MONSOON WOES - Rain batters city for second day running

Roads, Subways Flooded; Auto Driver Electrocuted In Stagnant Pool At T Nagar

Rain wreaked havoc in the city for the second consecutive day, flooding roads, felling trees and disrupting normal life even as the Met department announced that the northeast monsoon had officially set in over the state. The 16cm of rain dumped on the city in the 24 hours till 8.30am on Saturday claimed one life when a 52-yearold autorickshaw driver was electrocuted. D Ravikumar had dropped a passenger and got out of his auto at the Sarangapani Street-Tirumalai Pillai Road junction in T Nagar when he stepped on a live electric cable in a pool of stagnant water, police said. He was thrown off in the impact and was rushed to the Government Royapettah Hospital where he died later.

Elsewhere in the city, people struggled through flooded roads and subways, berating the city corporation for failing to keep its promises about being prepared for the monsoon. Vehicles and pedestrians were seen ploughing through knee-deep water in places such as Kilpauk and K K Nagar, while the subway in front of Central station was completely inundated. More than 39 trees were uprooted in various places since Friday.

“The rain has battered all roads in Kodambakkam and both motorists and pedestrians have been falling down,“ said M Charles, a resident of the locality. “Station View Road was laid poorly; now its condition is terrible. Storm water drains which were laid a year ago are not maintained properly.“

Experts say several issues are responsible for the mess, mainly the clogging of stor m water drains.“Most waterways are choked. How can the rainwater drain out? Buckingham Canal has almost vanished between Thiruvanmiyur and the point behind the Cancer Institute where it meets Adyar river and then joins the sea,“ says Sekhar Raghavan of Rain Centre. “Storm water drains should be properly desilted and constructed using the set gradient formula so that water automatically flows and it won't stagnate,“ he said.
The corporation, however, claimed that the situation was not as bad as the previous year. “About 284 waterlogged areas and all the fallen trees have been cleared in one day and none of the subways was closed,“ a senior corporation official said. “About 18cm of rain in a day is unprecedented but the city is up and about. Chennai has come a long way from the days when many areas would remain submerged for days on end.“
(With inputs from A Selvaraj)