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Rain hits flood rescue efforts
NEW DELHI, India -- Heavy rains have hampered rescue efforts to find dozens of workers washed away by flash floods at a construction site in the popular northern Indian resort district of Kulu, in Himachal Pradesh state. Many of the 250 workers at the state-funded Parvati hydroelectric power plant project were asleep in a makeshift tent site when the flood hit suddenly on Wednesday. Chief Minister Veerbhadra Singh, the state's top elected official, told The Associated Press the death toll could be higher than the 100 people that were initially reported killed. Local officials said that at least 30 people had been rescued from the site. A number of the victims were migrant laborers from Nepal and the Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the Press Trust of India (PTI), reported. They were engaged in building a tunnel under a mountain and a bridge for the electric plant -- one of Asia's biggest dam projects -- on the Pulia Nallah stream. The site is 350 kilometers (220 miles) north of New Delhi. A police spokesman told PTI that villagers reported seeing drowned bodies floating downstream in the swollen Parvati River and the rain damaged private and state properties. Police feared hamlets and villages had also been swamped, leading to a high number of casualties. The Kulu valley is popular with tourists at this time of the year and police told PTI that they were not ruling out foreigners among the dead. The freak cloudburst accompanied by torrential rain occurred in Kulu's remote Garsa area on the Parvati River, which is a tributary of the larger Beas River, which flows from Pakistan into India. South Asia's annual monsoon runs from June to September and is vital for the economy of the region, where most people depend on agriculture. But each year rains and flooding displace millions and results in thousands of deaths. Malaria, spread by mosquitoes in waterlogged areas, and water-borne diseases including diarrhea also escalate during the monsoon period. Weather forecasters said further heavy rains would lash the northeastern Indian state of Assam, one of the worst hit areas of the country. Hundreds of deaths have been recorded already this season, while more than 7 million people have been stranded or made homeless by flooding and landslides. Most of the deaths have been in the northeastern state of Assam where rising water levels have cut off about 3 million people. In neighboring Bangladesh, over 2 million people are marooned from raging rivers and more than 100 have died. In other parts of India and the neighboring Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, thousands are homeless and dozens have died since the rains started last month.
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