Kurnool under siege

Kurnool, the largest town in Rayalaseema that served as the first capital before it was moved to Hyderabad, is under siege. It is a vast water sheet since early on Friday as flood waters from the Tungabhadra and Hundri, which serve as tributaries of the Krishna, breached its banks to spread its fury.

While water levels rose by about four feet during the day, it is expected to rise further to alarmingly high levels through the night. Authorities are apprehensive of it rising to about twelve feet in the low lying areas of the city. With all essential services, including electricity, to the city cut off there are apprehensions about collapse of old, dilapidated buildings and extensive damage including deaths at night.

Kurnool residents speaking on their mobile phones point out they have already moved to the second and third floors of the buildings to keep an all night vigil in many cases without food and water. Disaster management authorities are moving in men of the National Disaster Management Force while the Indian Air Force are to position helicopters to drop food and water besides attending to emergencies by daybreak on Saturday.

Official sources told India Today that the administration is preparing for worst case scenarios in Kurnool. Besides the state administration, teams in the Defence Ministry in Delhi are to keep night watch for all out preparedness to handle all emerging situations by daybreak.

Meanwhile, it is emerging that the disaster in Kurnool could have been mitigated had the Kurnool District Collector Mukesh Kumar Meena not bungled on the flood warnings issued by the Central Water Commission (CWC) twice on Thursday more than 16 hours before the flood waters entered the town. CWC's Kurnool based engineer B. Chandran had clearly warned on the urgent need to evacuate people from low lying areas. He pointed out that the water levels in the Tungabhadra was expected to rise and Kurnool could be worse off than it was in 1992 when the floods left a huge trail of deaths and destruction. Unfortunately, the administration did precious little to alert the people leave alone take any steps to evacuate them to safer places. Consequently, thousands of residents are being forced to stay up all night on Black Friday. Their hope is rescue and relief will reach them on Saturday.

india today