Rescue efforts tardy - survivors

Banmankhi, Triveniganj: Villagers in northeast India who fled their homes after a river shifted course causing huge floods said yesterday the rescue operation was failing and those left behind had been abandoned.

At a makeshift relief camp in the state of Bihar, flood survivors pleaded with officials to send help to relatives they believe are marooned on rooftops or on the few areas of higher ground still above water.

"I left my village 12 days ago when the waters first started to rise. I went out to find food for the cattle and ended up at this camp," said Shivnath Yadav, 70, as tears welled in his eyes.

"I haven't seen my family since. I want to get them out but no boats are going there. I don't know what they are eating, or what they are drinking.

"We need the rescue operation to find our families now. But there are not enough boats."

Shrawan Baitha, 28, last spoke to his wife by cellphone on Saturday, when she told him she was stuck with other family members on their roof in Ratanpatti village, just a few kilometres from the relief camp here.

She told him that his pregnant niece was experiencing labour pains, but he has been unable to get through to her since.

"They said the water had completely surrounded them," said Baitha, who said he has run from one local official to another begging for boats to be sent there before it is too late.

"Not one person from Ratanpatti has made it to this camp," he said.

Baitha said 14,000 people live in his village, and he prayed many had escaped soon after the floods began when the monsoon-swollen Kosi river first breached its banks on the Nepal border on August 18.

Authorities, meanwhile, took control of all private boats in flooded northern India as desperate villagers hijacked rescue vessels and looted food and other essentials while flooding spread to new areas along the Nepal border, officials said.

About 1.2 million people have been left homeless and scores killed in Bihar state in the two weeks since the Kosi river in neighbouring Nepal burst its banks, dramatically changing course and spilling billions of gallons of water into the plains of northern India.

Nearly 700,000 people have been marooned and an estimated 3 million affected in five districts of the state.

Authorities have evacuated 475,000 people and put nearly 170,000 in state-run relief camps, said Prataya Amrit, secretary of the state's disaster management department.

"The government has taken over all boats in the area," said Ravindra Prasad Singh, a Bihar state government official coordinating rescue work in Supaul district.

Singh said he has 41 boats at his disposal and 50 soldiers have joined the rescue operation in Supaul.