Uddhav says will request Centre to permanently station NDRF teams in disaster-prone districts

Total death toll in Maharashtra floods estimated at 130; Taliye village toll up to 45

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Pune: Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, who visited flood-ravaged Chiplun in Ratnagiri district of Konkan region, said he would request the Centre to permanently station National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams in disaster-prone districts of the state to prevent rain-related calamities in the future.

Even now precise casualty figures are not forthcoming, sources estimated that the total death toll had risen to nearly 130 with the recovery of nine more bodies in Taliye village in Mahad (taking the toll there to 45) and seven more in Posare village in Khed tehsil in Ratnagiri district. Around 80-100 persons (including more than 30 in Taliye) are still believed missing in all the flood hit districts including Raigad, Khed and Satara, estimate authorities as rescue operations continued in full swing after rains gave a brief halt. 

The Chief Minister after touring rain-battered Chiplun on Sunday, said that while the State government and local administration was currently focusing on providing immediate relief in the form of food, clothes and medicines, he would officially announce a relief package once a comprehensive survey of all the afflicted districts in western Maharashtra and the Konkan was done over the next few days.

“I am not announcing any package just to make people feel better. This is not merely limited to Chiplun, but Raigad and other parts of the State. The estimates from Kolhapur, Sangli and Satara have yet to come in…the damage to property has been enormous with shops, establishments, infrastructure be they roads, bridges, power lines destroyed by the fury of the floodwaters…so, let the financial review be completed and only then will we be announcing a package,” Thackeray said. 

Grief-stricken, distraught residents accosted Thackeray and his entourage the moment he entered Chiplun, with citizens pleading him to provide immediate relief.

Reassuring them of every aid possible, Thackeray said he would be touring western Maharashtra tomorrow to take stock of the destruction in Satara, Sangli and Kolhapur. 

Responding to allegations that no help was given to stricken residents for more than 17 hours after the waters rose, Thackeray said that the intensity of the rains had not left anybody with any chance to plan or warn of the dangers ahead. 

“Hence, we will be requesting the Centre to keep an NFRF team in such districts. So, at least operations can commence at the earliest at local levels,” he said.  

“We have now started experiencing the effects of climate change…areas where villages had nestled comfortably in the mountains for years, unaffected by vagaries of nature, are now being buried by landslides in an instant. This is not merely excess rain, but a far more terrible phenomenon,” he said. 

He informed that doctors (including veterinary doctors) from other civic bodies were being brought in the afflicted areas to help ward-off any epidemic eruption in the wake of the floods.

Meanwhile, while rains gave a momentary reprieve to Kolhapur and Sangli, the Panchganga and Krishna river waters were still flowing above their danger levels in the two districts. 

Over 1.40 lakh citizens were evacuated to safer zones, more than 75,000 of these were from Kolhapur alone, where six teams of the NDRF and a column of the Army carried out round-the-clock rescue operations in the flood-hit areas.  

“While the water level of the Panchganga river at the Rajaram weir near Kolhapur city has dipped, vehicular traffic on the Mumbai-Bengaluru highway however, remained closed as a stretch of the highway near Shiroli village in the district was under water,” informed District Guardian Minister Satej Patil.