For the past week, parts of Northeast India have experienced unprecedented rainfall, causing floods and landslides, with several villages submerged and roads cut off. As of June 5, 46 people had lost their lives, across the seven states in the region.
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The city of Guwahati, commonly known as the Gateway to the Northeast, recorded 111 mm rainfall between May 30 and May 31, which has been highest May rainfall ever recorded for the city. It crossed the earlier high of 99.6 mm, which was also recorded this year, on May 20.
Silchar, the second largest city of Assam, recorded 415.8 mm rainfall in 24 hours on May 31, breaking its 132-year-old record of 290.3 mm over 24 hours in 1893.
Sohra and Mawsynrum in Meghalaya saw more than 470 mm rainfall on May 31 while Tezpur and North Lakhimpur in Assam saw over 150 mm rainfall during the same period.
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Explaining this unusually high intensity of rainfall, Rahul Mahanta, Associate Professor at Cotton University, Guwahati, who specialises in climate science, told Mongabay India, “This year, sea surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal have been abnormally high. Throughout May, instability in the atmosphere has been increasing. The depression over Bangladesh and Meghalaya was the trigger that turned the instability into rainfall. There are chances we might see more such weather events in the coming months.”
As per the flood bulletin released by Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) on June 5, currently 2,37,783 villages are affected in 19 districts with 41,415 people taking shelter in 385 relief camps across the state. Till now 21 people have lost their lives in Assam in the disaster.
The overall flood situation in Imphal Valley of Manipur also slightly improved on June 5 but 165,000 people still remain affected by the deluge, particularly in Imphal’s eastern part.
Hundreds affected in Assam
While Guwahati was brought to a standstill by incessant rainfall on May 30 and 31, it also highlighted the inadequate drainage arrangements of the city.
Consulting engineer J. N. Khataniar has proposed to the government to create a drain map for the city as well as making artificial ponds to store rainwater. “For example, the old Doordarshan studio in Zoo Road can be turned into an artificial pond and the studio can be shifted elsewhere. We can come up with more such ponds at Khanapara and Jorabat. We can also make a master drain from Guwahati Railway Station to Bonda,” he told Mongabay India.
Meanwhile, catastrophe struck North Lakhimpur district when the North East Electric Power Corporation (NEEPCO) released water from the Panyor Hydro Electric Plant (PHEP), located upstream at Yazali in Arunachal Pradesh. Two people were killed due to this sudden discharge of water while 243 villages were affected. The Aamtola embankment known as the ULFA embankment was also breached.
Bichitra Borah, a resident of Mazor Chapori, one of the villages severely affected by this incident told Mongabay India that they were caught unaware of the sudden discharge of water despite the district administration sending an SMS alert. “Because of incessant rain earlier, there was no power in our village and our phones got switched off. The district administration had sent a message alert that the dam is going to release water. The water was released at 1 a.m. and it submerged our village by 7 in the morning.”
“Ten villages in our area submerged because the Aamtola embankment was breached. Now, 500 families from our area are living in relief camps on the embankment. This embankment was constructed in 2013-14 and it has been breached for the first time. At least 300 people in our area have fisheries with some of the fisheries being as large as 15-20 bighas. They have been most affected. Now the government has said that they will repair the embankment after the monsoon and also construct a sluice gate,” he said.
A flood affected area in Chotojelenga in Cachar district of Assam. Image courtesy Dharmendra Tiwary.
Stranded by landslides
Dharmendra Tiwary, newly elected Zilla Parishad Committee member of Irongmara-Sonachera area of Cachar district in Assam, doesn’t recall seeing so many landslides in his area. “This time, at least five houses including concrete ones collapsed due to the landslide. In our area, we don’t even have any hills. What we have can at best be called a hillock. There are eight gram panchayats that I am responsible for, out of which three were highly impacted. Borjelenga, Chotojelenga, West Jelenga and Derby were particularly affected. People in this area are mainly vegetable farmers, and they faced heavy losses. We have shifted the affected people to relief camps,” he told Mongabay India.
Meanwhile, in the state of Mizoram, more than 600 landslides have taken place since May 24, killing five people. Champhai was one of the worst affected districts with three deaths while Aizawl and Serchip saw one death each.
Speaking about the high number of flash floods and landslides in Mizoram, Lalawmpuia Sailo, Secretary of NGO Conservation Mizoram told Mongabay India, “Illegal and senseless dumping of soil (from construction sites and highway construction) to streams, rivers and their catchment area is leading to flash floods, mud slide and turbidity of the river water. Also widening of National Highways and reckless actions by the road construction workers leads to rockfall and landslides during the rainy season. Extraction of riverbed stones, pebbles and sand by private and big companies is also affecting the river flows and its ecosystem…it will have long term consequences.”
Chief Minister of Mizoram, Lalduhoma visits a landslide affected site in Serchip district. Image courtesy CMO, Mizoram.
Devastating effects of landslides were seen in other states of the region as well. On the night of May 30, seven members of two families died when their car was swept off the road by a landslide along the Bana-Seppa stretch of NH-13 in East Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh. Two more people working in a cabbage farm in the state’s Lower Dibang Valley were killed by landslides.
A landslide halted vehicular movement along Imphal-Jiribam section of NH-37. This stranded hundreds of Imphal-bound goods trucks which might hit supply of essential commodities in flood devastated Manipur with the other key supply route, Imphal-Dimapur section of NH-2 already cut off.
In Sikkim, meanwhile, 27 tourists and seven family members of army personnel were evacuated from the landslide-hit Chaten area of North Sikkim. Also, three army personnel were killed and six were missing when a landslide hit a military camp near Lachen town.
Collaborative approach needed
Independent researcher Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, known for his work on transboundary rivers and borders in Northeast India called for a landscape approach to solve the issue of flood in the region. He said, “We are seeing a change in rainfall pattern in the region which is leading to an increase in level and intensity of flood. Our ecological connectivity has been deeply ruptured. If we don’t treat the Northeast as a larger, connected bio-region and just as separate states, we are not going to solve this problem. For the past seventy years, we have been trying to control floods by making embankments. In fact, much of our floods have been accentuated by concrete structures like embankments and dams. We need to spend money on research and not on quick fix solutions like embankments,” he told Mongabay India.
On June 3, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma met with his Meghalaya counterpart Conrad Sangma in Shillong to discuss how to jointly tackle the problem of floods.
Later speaking to the media, Sarma said, “We will work together to solve it. We will get the entire area satellite-mapped by Northeast Space Application Centre (NESAC) and then take the experience of IIT Roorkee to resolve it.”
This article originally appeared on Mongabay. Read the original article here