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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (3222)	9/23/2000 9:30:09 AM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 65232

Saturday, Sept. 23, 2000 Helicopters Supply Food in Flood-Hit India CALCUTTA, India (Reuters) - Military helicopters dropped emergency food supplies Saturday as millions of people remained marooned in eastern India following monsoon flooding that has killed 180 people. Many hungry villagers sat perched on treetops to avoid being swept away by swirling river waters in flood-hit West Bengal, where about 500,000 people have taken shelter in about 3,000 relief camps. Officials said the rains had stopped by Saturday but the flood situation in the province was still grim as about six million were marooned in eight flood-swamped districts. The number of stranded people had been put Friday at 10 million, but officials said four million of them had now managed to reach safety. Army helicopters have dropped packets of molasses and rice to stranded villagers. The flooding, triggered by torrential rains as the annual monsoon ended its journey across the country, took a dramatic turn for the worse Thursday when sluice gates of three major rivers were opened to avoid the break-up of dams. State Deputy Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya told reporters fresh areas in Hooghly and Howrah districts had been inundated Friday following the release of more water from a large state dam. Officials said relief operations were severely hamstrung by a lack of manpower and a communications breakdown in the region, also hit by a continuing telecommunications strike. State Chief Minister Jyoti Basu said relief supplies were ready for distribution, but there were problems transporting them to the victims. Northern parts of the state remained cut off and train services were hit because of the flooding. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said earlier in a statement that it had sent a team to the worst-affected districts, Birbhum, Murshidabad and Burdwan, to assess the situation and plan for immediate relief operations. The federation is already assisting 200,000 victims of flooding which inundated vast areas of West Bengal and the neighboring states of Assam and Bihar in August.