‘It Was a Tsunami’: Deadly Floods Devastate Assam After Unprecedented Deluge
SIVASAGAR, India – For Debiram Panika, a 37-year-old daily wage labourer, July 19 began with a routine video call to his family. Working in the neighboring state of Nagaland, he looked forward to his daily check-in with his wife, 30-year-old Dipika, and their two young daughters. Instead, he heard the chilling final words of his wife: “This is it for us. We are going to die.”
Moments later, the connection severed. Rising waters from the Dikhow River, swollen by torrential rains and debris from the Naga Hills, surged into their bamboo-and-mud home in Assam’s Sivasagar district. The current, described by survivors as an “apocalyptic” wall of water, swept away Dipika and their four-year-old daughter, Radhika.
“The water came flooding like sea waves, and they were gone in a flash,” Panika said, standing amidst the ruins of his home. While his 10-year-old daughter, Ridhika, was rescued by neighbors after clinging to a bamboo bush, Radhika’s body remains missing. “I look for Radhika every day in the bushes, tirelessly,” he added. “Her last words are still reverberating in my ears.”
An Unprecedented Catastrophe
The tragedy in Sivasagar is part of a larger, devastating humanitarian crisis. Between July 18 and July 20, incessant rainfall triggered landslides in the Naga Hills, causing massive, turbulent runoff to roar downstream into Assam. The resulting [floods](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/22/it-was-a-tsunami-floods-leave-death-trail-in-indias-assam" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">floods) have claimed more than 100 lives, displaced 700,000 people, and submerged 2,700 villages. Authorities estimate that 1.2 million people have had their lives upended.
Witnesses describe scenes of utter destruction. Tens of thousands of massive tree trunks, washed down from the hills, acted as battering rams against homes. “It was an apocalyptic event,” said local vlogger Kukil Das. “Trees as tall as 40 metres came down… it was a tsunami.”
Amidst the chaos, acts of profound bravery emerged. In Simaluguri village, when a torrent swept away Reihana Ahmed, her neighbor Ratul Swarna—who could not swim—leaped into the water in a desperate attempt to save her. Both perished, their bodies later found in a nearby paddy field. “It was humanity that won in a disaster like this,” said Ahmed’s grieving husband.
A Natural Disaster or Human-Made Crisis?
While officials have cited the unprecedented rainfall as the primary cause, local residents and researchers are pointing to a darker reality: the degradation of the environment.
Researchers note that the region’s rivers have lost their “natural cushion” due to years of unchecked stone and sand mining, alongside aggressive deforestation in Nagaland’s Mon district. Data from the Forest Survey of India indicates that Nagaland has lost nearly 800 square kilometres of forest cover in the last decade. Satellite imagery confirms extensive coal mining and riverbed excavation in the border areas, which experts argue has fundamentally compromised the riverbanks’ ability to handle high-velocity flows.
“This is a human-made disaster,” said Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, a researcher on the Brahmaputra basin. “The unrestrained extraction from the riverbed has damaged the river’s natural capacity to resist high flows.”
While government officials in Nagaland and Assam have largely attributed the destruction to the “wrath of nature” and the climate crisis, the political opposition and environmental advocates argue that corruption and illegal mining are the true culprits.
For survivors like 75-year-old Asor Ali, the debate offers little comfort. Sitting near the eroded banks of the Dikhow, he views the devastation as a cycle born of human greed. “It will happen again,” he said, looking at the receding, yet still dangerous, river. “So long as there is greed for land and coal, nature will keep paying them back.”
