Bihar floods put 43.64 lakh people in 14 districts under water

Bihar's Disaster Management Department said on Thursday that floods have hit about 43.64 lakh people in 527 gram panchayats across 85 blocks in 14 districts. The worst-hit districts named in the bulletin are Patna, Bhojpur, Saran, Vaishali, Bhagalpur, Begusarai and Buxar. Earlier departmental tallies this week put the figure at 41.45 lakh and 40.11 lakh as rivers kept rising. The latest number is the one the state is using.

The Ganga at Sultanganj in Bhagalpur was flowing at 36.72 metres at 6 a.m. on Thursday, 2.22 metres above the danger mark, though the level was described as stable. The river was also above danger at Digha, Gandhi Ghat, Hathidah, Bhagalpur, Kahalgaon and Munger. The Gandak was above the mark at Dumriya Ghat, the Kosi at Baltara and Kursela, and the Budhi Gandak at Khagaria. Earlier in the week the Ganga at Sultanganj and at Gandhi Ghat in Patna had crossed their highest flood levels on the current charts.

Rain inside Bihar and rain on the Nepal catchments filled the system together. The state has had 83.6 millimetres of rain in September so far, 24 percent above normal. Light to moderate rain is still forecast for the next two days. Diara land along the Ganga, the low sandbars and old channels where people farm between floods, took the first punch. Hundreds of families moved onto embankments.

Relief numbers are precise and small next to the affected count. Fifteen camps were housing 11,255 people on Thursday, with food and basic medical cover. The state is running 951 community kitchens. Officials said 2.57 lakh polythene sheets and 40,600 dry-ration packets have been given out. Some 1,872 boats were in use on an earlier count this week. Rural-works engineers reported about 700 village roads under water and more than 100 roads damaged, with the heaviest road losses in Patna, Vaishali, Saran, Bhagalpur, Bhojpur and Begusarai.

A boat capsize in Vaishali earlier in the week left one person dead and one missing. That is the only fatality figure attached to this flood pulse in the public bulletins so far. The larger cost is displacement, drinking water, closed schools and lost work in a state that floods on this pattern most years.

Bihar's flood map is old. The Kosi, Gandak and Ganga have been moving silt and people for decades. What changes each September is the count and the height at a few gauges. This week's gauges are high enough that 14 districts are in the bulletin at once. Nepal's own flood disaster, with a death toll above 1,300, is the upstream pair to the same monsoon.

The departmental machine is doing what it always does: kitchens, sheets, boats, camps. 11,255 people in camps against 43.64 lakh affected means most households are staying in place or on the nearest high ground. The next two days of rain will decide whether Sultanganj stays stable or the Ganga starts another rise towards Patna.