Hyderabad, October 04: The flood fury in river Krishna has cut a devastating swathe in hundreds of villages along its course in Andhra Pradesh. The toll — unofficial reports put it over 100 — does not reflect the magnitude of the devastation.
Thousands have been rendered homeless and remained without food and water for the second consecutive day, most parts of Kurnool and Mahaboobnagar districts were still under knee-deep water and the submerged temple town of Mantralayam resembled just a huge mound of sand after water receded.
The loss — no official estimate has been made so far — could run into hundreds of crores of rupees as crop in thousands of acres has been lost, a power house at Srisailam came under water and countless families lost their houses. The only solace is that inflow into Srisailam reservoir, which had crossed over 20 lakh cusecs on Friday raising concerns over the safety of the dam, decreased to around 13 lakh cusecs. Still, the huge volume of discharge from the reservoir — around 15 lakh cusecs — meant virtual inundation of villages along the course in Nalgonda, Guntur and Krishna districts.
Officials also began to worry about flood threat to Hyderabad with the Hussainsagar in the heart of the capital city filling up to the full tank level and posing a serious danger of inundation to people living along the banks of its surplus line. Though armed forces launched a major rescue and rehabilitation effort in the affected districts, particularly Kurnool, the havoc wreaked by the sudden floods was too huge to handle. People in Kurnool town were still trapped on the second and third floors of apartments and houses unable to move out. If there was anything to cheer about, it was that the situation did not deteriorate as feared on Friday.
‘‘Earlier, we used to request Karnataka to release water. Now we are asking them not to. We requested them to impound as much water as their reservoirs can hold and that only the water flowing above FRL could be let out,’’ Chief Minister K Rosaiah said.
The flood waters reaching Srisailam have already submerged the underground 770 MW hydel power station.
This is the second time the power station has gone under water, the earlier occasion being on October 15, 1998 when the Srisailam reservoir received an inflow of 7.35 lakh cusecs.
Mantralayam looked more like a war-ravaged town than a pilgrim centre with deserted and collapsed houses. As many people had left their homes for safer places, burglars had a field day, stealing household articles in deserted houses. The situation is more or less similar in Nandyal, another important town in the district where victims were seen wading through waist-deep water.
A similar situation prevailed in Mahaboobnagar district with several villages still marooned.
People, in thousands, who had no food or drinking water, are looking for help which hasn’t been forthcoming. Meanwhile at Nagarjuna Sagar, inflow touched around 15 lakh cusecs while the outflow was 8.66 lakh cusecs. Of its eight power generating units, one has been submerged and two more likely to be by morning.
–Agencies–