Flood-hit Senapati residents flee to higher ground

Our Correspondent
Imphal, August 26 (EMN): An orphanage was washed away while more than 10 houses were badly damaged due to fresh flash flood and mudslide caused by heavy rainfall in Manipur’s Senapati district bordering Nagaland in the wee hours of Saturday. However there was no report of any human casualty.
Many villagers have been forced to flee to safer places after their houses under Karong and Senapati area near riverbanks, were submerged by flood water in the morning while mudslide measuring a stretch of more than 80 feet at Makhan Tabio, about 90 km north of Imphal, severely affected normal traffic along the Imphal-Mao sector of the National Highway 2. The vehicular movement which was closed for some hours due to mudslide, was later resumed after road was cleared in the afternoon, sources said.
However, fresh landslide near Makhan area around 7 pm again disturbed normal traffic, according to sources from DC Senapati office.
Many houses at Karong, a small town area on the bank of Barak River, 65 km north of Imphal, were also submerged due to rise in water level of Barak while 4/5 houses of View Land colony in Senapati district headquarters, and 7/8 houses at Chakhumei area located between Maram and Mao have also been badly hit by flood and mudslide respectively, sources said.
According to Robin Raomai of CCM orphanage home, which provides free education to around 120 students till Class VII standard, the flood water washed away their school around 2 am Saturday. The students have evacuated to a junior school and a hostel located in Karong area. The orphanage home functionaries have requested the authorities concerned to extend necessary help as they’ve reportedly lost properties approximately around Rs 25 lakh. A silver-coloured car (MN 05 5157) was also swept away by the flood.
When inquired, deputy commissioner of Senapati district, Athem Muivah informed that the district administration would be providing 112 blankets, 27 rice bags, 60 kg of dal, 30 kg each of sugar and salt besides other essential relief materials as an immediate measure to the orphanage affected by the flood.
“We’re also planning to distribute relief materials to the affected villagers besides taking up other necessary steps,” he said.
According to a village elder, M Thowo, a resident of Church road colony in Senapati, the flood the people of Senapati were currently experiencing was the deadliest in the last three decades.
Manipur’s relief and disaster management department has alerted all the DCs to take necessary steps by activating 24×7 district control rooms “to attend the distress call from public” as the state was likely to witness very heavy rainfall (115.6 to 204.4 mm) in the next 72 hours. Interestingly Senapati district had witnessed heavy rainfall (40.8mm) within one hour, according to Manipur’s environment directorate report.
Besides suffering a huge loss of around Rs 213.71 crore in ‘damage assessment’, Manipur had been witnessing frequent flash flood in the recent months since Cyclone Mora hit the state in May end this year due to various factors including lack of proper infrastructure on riverbanks, deforestation in the catchment areas etc.
So far it has claimed 19 lives and affected nearly 85,226 hectares of agriculture land, 16,968 hectares of fish farms, 19095 houses, 421 government infrastructure including 128 schools, 43 bridges and 35 market sheds.