Flood victims leave the inundated Chandpur-Bhangaha relief camp in Purnea on Tuesday for another in Banmankhi. The villagers had come to Chandpur-Bhangaha from the worst-hit Madhepura district. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Chandpur-Bhangaha (Bihar), Sept. 2: Gunchun Kumar, 21, a migrant labourer in Uttar Pradesh, rushed to meet his family when he heard about what he calls the “tsunami” at his village in Bihar’s worst-hit Madhepura district.

But Gunchun has been stuck at the Chandpur-Bhangaha rescue and relief centre, Purnea, for the past three days. Today he was pleading with the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team to ferry him to his parents’ home.

Gunchun’s father Mahendra Mandal, 50, mother Bindu Devi, 45, seven young brothers and sister are trapped with 500 others on trees and rooftops in Kumarkhand. The village lies in the middle of the new channel the Kosi has carved out after breaching its embankment in Nepal on August 18.

Inspector Satish Kumar of the NDRF, attached to the Guwahati unit of the Border Security Force, said: “There are not just 500 people trapped in Gunchun’s village, there are still about 10,000 people marooned in over 20 remote villages.”

Over his walkie-talkie, Kumar is in touch with air force helicopters that are searching for stranded populations and informing the army and NDRF rescuers.

The army and the NDRF — formed with personnel from four central paramilitary forces — arrived at Chandpur-Bhangaha yesterday.

This morning, their motorboats began fanning out to rescue flood victims from some of the hundreds of submerged villages in Murliganj and Kumarkhand blocks in Madhepura.

The rescuers have 20 boats, each of which can carry 10 persons, and NDRF sources said they could not make more than three trips a day. So they can evacuate at best only 600 people in a day.

“It will still take many days to rescue all the trapped people,” a rescuer said.

A harried BSF inspector, Vijay Gupta, spoke of another problem. “Many of the people trapped on rooftops are refusing to leave, fearing their belongings would be stolen. They don’t realise their homes are being eroded fast by the Kosi’s current and they will drown.”

Gunchun, who has arrived from Rae Bareli, has been passionately requesting inspectors Kumar and Gupta to take him to Kumarkhand and to rescue his family. But his turn is yet to come.

Hundreds of people from Kumarkhand, Jorgawana, Murliganj and Raikatola areas had arrived at Chandpur-Bhangaha on bamboo and banana-tree rafts and buffaloes on August 19-20.

Now Chandpur-Bhangaha, too, is flooded. People in hordes are moving towards Banmankhi, also in Purnea, which is still unaffected by the floods and where a relief camp has been set up.

Earlier, the journey had been from submerged villages to the relief camp. Now it’s journey time again — from a flooded relief camp to a safer one.