Prime Minister Narendra Modi conducted an aerial survey of flood-affected areas of Chennai on Thursday and announced Rs 1000 crore immediate relief for the victims.
Advertisement
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa also conducted an aerial survey of the flood affected areas of Chennai, Kanchipuram and Tiruvallu today.
The relentless rains that lashed southern India’s Tamil Nadu state for three days eased Friday, but the misery of tens of thousands of people was far from over, with large parts of the main city still underwater along with the region’s biggest airport.
Air Force personnel dropped food packets providing succour to the distressed people living on rooftops after floods displaced them from their homes.
Modi said the relief package was in addition to 9.4 billion Indian rupees disbursed for the crisis earlier.
Predictions of incessant rainfall via the whether office supposed that the army had to paintings on a conflict footing to rescue survivors trapped in inundated components of Chennai, India’s fourth most populous city.
Dhatwalia said the priority was to fix phone networks, distribute drinking water, medicines, food for infants and prevent the spread of water-borne diseases.
“I appreciate the efforts of the state government, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), civil society organisations and rescue workers as they continue to save lives and mitigate the suffering of the affected population”, the president said.
City authorities were deploying bulldozers and bags ofccrete to fix collapsed roads while several bridges wereunder water as urban lakes in the low-lying coastal city of sixmillion overflowed.
He said over 100 boats, 22 divers, 445 lifejackets and 328 buoys have been pressed in by the force and more such rescue items are being dispatched.
Modi earlier reached INS Rajali, which is a naval air station in Arakkonam town, where he took an overview of flood relief operations in the south Indian state.
Chennai will remain overcast with possibility of intermittent rains. “But we have built over many of these water bodies, blocking the smooth flow of water”, she said.
“We pick up information from all social media avenues and immediately send it to our field teams, manned by two DIG-rank officers in Tamil Nadu, in an Excel sheet format via the V-SAT system activated exclusively for these tasks”, a senior NDRF official said. “One lakh bottles of Rail Neer have been dispatched to Tamil Nadu”, he added.
Advertisement
Tamil Nadu’s health secretary confirmed the deaths but said the cause needed to be investigated.
