Heavy rains have played havoc in some parts of the country with 43 people getting killed and 37 missing in Himachal Pradesh in the last two weeks besides two Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel drowning in a swollen lake in Uttarakhand's Bhimtal on Thursday.
Residents of Odisha's capital Bhubaneswar continued to face a harrowing time as several low-lying areas remained waterlogged on Friday. The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) struggled to clear the water as the drainage system went kaput.
The monsoon hit Himachal Pradesh on June 20 and has already cost the state Rs 5,000 in damages due to cloudbursts, flash floods and landslides.
Of the 43 killed in the hill state, 14 died in cloudbursts, eight in flash floods and one in a landslide, while seven were drowned. The most deaths, 17, took place in Mandi district where 10 instances of cloudbursts, flash floods and landslides wreaked havoc on Tuesday.
A search is still on for 31 people missing from this district alone, officials said.
On Friday, the soldiers from the National Disaster Response Force rescued 65 people trapped in Bharad, Deji, Payala and Rukchui villages after heavy rain.
The downpour, followed by landslides, damaged roads and caused rivers to swell, which cut off many villages and deposited debris to people's houses and fields.
More than 150 houses, 106 cattle sheds, 31 vehicles, 14 bridges and several roads have suffered damage, while 164 cattle have perished in the various inclemencies.
Five relief camps have been set up to house the 402 people rescued, 348 of them from Mandi alone.
The State Emergency Operation Centre (SEOC) said 280 roads, including 156 in Mandi, 49 in Sirmaur and 36 in Kullu districts, were rendered out of bounds for vehicular traffic. It said 332 transformers and 784 water supply schemes have been disrupted in the state.
The local Met office has issued an Orange Alert, warning of heavy to very heavy rain in isolated parts of the state from Saturday to Tuesday.
Amid heavy rains in another hill state, Uttarakhand, two IAF personnel drowned in a swollen lake in Bhimtal, officials said on Friday.
Prince Yadav (22) from Pathankot, Punjab and Sahil Kumar (23) from Muzaffarpur in Bihar were part of a group of eight IAF personnel, including four women, vacationing in Nainital, Circle Officer Pramod Shah said.
Locals joined the police in the rescue operation to pull Yadav and Kumar's bodies out of the lake after a struggle that lasted almost an hour, he added.
The rains which have been battering the state have affected daily life with the closure of more than 100 roads across the state, disrupting the Chardham Yatra and causing food grain shortages in some villages in the Geeth area of Uttarkashi district.
Home Minister Amit Shah spoke with Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Friday to assess the situation in the disaster-sensitive districts of the state, including Kedarnath Dham in the Rudraprayag district.
Dhami shared this development in a post on X, stating that the Home Minister assured him that the Central Government's emergency relief agencies, including the NDRF and ITBP, are being deployed promptly. This is to ensure that the Chardham Yatra remains uninterrupted and that devotees do not experience any inconvenience while travelling.
On Friday morning, boulders also blocked the Badrinath highway at several locations.
The State Emergency Operation Centre said 109 roads across the hill state are closed due to rain-related blockages.
Most rivers, including the Ganga in Haridwar, Alaknanda, Nandakini and Pindar in Chamoli, Bhagirathi in Uttarkashi and Kali, Gori and Saryu rivers in Pithoragarh district, are in spate, flowing just a couple of metres below the danger mark, officials said.
In the eastern part of the country, waterlogging continues in low-lying areas of Bhubaneswar.
BMC Commissioner Rajesh Prabhakar Patil visited some of the affected areas, including Laxmisagar and Badagada and instructed civic personnel to clear the water on a war footing.
The BMC has advised people to avoid the route from Badagad to Rasulgarh and take alternative roads.
In some good news, train services to parts of Northeast — Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur and Assam’s Barak Valley — were restored on Friday, a day after disruptions due to landslide in Dima Hasao district, an official statement said.
A Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) release said services on the Lumding-Badarpur hill section were successfully restored in the morning.
“Train operations through the section resumed this morning from about 09:42 hours. The first train to pass through the restored section was Train No. 12520 (Agartala–Lokmanya Tilak Terminus) Express,” the statement said.
Services were disrupted between Dihakho and Mupa stations on Thursday evening, as large boulders fell on the tracks following the landslide.
Continuous efforts throughout the night ensured the debris was cleared and the tracks were safely restored, the NFR statement said.
Necessary food items and water were also provided to the stranded passengers, it said.
The trains that were rescheduled or regulated at various locations have resumed their scheduled onward journey, it added.
To ensure animal safety and prevent flooding in enclosures during heavy rainfall, the National Zoological Park in Delhi has ramped up staff preparedness, initiated key infrastructure repairs, ordered new water pumps and adopted traditional remedies like turmeric and neem oil to deal with seasonal infections and flies.
With the monsoon officially arriving in the national capital, zoo authorities have implemented their comprehensive monsoon action plan to avoid incidents of waterlogging that disrupted operations in the past.
Last year, the zoo faced a lengthy power outage and flooding in several enclosures after water entered a transformer.
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