Deadly storm hits S. Asia, 50 killed, 800 missing<\/p>\n
S. Radha Kumar, Reuters\/Hyderabad, India<\/p>\n
At least 800 people remained missing in southern India on
\nWednesday and hundreds of fishermen were unaccounted for in
\nBangladesh after a severe storm in the Bay of Bengal killed 50
\npeople, officials said.<\/p>\n
Indian authorities said about 100,000 people were homeless
\nafter heavy rains this week caused floods in the coastal
\ndistricts of Andhra Pradesh state, with strong winds uprooting
\nthousands of trees and electricity poles.<\/p>\n
They had earlier said more than 1,000 people were missing in
\nthe state, including scores of fishermen, but some of them had
\nreturned to shore.<\/p>\n
\"Of the over 1,000 missing people, 150-200 fishermen have been
\ntraced and are safe,\" top state disaster management official
\nShashank Goel told Reuters.<\/p>\n
He said flood waters had started to recede as rains had eased
\nin the region.<\/p>\n
Rescue workers in motorized rubber dinghies picked up people
\nstranded in floods, while military helicopters dropped food and
\nwater packets to marooned people and lifted them off rooftops.
\nThousands were evacuated to relief camps.<\/p>\n
\"Water entered my house around midnight on Monday. We lost
\neverything, including our clothes,\" Samba Siva Rao, a coastal
\nresident, told Reuters by telephone from a relief camp.<\/p>\n
Most of the 50 killed in Andhra Pradesh were either
\nelectrocuted or died in house collapses, officials said.<\/p>\n
In Bangladesh, leaders of the low-lying nation's fishing
\ncommunity said on Wednesday they had not heard from about 300
\nfishermen after the storm triggered high waves and heavy rain
\nalong the coast this week.<\/p>\n
\"We are expecting some of them to come back,\" Kabir Ahmed
\nSawdagar told Reuters from the coastal city of Cox's Bazar,
\nadding that in the past fishermen reported missing had returned
\nsafely weeks after a storm.<\/p>\n
But Golam Mustafa Chowdhury, president of the Fishing Trawlers
\nAssociation in the coastal district of Barguna, said 31 trawlers
\nwith about 450 fishermen sank during the storm and he feared most
\nof the men on them had drowned.<\/p>\n
Other fishing groups said some missing fishermen had returned
\nand others may have been pushed towards Indian waters.<\/p>\n
Storms and cyclones that form in the Bay of Bengal in
\nSeptember and October slam into India's eastern coast and
\nneighboring Bangladesh almost every year.<\/p>\n
In 1977, around 10,000 people were killed when a cyclone
\nlashed Andhra Pradesh. Nineteen years later, some 2,000 people
\nwere killed in another cyclone. In Bangladesh, a cyclone left
\n143,000 people dead in 1991.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, there was no electricity in about 100 towns and
\n1,300 villages on Andhra Pradesh's coast where rail, air and road
\ntraffic has been severely disrupted.<\/p>\n
With flood waters beginning to recede, most train services
\nwere expected to resume by Thursday, railway officials said.<\/p>\n
Cargo handling at Visakhapatnam port -- one of India's busiest
\n-- had resumed after being suspended for two days due to the
\nstorm.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of vehicles were stranded on a key highway linking
\neastern India with the south of the country and the airport in
\nthe port city of Visakhapatnam was closed for the second day as
\nits runway was still partially waterlogged.<\/p>\n
Rains had eased in most parts of the state on Wednesday but
\nits largest river, the Godavari, had burst its bank in several
\nareas and was threatening to spill over. Officials said they were
\nworried about losses to sugarcane, chilli and paddy crops.<\/p>\n
\"Lakhs (hundreds of thousands) of acres of fields have got
\ninundated,\" Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, Andhra Pradesh's chief
\nminister, said after a aerial survey of flood-hit areas.<\/p>",
"url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/deadly-storm-hits-s-asia-50-killed-800-missing-1447893297",
"image": ""
},
"sponsor": "Okusi Associates",
"sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com"
}