Mumbai, India's most populous city, was underwater
Wednesday following intense rainfall on Tuesday night that paralyzed
transportation and closed down offices, schools and colleges for the
day.
At least five people, including two toddlers, were killed
by the resulting waist-deep floods and many more remain missing in
India's financial capital. Flights, trains and public transportation
services were suspended, c
ausing tens of thousands of commuters to spend
the night in their offices.
South Asia's monsoon rains downpour from June to
September, and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies has declared the 2017 season to be one of the worst
regional humanitarian crises in years.
This year, the seasonal monsoon floods have displaced
tens of thousands of people throughout India, Nepal and Bangladesh. The
floods have also killed more than 1,200, with 500 killed in the northern
Indian state of Bihar alone, according to local officials. Stretching
across Himalayan foothills in the three countries, they have caused
landslides, damaged roads and electric towers and washed away tens of
thousands of homes as well as large amounts of farmland.
"This year farming has collapsed due to floods and we
will witness a sharp rise in unemployment," said Anirudh Kumar, a
disaster management official in Patna, the capital of Bihar, to The Telegraph.
As Mumbai takes at least a day to start to recover, locals have gone to Twitter to offer food, hospitality and shelter to those stranded in the city under the hashtag #RainHosts. They have also voiced their opinions on how the city's paralysis could have been avoided, blaming plastic litter for clogging drains and waterways.
Katelyn Newman
is a digital producer and writer for the News division at U.S. News & World Report. You can follow her on Twitter or reach her at knewman[at]usn... full bio »
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