At least 50 people were killed in separate incidents of floods and landslides triggered by intense monsoon rains across four states over the past three days, officials said.
Heavy showers followed by landslides and flooding in Himachal Pradesh over the past three days killed at least 36 people, news agency Reuters reported quoting a state government official. At least 10 people were injured in the state which has reported over two dozen weather-related incidents. As many as 743 roads, including the Manali-Chandigarh national highway at Mandi and the Shimla-Chandigath highway at Shoghi, have been blocked for traffic.
In Uttarakhand, a series of cloudbursts early Saturday killed four people, while 10 went missing as rivers breached banks, washed away bridges, and threw mud and waters inside houses, forcing evacuation of multiple villages.
In Odisha, the death toll in rain and flood-related incidents rose to six, with rescue teams recovering bodies of at least two persons in Kuchinda area of Sambalpur district, the media reported on Sunday. Earlier, four people, including two girls, died in incidents of wall collapse following heavy rain in Odisha on Friday night, a senior official said. Special Relief Commissioner P K Jena said that two people died in Mayurbhanj district, and one each in Balasore and Keonjhar districts.
The district administration of Odisha’s Balasore and Mayurbhanj has launched a massive evacuation drive in low-lying areas, as it gears up to combat flooding in the Subarnarekha river system, officials said on Sunday. The state is already reeling under the impact of a medium flood in the Mahanadi river system following incessant rainfall, which has affected above seven lakh people, of whom nearly 5 lakh are still marooned in 763 villages, they said.
Three persons lost their lives in Jharkhand amid heavy rain and strong winds that lashed several districts of the state, inundating low-lying areas and uprooting trees and electricity poles, officials said. A woman died when a mud wall of her house collapsed in West Singhbhum district, as a deep depression over the Bay of Bengal brought torrential rainfall in various parts of the state on Saturday, they said.
India Meteorological Department (IMD) predicted heavy rainfall in Himachal Pradesh on August 23-24 and in Uttarakhand on August 24.