Hyderabad, October 05: After devastating Kurnool, the furious Krishna river has hit parts of Vijayawada and several villages in Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh on Sunday, rendering thousands homeless. The river, racing towards the Bay of Bengal, also invaded habitations in Guntur and Nalgonda districts.
Though the toll is put at 38 by the government, the number of deaths is likely to be more than 100.
The flood waters, as they receded in Kurnool and the temple town of Mantralayam, uncovered misery on a mammoth scale with people who have lost everything crying out for essentials whose prices have shot up in inverse proportion to their indigence.
The state is yet to come back to normalcy with transportation taking a hit. In Vijayawada, water has already entered the Police Colony and Ramalingwara Nagar.
Though officials have shifted over a lakh people to relief centres, there is an equal number in vulnerable areas refusing to move out for fear of losing everything and just hoping that their homes would be somehow spared.
Inflows into the Srisailam Rerservoir have not abated – continuing at over 13.49 lakh cusecs – and the level remains at 892 ft as against the project’s FRL of 885 ft. As for Nagarjuna Sagar, it too was debouching huge volumes at the rate of 10.6 lakh cusecs and the river is surging furiously towards the Prakasam barrage in Vijayawada. On Sunday evening, the outflow at the barrage was 8.54 lakh cusecs and might touch 10 lakh cusecs by Monday morning.
Transportation has been badly hit across the state following breaches to roads at many places. The Hyderabad- Bangalore National Highway No 7 was washed away in Kurnool while the Hyderabad-Vijayawada National Highway is under threat with flood waters reaching it near Ibrahimpatnam.
The traffic on the Guntur- Hyderabad state highway has come to a halt in the Dachepalli ‘mandal’ in Guntur district.
In Karnataka the toll in heavy rains and floods climbed to 168 with 12 fresh casualties being reported even as there was a slight let up in the rains in some regions, officials said. Bijapur was the worst hit with 31 rain related deaths in the last six days.
State Home Minister V S Acharya told reporters on Sunday the toll was likely to go up once the rain stopped completely and authorities were able to unearth the bodies of persons feared to be buried alive in a landslide in Karwar in Uttara Kannada district on Saturday. On Saturday, Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa conducted an aerial survey of the affected districts of Bellary, Koppal and Raichur.
–Agencies–