Floods threaten Indian state

Press, 22 September 1980, Page 4

Floods threaten Indian state

NZPA New Delhi An entire Indian state of 25 million people is on the verge of disaster after flooding which threatens a dam and which has already killed perhaps 1000 people, Indian newspapers reported yesterday.

The state of Orissa, on the Gulf of Bengal, suffered a .total blackout on Saturday night when high-tension cables serving the power station at the giant Hirakud Dam broke. Experts said the power could not be restored for three days at least, and Orissa has asked its northern neighbour, Bihar, to supply electricity. The state’s head of government, Mr J. B. Patnaik, was reportedly nearly lynched on Saturday by angry residents of the town of Gunupur demanding food when he made a helicopter visit to the town, which was isolated by the flooding. The whole population of the 1 coastal city of Puri, one of the seven holy places of Hinduism, and the surround-

ing Mahanadi Delta region, has been advised to leave. More than 3000 people in the western part of the state have already been moved to higher ground. Special correspondents of the main Indian newspapers agreed that the death toll in Orissa, officially estimated at 200, was at least five times higher. Road and rail links to scores of towns, each with more than 10,000 inhabitants, have been cut by the rising waters of the Mahanadi River, which- runs through the state. The newspaper, “Patriot,” said that at Gunupur only 70 of the 3000 houses in the town were left standing and Mr Patnaik said on his return that the community was

like "an island lost in a vast ocean.” Food and medicine were being dropped by helicopters and transport planes to affected areas, some of which have been isolated for five days. The Kirakud Dam, completed in 1956, is about 25km long. It straddles the Mahanadi near Salbampur on the western edge of the state and holds back one of India’s largest reservoirs. The flooding has also affected the central Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, where at least 150,000 people are homeless and widespread crop damage feared, and Uttar Pradesh in the north, where more than 1300 people have already died this year and more flooding is threatened.