Bhubaneswar: The fresh flood situation caused by heavy rainfall in last few days showed signs of improvement on Tuesday with water levels of major rivers beginning to recede.
Stating that the situation has started improving, Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Suresh Pujari told reporters that the water levels of all major are now falling. The rivers, which were flowing above the danger mark, are now receding.
Ruling out any major threat of flood in the Mahanadi River, he said though flow of water into the Hirakud dam in Sambalpur has increased following heavy downpour in upper catchment areas, there is no need to worry.
The water level at Hirakud now stands at 622.8 feet against the full reservoir capacity of 630 feet, he said 2.5 lakh cusec of water is flowing into the reservoir, while around two lakh cusec is being discharged through 16 sluice gates of the dam.
The water flow at Khairmal was 5.55 lakh cusec, while it was 2.3 lakh cusec at Barmul, 2.09 lakh cusec at Mundali and 2 lakh cusec at Naraj in Kataka.
Similarly, the water levels in Rengali, Indravati and other places are now dropping and there is no threat in coming days.
Stating that new areas in districts such as Kalahandi, Sundaragada, Jharsuguda and Bargad were affected by the fresh floods, Pujari said around 2282 more people have been evacuated from vulnerable areas to safe places since Monday.
Altogether 95 new relief camps have been set up during the period with free kitchen facility, he said, adding that additional teams of NDRF, ODRAF, Fire and Emergency Service and Police and Civil Defence have been deployed in new areas for rescue operations.
So far, altogether 4,94,125 people have so far been evacuated by rescue teams and they have been accommodated in 957 relief centres operating across the state.
The total number of free kitchens now stands at 994 in the state, where cooked food is being provided to a total of 5,02,608 people, he said.