Hyderabad, October 6
The villagers along the Andhra coast are no strangers to floods. The vulnerability of their location has made them more resolute
over years. But, the current flood fury is unprecedented in its scale and impact.
The authorities engaged in the relief and rescue operations are facing a challenge of immeasurable proportion following record water inflow into the Krishna river basin and threat of submergence of a vast swathe of coastal land.
“For the past three days, we have been taking a tour of vulnerable villages and asking people to move to safer areas. Several villagers are reluctant to leave their homes and belongings and are underestimating the scale of the flooding,” said K Lakshminarayana, a state minister.
Virtually racing against time as the water, released from the upstream dams, was gushing into the coastal region, the authorities in Krishna and Guntur, the two affected districts, have evacuated more than 3.20 lakh people from over 200 villages.
Several colonies in Vijayawada, the commercial hub located close to Prakasam barrage, were also inundated. The Hyderabad-Vijayawada highway is also flooded, disrupting traffic between the two cities.
The inflows at Prakasam barrage, the last point before the river joins Bay of Bengal, touched 11.30 lakh cusecs, the highest in 100 years of recorded history. The earlier record was 10.03 lakh cusecs in 1903.
“This unprecedented rise in the flood water level threatens several low-lying areas, especially the island villages,” the Engineer-in-Chief of Irrigation M K Rahman said.
The Army and the police help has been sought to evacuate people from vulnerable areas and in some cases the reluctant villagers are being shifted forcibly.
The authorities are keeping their fingers crossed over the safety of flood banks along the river course that protect the villages from flooding. The flood banks stretch over 182 kms in Krishna and Guntur districts.
Already, the river embankments at some places have breached, leading to submergence of several villages. The flood waters entered dozens of island villages in Krishna and Guntur near the point where the river falls into the Bay of Bengal.
As many as 30 villages upstream of the barrage are marooned since the barrage is unable to discharge the massive inflows it is receiving from the upstream Nagarjunasagar and Srisailam.
However, loss of life was minimised as the administration had sufficient time for evacuation after massive floods hit Kurnool and Mahbubnagar districts in the upstream of
Krishna.
The Railway authorities are anxiously watching the water level downstream of Prakasam barrage since the river is nearly touching the rail bridge connecting Vijayawada to Chennai. The water level rose to 21.9 feet today against its full reservoir level of 23 feet and all the 70 gates of the barrage have been opened to let out the water into the sea.
The people in the Diviseema area of Krishna district, the scene of the worst cyclone disaster in 1977, are living in fear. It lies close to the sea and any breach of the river embankments, already being pounded by the enormous quantity of water, could spell disaster there.
The death toll in the unprecedented floods has risen to 55.
