Assam flood situation worsens

Guwahati: Assam`s flood situation in severly-hit Dhemaji and Lakhimpur districts on Saturday further worsened as river Subansiri in neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh was in spate. The death toll in the current wave of flood has risen to three with one person washed away at Chauldhua village in Lakhimpur last evening, an official report said here today. Heavy rainfall has led to the overflowing of Subansiri, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, forcing more than 500 families in Lakhimpur district to take shelter in relief camps set up by the district administration. The district administration has made arrangements for providing shelter to the affected families and provide them with necessary relief materials, a senior oifficial of the district administration said. In neighbouring Dhemaji district, a breach in the embankment of River Jiadhol, another tributary of the Brahmputa, at Tekjuri has affected around ten thousand people. The Brahmaputra and all its tributaries in the district were flowing above the danger level and nearly 2.15 lakh people have been affected by the current wave of flood, Dhemaji Deputy Commissioner Monalisa Goswami said. In other parts of the state, the Brahmaputra was flowing above the danger level in Jorhat, Goalpara and Dhubri while its tributaries Dhansiri, Jia-Bharali and Kopili was flowing above the danger level at Golaghat, Sonitpur and Nagaon respectively, according to a report of the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA). The current wave of flood has severly affected the districts of Barpeta, Bongaigaon, Dhemaji, Jorhat, Lakhimpur, Sonitpur, Morigaon, Dibrugarh, Kamrup, Goalpara, Nagaon and Nalbari with nearly thousand villages inundated.