BHUBANESWAR: Millions of flood-hit people in Orissa continued to suffer as relief and rescue operations were severely affected on Monday due to incessant rain and rising water level in the marooned areas.

The administration was not able to execute relief operations in the worst-hit blocks of Kendrapara district as inclement weather affected movement of boats used for dispatching relief materials to the marooned villages.

"The situation is extremely grave in Kendrapara. The flood and subsequent rain have caused havoc," State Special Relief Commissioner Jagadananda Panda told presspersons at the State Secretariat here.

The State's coastal belt experienced heavy rain during most parts of the day under the influence of a depression over the Bay of Bengal that crossed the State's coast near Chandbali in the morning. Heavy rain was likely to occur at many places in the next 24 hours.

Angry protests

The district authorities were geared to take up relief and rescue operations with full force in Kendrapara following angry protests from the relief-seeking people during Revenue Minister Manmohan Samal's visit to the area on Saturday and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik's tour on Sunday. But inclement weather affected relief work, multiplying the miseries of the affected population.

With hundreds of villages in Marshaghai, Garadpur and Kendrapara blocks of the district remaining cut off for the fourth consecutive day, little information was available about relief reaching the people. Reports of anti-social elements snatching away relief materials were received from at least two places.

Mahanadi tributaries rising

The flood situation also remained grim in several blocks of Cuttack, Puri and Jagatsinghpur districts that were in the grip of the floods in Mahanadi and its distributaries for the past several days. The distributaries had shown a rising trend downstream following the rain.

A seven-member Central team started assessing the damage caused by five spells of floods this monsoon, which had claimed a total of 81 lives till date. The current and fifth spell has affected over 15 lakh people in 12 of the 30 districts in the State.

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