Malda, Aug. 25: As the district administration sounded a red alert in erosion-ravaged Panchanandapur fearing flooding, thousands of people were marooned in five gram panchayats in Manikchak block.

District magistrate Ashok Bala said the Ganga’s water level was rising fast in Panchanandapur, where hundreds of villagers have been displaced by erosion.

“We put the area on high alert since we fear that the water level may cross the danger mark by tomorrow morning,” Bala said.

At least 5,000 people living in Manikchak have been flooded out of their homes after the Ganga broke its banks, block development officer Abhijit Mukherjee said.

The flooded panchayats are Gopalpur, Manikchak, Dharampur, Hiranandapur and Dakshin Chandipur, the last two located on the Bhutni island.

“The situation is bad, but we are trying to control it somehow,” the official said.

Mukherjee said the worst affected was Gadaichar. Though this village, inhabited by 3,000 people, has been inundated, villagers refused to move to safety, the BDO said.

The residents, salvaging whatever they could from floodwater, climbed onto rooftops and remain perched there.

“Some of them even heaved up their wooden cots onto the rooftops and sitting on it, waiting for the floodwater to recede,” Mukherjee said.

He said the block staff would carry foodstuff and tarpaulins by boat to Gadaichar tomorrow. It takes four to five hours by boat to go to the area from Manikchak.

At least 8,000 people were affected in Dakshin Chandipur, local panchayat upapradhan Shankar Mondal said.

All schools in the area were closed and a police outpost was shifted to the neighbouring village of Paschimnarayanpur.

Mondal said rescue work was affected as the village hardly had any boats. “The people are unable to move to an embankment, where they could take shelter. We have already informed the BDO of the boat shortage.”

There is a shortage of potable water in the flooded gram panchayat. “Most tarpaulins sent by the block office have big holes. They are of no use,” Mondal said.

Manikchak panchayat samity member Krishno Mondal said the embankment surrounding Bhutni island, inhabited by at least 90,000 people, were in dire need of repair.

“The swollen Ganga is lashing against the embankment. A breach could flood the entire island,” he said.

A breach flooded the thickly populated island in 1998, when thousands of people stayed atop the embankment with their livestock for nearly two months waiting for the water to recede.

“Not one government official has visited us since the water started rising a week ago. Everyone is busy with erosion-affected Panchanandapur as Bhutni is going under water,” Raghunath Mondal, a resident of Hiranandapur, said.