Floods Leave 55,000 Homeless in Calcutta

Flood waters inundated parts of this Indian city of 13 million Wednesday, leaving 55,000 people homeless--many rowing in boats.

Fed by monsoon rains, the rising waters of the Hooghly River running through Calcutta swept away sandbag barriers and coursed through the city’s central, eastern and northern regions.

No deaths were reported in Calcutta, but authorities said 727 people have died in eight days of floods in West Bengal state, of which Calcutta is the capital.

Police in jeeps patrolled the crowded shanty clusters along the river, warning Calcutta residents over loudspeakers to move to safer areas. Calcutta is India’s second most populous city after Bombay.

The refugees waded from their flooded homes or rowed in boats to a partly constructed market complex where the government had been planning to relocate street vendors in a cleanup drive.

Volunteers set up community kitchens to provide food--mostly rice gruel and lentils--to the 55,000 made homeless by the rising Hooghly, which is part of the Ganges River system.

More rain was predicted, and Calcutta weather official R. N. Goldar said a high tide was expected today that could reach 21 feet and flood the whole city.

In the nine worst-hit districts of West Bengal state, air force helicopters dropped food to people marooned on rooftops since the floods began Sept. 18.

One woman, 55, was killed and another injured when they were hit by bags of rice dropped from a helicopter in Murshidabad district, north of Calcutta.

The unusual late monsoon floods have caused more than $671 million of damage in West Bengal state.

A total of 794 people are dead or missing in the floods that have submerged vast tracts of eastern India and Bangladesh and marooned more than 11 million people.

In Bangladesh, where more than 1 million people have been affected by the floods, pirates in boats looted the homes of thousands who fled their marooned villages.

At least 200,000 people in Bangladesh have lost their homes as swirling waters swept away thousands of mud-and-thatch huts across the farming region that borders India’s West Bengal state.