Heavy evening rain wrecks city's western, northern parts

At least 30 localities in western and northern parts of Bengaluru were inundated and rainwater gushed into hundreds of homes as the city received another spell of heavy rainfall on Friday evening. Traffic crawled and thousands of people were stranded in knee-deep water on the city’s potholed roads.

Mahalakshmi Layout, Kurubarahalli, Malleswaram, Vijayananda Nagar, Yeshwantpur, Prakash Nagar, Laggere, Nayandahalli, Rajarajeshwari Nagar, Nagarabhavi, Bapuji Nagar, the area around Navarang theatre, the stretch outside IISc, etc were among the worst-affected.

The water level rose to dangerous proportions and almost submerged buses near West Bengaluru’s Nayandahalli, not far away from the stretch that recently claimed several lives because of potholes. Many homes are reported to have been submerged.

The situation was so precarious that the Global Village Tech Park in Rajarajeshwari Nagar behind RV College of Engineering was just submerged while water gushed into the basement (car park) of Mantri Square mall in Malleswaram.

In Laggere, the water level in a stormwater drain rose up 20 feet, dwarfing the eight-foot-tall retaining wall, flooding a number of homes and damaging household articles. The house of one K R Venkatesh was fully submerged and all the household materials were damaged.

The water level in Rajarajeshwari Nagar rose up four feet. The Traffic and Transit Management Centre (TTMC) in Yeshwantpur was flooded, marooning hundreds of travellers as buses could not get in.

Until 11.30 pm, the highest amount of rainfall was recorded at Nandini Layout (91 mm), Harohalli in RR Nagar (90 mm), Marappanapalya (88 mm), Nagapura (86 mm), Basaveshwaranagar (79 mm), RMV Extension near Palace Guttahalli (68 mm), Dasarahalli (64 mm), Hampinagar (49 mm) and Marenahalli (38 mm), VV Puram (38 mm), Basavanagudi (30 mm), the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC) said.

More rain has been forecast for Saturday.

Huge trees were uprooted by heavy rainfall in Chamarajpet and Rajajinagar. Earth caved in several localities, forming craters.

Scores of commuters were caught off guard as it started to pour after 7 pm. Traffic crawled at Sivananda Circle, Cauvery theatre junction, on Race Course Road and other places.

The wide-scale destruction notwithstanding, hardly any worker of the BBMP’s Prahari team was seen pumping water out of flooded localities, contrary to the promises made by Mayor R Sampath Raj.