CHANDIGARH July 9, 93: Over a hundred people were feared killed in Patiala as hundreds of villages in Punjab were marooned, thousands of rail and road passengers stranded at Ambala and Jammu and the death toll rose to over 200 in the region as intermittent rains, lashed Punjab and the adjoining areas.

The disruption in rail and road traffic was near total in Punjab with most of the national and state highways and the rail tracks having breached or submerged.

The Punjab cabinet al its emergency meeting took stock of the situation and ordered massive relief operations in the wake of 10out of 14 revenue districts having been affected due to unprecedented rains and flash floods during the last two days. While Army was called out in some of the districts, the major relief operation was being carried out by the police and the people themselves. The civil administration virtually seemed to have collapsed in some areas. Voluntary organizations were seen organizing relief operations. The Union Territory of Chandigarh was limping back to normalcy but the communication system continued to be disrupted.

The death toll was officially stated as 55 in Punjab, 28 in Himachal Pradesh, 13 in Haryana and six in Chandigarh.

Patiala, Ropar and pars of border districts of Amritsar and Gurdaspur were the worst affected. About 700 houses in the corporation area of Amritsar had cither collapsed or greatly damaged. Flood water entered Ajnala tehsil of Amritsar district.

 

The Army dropped food packets in Patiala as thousands of people were still trapped in the low lying areas of the city. There was no water supply in the town and all the sewers were choked.

Two deaths were reported from Ludhiana in the district was stated to be alarming.

Two persons were reported to have been killed in Jalandhar district and 48 villages were less than four to five feet of water.

 The embankments of Ravi, Sutlej and Beas were reported to have breached at many places. According to report from Jammu, at least 15,000 persons were stranded at various places in Jammu due to disruption of train services.

Thousands of bus and rail passengers were stranded at Ambala as many stretches of the Ambala Ludhiana rail track were washed away and the Sher Shah Suri Marg was submerged. At about five places, people made cuts in the rail tracks between Rajpura and Sirhind to save their villages from the flood fury. About 200 mts of rail track between Mandi Gobindgarh and Khanna was washed away.

Article extracted from this publication >>  July 16, 1993