Bengaluru, Hyderabad bear the brunt of heavy October downpour, civic services left paralyzed.
The monsoon has caused much havoc in parts of southern India even at the fag end of the season. The regions which bore the brunt this time were the cities of Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mysuru and nearby areas.
Bengaluru on Thursday witnessed 65 mm rainfall, which was the highest rainfall in a day in the city since 2007. The extent of the downpour can be gauged from the fact that the rainfall on Thursday alone was 39 percent of the total expected rainfall for the city in October, according to a report in The Times of India. Bengaluru had been at the receiving end of nature’s fury earlier this year as well. In early September, four people were killed after a thunderstorm lashed the city and brought it to a standstill.
In Hyderabad, three people were killed after rains pounded the city on Monday. Of these, two people died in a wall collapse, while one person died of electrocution, News18 reported. As some parts of Hyderabad received 7 cm to 12 cm, officials have termed it as a cloudburst, according to the News18 report.
On Thursday, six people were killed and four injured when lightning struck a temple in a Mysuru village, the police said. The victims were shepherds and had taken shelter in a temple.
With the monsoon still not having officially withdrawn, it appears that southern India has not yet seen the last of this season’s rains.
Aftermath of the downpour
In Hyderabad, emergency teams of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) have started removing debris and other waste material accumulated on the roads after the cloudburst.
GHMC Commissioner B Janardhan Reddy asked the engineering staff to take road repair works on a war footing, the civic body said. The civic body also continued its drive to make residents of the dilapidated buildings to vacate the premises. The civic body said it had demolished 1,140 out of the 2,182 dilapidated structures in the last six months, and issued notices to owners and occupants of the remaining buildings. ‘Caution notices’ have been pasted, asking occupants to vacate, on ‘most dangerous’ premises.
Bengaluru was left struggling with shoddy roads after the rains, with citizen complaints spiking. A meeting of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) revealed that the city had as many as 15,935 potholes, as per a report in The Hindu.
Normal life was disrupted on another recent occasion as torrential rains lashed Bengaluru on 27 September, as also other parts of Karnataka. Many trees were uprooted, lakes breached their banks, and houses were inundated as rains pounded the city.
This was despite a massive demolition drive last year to remove encroachment of storm water drain in Avani Sringerinagar on Bannerghatta Road, Shubh Enclave and Yelahanka in Bengaluru.
Underlying reasons
The heavy rainfall in Bengaluru was caused by upper-air cyclonic circulation over the Arabian Sea. The rainfall in August was caused by similar conditions over the Bay of Bengal, The Times of India reported.
In Hyderabad, the unexpected heavy downpour took place as the humidity level suddenly rose from 87 percent to 97 percent in just 24 hours, Hindustan Times quoted an official from the Hyderabad Metereological Department as saying.
According to a study by the Nature Communications journal, Telangana as well parts of the Western Ghats including Karnataka are among the regions in India which have received the worst extreme rainfall since 1950.
“There have been 268 reported flooding events in India over 1950-2015 affecting about 825 million people, leaving 17 million homeless and killing 69,000 people (according to the International Disaster Data Base),” the study said.
