The north-eastern state associated with Assam in Indian has been ravaged by deadly floods : one of the worst within the region’s history – which has impacted an incredible number of residents and pressured thousands to take shelter in relief camps.
The BBC’s Anshul Verma visited the flood-hit area of Silchar city lately where he saw thousands of people struggling to reach food, medicines plus drinking water as waterlogged streets made any kind of travel almost impossible.
People searched desperately intended for boats, rafts or some kind of mode of transportation that would help all of them cross the oceans to reach shelters set up by the government. Many said they struggled to evacuate the elderly and take suffering family members to private hospitals.
The Indian army and the National Disaster Response Force have already been carrying out relief operations in the state, evacuating residents from inundated areas and getting them food and drinking water.
More than 148, 000 people are in 299 relief camps spread out across the state, Assam’s disaster management company said.
However the situation in the shelters is not much better as several families are crammed into little spaces, sometimes as much as 30 people to an area. Many of these shelters are usually homes or educational institutions that have been temporarily turned into relief camps to take people affected by the particular floods.
Here too, access to thoroughly clean water and sterilization remains a struggle. People that injured themselves as they fled their homes in the middle of the night stated they had not had the opportunity to get medical attention within the camps.
A lot of said they had left all their belongings at the rear of and lost important identification documents to the floods.
Many images by Anshul Verma; Text by Meryl Sebastian
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