floods, Kerala is bracing up to face the challenges of reconstruction and restoration of the ruined infrastructure of varied sorts.
The Kerala State Electricity Board has started the restoration works on a war-footing. The state agency will also be joined by expert technicians from agencies attached to the governments of Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Karnataka. In houses where the flood damage has been extensive and it may take much longer to restore power, smaller make-shift mechanisms with a light source and a charging point will be provided.
Private companies like Siemens and Tata power have also chipped in with technical support.
On Monday, the southern state of Telangana donated Rs 50 crore to the Kerala chief minister’s disaster relief fund. Telangana has also sent RO machines for purification of drinking water and nutritious food for children in the flood-affected areas. Lakhs of litres of potable water have been brought in by the water wagons of the Railways.
Meanwhile, shipments of various relief materials have reached the state. The relief goods that were offloaded at the Kochi Naval Base, which has been converted into a temporary facility for landing civilian flights, have been exempted from customs duties. Authorities said that even two inflatable boats were released without any charges.
The Union finance ministry has also decided to exempt goods imported or supplied for flood relief operations in Kerala from basic customs duty/Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST) till December 31, 2018. A notification to this effect is likely to be issued Wednesday and it will be placed before the GST Council for approval.
A Coast Guard ship carrying relief supplies have reached Kerala from Mumbai and the articles will be distributed with the help of media group Malayala Manorama.
Another set of consignments from the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation has also reached the south-western state. ONGC employees have also contributed one-month salary to aid flood relief in Kerala.
Vice-president Venkaiah Naidu has requested the MPs to contribute generously to the flood relief operations in Kerala. He, along with the Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan, asked the parliamentarians to donate a month’s salary along with contributions up to Rs 1 crore from their development funds.
Kerala Floodwater Starts To Recede, As Fear Of Disease Spreads</b>
Indian health authorities have started preparing defences against the spread of disease in flood-hit Kerala state, as water receded and a huge clean-up gathered pace.
By Monday, the death toll in the southern state had reached 370 and the number of people displaced was upwards of a million.
Incessant rain since August 8 has caused the worst floods the region has experienced in a century and triggered landslides.
Dozens of people are missing and hundreds of thousands are sheltering in thousands of makeshift relief camps, state officials said.
“The biggest challenges immediately ahead are cleaning of the flood-hit houses, rehabilitation, and prevention of water-borne diseases,” said Mahesh P, a village-level officer from Rayamangalam, some 45km from Kerala’s financial capital of Kochi.
Al Jazeera’s Andrew Thomas, reporting from a relief camp in Kayamkulam, said the huge number of people gathered in the shelters increased the risk of disease spreading.
“When you have more than three quarters of a million people in temporary camps like this one, disease is always a risk,” he said.
“You have lots of people in a small space, and without the things they would normally have at home, like clean water and regular food.”
Light to moderate rain was expected across Kerala on Monday, bringing some respite to rescue workers, who have been battling rising waters and mudslides to reach tens of thousands of stranded villagers.
Rainfall in the state during the June-September monsoon season has been more than 40 percent higher than normal, with torrential rain in the last 10 days forcing authorities to release water from dozens of dangerously full dams, sending surges into rivers that then overflowed their banks.
Anil Vasudevan, who handles disaster management at Kerala’s health department, said the state was preparing to battle any outbreak of diseases in the relief camps and preventive medicines were being distributed.
Mahesh said villagers had all pulled together to rescue people and prevent an even bigger disaster.
“The bulk of the credit for the rescue goes to the ordinary citizens. The army, the navy, the local authorities assisted them,” Mahesh said.
“The flood has bonded the people like never before, with people sharing whatever they had.”
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said there was no shortage of food in the state as traders had stocked up ahead of Onam, the state’s biggest festival which falls on August 25.
The state has cancelled all official celebrations in connection with the Hindu harvest festival.
