Diviseema goes under

Road links to Vijayawada cut off; parts of the city and island villages at the mouth of Bay of Bengal under threat.
National highway No 9 submerged in flood waters at Mulapadu in Krishna district on Monday/Ch Narayana Rao .
National highway No 9 submerged in flood waters at Mulapadu in Krishna district on Monday/Ch Narayana Rao .

HYDERABAD/VIJAYAWADA: The fury of the Krishna is now being vented on the district that bears its name, with parts of Vijayawada and island villages at the mouth of Bay of Bengal under threat, even though inflows into the river have abated a bit at Srisailam Reservoir.

Meanwhile, an embattled State Government requested UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi to arrange for immediate assistance of Rs 6,000 crore, after she made an aerial survey of the flood-affected districts, to grapple with the postflood crisis in Kurnool and Mahaboobnagar and the looming crisis in Krishna and Guntur districts.

Though Krishna district administration, unlike its Kurnool counterpart, has had time to be prepared for the eventuality the enormity of the challenge is nevertheless unnerving.

At least 30 villages remain marooned in Diviseema at the mouth of the Bay, an area comprising the mandals of Nagayalanka, Avanigadda and Koduru.

The administration has pressed into service men, material and boats to go to the rescue of the victims but they appear woefully inadequate to the magnitude of the task.

On an island village, Edlanka near Avanigadda, a boat ferrying about 11 persons capsized in flood waters. While nine persons managed to swim to safety, the whereabouts of two children are not known.

Air-dropping of food and water sachets continued in marooned villages but nowhere on the scale required.

The situation in some parts of Vijayawada, the commercial capital of the State, is no less grim with several localities abutting the flood embankment inundated. Road links to Hyderabad have been badly affected with the National Highway No 9 submerged at several places between Kanchikacharla and Ibrahimpatnam in Krishna district.

The threat of more areas coming under water will continue for the next 36 hours with the Prakasam Barrage still receiving inflows. At present, the inflow is 11 lakh cusecs and outflow 10.87 lakh cusecs. The effect of decreased discharges from N’Sagar and Srisailam would be visible only tomorrow, officials said.

Meanwhile, discharges into Srisailam, the major reservoir on the Krishna in the State that receives waters from Karnataka, have come down. Karnataka has significantly reduced discharge from Almatti and Narayanpur, thus giving Andhra Pradesh a breather.

Officials said the emergency gate was being closed as inflows had decreased. The inflow into Srisailam reservoir was 4.5 lakh cusecs while the outflow was double the volume whereas the discharge from the Nagarjuna Sagar is 10.27 lakh cusecs which the Prakasam Barrage downstream can handle.

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