Water recedes in Asom, epidemics loom large

Guwahati, Aug 5 (UNI) Receding water levels in rivers across Asom led to a great deal of improvement in the flood situation.

The government is now concentrating on checking outbreak of post-flood epidemics and clearing the debris left behind by the waters.

UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil would be visiting the state on Tuesday to review the flood situation.

As many as 26 districts of the total 27 had been affected in this second wave of flood, which had left a death toll of 24 so far.

The Brahmaputra and its tributaries, which had breached the danger level across its route through the state, were flowing over the red mark in only six gauge stations. The Brahmaputra continued to flow above the danger level at Dibrugarh, Neamatighat in Jorhat and Dhubri, though at both places it displayed a falling trend, official sources said.

It had moved below the danger mark at gauge stations in Guwahati, Tezpur, Goalpara. The river had submerged several places in these towns, barring capital city of Guwahati, where, too, it had posed a threat of metering the city limits. Among its main tributaries, Dhansiri, Kopili and Puthimari were still over the danger level at Numaligarh in Golagaht, Dharamtul in Nagaon and national highway crossing in Kamrup district.

However, a Central Water Commission (CWC) forecast said waters of Jiabharali and Kushiyara rivers could cross the red mark in Sonitpur and Karimganj. The rivers currently over the danger level would continue to remain so, though there was no rising trend in any of them.

Meanwhile, the gradual improving situation has also led to another doleful tale of water-borne diseases spreading fast in the flood-affected areas. Reports pouring in from the flood-affected areas indicate that people have been affected by water-borne diseases like cholera, diarrhoea, pox, fever and malaria.

Though no reports of casualty have been received as yet, the diseases were said to spreading fast in certain areas of Dhemaji, Lakhimpur, Dibrugarh, Kamrup and Nalbari, putting the administration in a dock.

According to official estimates, over 63 lakh people have been displaced as the floods swept across 26 districts of the states, breaching embankments, washing off roads and inundating croplands over the last three weeks. The state government has opened 523 relief camps across the state, sheltering over 1 lakh flood-hit.

The flood has taken 14 animal heads to the pristine Kaziranga National Park, even as the waters were said to be receding and the forest guards moving back to their camps, 90 of which were inundated by the flood.

Seven deer were run over by speeding vehicles on the national highway, while four others, two pigs and rhino were drowned in flood waters till date.

Prohibitory orders were still in the place on the NH 37, which passes through the Park, as animals were still crossing the road to pass over to the higher places in the Karbi hills towards the south.

Waters in the Manas National Park were also receding. No casualties have been reported from the wildlife habitat as yet.

Official sources said no fresh reports of damage have been received from any other flood-affected district. The state government, meanwhile, has ordered an inquiry as to how 53 embankments have been breached in a single flood.

UNI