PNS|Eluru
District Collector V Prasanna Venkatesh has directed the officials to identify low-lying areas and other vulnerable areas and shift the people living there to the relief camps.
The Collector here on Saturday held a teleconference with the ITDC PSs, RDOs, DPOs, RWS, revenue and health officials and reviewed the Godavari river food situation.
He told them to shift the people from low-lying areas to flood relief camps. He inquired how the in-charges of relief camps were working. He directed them to make arrangements to provide food and drinking water to those who are in the relief camps.
Collector Prasanna Venkatesh directed them to keep ready anti-venom injections to treat snake bite victims. He said that since the flood water in the river Godavari was rising, the entire official machinery should be ready to face any eventuality. All the officials should be accessible to the flood victims and the relief camps should be organized efficiently, he told them.
Nuzvid Collector Adarsha Rajendran made ready vegetables to be sent to the relief camps and the DWCRA members should be made available to take part in the relief works, the Collector said. The R&B officials should take steps to plug the breaches to the roads leading to the flood-affected villages. Arrangements should be made to provide drinking water and essentials to the flood affected villages, the officials were told.
Water packets and hand bores were made available to R&R colonies, Kukunoor, Dacharam, Kewwaka, Marripadu and Palagudem villages. Drinking water is being supplied through tankers at Dacharam villages, the officials told the Collector.
They said that 225 sanitary staff were deployed to carry out sanitation works at the affected flood villages. Fogging is being done by 22 fogging machines at night to do away with the mosquitoes menace in the relief camps and at the flood-affected villages. The Collector told the officials that Rs 2000 should be given to each of the family when they leave the flood relief camps after the flood water receded.
Meanwhile, Joint Collector B Lavanya Veni visited some of the flood affected areas on a boat flanked by sub-collector Adarsh Rajendra and RDO Jhanshi Rani.
In ASR district, as many as 300 houses in 40 villages at Sriramagiri, Tammileru, Pothavaram, Jeedigudem and China Mattapalli were marooned in the Godavari flood water. The flood victims were staying in make-shift tents as the villages are in a remote area and beyond the reach of officials. Meanwhile, the river Godavari continues to be in spate as the water level stood at 14.50 feet at Dowleswaram barrage and 13.69 lakh cusecs of water was being discharged downstream into the sea. The second danger signal sounded at the barrage.
3rd warning issued
The third warning was issued after the water level of Godavari at Bhadrachalam reached 55.40 feet at 4 pm on Saturday. A second warning has been issued at Sir Arthur Cotton Barrage in Dowleswaram. At Bhadrachalam, 15,59,000 cusecs of floodwater is flowing in the Godavari River. People in the tribal villages of Velerupadu, Kukunoor and Polavaram mandals of Eluru district are in distress as the intensity of the flood is increasing. A large number of people from the flood-affected villages in Kukunoor and Velerupadu mandals have been evacuated to safer places by the police and revenue officials. The water level at the Polavaram project spillway has reached 33.840 meters.