Current affairs

From dozens of boats to lakhs of food packets: How Chennai had addressed the historical rainfall?

By alagu, 12 November, 2021
Heavy rains, Chennai, Tamilnadu

The recent spell of rainfall has been historic for Chennai as the city has recorded the first such heavy downpour for the first time since 2015. For the past few days, the city has been inundated by the rainwater and with flawed urban planning that showcased nothing has changed in the past six years. The downtown and the suburbs of the city were blanketed by the rainwater, which caused massive disruption to the residents.

The rainfall had implied a strong factor - whenever the city is hit by incessant rainfall, it will be a Himalayan task for the people and the local administration to bring back the city to normalcy. Like the 2015 floods, Chennai braced up back-to-back warnings from the meteorological department and the entire government mechanism was in and across the city, deploying the measures and expediting the efforts to evacuate the stranded people. 

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin and several ministers had taken to roads for consecutive days and toured the affected areas of the city. The Chief Minister had directly intervened in addressing the disruption and distributed the relief materials to the affected and vulnerable people. The Greater Chennai Corporation indeed had a Himalayan task and very busy days in mitigating the fury of the people and evacuating the affected people to safe places. 

As the sequel of the waterlog, travelling on the boat has become a large mode of transportation and the civic body had used such boats and floating beds to rescue the stranded people and shift them to the relief camps. On the front of how it tackled the heavy rains and how it accommodated hundreds of thousands of affected people, the civic body has released data in which it has said that a total of 68 relief camps were installed across the city out of which 44 were occupied by over 2,200 people. 

The corporation has also carried out swift measures to distribute the essential materials and as per the data, it has said that over 6.64 lakh food packets were distributed to the needy people on Thursday alone. Around 50 boats were deployed across the city to rescue people and as the city was flooded with rainwater, the control room of the civic body was flooded with phone calls and complaints. As per the data, the control room had received over 13,000 complaints on various rain-related issues on Thursday from across Chennai. 

The Chennai Corporation has had a mammoth task of pumping out the rainwater from the waterlogged areas. It has said that the officials had cleared water stagnation from 240 places and 26 places on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. However, the civic body has noted that the waterlogging in 476 places is yet to be cleared. It has also noted that around 54 trees were uprooted due to heavy rains in the city and the civic body has cleared all of them. 

Out of 22 subways in the city, 12 were cleared while the rest ten are closed due to heavy inundation. There were events where volunteers had also joined the frontline workers to assist in the relief works. Besides providing food packets, the civic body had also served food from a big vessel to the people in the affected areas. Thanks to the frontline workers for courageously addressing the disruptions, Chennai is getting back to normalcy with the dreadful fact that nothing has changed in the city in six years when it comes to rainwater management. 

On Friday, Chennai has wakened up with a respite and a bright sunrise as the rainfall has shown signs of gradual mitigation. Though the rainy clouds haven't been fully subsided, the meteorological department has on Thursday withdrawn the red alert warning to the city after the low-pressure area, that formed over the Bay of Bengal, had crossed the coast. India Meteorological Department (IMD) has said that the rainfall will subside from Friday. The weather watchdog has put a forecast of light to moderate rain for the next two days in the city. Speaking to the media, S Balachandran, Deputy Director-General of the IMD, has said, "From Friday onwards, there are chances of reduction in rainfall." As per the IMD forecast, Chennai and its suburbs would witness cloudy skies and light to moderate rainfall for the next 48 hours. 

 

You may also like

Comments