Krishna river flood level slowly rising in AP, first warning signal issued

Flood flow has slowly increased at Prakasam Barrage on river Krishna at Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh even as the first warning signal continued on Friday.

The instant inflow and outflow at the barrage rose to 4.23 lakh cusecs at 8 pm today.

The discharge at Dr K L Rao Sagar Pulichintala upstream the Prakasam Barrage was 4.20 lakh cusecs.

From Srisailam reservoir, 4.41 lakh cusecs (cubic feet of water flow per second) has been discharged, while at Nagarjuna Sagar downstream 3.93 lakh cusecs was released, according to the Water Resources Information Management System data.

Krishna District Collector P Ranjit Basha directed the government machinery to be on high alert in view of the rising flood levels. He asked people not to go near the river course.

Meanwhile, river Penna also continued to be in spate with increasing inflows due to continuing rains in the upper catchment areas in neighbouring Karnataka.

The outflow at Somasila reservoir in SPS Nellore district touched 19,034 cusecs on Friday.

The Gandikota reservoir in YSR Kadapa district too got about 30,000 cusecs of water. From here, the floodwater is being released into the Mylavaram reservoir, where the outflow has increased to 24,957 cusecs, according to the Water Resources Department data.

The flood in Penna has cut off a major road in Jammalamadugu mandal, snapping road communication links to 16 villages.

The Bhairavanitippa reservoir in the Krishna basin in Anantapuramu district is filling up fast with copious inflows, following which 30,276 cusecs of water is being discharged.

According to the Water Resources Information Management System data, the cumulative storage in all major reservoirs on various rivers touched 768.50 thousand million cubic feet as on Friday, which is 88.78 per cent of the total capacity.

On the same day last year, the storage was 739.44 tmc ft.