THRISSUR: Rescuers searched submerged villages in southwest India on Sunday in a desperate hunt for survivors after floods killed at least 370 people and drove more than 700,000 from their homes.
Entire villages in Kerala have been swept away in the state’s worst floods for a century. Rescuers fear the death toll will rise as they reach areas almost entirely underwater.
Thousands remain trapped — often without food or water — in towns and villages cut off by the floods, and heavy rain forecast in coming days threatens to compound the disaster.
Nearly 725,000 people have taken shelter in relief camps, state government spokesman Subhash T.V. told AFP on Sunday.
Bedraggled survivors massing at evacuation centres have described desperate scenes after days without food or water.
“They were the scariest hours of our life,” 20-year-old Inderjeet Kumar told AFP at a church doubling as a relief shelter in the hard-hit Thrissur district.
“There was no power, no food and no water — even though it was all around us.”
The overall death toll in the state since the start of the monsoon on May 29 had reached 370, the spokesman said.
Forty-six of them were found dead in just the last 24 hours.
In Thrissur, rescuers searching inundated houses discovered the bodies of those unable to escape as the floodwaters quickly rose.
“They didn’t think that it would rise this high — 10 to 15 feet at some places — when the initial warnings were issued,” said Ashraf Ali K.M, who is leading the search in the small town of Mala.
“Some of them later gave distress calls when the water rose high and fast,” he told AFP at the scene Sunday as the carcases of cattle and other livestock floated past.
Among the dead was a mother and son whose home collapsed around them late Saturday. Another was a local man who volunteered for the search and rescue mission.
His body was retrieved by comrades early Sunday, said Dibin K.S, a Kerala firefighter, in a grim reminder of the perils facing rescuers.
Thousands of army, navy and air force personnel have fanned out across Kerala.
The army said Sunday that 250 people had been evacuated from Pathanamthitta district, many of them sick after days in the pounding monsoon rain.
Food, medicine and water has been dropped from helicopters to isolated areas.
A train from Pune in Maharashtra state headed south on Saturday for Kerala laden with more than one million litres (two million pints) of drinking water.
Roads and 134 bridges have been damaged, cutting off remote areas in the hilly districts of Kerala which are worst affected.
Rising torrents of murky brown water swallowed the only remaining road into the town of Mannar, where an estimated 10,000 residents are trapped, The Times of India newspaper reported.
