Assam: How a 97-year-old escaped deadly Indian floods on a banana log raft - BBC News

A 97-year-old's dramatic rescue captures how Assam's floods are reaching places once thought safe.

Image source, AFP via Getty ImagesImage caption, A woman wades through floodwaters outside her inundated house at a village in Assam's Sivasagar

India correspondentPublished12 August 2026, 00:11 BSTWell past midnight on 19 July, as floodwaters surged through a village in India's northeastern state of Assam, Bornali Baruah and her husband were trying to save his 97-year-old mother.

Almost bedridden, Lokada Duarah could not walk. There was no boat, no rescue team and no neighbour available to help. So they lifted her onto a makeshift raft made of banana trunks, and carried her through the rushing water towards safety.

"Everyone was trying to save themselves," Baruah says.

An hour later, she says, the three of them reached a shelter camp on a national highway some distance away from their house in Charing village in Sivasagar district, one of the worst flood-affected districts.