Flash Floods in Assam, India: 'Like a Tsunami'

Assam, India – A catastrophic flash flood from July 18 to 20 in Assam, northeastern India, has left a heavy toll, killing over 100 people, forcing around 700,000 from their homes, and destroying 2,700 villages. According to state authorities, a total of 1.2 million people have been affected.

The flood followed days of heavy rain in the Naga Hills of neighboring Nagaland, triggering a series of landslides. A massive volume of water from rivers originating in these hills, including the Dikhow, surged downstream with fierce intensity, submerging large parts of Upper Assam. The abnormally rapid rise in water levels led locals to compare the flood to a tsunami.

Debiram Panika, a 37-year-old freelance worker, was in Dimapur, Nagaland, when he received a frantic video call from his wife, Dipika, on the morning of July 19. “I only heard my wife say, 'We are dying,' before the call cut off,” Panika told Al Jazeera. That was their last conversation. Floodwater from the Dikhow River inundated their bamboo-and-mud home, sweeping away Dipika and their 4-year-old daughter, Radhika. Radhika's body has not been found.

Kukil Das, a 30-year-old vlogger from Nepali Khuti village, where Panika lived, described the floodwaters as an apocalyptic scene. “Trees 30 to 40 meters tall came down from the hills, blocked the river, and swept everything away as they crashed into houses,” Das said. “Not a single roof remains. It was a tsunami.”

In the disaster, many residents tried to help each other. Laxmi Sharma, 46, said she let at least 60 people take shelter on her rooftop. Meanwhile, in Simaluguri village, two friends, Reihana Ahmed and Ratul Swarna, both in their 30s, were swept away when Ahmed drowned and Swarna, despite not knowing how to swim, jumped in to save him. Both bodies were later found in a paddy field.

Beyond the human toll, the flood has sparked debate over its causes. Many residents and experts argue that illegal stone and sand mining in rivers, deforestation, and coal mining in Nagaland exacerbated the disaster. Data from the Global Nature Watch platform shows Nagaland lost 14% of its forest cover from 2002 to 2025. According to a 2023 report by India's Forest Survey of India, Nagaland lost about 794.88 square kilometers of forest between 2013 and 2023.

Debabrata Saikia, an opposition lawmaker from Sivasagar, accused the ruling BJP party of permitting illegal stone and sand mining along the Dikhow River, turning the area into wasteland and worsening the flood. He called it a “man-made disaster.” In response, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma rejected the accusation, attributing the flood primarily to excessive rainfall in Nagaland. Another official cited climate change as the culprit.

Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, a researcher on the Brahmaputra river basin, said climate change played a role, but this flood was “purely man-made” due to landscape fragmentation. He pointed to uncontrolled stone mining from the Dikhow riverbed, which destroyed the river's natural cushioning, leaving it vulnerable to strong currents. An official document from 2022 also highlighted mining as a factor increasing the likelihood of large-scale floods downstream.

Meanwhile, Asor Ali, 75, sitting by the Dikhow River in Prajabasti village, said he had never seen such a devastating flood in his lifetime. “Even the 1950 earthquake that caused flooding here didn't cause this much destruction,” he said. Ali believes floods will recur as long as people remain greedy for land and coal: “Nature will pay them back.”