Floods in Southern Indian States Leave 195 Dead

Flooding caused by heavy rains in two of India’s southern states killed at least 195 people and displaced about 1 million, government officials said.

Flash floods and house collapses killed 158 people in Karnataka state, H.V. Parashwanath, secretary of Karnataka State’s Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre said in a phone interview. In neighboring Andhra Pradesh state, 37 people died and water levels in some districts are still rising, government spokesman Subhash Goud said in a phone interview from Hyderabad.

Floods in India on average kill 1,793 people annually and affect almost 41 million people, according to the government’s National Institute of Disaster Management. The flooding causes average annual losses of $566 million, including $229 million in crop damage.

“At least 123,000 houses have been damaged due to the floods,” Parashwanath said. About 374 villages in northern Karnataka were affected by flooding and 240,580 people are being housed in 793 relief camps, he said.

In Andhra Pradesh, where 272 villages were affected, 89 relief camps have been set up to accommodate 450,000 villagers and boats and helicopters have been deployed for rescue operations said Ganesh Kumar, an official at Ministry of Home Affairs, in a telephone interview from New Delhi.

“Rescue and relief operations are continuing in five districts in each of both the states,” Kumar said. He added that operations were hampered after communication and transport links were disrupted in the northern districts of Karnataka.

The death toll is likely to increase as many people have gone missing, according to a report by the Press Trust of India.

India’s army, air force and navy joined in to rescue marooned people and distribute food, the federal government said in a statement yesterday. Heavy rain held up the deployment of troops in the affected regions, where 720 soldiers will join rescue operations, the government said.