Kerala floods: The first flight of the 70-seater Alliance Air ATR plane that landed at Kochi has been booked full on its return flight to Bengalur
The Centre on Saturday said the Cochin Naval Base will be thrown open for commercial flight operations from the morning of August 20, bringing a huge relief to people awaiting resumption of air service from Kochi.
Commercial flight operations to flood-hit Kochi resumed today after the Navy activated its airstrips to accommodate small passenger aircraft. The first flight — an Alliance Air ATR plane — landed early this morning at the INS Garuda naval air station. The main Kochi airport will remain closed till August 26 as water is yet to recede from the facility, the country’s seventh-busiest. Across Kerala, relief teams are running against time to ensure food and medicines reach people stranded in their homes. Over 160 people have died in the Kerala flood. Heavy rain is likely to subside today in the flood-hit state, the weather office has said, though light rain has been forecast at least till Saturday. Rainfall has been gradually decreasing for the last three days, the weather office said.
Here are the top 10 updates on the Kerala flood situation:
1.A joint team of the centre and the civil aviation ministry gave the go-ahead for the flight operations at the Navy’s air station in Kochi. The first flight of the 70-seater Alliance Air plane that landed at Kochi has been booked full on its return leg to Bengaluru. Alliance Air is a subsidiary of the state-run carrier Air India. Other airlines are also likely to fly to Kochi.
2.Flights to other destinations such as Coimbatore and Madurai are likely to resume shortly, Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu tweeted. The Indian Commercial Pilots’ Association or ICPA has told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that they are willing to fly to flood-hit Kerala without taking any payment.
3.Floodwater has started receding in some areas of Kerala. However, the bigger concern now in the aftermath of the severe floods is lack of clean drinking water and diseases due to mosquito infestation, especially in Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram.
4.There has been no rain in central Kerala’s Thrissur in the last 24 hours. People displaced by the floods have started returning homes. Relief agencies in Thrissur say they need more antiseptic soaps and disinfectants. Food packets and medicines are being dropped from helicopters.
5.The centre has set up 3,700 medical camps across Kerala, the health ministry said in a statement on Sunday. They are actively monitoring patients to stop any contagious disease from spreading fast.
6.The red alert in the state that had been in place for days, was finally removed on Sunday. But some districts still have orange and yellow alerts, meaning they are not out of the woods yet.
7.Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said the state has enough food to feed the flood-affected people. Transporting food and relief material, however, remains a challenge as long stretches of several important highways are flooded.
8.The chief minister said over seven lakh people are staying at 5,645 relief camps across Kerala. Two large boats of the Border Security reached Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday. Sixty tonnes of medicines from Hindon and 70 doctors from Mumbai have also arrived at the state capital, the National Disaster Management Authority or NDMA tweeted.
9.With Kerala receiving over 250 per cent more rain than normal between August 8 and 15, the state’s authorities had to release water from 35 dams where the water had accumulated to their critical capacity.
10.Rescue operations were focused on the town of Chengannur on the banks of the Pamba River, where some 5,000 people are feared trapped, officials said.
(Kerala has to rebuild itself after the worst floods in over a century. Hundreds have died and lakhs are homeless.)