Floods have wrecked havoc in India and going by the statistics, the casualties and the consequential damage caused, we seem to be ill equipped to handle the effects of floods. Moreover, floods have increased in frequency much in line with what climate change specialists have predicted. The National Disaster Management Division (NDMD) of the Ministry of Home Affairs in India reports that over 5 million people across 8 states are currently affected by flooding.
The states that have been affected the worst are Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The devastation of floods has reached to 375 villages from 89 districts across the eight states. This season’s flooding has reportedly cost 124 lives and over 90 of the fatalities are believed to have occurred during the last 2 weeks themselves, besides injuring 200 people.
Regions in the red Indian Meteorological Department has issued a high-level warning for heavy rains in Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Himalayan West Bengal and Sikkim.
Scale of devastation has so far been:
1. 2,888 houses have been destroyed 336,555 damaged
2. 55,000 heads of cattle have been lost due to the floods
3. 20,000 people have been forced to evacuate their home by the floods.
