The breach came at night. Most families had less than forty minutes to leave. They took their children, their cattle if they were lucky, and walked — sometimes waded, sometimes floated on bamboo rafts tied to plastic drums — for hours in chest-deep water to reach the nearest highway or school building.
Eleven days in, the water has only begun to recede in the upper districts. In the lower belts of Khagaria and Bhagalpur, vast stretches remain submerged. There is no clean drinking water. There is no food that hasn't been wet for days. There are no toilets, no light, no dry clothes. Children are beginning to fall ill. The slow disaster — disease, hunger, exposure — is now taking more lives than the flood itself.
