AHMEDABAD: Intense monsoon rains and floods in India’s Gujarat state killed at least 28 people in the past three days, some drowning and others hit by falling trees, government officials said.

The weather department warned more heavy rain is expected on Thursday in the western coastal state. Rivers have burst their banks and more than 30,000 people fled their homes. People waded through waist-high waters that partly submerged vehicles and roads in parts of the state, visuals from television showed.

The state government said late Wednesday that 13 people had died from drowning and the rest from houses or trees collapsing on them.

The Indian Express newspaper said 35 people had died so far across the state. Some 1,856 people were rescued by disaster and army officials deployed for relief operations. Vadodara was among the worst affected cities, the press release said. Electricity connections were badly affected, with some 1,000 villages grappling without power.

Experts claim climate change is shifting weather patterns and increasing extreme events

“There is no electricity for the last two days,” said Prabhu Ram Soni, who lives in Gujarat’s coastal city of Jamnagar. “I have an eight-month-old daughter and an asthma patient, my mother, who is on oxygen support.”

More than 18,000 have been evacuated since Sunday from cities near the coast, disaster management authorities said. The army was also involved in relief efforts in the state which was hit in last year by cyclone Biparjoy, damaging infrastructure and leading to the evacuation of more than 180,000 people.

Images and video released by disaster officials showed them using inflatable boats and tyres to rescue people stranded by surging waters. Rains cause widespread destruction every year, but experts say climate change is shifting weather patterns and increasing the number of extreme weather events.

Heavy rains also lashed Jamnagar, home to the world’s largest oil refinery complex, owned by Reliance, the district collector, B K Pandya, said. At nearby Vadinar, Nayara Energy, backed by Russian groups including its largest oil producer, Rosneft, runs another refinery.

“They are operational,” Pandya said, when asked if rain had affected work in the refineries, adding that authorities were focusing on rescue efforts in the district.

A deep depression off Gujarat is expected to intensify into a cyclonic storm by Friday, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said, but it was forecast to move away from the Indian coast over the next two days.

The IMD has forecast extremely heavy rainfall in Gujarat’s Bharuch, Kutch and Saurashtra districts on Friday.

The northeastern Indian state of Tripura was hit by floods and landslides last week, with more than 20 people killed.

In neighbouring Bangladesh, downriver from India, floods killed at least 40 people over the same period, with nearly 300,000 residents taking refuge in emergency shelters.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2024