In brief
Assam’s 2026 floods turned Sivasagar district into a chaotic theatre of rising waters. A 97‑year‑old resident, Lokada Duarah, was rescued by a banana‑tree‑raft. The incident underscores a sharp rise in flood intensity and the vulnerability of local livestock, many of which lack insurance. Bornali Baruah, a veteran farmer, has begun rethinking life in an area once thought safe from such storms.
A woman wades through floodwaters outside her inundated house at a village in Assam’s Sivasagar district, and a 97‑year‑old is about to slip into her boat‑shaped banana leaf.
Well past midnight on 19 July, floodwaters surged through the village and fought to swallow the family’s home. Lokada Duarah, who cannot walk, was lifted onto a makeshift raft made of banana trunks and carried through the raging waters toward safety.
The family – Bornali Baruah, her husband, and Lokada – struggled against currents that were four feet deep, holding each other’s hands and using sticks to steady themselves.
The flood eventually covered the house, rising to around five feet. By day’s end the three had reached a shelter camp on a national highway, but the damage was complete: the family’s goats, ducks, chickens and fish were lost, and their entire home was almost destroyed.
While Assam’s Sivasagar district is a long‑term floodplain, the recent deluge pushed cracks into areas that had never flooded before, with rising rivers, sediment, and broken embankments. The events coincide with a pattern of increasing flood intensity due to climate change and unplanned development on floodplains.
Baruah, who left journalism for animal husbandry in 2016 and has now lost major livestock, recounts how fragile her livelihood had become. She still shelters in a nearby private house and intends to rebuild, but she is learning to live with the possibility that floods may return.
The images that accompany this story capture the human cost: a 97‑year‑old on a banana raft, the devastation inside a flooded home, and relief camp tents that house thousands overnight.
