Ganga sets a new flood mark at Patna as 10.26 lakh people are hit in Bihar

The Ganga at Gandhi Ghat in Patna crossed its highest flood level on Saturday, 5 September. The Water Resources Department recorded 50.53 metres at 10 a.m., one centimetre above the 50.52-metre mark set on 21 August 2016. The river had risen 10 centimetres in four hours. By afternoon it stood at 50.57 to 50.58 metres, nearly two metres above the danger level. Officials forecast 50.62 metres by 8 a.m. on Sunday.

Downstream at Pandarak, about 90 kilometres from the capital, the river was at 43.78 metres at 10 a.m., above the previous high of 43.73 metres from 16 August 2021. The Ganga is also above the danger mark at Digha in Patna, Hathidah in Mokama, Bhagalpur, Kahalgaon, Buxar and Munger. The Gandak is above danger at Dumaria Ghat in Gopalganj and at Hajipur in Vaishali.

Bihar's Disaster Management Department said about 10.26 lakh people in 50 blocks and 201 gram panchayats across 11 districts are affected. The list is Patna, Bhojpur, Saran, Vaishali, Bhagalpur, Begusarai, Buxar, Samastipur, Munger, Katihar and Araria. Later state bulletins spoke of 12 basin districts on alert. Homes, roads, markets and standing crops in diara land are under water. Families in Begusarai and Vaishali have been leaving by boat.

Rain is the immediate cause. Bihar has had 60.8 millimetres in September so far, 69 percent above normal. Catchments in Nepal have also been wet after the Himalayan floods that have already killed more than 1,300 people across the border. Water arriving from the north meets a Ganga that is already high, and the channel through Patna has little spare room.

Relief numbers from the department: 38 community kitchens, with about 1.20 lakh meals served; 50 health camps and 36 animal camps; 12,300 polythene sheets and 2,250 dry-ration packets. Fourteen to 33 NDRF and SDRF teams have been listed in different bulletins through Friday and Saturday, with hundreds of government boats, one count putting the fleet at 693. Senior officers have been told to camp in the worst blocks.

BJP national president Nitin Nabin, who is from the state, said the Ganga basin situation had turned grim and that the river was above its record at some gauges and above danger at others. The engineer-in-chief of the Water Resources Department put 12 districts on high alert and told them to watch diara tracts through the night.

A one-centimetre breach of a ten-year-old record does not sound large. At Gandhi Ghat it is the difference between a known high and a new line on the staff gauge. Embankments, pumping sets and the height of a courtyard floor are built against the old number. When the river writes a new one, every wall that was "just enough" in 2016 is now short.

Sunday's forecast of 50.62 metres is the number local officials will work to. If it arrives, low parts of Patna Sadar and the diara villages will take more water. If the peak holds or falls, the work shifts from evacuation to pumping and disease control. Either way, 10.26 lakh people are already inside the flood, not waiting for it.