Sunday, June 10, 2018

It’s official: Monsoon arrives a day early and comes pouring with its usual woes

TEAM TOI  10.06.2018

Mumbai:

Monsoon arrived in Mumbai with a bang early Saturday and headed straight to the town. While most areas in the city received a fair amount of rainfall, it was the island city that got the maximum. Fort received 207mm and Nariman Point 153mm rainfall in 13 hours—8am to 9pm—as recorded by BMC’s automatic weather stations. Byculla received 162mm in the same period. The India Meteorological Department’s Colaba observatory, an indicator for south Mumbai, recorded 157mm rainfall, while its Santacruz observatory, an indicator for the rest of Mumbai, saw 64mm between 8.30am and 8.30pm.

The island city, also the area which saw the most number of rain-related problems, received 108mm in three hours—5.30pm to 8.30pm. Bhandup and Mulund (172mm and 112mm respectively between 2am and 5pm) were among the few areas in the suburbs that received triple-digit rainfall. In stark contrast, there was Malad which received just 20mm, Kandivli 24mm and Goregaon 26mm. While the neighbouring Thane recorded 120mm, Bhiwandi recorded 210mm rainfall in 24 hours. In Navi Mumbai, the 24-hour rainfall was 153mm.

The rains brought along the usual partners: Water-logging and traffic jams. Though several low-lying areas in Mumbai were water-logged, leading to traffic snarls, the BMC decided to put the flooded areas’ figure at just 12. The usual offender, Hindmata Junction, forced municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta to visit the spot and take stock. The BMC passed the buck to rain Gods and its officials said water-logging in Parel, Sion and Kurla was caused due to nearly 100mm rainfall in a very short span of time.

“There was knee-level water-logging at Hindmata Junction after just one hour of rain. Shops had to be shut and water was being pumped out of them,” said Sheetal Porwal, a local. She also said schools reopen on Monday after summer vacation and school buses will not come to pick up children if this happens after every downpour. Railway tracks too were flooded, delaying local trains by nearly 20-25 minutes.

Amid this chaos, BMC said its performance this year is better compared to last year as water receded quickly. Mehta said, “3,000 BMC staffers were on the road on Saturday. We managed to minimize waterlogging problems as we have paid attention to each flooding spot by widening the drainage system in those areas.” said Mehta. He added that on Saturday there was no problem at some spots that usually flood every year.

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