After deadly floods in India, experts call for better warnings and long-term planning

GUWAHATI, India -- Rojo Neog left his house in India's Assam state on the evening of July 19 to buy candles after heavy rain knocked out electricity. As he rode back on his bicycle, the Dikhow River suddenly rose and the current intensified.The floodwaters swept him away, and his body was found three days later, said his niece Priyakshi Gogoi, who lives nearby. Gogoi said floodwaters around her uncle’s village Hulang Katoni rose from knee-deep to neck-deep in about 30 minutes.“There was no warning, nothing,” she said. “In the morning we thought it’s fine, there is little flooding but it will subside, but we didn’t expect it to become so bad.”More than 100 people have died in flooding in Assam this year in what state officials have described as its worst flooding in about six decades. While flooding is frequent in Assam, climate and disaster experts said increasingly intense rainfall, sand mining, upstream deforestation, wetland loss, urbanization and heavy reliance on embankments are making floods more unpredictable and destructive.Experts said Assam and other states upstream must move beyond spending millions of dollars on flood-control structures and relief toward better early wa...