Heavy rains continue to hit train services, cause landslide, building collapses in island city

A portion of a balcony of an empty building near the Handloom house, Bora Bazaar, Fort collapsed at 1pm due to heavy rainfall in the day. In another case, some portion of the southern-end of a three-storeyed cessed building, around Gulshan Manzil in Bhendi Bazaar collapsed at 12.30 pm, while a wall of an industrial estate in Ketkipada, Dahisar collapsed with no reported injuries.

According to the Indian Meteorological Department, on Wednesday, Colaba received 10.1 mm or rainfall up to 5.30 pm while Santacruz received 14.6 mm. The IMD has forecast occasional rain and showers in the city and suburbs with heavy rainfall in some areas for the next 24 hours.

“Intermittent rain, not as much as Tuesday, can be expected in the coming days. The offshore trough over the Arabian sea still persists resulting in this rainfall over the city,” said V K Rajeev, IMD Mumbai director.

So far, Colaba has seen a seasonal total (From June 1 to July 16) of 1138.2 mm, 178.5 mm above normal as on Wednesday and Santacruz has seen a seasonal total of 1027.2 mm, 75.6 mm above normal. With the downpour, commuters were plagued with problems of inundation and potholes as a high tide of over 4.7 meters added to water-logging in several parts of the city.

On the Central Railways (CR), water-logging complaints were registered on the tracks near Parel, Curry Road, Byculla, Sandhurst road and other stations. These led to a delay of 15-20 minutes during the peak hours. While no water-logging was reported in the CR station premises, trains were running late by 20 minutes due to a signal failure.

Heavy rains also affected the Virar-Dahanu suburban section on the Western Railways (WR) route, with services being delayed for over an hour. Trains on the WR route were also running late by 10 minutes. While rainfall through the day also led to water-logging problems on Mumbai’s roads in a number of areas, the civic body recorded complaints only in three places – Elphinstone bridge, Anandibai road, and Madkebuwa chowk in Parel.

The BMC says traffic in these particular areas was diverted in the morning and given access only by 1 pm. According to the administration, no complaints of water-logging were registered in the usually inundated low-lying areas of Hindmata, Parel TT, Milan and Andheri subway.

While the BMC recorded 19 incidents of trees falling in various parts – seven in the island city, four in the eastern suburbs and eight in the western suburbs, no injuries have been reported. The civic body also registered six incidents of short-circuit. The maximum temperature at Colaba was 26.9 degree Celsius, and at Santacruz, it was 27.8 degrees Celsius. The minimum temperature at Colaba and Santacruz on Wednesday was 24.5 degrees Celsius. The relative humidity at Colaba was 97 per cent on Wednesday, while at Santacruz, it was 87 per cent.
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