INDIA: Flash Floods Continue to Cause Havoc

Over three million people have been affected by the flash floods that hit the Indian state of Assam in July - with the death toll raising to 21 and 80,000 homeless.

The state government has set up 294 relief camps in the area.

Associate Director of North East Zone of World Vision India Mansang Songate says families are camped along the National Highway and are receiving a meager amount of food aid from the government.

Even as the waters show little signs of receding, people look towards a bleak future and a painful return to their waterlogged homes. Located in 22 government schools converted into camps, more than 33,000 people are packed into classrooms with what little belongings they had salvaged from the rising waters.

Escaping by foot or by boat, families watched as their fields were inundated by water and their livestock washed away. Hemolota Taye, 10, and her family left behind a one-acre field of paddy as they fled from the rising torrent. "The paddy was our major source of income," says Toladai Taye, Hemolota's mother, "I do not know what we will do when the water recedes."

Hemolota's family had also lost livestock like cows, chicken and pigs, which they reared to supplement the meager income from agriculture.

Reported to be the heaviest monsoon in the last four hundred years, the water which at times rose more than 80 feet above the normal levels has not only left crops and livestock destroyed, but has also contaminated the drinking water wells. The water has caused people in the camp to succumb to diarrhea and rash skin and eye diseases.

World Vision has provided 20 villages a system for clean drinking water and medicines to 19 relief camps in Silapathar area. A total of 1,500 tarpaulins were distributed to the flood affected people sheltered in 22 camps and 78 villages. Staff continue to work hand-in-hand with the government and other NGOs to provide medicines, plastic sheds, tarpaulins, and safe drinking water to flood victims sheltered in all twenty-two camps.

World Vision New Zealand says no children sponsored by New Zealanders have been affected by the flooding.