By Syed Zarir Hussain, IANS
Guwahati : Thousands of people were returning to their homes in Assam with floodwaters receding as authorities sounded a health alert to prevent outbreak of waterborne diseases, officials said Friday.
“The flood situation has improved considerably with no rains in the past four days. People are heading back to their homes, but thousands of them are still in makeshift shelters as their homes are filled with mud and slush,” Bhumidhar Barman, Assam’s revenue, relief and rehabilitation minister, told IANS.
A Central Water Commission bulletin Friday said the main Brahmaputra river and its tributaries were all flowing below the danger mark with the trend receding.
Three waves of flooding since July left 102 people dead and displaced nearly 12 million people in 25 of Assam’s 27 districts — the worst hit districts being Cachar, Karimganj, Hailakandi, Dhubri, Morigaon, Barpeta, Lakhimpur and Nalbari.
Close to 10,000 villages in an area of 825,000 hectares were affected by the raging floods that cut a swath across the state.
“Teams of doctors and paramedics are on full alert and visiting flood-hit areas, although there are no reports of any outbreak of waterborne diseases,” Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.
Road and rail communications were disrupted in many parts of Assam with floodwaters inundating highways and rail tracks.
Floodwaters have submerged the entire 430 sq km Kaziranga national park killing at least 25 animals, including three rhinos, deer and wild boars, in separate incidents of drowning or being mown down by speeding trucks while the animals were trying to cross a highway an take shelter on the slopes of a nearby hill.
The 2,906 km Brahmaputra river, one of the longest in Asia, traverses Tibet, India and Bangladesh. Every year the monsoon causes the river to flood in Assam, a state of 26 million people. In 2004, at least 200 people died and millions were displaced.