BIHAR FLOODS | PM, SONIA VISIT AFFECTED AREAS
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20 kids trapped inside school for over a week
Published on Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 15:14, Updated on Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 16:16 in India section
Tags: Bihar Floods, Nitish Kumar , New Delhi
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New Delhi: The swollen Kosi river continues to wreak havoc in Bihar. Making matter worse was an additional 1.5 lakh cusecs of water that was released from Nepal on Thursday morning. An alert has been sounded at Purnia and Katihar district.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the flood crisis a “national calamity” and announced a relief package of Rs 1,000 crore for Bihar after visiting the affected areas.
Meanwhile, at least 20 children have been trapped inside a school in flooded Madhepura for the last seven days.
Principal of Little Star School, SM Sonsi, confirmed to CNN-IBN that over 20 students are still stranded. He said he had managed to keep the children safe but fears the food shortage will trigger a food war.
“If the administration had sounded an alert, we would have left the school after the morning attendance. Somehow we managed to take out 15 students. Around 20 students are still trapped there. I feel it can lead to a food war. The problem is that the children are from Madhepura circumference. Even if they escape from here, they can’t escape the situation as their homes are submerged as well,” Sonsi said.
However, the local administration said that a rescue plan is in place. Secretary of Disaster Management for Bihar, Pratyaya Amrit, said, “We have to monitor the scenario till October and all concerned officials are on the job. Water will enter certain new areas but will not be a very alarming situation. Almost 1.25 lakh people have been evacuated. Target is to evacuate some 15 lakh people. Presently two relief camps are working. More camps are being prepared.”
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Thursday undertook an aerial survey of the four most affected districts by floods in Bihar.
Singh and Gandhi arrived at the Purnia airbase by a special IAF plane from New Delhi and took off in an IAF chopper to undertake the aerial survey in Supaul, Saharsa, Araria and Madhepura districts, official sources said.
They were accompanied by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Railway Minister Lalu Prasad, Union Minister of State for Water Resource Jaiprakash Narain Yadav and BJP Lok Sabha members from Purnia and Araria – Uday Singh and Sukhdeo Paswan – respectively.
Earlier, Kumar received Singh and Gandhi at the Purnia airbase and briefed them about the flood situation.
Altogether 55 persons have so far lost their lives in the current spell of floods in the state.
Personnel of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Special Auxiliary Police (SAP), Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), state police and the Army were engaged in the flood-hit areas to provide succour to the victims, the sources said.
Over 25 lakh people in 15 districts have been hit by the impact of one of the worst floods in recent memory with victims from these four districts making up 19.78 lakh.
A total of 396 boats engaged in relief and rescue work in the four districts have so far rescued 65,539 marooned people to safer places, they said, adding the number of people rescued from all the 15 districts was over 1.2 lakh.
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