he fragile civic infrastructure of the city took a beating once again on Saturday as the torrential downpour left one dead, and marooned residents in several low-lying areas. Motorists were stranded for long hours in traffic that could at best be described as ‘crawling’.
As intermittent rains continued, owing to a persistent trough over the Bay of Bengal along the Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka coasts on Saturday, most arterial roads were choked as early as 8 a.m.
Pedestrians were put to risk as electricity cables lay hidden beneath sheets of water.
V. Ravi, an autorickshaw driver, lost his life when he stepped on a live wire on flooded Tirumalai Pillai Road in T. Nagar. The police said the victim was found lying in a pool of stagnant water on Friday night.
Smoke from damaged junction boxes was a common sight in many areas.
With power cuts rampant across the city, banking operations were affected in localities such as Anna Nagar. While rains battered the roads — even arterial ones — in several places, dug up stretches, uprooted trees and poorly-maintained stormwater drains aggravated the woes of residents.
Motorists on Jawaharlal Nehru Salai had to vie for space with Deepavali special buses and flooded stretches for more than an hour to cover just five km. Royapettah High Road presented a classic example of the hardship faced by pedestrians and commuters as a portion of the road near Sanskrit College is dug up.
“It is foolish on the part of government agencies to dig roads just before the rains. There is no space to walk as the dug-up debris too is dumped on the road,” said S. Sahadevan, an autorickshaw driver.
The Chennai Corporation reported a total of 33 fallen trees, and baled out water from over 280 locations in the city.
Nungambakkam and Meenambakkam recorded 2 cm and 5 cm of rainfall, respectively, on Saturday. A whopping 16 cm of rainfall lashed the city in a single day ending 8.30 a.m. on Saturday.
Pradeep John, a weather blogger, pointed out that Chennai has got 15 cm of rains on a single day only thrice in the past five years. “I expect the rains to continue till Deepavali,” he said.
(With additional reporting by Vivek Narayanan, Zubeda Hamid and Deepa H. Ramakrishnan)
