Hundreds of villages in East& West Godavari on verges of flood

: Hundreds of villages in East and West Godavari districts of Andhra Pradesh were again on the verge of floods as river Godavari remained in spate on Saturday.

Heavy rains in Maharashtra, the main catchment area of Godavari, have increased the water flow in the river with the level inching closer to the danger mark at the Sir Arthur Cotton Barrage in Dowaleswaram.

The State Disaster Management Authority said in a release on Saturday night that 8,11,353 cusecs of water flowed into the SAC Barrage and the same was being discharged into the Bay of Bengal.

The first warning signal would be issued once the level touches 10 lakh cusecs later in the night.

In all, 283 villages in the two Godavari districts face the threat of inundation if 10 lakh cusecs water is discharged.

Accordingly, an alert has been sounded and the SDMA Commissioner K Kanna Babu has asked people in the flood-hit areas to move to safer places.

NDRF and SDRF teams have also been put on alert to meet any eventuality, SDMA said.

Hundreds of villages in the two districts remained marooned or inundated for close to three weeks last month as the river carried more than 13 lakh cusecs of flood waters.

Meanwhile, the river Krishna is also witnessing a fresh flood due to copious inflows from upper riparian states.

At Srisailam, 2.20 lakh cusecs flowed in while 98,337 cusecs was being let out. Consequently, Nagarjuna Sagar reservoir downstream received 72,790 cusecs.

Both Srisailam and Nagarjuna Sagar are filled to the brim due to the flood last month and, as such, any fresh inflows will have to be discharged downstream, official sources in the Water Resources Department said.

The Krishna flood touched a maximum of over 8 lakh cusecs last month, inundating many villages for about a week in Krishna and Guntur districts.

This time, however, officials feel there could not be a threat of that scale.