Landslides kill several in India’s Mumbai after monsoon rains
Mumbai: Torrential rain from a thunderstorm, described by meteorologists as “monstrous”, hammered Mumbai in the early hours on Sunday, flooding low-lying areas, triggering landslides, house collapses and electrocutions that resulted in the deaths of at least 31 people, officials said.
Maharashtra Relief & Rehabilitation Minister Vijay Wadettiwar talked about the Chembur incident and he said, “Santa Cruz received around 235-270mm of rain while Chembur saw 200mm on Sunday. A red alert was issued and people were evacuated to safe places from danger zones. Such incidents are normal amid 300mm rain in a day, sad that people died”.
A wall collapsed due to a landslide which was triggered by incessant rain in the city.
In this whole incident, several people lost their lives after a wall collapsed on shanties in Chembur’s Bharat Nagar area in Mumbai on July 18.
The suddenness and intensity of Sunday morning’s downpour made it one of the most intense rain spells since the 2005 cloud
burst, when a record 944mm downpour was recorded in the inancial capital in a single day.
The heavy rain, which environment minister Aaditya Thackeray
labelled as a “mini cloudburst”, triggered two landslides — the first in east Mumbai’s Chembur where 19 people were killed, and the second in the suburb of Vikhroli, where at least 10 people lost their lives. In both instances, landslides crushed the houses with peoplesleeping inside.