BALESHWAR, India, MSNBC —  Homeless survivors of one of India’s worst cyclones drank filthy flood water and scrambled for helicopter-dropped food packets Tuesday. Officials, unprepared for the disaster, refused to estimate how many thousands were dead.

“IT IS THE worst flood in the last 100 years,” said Asim Kumar Vaishnav, chief administrator for Baleshwar district. He acknowledged the government did not have enough supplies, planning or equipment to provide relief.
 
In New Delhi, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee summoned his senior Cabinet ministers to discuss relief efforts and reports of food riots and looting in the stricken area.
 
Most of the coastal areas of eastern Orissa state remained cut off from the world four days after a cyclone with 155 mph winds and 10-foot tidal waves whirled in from the Bay of Bengal.  “It will be at least a week for relief to reach all parts of the state. By then, many people would have died of hunger and diseases,” Anadi Sadhu, a member of parliament from the state, told The Indian Express newspaper.
 
The United News of India quoted an unidentified official as saying 3,000 to 5,000 were dead, but national television reports said the number was expected to be much higher.
 
Millions of people whose homes, livestock and rice fields were under up to 6 feet of water stood along the highways, waiting for packets of rice and water to be dropped from air force helicopters.  “Even now, drinking water has not been provided to us, and we have to quench our thirst with floodwater,” a man named Monorama in Talanagar village near Baleshwar told the Press Trust of India.