BHUBANESWAR: As the flood situation improved in the three worst hit Southern Odisha districts, the State Government on Sunday decided to close down relief camps. Besides, compensation of Rs 4 lakh each was announced for each family whose members were killed in the landslide in Gajapati district on October 10. With the communication system slowly getting restored, more reports about death due to the very severe cyclone Titli and subsequent floods in remote areas of the three districts are coming to the fore. Reports reaching here said 12 students who had taken shelter in a school in Mada panchayat of Gajapati district have been washed away. However, there is no official confirmation of the report.
The death toll due to the cyclonic storm and flood officially increased to 24 as 15 people were killed in the landslide at Baraghara in Gajapati district, about 50 kms from the district headquarters town of Parlakhemundi. While 13 bodies were found on Saturday night, two more bodies were pulled out of the rubble on Sunday morning. Besides, four people were killed in Ganjam and three in Gajapati while two deaths were reported from Kandhamal.
Special Relief Commissioner (SRC) Bishnupada Sethi told mediapersons that 68 out of 75 families of Baraghara village in Gajapati district had evacuated to safer places. Most of the members of the seven families, who expressed their unwillingness to be evacuated, died in the landslide.
The SRC said the Government has decided to stop providing cooked food at the relief camps in the flood affected areas by Sunday evening. As flood water has subsided in the three districts with the improvement of weather condition, people have started returning to their houses. Water level in all the major rivers have started receding.
“Affected families will be provided relief for 15 days and money will be deposited in the bank accounts of family members at the rate of `60 for each elderly person and `45 for each child,” he said.
Sethi said after attending a review meeting on the post-cyclone and flood situation in the three South Odisha districts presided by the Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi at the State Secretariat later in the day, heads of different departments have been asked to camp in the affected districts to oversee the restoration and rehabilitation work. “It was decided that three additional ODRAF and two NDRF teams would be sent to Gajapati district,” he said.
Replying to the media reports about some persons of Laxmipur panchayat in Koraput district having gone missing during the cyclonic storm, the SRC said the district administration and the police have been asked to probe the incident and submit a report at the earliest. The cyclone and subsequent floods have affected 56.02 lakh people in 7229 villages of 113 blocks of Gajapati, Ganjam, Puri, Kendrapara, Kandhamal, Cuttack, Dhenkanal, Khurda, Jagatsinghpur, Rayagada, Keonjhar, Jajpur, Nayagarh, Balasore, Mayurbhanj and Angul districts. More than 3.5 lakh persons were evacuated and sheltered in 1517 relief centres.
As per preliminary estimates, 16,830 houses were damaged and crops in 2,30,714 hectares have been affected due to the cyclone and subsequent floods. Besides, 7,34,956 livestock have been affected and 24,209 were killed. The cyclone and floods have also caused massive damage to power and communication infrastructure.