Incessant rain, floods wreak havoc in AP districts

United News of India

19 hours ago

Vijayawada, Aug 19 (UNI) Incessant rain and floods have wreaked havoc in Coastal Andhra districts and crops in about two lakh acres marooned in the flood water.
According to official sources, incessant rains and foods affected 106 mandals in 14 districts. Over 900 villages across the state were affected by the floods.
ASR, Vizianagaram, Srikakulam, Visakhapatnam and Anakapalli districts were battered by heavy floods and rain throwing normal life out of gear. Road connectivity to over 200 villages was cut off due to overflowing of flood water on the roads.
As a preliminary assessment, crops were damaged in over 1.85 lakh acres in these districts. The paddy crop in over 1.60 lakh acres was marooned in the flood water and cotton crop in over 20,000 acres. The crop loss was expected to be high in combined Guntur, West Godavari and Krishna districts, official sources added.
All the major rivers including the Krishna, Godavari, Shabari, Vashista, Vainateya and Gowthami are in spate with heavy inflows.
Over 20 island villages in Konaseema district including Burugulanka, Arigelavaripet, Udumudilanka, G Pedapudilanka, Ayodyalanka, Marrilanka and Anagarilanka were surrounded by flood water and the villagers were using boats to come out the villages.
The vehicular traffic was suspended on Tacheru bridge as flood water overflowed on the bridge resulting in the road connectivity between Vaddadi-Chodavaram was disrupted. A control room was set up in the Collector's office in Srikakulam to receive and provide information to the affected people.
Collector Swipnal Pudkar warned the fishermen not to venture into the sea for fishing.
Special Chief Secretary of Disaster Management G Jayalakshmi directed the district Collectors of the affected districts to be on high alert. She held a video conference with the Collectors of 13 districts on Tuesday. She directed them to take all required steps to ensure that no untoward incident took place. The Special CS told them to take steps to evacuate people living in the low-lying areas to the relief camps, if needed. She also directed the NDRF and SDRF teams to be ready to swing into action if required. AP Disaster Management MD Prakhar Jail said that the depression crossed over South Odisha coast at Gopalpur.
In Konaseema district, RDO Madhavi visited some of the flood hit areas in Mummidivaram mandal and reviewed the situation.
The Srisailam dam across the river Krishna is receiving heavy inflow of 3.42 lakh cusecs and 4.04 lakh cusecs is being released to the downstream NSP project. The NS project was receiving 3.71 lakh cusecs of water and 3.98 lakh cusecs was being released to the downstream Prakasam barrage. The inflow at Prakasam barrage here was 4.01 lakh cusecs and the same was being discharged into the sea by lifting all the 70 crest gates.
The river Godavari is also in spate with 8.23 lakh cusecs of inflow at the Dowleswaram projects at Rajahmundry and the same was being released into the sea. All the rivulets, streams, irrigation canals and nalas are overflowing in the coastal Andhra districts. However, no major rain or flood related incident has been reported from anywhere, the officials made it clear. UNI DP SSP