Floodwaters rose from knee-deep to neck-deep in 30 minutes, niece says
More than 100 people have died in flooding in India’s Assam state this year, in what state officials have described as the state’s worst flooding in about six decades.
The dead include Rojo Neog, who left his house on the evening of July 19 to buy candles after heavy rain knocked out electricity. As he rode back on his bicycle, the Dikhow River suddenly rose and the current intensified, according to his niece, Priyakshi Gogoi, who lives nearby. The floodwaters swept him away, and his body was found three days later, she said.
Gogoi said floodwaters around her uncle’s village, Hulang Katoni, rose from knee-deep to neck-deep in about 30 minutes.
“There was no warning, nothing,” she said. “In the morning we thought it’s fine, there is little flooding but it will subside, but we didn’t expect it to become so bad.”
Flooding is frequent in Assam. Climate and disaster experts said increasingly intense rainfall, sand mining, upstream deforestation, wetland loss, urbanization and heavy reliance on embankments are making the floods more unpredictable and destructive.