5 hrs of rain, entire day of trouble inggm
WATERLOGGED Gurugram receives highest rain in eight years, underpasses and roads waterlogged throughout city
GURUGRAM: At 128 mm, Gurugram received the highest rainfall in a day in since 2010, on Tuesday.
The five-hour rain between 4am and 9am left Hero Honda Chowk-narsinghpur stretch, HUDA City Centre junction, St Thomas Marg, sectors 28, 41, 47, South City-1, and Sohna Road, in knee-deep water. The underpasses at Rajiv Chowk and Hero Honda Chowk were rendered unusable as runoff water stood knee-high, and sections of the Golf Course Road, Sector 22 and Signature Tower caved in. No accidents were reported.
Though the rainfall recorded was almost three times the rain received on July 28, 2016 — when waterlogging caused by 52mm rain brought city and inter-state traffic to a standstill for about 20 hours — city’s various agencies just about managed to prevent a Gurujam re-run as over 2,500 policemen managed traffic and MCG officials pumped out rainwater from inundated underpasses and roads, starting 6am.
Assistant commissioner of police (traffic) Hira Singh said, “Officials were put on ground well before the rush hour to ensure there was minimal effect on movement of traffic. Although roads leading to Rajiv Chowk, Hero Honda Chowk, Sohna Road and HUDA City Centre junction were heavily waterlogged, traffic personnel planned diversions and kept the traffic moving.”
Despite these efforts, a twokilometre-long j am l eft the stretch between Narsinghpura and Kherki Daula toll plaza was gridlocked for 30 minutes around 9.30am as three of the four lanes on the Delhi-jaipur carriageway were inundated. The traffic came to a crawl after water receded, but there was little improvement in the situation till late on Tuesday evening as Narsinghpur-hero Honda Chowk stretch, and Sohna Road, remained inundated.
V Umashankar, CEO of the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority ( GMDA), admitted that “drainage remains a major concern” but said that the timeliness of response helped keep the situation from becoming as bad as it was in 2016.
“The drainage in Gurugram is still a problem, but we sent out people early to check on the flow of water, and also amped up efforts to manage traffic. However, the NHAI and GMDA could have done a better job of keeping the underpass at Hero Honda Chowk from flooding,” he said.
However, people who were stuck in Gurujam said they feared a repeat of the 2016 logjam when they experienced bumperto-bumper traffic.
“I left my house around 8am and managed to reach MG Road by 10.15am. All along the way, I could see that the internal roads were waterlogged. But the situation wasn’t as bad as it was in 2016, when residents had had to leave their cars on the road to walk to their destinations,” Abhishek Dayal, a resident of Nirvana Country said.
GMDA officials said water receded from most arterial roads by noon, but internal roads and public parks remained flooded.
Some residents said waterlogging left them virtually ‘landlocked’, and that their basements and courtyards were completely flooded. “There was knee-deep water everywhere. It was virtually impossible to get out of the house. On certain roads, water was waist-high. Using vehicles was not an option at all,” Sector 28 resident Vatsal Sinha said.
The waterlogging also hit the public transport as people were not able to avail of services provided by app-based cab aggregators. High demand meant that hundreds of people were stranded for long hours. At the Najafgarh drain, where water from Badshahpur drain merges, due to high silt deposition during monsoon, water backflows and floods areas in Gurugram. The natural flow of the rain run-off is from the Aravallis through Badshahpur drain into the Najafgarh drain. At the Hero Honda Chowk- Narsinghpur stretch, three hours after rainfall, the receding water accumulates there as the area is geographically located at a lower plain and ends up becoming a ‘pit’ where rainwater accumulates.
The breach and overflow of the Badshahpur drain at Khandsa village on to the expressway and other arterial roads, such as Sohna Road, Southern Peripheral Road and Golf Course Extension Road, was identified as the main cause for the 2016 deluge After it rains, water from the Aravallis near Ghata starts trickling down towards Gurugram, which is a low-lying area, mainly towards the Hero Honda Chowk- Narsinghpur stretch. Check dams were proposed to stop the flow of rainwater and prevent it from seeping into low-lying areas.