No respite from flood, over 56 lakh hit in 14 North Bihar districts

PATNA: The number of flood-affected people in north Bihar went up by around 3 lakh in 24 hours reaching 56.5 lakh across 14 districts by Monday evening.
Major rivers such as Bagmati, Burhi Gandak, Kamla Balan, Khiroi and Adhwara group of rivers continued to flow above their corresponding danger levels. The silver lining is that except Khiroi and Bagmati, water levels in all other rivers in north Bihar were showing either static or falling trends on Monday evening.
As per the daily flood bulletin issued by the water resources department on Monday evening, Bagmati was showing a rising trend at three flood gauges in Sitamarhi district and either falling or static at remaining four places in Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga and Sitamarhi districts. The swollen river was flowing above the danger level at all but one flood gauge in Sitamarhi district.
The turbulent Burhi Gandak was also flowing above the danger level at all four flood gauges in Muzaffarpur, Samstipur and Khagaria districts but it showed a rising trend only at one place in Khagaria. Kamla Balan also showed static and falling trends at both flood gauges in Madhubani district but continued to flow above the danger mark.
Khiroi, one of the branches of the Adhwara, however, showed a rising trend and it was flowing above flood gauges in Darbhanga district on Monday.
According to the weather forecast, only light to moderate rainfall is expected in Bihar over the next 48 hours as the India Meteorological Department (IMD) predicted on Monday evening that monsoon rainfall activity will be comparatively higher over central and peninsular India.
Dinesh Kumar Bharti, an officer at the Patna Meteorological Centre said in a statement issued on Monday that monsoon activity was normal in Bihar in the past 24 hours. “Light rainfall occurred at many places in the state. The monsoon trough line was passing through Gaya, Jamshedpur and Digha on Monday. Accordingly, one or two places in the state may receive light to moderate,” he said.
As far as rescue and relief work is concerned, the daily bulletin issued by DMD on Monday stated that 4.2 lakh out of total 56.5 lakh people affected by the floods have been evacuated to safer places. A total of 17,554 people were staying in relief camps and 9.4 lakh people were getting food at 1,358 community kitchen centres. Altogether 31 teams of NDRF and SDRF are involved in flood relief operations.