Kolkata: The state Irrigation and Waterways department has introduced the mechanism of collecting data on volume of rainfall of every four hours in Sikkim and Bhutan to ensure safety of 43 per cent population of three north Bengal districts from flood like situation during monsoon.
This comes at the time when Regional Metereological Department at Alipore predicted heavy rainfall in north Bengal districts in the next three days with a monsoon trough moving towards Himalayan foothills. Sikkim is also predicted to receive heavy rainfall.
Cooch Behar, Alipurduar and Japaiguri are the three worst hit districts that face trouble almost every year due to flood like situation as water gets inundated after overflowing rivers and river channels coming down from the hills of Sikkim and Bhutan.
"At least 43 per cent of the total population of these three districts gets badly affected due to the overflowing of the rivers coming down from the hills. So every four-hourly monitoring of the rainfall in
Bhutan and Sikkim during monsoon helps us in taking swift measures before the water flows into our territory through these rivers to cause major loss of life and property in the three north Bengal districts," said an official of the department.
Following repeated requests and formal communiques, now it has become possible to get the information at every four hours from their rain gauge stations.
The data gets uploaded to our system for immediate analysis by our experts in the department's 24x7 flood control room to plan the next course of action.
Departments team headed by engineers rush to vulnerable spots if the analysis predicts alarming situation. If needed people are also shifted to safe places before the rivers overflows to lead to a flood like situation.
Rainfall data for catchment areas of rivers including Teesta, Torsa, Jaldhaka, Sankosh and Brahmaputra river's tributary, Raidak, is being constantly monitored.
Teesta passes through Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar before entering Bangladesh. Torsa enters Cooch Behar after a stretch of 145 km passes through Bhutan. While Jaldhaka carries water from both Sikkim and Bhutan to Kalimpong, Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar. Raidak too passes through both Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar.
Officials of the Central Water Commission (CWC) posted there and IMD provide the data related on projected rainfall and actual rainfall of a particular location in the hills of Sikkim and Bhutan.
The state Irrigation and Waterways department has also carried out pre-monsoon flood management task in these districts. It include repairing on embankments and sluice gates. It even worked with local civic bodies to check water logging in town part of these districts.