Dozens of people dead or missing as flash floods hit southern India

NEW DELHI: Dozens of individuals had been reported useless or lacking on Saturday after heavy rainfall and flash floods hit the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Environmentalists say deforestation and extreme growth are exacerbating the results of maximum climate pushed by local weather change.
Native media studies mentioned tens of 1000’s of individuals had been evacuated to makeshift shelters in Chittoor, Kadapa, Nellore and Anantapur districts within the state’s southern Rayalaseema area which were hit by intense torrents since Thursday.
Not less than 17 individuals had been confirmed useless and greater than 100 are lacking. Navy personnel and 7 groups of the Nationwide Catastrophe Response Pressure and the State Catastrophe Response Pressure have been deployed in rescue operations.
A DRF spokesperson mentioned three districts, Chittoor, Tirupati and Kadapa, had been severely hit. Greater than 100 villages within the Kadapa district are below water.
“Very heavy rainfall within the vary of 180 to 200 millimeters befell within the affected areas inside 24 hours,” R. Okay. Jenamani of the Indian Meteorological Division mentioned.
“The severity of rainfall is growing however on the identical time there is no such thing as a place for water to flee.”
Himanshu Thakkar, who research rainfall patterns in India, mentioned that whether or not rainfall will flip into catastrophe or not is “majorly influenced by the best way we’re coping with the river basins, the catchments.”
“There’s an growing degradation of catchment and deforestation is occurring. The native water system which used to assist harvest the rain and recharge floor water — these techniques are getting systematically degraded,” the Delhi-based environmentalist at South Asia Community on Dams, Rivers and Folks mentioned. He added it was unlucky that regardless of authorities’ forecasts for Andhra Pradesh the catastrophe befell.
“The Rayalaseema area of Andhra Pradesh is without doubt one of the driest areas of India,” Thakkar mentioned. Had we ready, this rainfall might have been a boon.”
Flooding in Andhra Pradesh comes after excessive climate disrupted life and brought on heavy harm in one other South Indian state.
Actions in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, had been delivered to a halt earlier this week after heavy rainfall and floods. Environmentalists say that whereas rainfall frequency has been disrupted by local weather change, what aggravates its results, main to large harm within the area, is rampant growth. Environmentalist Nityanand Jayaraman, who works in Chennai, mentioned “progress and growth have destabilized the setting and degraded the land.”
“What we name growth is the degradation of land,” he mentioned.
“Earlier the full rainfall was once unfold over quite a few days, whereas now the variety of wet days has shrunk. Earlier there was once 30 to 35 days of rain however now it has shrunk to 10 to fifteen days in all the northeast monsoon.
That is one distinction due to primarily local weather change,” mentioned Prof. S. Janakarajan of the Madras Institute of Improvement Research in Chennai.
The disaster, nonetheless, is because of the area’s rising inhabitants density. 
“In 2011, there was once 26,000 individuals per sq. kilometer, now there may be simply 35,000 to 36,000 individuals per sq. kilometer. When the inhabitants density goes up, per capita drain house is declining and causes flood.”
He added that the “approach out” of the flood scenario is the “retrieval of micro drains and rivers and the discount of inhabitants density.”