Chhattisgarh floods: nearly 5,000 rescued; Dongaghat airlift given as 16 and as 18

Nearly 5,000 people were rescued in Chhattisgarh over two days after heavy rain swelled rivers, officials said on Sunday. India Today and The Hindu BusinessLine carried that account from PTI. Rain had eased, they said, but levels stayed high because of upstream inflow and releases from dams. The districts named were Bastar, Dhamtari, Bilaspur, Durg, Raipur, Balodabazar-Bhatapara and Narayanpur.

Bastar was described as the worst affected. An official in Jagdalpur said more than 1,000 people were rescued and moved to camps in 24 hours. The Dongaghat airlift is not one figure. India Today said 16 people stranded there were rescued by helicopter on Sunday morning. BusinessLine said 16 were rescued using helicopters. A post by the Chhattisgarh Directorate of Public Relations said 18 people at Dongaghat were rescued by an Air Force Mi-17. Both numbers are recorded here. PTI said 43 relief camps were sheltering more than 5,000 people. These reports do not give a second camp count. The Indravati was at 12.56 metres at 8 pm on Saturday, 4.26 metres above the danger mark, PTI said. Collector Akash Chhikara and SP Shalabh Sinha visited Dongaghat, Asna and a camp at Panarapara on Saturday.

PTI also reported about six truck drivers and helpers rescued near Sonarpal on NH-30 on Saturday, after five trucks stopped on the Jagdalpur–Raipur road. In Durg, 764 people were rescued after water entered about 200 houses in 13 rural areas and in parts of Durg and Bhilai, and 16 temporary camps were opened. In Abhanpur, Raipur, about 2,000 people were moved, and Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Tankram Verma gave ₹5,000 cheques on Saturday. Balodabazar-Bhatapara reported 120 rescues. In Narayanpur, nine families were moved from Kalmanar, and Gopi Ram Patel, 55, was rescued at Taragaon. In Dhamtari, nine people were rescued at the Lomash Rishi Ashram in Kurud, and an SDRF team went to a waterlogged liquor shop in Nari.

ETV Bharat, separately, said SDRF and Army personnel rescued 15 people at Matiya Khar in Durg at about 2 am, and that Gariaband police rescued 48 bus passengers near Sarai Bhadar. The Sunday PTI copy does not mention those two operations.

These reports do not give one statewide death toll. PTI said two boys, aged 12 and 16, were swept away on Saturday while bathing in the Arpa at Madhuban Ghat, Dayalband, Bilaspur. One body was recovered that night. The search for the other continued. In Dhamtari, police and the State Disaster Response Force were looking for Babulal Sahu, 65, a retired forest employee missing from Sirsida, whose phone, shawl, walking stick and towel were found near a riverbank, and for Tarana Nishad, 15, swept away near a petrol pump in Megha village under Magarlod police station. The Hindu and ETV Bharat said a farmer, 40, drowned in Kondagaon on Friday, 25 September, after falling into a flooded drain while trying to catch fish in a partly submerged paddy field, officials said. ETV Bharat also said a woman reportedly died when a mud house collapsed in Kurandi, Bastar. That death is not in the Sunday PTI copy.

The Hindu said government, private and aided schools were closed on Saturday, 26 September, after Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai's Friday announcement. He asked parents to keep children at home and told collectors to arrange shelter, food, water and medicines. ETV Bharat quoted him telling people not to cross submerged roads and to dial 112. The Hindu said rain from 1 June to 25 September averaged 1,082.4 mm, 100.1 percent of the 10-year mark of 1,081.5 mm. ETV Bharat said a very-heavy-rain warning covered isolated places in 13 districts.

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India Today, citing officials, said rescue and relief were continuing because rivers were still high, and that searches were still on in Dhamtari and Bilaspur.