13,227 people from 294 villages evacuated: HM

Home Minister Vangalapudi Anitha on Sunday said 13,227 people were evacuated from 294 villages in five districts due to torrential downpours in the past two days.
Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu reviewed the weather situation with senior officials and asked them to incorporate technologies such as drones to assess the deluge and accordingly plan the relief works.
Meanwhile, the depression over north Andhra Pradesh and south Odisha coasts, which has been causing heavy rainfall over the past two days, moved northwestwards to cross the southern state’s coast near Kalingapatnam in the wee hours of Sunday, said an / India Meteorological Department official. Home Minister Vangalapudi Anitha noted that 100 rehabilitation centres were set up in NTR, Krishna, Bapatla, Guntur and Palnadu districts to accommodate the evacuees, along with the arrangement of 61 medical camps.
“Until now nine people died due to the heavy rains. Police, NDRF and SDRF teams rescued 600 people from the marooned places. As many as 17 NDRF and SDRF teams undertook rescue operations at 22 submerged places in seven districts,” she said in an official release.
Citing preliminary estimates, Anitha said 62,644 hectares of paddy crops and 7,218 hectares of orchards were submerged.
Further, she highlighted that the command and control rooms and toll-free numbers were set up in all the districts, along with the appointment of nodal officers to monitor the situation.