More than 300,000 flood victims have taken refuge in government-run relief camps as their homes remained under water more than three weeks after a monsoon-swollen river flooded northern India's vast plains, officials said Thursday. Most residents in the five worst flood-hit districts of Bihar state initially refused to abandon their homes despite pleas by authorities to evacuate, said state disaster management official Prataya Amrit. "They now find the relief camps to be the best place to be in," Amrit said. The number of flood victims has gone up to 315,000 in 324 state-run relief camps with the arrival of another 31,000 people in the past two days, Amrit said. More than 1.2 million people have been driven from their homes and the rest are living with friends or relatives, he said. Authorities have confirmed 42 deaths, but it is widely believed the final toll from the floods will be much higher. On Aug. 18, the Kosi River, a Ganges tributary that flows from Nepal to India, burst an embankment on the Nepali side of the border and flowed into a channel it had abandoned a century earlier. The water flooded nearly 1,000 villages in Bihar state and 370,650 acres (150,000 hectares) of farmland, Amrit said. On Wednesday, the state government ordered a probe following accusations that the devastation in the impoverished Bihar state was caused by poor maintenance of embankments on the Kosi River. Hundreds of people in the camps are suffering from pneumonia, diarrhea and high fever, but doctors have been able to prevent the outbreak of an epidemic of waterborne diseases through immunization drives, according to Deepak Kumar, the state health secretary. Kumar said there are 432 doctors and another 400 paramedics running 179 health camps in the state's five worst-hit districts. The relief camps would run for another six months because repairing damaged embankments, homes, highways and village roads will take at least that long, the state's top elected official, Nitish Kumar, said earlier this week.
