The annual monsoon floods typically hit low-lying areas of Assam, a largely agrarian state, but the record rains this month fell so hard and so fast that they also overwhelmed urban areas such as Silchar.
The situation in the city is “still very critical,” said Shamim Ahmed Laskar, a local official from the disaster management authority.
Water packets were being airdropped by drones and by the Indian Air Force, according to the Deccan Herald newspaper. Images from the state disaster management authority showed women standing in waist-deep water filling buckets for drinking water, while doctors at an inundated hospital said they were treating cancer patients in the street.
Though electricity has been restored in some areas, many residents are still without power. People crowded around a free mobile charging booth set up on a main road in Silchar, in a video shared by NDTV.
Biswa Kalyan Purkayastha, a 32-year-old journalist from the city, spent a week marooned on the second-floor terrace of his home with eight other people, including neighbors and family members.
When the flooding reached his neighborhood last Monday, Purkayastha and his brother stocked up on food and drinking water. Within a few hours, he said, there was 5 feet of water outside and it began to seep into their house. Soon, the water inside was up to their knees. The family strung a tarpaulin across the terrace and moved upstairs.
“We took some electronics and clothes,” he said. “For bathing and cooking, we collected rainwater in buckets.”
On Monday, the water had finally receded from their home, but the signs of calamity were still visible. “It never floods [in the area] we live in,” he said. “But the lane still has four feet of water.”
Sushmita Dev, an opposition leader from the region who is helping with rescue efforts, tweeted that the whole town feels like a “camp” and tens of thousands are suffering.
Other parts of Assam are also reeling. More than 130 people have been killed in the state and millions have been affected by the floods, which also devastated neighboring Bangladesh. Major rivers such as the Barak and its tributaries are overflowing.
A recent report by the Indian government’s science and technology department found that more than half of Assam is highly vulnerable to climate change.
On Sunday, Himanta Biswa Sarma, the state’s chief minister, visited Silchar, wading through knee-high water in the streets. “If there is no fresh rainfall, flooding in the town should come down in the next 48 hours,” he said, according to Hindustan Times.