As the incessant monsoon rains continued, flood situation in Assam further worsened on Saturday with 1,289 villages in 21 districts being inundated, distressing 4.63 lakh people, while the Brahmaputra is flowing above the danger level at many places in nine districts, officials said.
Meanwhile, officials of the state-owned Oil India Ltd (OIL) said that due to the heavy downpour over the past few days, Baghjan – where its leaking oil well caught fire – and adjoining areas in Tinsukia district have been badly hit by floodwater and the accident site has been inundated, affecting the efforts to douse the blaze.
“All connecting roads to the OIL’s oil well site have been submerged with floodwater. Bridges were damaged. At many places, water is flowing over the road with a knee to waist-deep water. OIL’s operational areas are heavily inundated,” an OIL release said.
A massive fire broke out on June 9 at OIL’s Baghjan oil well near the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park that had been spewing natural gas and oil condensates uncontrollably since May 27.
An important bridge en route to Baghjan, around 550 km east of Guwahati, was damaged due to the floods and the Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal has asked the official to build a bailey bridge for unimpeded movement of emergency services.
An official of the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) said that the flood-hit districts are Dhemaji, Lakhimpur, Biswanath, Udalguri, Darrang, Nalbari, Barpeta, Kokrajhar, Nagaon, Golaghat, Jorhat, Majuli, Sivasagar, Dibrugarh, Chirang, Bongaigaon, South Salmara, Goalpara, Kamrup, Morigaon, and Tinsukia.
The official said: “Over 4.63 lakh people affected by the floods and over 37,313 Ahectares of the crop were badly affected due to the floods. Around 19,500 people took shelter in 132 relief camps.”
The official said that in the current wave of floods, three persons died in Goalpara and Dibrugarh districts while in the first wave of floods from May 22 claimed 15 lives in different districts of Assam.
In all, at least 2,49,300 various pets (domestic) animals were affected due to the current wave of floods since early this week.
The National Disaster Response Force, Assam State Disaster Response Force personnel, along with local administrations, are continuously working to rescue the affected people and rendering the relief services, including distribution of relief to the marooned villagers.
TThe Chief Minister has also directed the Deputy Commissioners of all the affected districts to address the needs of the flood-hit people urgently while also adhering to COVID-19 safety protocols. Meanwhile, the heavy monsoon rains affected the normal life in most of the other northeastern states.
The rainwater has inundated vast low lying areas of Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, and Mizoram.
