The damage caused by the devastating floods in the Krishna river basin of Andhra Pradesh has been preliminarily estimated at Rs 12,225 crore, chief minister, K Rosaiah, said urging the Centre to release Rs 6,000 crore immediately for undertaking, relief, rehabilitation and restoration works.
Rosaiah wrote a letter to Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, on Monday requesting him to consider the floods as “national calamity of rare severity” and release the money under the National Calamity and Contingency Fund.
Meanwhile, United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson, Sonia Gandhi, arrived here along with home minister, P Chidambaram, to undertake an aerial survey of the flood-affected areas. Before she left for Delhi after the survey, Rosaiah submitted to her a preliminary report on the flood situation. Sonia Gandhi is stated to have extended all help for providing relief to the affected persons.
According to Rosaiah, the loss incurred by the infrastructure sector including roads, communication, power and irrigation is to the tune of Rs 10,000 crore. Besides, Rs 1,050 crore worth of agricultural and horticultural crops have been destroyed and Rs 270 crore worth of cattle perished. While damages to houses is Rs 300 crore, the loss incurred by the fisheries segment is Rs 100 crore. An amount of Rs 500 crore is being spent on rescue and relief operations including food supplies and payment of ex gratia to the kin of the deceased.
He said the floods had damaged more than 100,000 acres of standing crops. About 574 minor irrigation tanks had breached. The Sunkesula barrage breached at two places and the Banakacherla regulator was damaged. The Srisailam Right Bank Power house was completely inundated and 770 Mw generation capacity was lost for the next 3-4 months.
Highlighting the severity of the calamity in his letter, the chief minister said that some mandals in Mahabubnagar and Kurnool districts received a rainfall of over 30 cm in a day resulting in heavy inflows into major projects like Jurala, Srisailam, Nagarjunasagar, Prakasam and Sunkesula located in the Krishna basin. The Srisailam project, which is designed to have an inflow up to 1.36 million cusecs, received more than 2.5 million cusecs continuously for 12 hours. “This is the Probable Maximum Flood (PMF) predicted once in 10,000 years.”
Consequently, Rosaiah said, the water levels in Jurala, Srisailam and Sunkesula projects had crossed the maximum water level resulting in inundation of many villages located in the backwaters. The entire Kurnool town, which has a population of over 500,000, was flooded with over 20 feet water. Electrical installations at several places were damaged causing total disruption of power to hundreds of villages in the five affected districts. More than three dozen persons had died and lakhs of people from the low-lying areas had being evacuated.
The flood situation in the state continued to be alarming even on Monday. While flood waters receded in Kurnool and Mahabubnagar districts, the inhabitants of Krishna and Guntur districts are bearing the brunt now. Several villages in the two districts and also parts of Nalgonda are currently inundated. Over 150,000 people have been evacuated to safer places in Krishna district alone.
The government has estimated that so far 1.3 million people have been affected. The number does not include people living in Nalgonda, Krishna and Guntur districts where flood waters entered in about 200 villages.
According to unofficial information, the death toll so far has crossed 50. The chief minister has increased the ex gratia amount to be paid for the kin of the deceased from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh.
The flood situation is expected to be under control by tomorrow as there has been a considerable reduction in the inflows to various reservoirs. The inflow into Srisailam reservoir declined to 538,000 cusecs and the outflow was down to 1 million cusecs. This was likely to decrease further from now onwards. The inflow into the Nagarjunasagar dam also declined to 1.13 million cusecs, while the outflow stood at 1.01 million cusecs.
