Rain lashes Chandigarh; Bengal and Assam still reel under floods
TROUBLED WATERS Record 115mm rain in three hours brings city beautiful to a standstill
A record 115mm rain in three hours on Monday morning brought tricity towns of Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula to standstill. The peak hour traffic and heavy downpour resulted in waterlogging on roads and huge pile up of traffic, which continued till afternoon. Officers goers remained stranded four hours.
Worst affected was Mohali, where roads remained waterlogged for hours and traffic remained suspended. Normalcy could be restored only in the afternoon. Water-logging and broken down vehicles also affected traffic on national highways between Chandigarh- Delhi, Chandigarh-Ludhiana and Chandigarh Patiala for atleast three hours.
The Met department said that Chandigarh received 115.2 mm of rain between 8:30 am and 11:30 am while total rainfall of the day was at 134mm, highest rainfall this season for 24 hours. Last highest rainfall recorded in recent times was on August 3, 2004 recorded at 241.6 mm Met attributed the heavy rain spell to “intense monsoon conditions’, which could not have been predicted. The flood situation in Assam improved considerably during the past 24 hours but the casualty list is expanding.
Three people, two of them in north-central Assam’s Darrang district, drowned on Monday to take the toll in two waves of deluge to 154. The first wave that ended mid-July had claimed 84 human lives.
Besides, flash floods and landslides have killed at least 65 people in five other states in the Northeast.
Officials of the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) said 15 of the state’s 33 districts continue to be flood-affected with 46,365 people – down from 54,982 on Sunday – still lodged in 2227 relief camps.
The number of affected people across 1,241 inundated villages was 14.36 lakh after 4.29 lakh people returned to their homes.
“The most affected district is Morigaon (central Assam) where 4.22 lakh people are still affected. Barpeta and South Salmara districts (western Assam) follow,” an ASDMA official said.
Meanwhile, the death toll in Bihar floods crossed the 300 mark, with 51 people losing their lives since Sunday. Altogether 152 lives have been lost with 1.5 crore people affected in the ongoing Bengal floods, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said on Monday after visiting three northern districts where large areas continued to be submerged.