Over 1 million people hit by flooding in India’s tea region of Assam

We’ve just learned of the flooding that has hit the communities and tea gardens in the Assam region of India. This is also the region (specifically, the Tinsukia district) where our project, Together for H2OPE — a partnership between WEA, Numi Foundation, and Purva Bharati Educational Trust — is based. Please join with us as we keep all those impacted in our thoughts. We will be keeping a close watch on the situation, to see if/how we can support our friends and colleagues on the ground in the coming hours/days.

A woman (C) looks on as she walks with others to a safer place through a flooded road after incessant rains at Bullut village in Kamrup district in Assam, June 12, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer/Files

More than 1.2 million people in northeast India have been hit by floods which have submerged hundreds of villages, inundated large swathes of farmland and damaged roads, bridges and telecommunications services…

More than 2,100 low-lying villages and almost 100,000 hectares (247,105 acres) of crops have been partially or totally submerged in upper Assam…

The fast-flowing waters have also breached embankments and eroded dykes, leaving some parts of national and state highways inaccessible and compounding efforts to rescue marooned villagers and distribute food aid such as rice, lentils and oil.

Officials said more than 60 percent of region’s famed Kaziranga National Park, home to two-thirds of the world’s endangered one-horned rhinoceroses, is also under water, leaving the animals more vulnerable to poaching…

Experts say decades of mass deforestation have led to soil erosion where sediment is washed downstream from mountainous areas. It ends up in rivers where it builds up on the river bed, raising the level of the water far higher than normal.

Read the full article here.

Daily flood watch available here.