Severe deluge from several rivers, including the Gandak, Kosi and Bagmati, hit Bihar and created havoc on Sunday.

The state government has not released any information about the dead or missing people, while the Union home ministry was monitoring the situation, which is expected to worsen further over the next couple of days.

Rail and road services in the northern parts of the state have been disrupted, a large number of people have been displaced and vast stretches of agricultural crops devastated as flood waters swept across at least 13 districts.

There were unprecedented scenes of flood waters topping the Kosi barrage and threatening the 62-year-old structure at Birpur in Supaul district along the Indo-Nepal border despite all its 56 gates being open and water gushing out from them.

The discharge from the Kosi barrage crossed 6.61 lakh cusec on Sunday morning, the highest since 1968 when it had gone beyond 7.88 lakh cusec.

One cusec or ‘cubic foot per second’ is 28.32 litres of water crossing any particular point in a second.

The state water resources department (WRD) and the Supaul district administration have initiated emergency measures to protect the barrage and were monitoring the embankments around. Vehicular near barrage has been stopped.

A team of three superintending engineers, 17 executive engineers, 25 assistant engineers and 45 junior engineers of the WRD have been deployed in Supaul to tackle the floods.

Compounding the situation, 5.62 lakh cusecs of water was released from the Valmikinagar Barrage at 10pm on Saturday night. This was the highest in 21 years since 2004.

“Incessant rainfall in the catchment areas of Nepal has led to several rivers flowing above the danger level at several places in the bordering districts. The excess water is inundating the low-lying areas in the affected districts,” WRD principal secretary Santosh Kumar Mall told reporters.

Disaster management department (DMD) additional chief secretary Pratyaya Amrit said that 16 team of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) have been deployed in Supaul, Saharsa, East Champaran, West Champaran, Gopalganj, Saran, and Muzaffarpur districts.

“We have asked the NDRF and SDRF units in Bihar to stay on high alert,” Amrit said.

The floodwaters are expected to find their way finally to the Ganga, which has already brought floods in the districts along it in Bihar earlier this month. This will again shoot up its water level endangering the affected districts again and threatening the state capital as well.