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More than 1,000 missing after South Asian storm
(S. Radha Kumar, Reuters, September 21, 2005)
At least 800 people remained missing in southern India on Wednesday and hundreds of fishermen were unaccounted for in Bangladesh after a severe storm in the Bay of Bengal killed 50 people, officials said. . . . Indian authorities said about 100,000 people were homeless after heavy rains this week caused floods in the coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh state, with strong winds uprooting thousands of trees and electricity poles. . . . They had earlier said more than 1,000 people were missing in the state, including scores of fishermen, but some of them had returned to shore. . . . "Of the over 1,000 missing people, 150-200 fishermen have been traced and are safe," top state disaster management official Shashank Goel told Reuters. . . . He said flood waters had started to recede as rains had eased in the region. . . . Most of the 50 killed in Andhra Pradesh were either electrocuted or died in house collapses, officials said. . . . In Bangladesh, leaders of the low-lying nation's fishing community said on Wednesday they had not heard from about 300 fishermen after the storm triggered high waves and heavy rain along the coast this week. . . . "We are expecting some of them to come back," Kabir Ahmed Sawdagar told Reuters from the coastal city of Cox's Bazar, adding that in the past fishermen reported missing had returned safely weeks after a storm. . . . But Golam Mustafa Chowdhury, president of the Fishing Trawlers Association in the coastal district of Barguna, said 31 trawlers with about 450 fishermen sank during the storm and he feared most of the men on them had drowned. . . . Other fishing groups said some missing fishermen had returned and others may have been pushed towards Indian waters. . . . On Wednesday, there was no electricity in about 100 towns and 1,300 villages on Andhra Pradesh's coast where rail, air and road traffic has been severely disrupted. . . . With flood waters beginning to recede, most train services were expected to resume by Thursday, railway officials said. . . . Cargo handling at Visakhapatnam port -- one of India's busiest -- had resumed after being suspended for two days due to the storm. . . . Hundreds of vehicles were stranded on a key highway linking eastern India with the south of the country and the airport in the port city of Visakhapatnam was closed for the second day as its runway was still partially waterlogged. . . . Rains had eased in most parts of the state on Wednesday but its largest river, the Godavari, had burst its bank in several areas and was threatening to spill over. Officials said they were worried about losses to sugarcane, chilli and paddy crops. . . . "Lakhs (hundreds of thousands) of acres of fields have got inundated," Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, Andhra Pradesh's chief minister, said after a aerial survey of flood-hit areas.

posted by LoZo 10:24 AM