300,000 flee deadly floods in India

Indian People are airlifted by Navy personnel during a rescue operation at a flooded area in Paravoor near Kochi, in the Indian state of Kerala on August 18, 2018.

(Image credit: AFP contributor/Getty Images)

published 18 August 2018

Unusually catastrophic monsoon rains continued Saturday in the southern Indian state of Kerala, where more than 300,000 people have now evacuated their homes to escape rising floodwaters. Another 10,000 are thought to be trapped on their roofs awaiting rescue.

Severe flooding has lasted for more than a week, and at least 324 people have died in connection to the floods. More rain is expected at least through Monday, hindering already fraught rescue efforts. Nevertheless, 82,000 rescues were completed on Friday alone.

"It's a four-story house, but water started pouring in fast until it reached the second floor and stayed that way for two days," said one woman named Shrinni, who lives with her family in a town called Ranni. "My relatives shifted to the top floor with all the stuff they immediately needed. An airlift came, but as my 85-year-old grandmother had never taken a flight in her life and she was afraid to go. So the whole family stayed back. On Friday, rescuers came with motor boats and shifted them to a safe place."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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