Food dropped to flood victims

Press, 30 June 1983, Page 10

Food dropped to flood victims

NZPA New Delhi The Indian Air Force has dropped thousands of food packets to residents marooned in Gujarat state’s flood-swept areas as the authorities reported that nearly 1000 people were dead or missing. Rescuers had recovered 445 bodies in the flood-hit Saurashtra region, 1050 km

south-west of New Delhi, state officials said. Dozens of villages in the Junagadh district remained inaccessible, and Gujarat’s Home Affairs Minister, Mr Prabodh Rawal, announced that horses and camels had been pressed into service by rescuers to reach tens of thousands of stranded people.

At least 424 people had died and more than 500 were still missing, the Press Trust of India reported. Most of the victims were from the worst-hit Junagadh district. The weather office in the Gujarat capital of Ahmadabad forecast heavy rains in the state, especially over Saurashtra, which was inundated by last week’s rain-

storms and floods. The havoc in the state’s ground-nut-growing Saurashtra region was the worst since 1979 when a dam burst, killing more than 1500 people. The area was also hit by a cyclone in November which killed more than 500 people.

Officials said that a full assessment of the damage was still to be made but

hundreds of kilometres of roads have been washed away and power lines to nearly 3000 villages have been snapped. Floodwaters inundated vast areas of farmland that grow ground-nuts and cotton. Summer crops already have been harvested and officials said that the rains would be good for groundnuts and cotton.