Nagaon: Flash floods affected 40,000 people striking north-central Assam in the wee hours of Sunday. The flood has struck the state recently which had taken 150 lives.
Officials in Sonitpur district said the floods affected some 40,000 people while one person who was washed away reportedly drowned.
“The water level of river Jorakhar, which originates in Arunachal Pradesh, started rising suddenly about 3 am. Several areas in Balipara town and parts of a highway was under waist-deep water,” Surjya Kama Borah, circle officer of Chariduar, said.
Nearly three dozen villages in Chariduar circle were inundated too, forcing thousands to flee their homes. The area had witnessed similar flooding in June this year following few hours of heavy rainfall and rise in water levels of Mansiri and Jorakhar rivers, reports Hindustan Times.
Disaster management officials in Imphal said this year’s flood has pegged the state back by Rs 358.23-crore with 25 people having died and 78,677 hectares of agricultural land damaged.
Officials of the Manipur directorate of environment attributed the unusually high average rainfall to climate change. The state received 1,668.5 mm of rainfall from February-August, considerably higher than the average annual mark of 1,500mm.
Chief Minister N Biren said the state’s hills in particularly have suffered from deforestation besides conditions influenced by climate change.