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Fear of more devastation looms large over the flood hit districts in coastal Orissa with the water level in all the tributaries of the Mahanadi river much above the danger levels on Friday morning.
"The water level in all the rivers are still rising due to fresh release of water from the Hirakud reservoir and the situation may take a turn for the worse," official sources said.
The senior officials dealing with flood situation made it clear that the worst was yet to come. "The next twenty four hours is crucial," officials said, adding that the rising water level was causing worry.
State Revenue Minister Biswabhusan Harichandan described the current flood as the worst since independence and warned that the worst was yet to come.
According to the Orissa State Disaster Mitigation Authority (OSDMA), about seven million people had been affected and nearly two million were still marooned in the worst affected districts of Jagatsinghpur, Cuttack, Puri, Kenderapara, Jajpur and Nayagarh.
The flood has affected over a dozen districts out of the 30 in the state.
Special Relief Commissioner Hrushikesh Panda told rediff.com that till Friday morning about 600,000 people had been evacuated to safer places and more evacuations would follow.
The official toll in the week long flood has hit 42.
About 500 army personnel had been deployed in the affected districts and more are expected to follow. While five IAF helicopters are airdropping food materials, two more were likely to join the operation.
The week long floods are likely to cause a loss of over Rs 1000 crore (Rs 10 billion) to the state, official sources said on Friday.
The floods caused heavy losses to standing paddy and non paddy crops, houses and bridges. Besides, swollen rivers have breached embankments in at least 30 places.
The state government would submit a detailed memorandum to the Centre by next week after assessing the exact loss and damage by the floods.
So far, the Centre had released Rs 100 crore (Rs one billion) from the National Calamity Contingency Fund (NCCF) while the state government had demanded double that amount.
EARLIER REPORT Diarrhoea cases rise rapidly in flood-hit Orissa
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