Kosi river flows dangerousl
Army has been pressed on duty in Madhepura to evacuate the marooned even as chief minister Nitish Kumar appealed to people to shift to safer places.
By Ashok K Mishra, ET Bureau |
PATNA: Army has been pressed on duty in Madhepura to evacuate the marooned even as chief minister Nitish Kumar appealed to people to shift to safer places.
���I urge the people to move out to relief camps. The situation could become far more serious if the water level rose to 5 lakh cusecs in the days to come. The Kosi has changed its course following the breach in the embankment and it would be foolhardy to think that the water level will recede early from its new adopted course.
It is not a normal flood like situation with which the people of North Bihar are well acquainted. The situation is far more frightening and it could only become worse if the water level was to rise further,��� the CM appealed to the people in a radio broadcast on Tuesday evening
Given the fact the Kosi has a track record of flowing in excess of 9 lakh cusecs, the Bihar government is indeed worried that a monumental effort will have to be put in to rescue the people. ���We will have to rescue more than 10 lakh people in relief camps. And we will have to keep them for more than 6 months as it will take time to plug the breach. More significantly, the flow of the Kosi will have to shift to its original course and all this will take time,��� the chief minister said.
At least 5 districts of North Bihar including Supaul and Madhepura are in the spate of Kosi river following the breach in its eastern afflux embankment at Kusaha in Nepal . The breach was caused on 18 August but the breach ever since has been widening under the pressure of the turbulent Kosi.. Obviously, the river has opened a new channel and meandering on a course with the potential to cause incalculable damage to human population.
���We cannot leave anything to chance. The people will have to be evacuated. The Kosi normally stabilises after 15 October and till then we will have to keep a close watch on the situation,��� the CM said .
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According to additional secretary of the disaster management department, Pratay Amrit, ���besides 30 boats of the National Disaster Response Force, 240 boats have been pressed into service to evacuate the marooned. Army personnel have also moved in to Madhepura with boats. We are at present running 73 relief camps but their number is expected to go up. Our target is to evacuate 10 lakh people.���Download
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