Rain kills 30, displaces 80,000
HYDERABAD: Torrential rain pounded the neighbouring states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday and Wednesday, submerging low-lying areas, triggering roof and wall collapses, prompting the evacuation of some 80,000 people to relief camps and claiming at least 30 lives, officials said.
Seventeen people were killed in Hyderabad and its suburbs, caused a lake in the middle of the city to overflow onto the roads, and three died in a house collapse in Nagarkurnool district. In Andhra Pradesh, heavy rain claimed lives of 10 people.
As many as nine people, including three children, were killed and four injured in two separate wall collapses in Bandlaguda in the old city of Hyderabad late on Tuesday.
Assistant commissioner of police, Falaknuma, M A Majeed, said eight died when huge slabs of granite from a compound wall and boulders fell on around 10 houses at Mohammadia Hills in Bandlaguda at around 11 pm.
One more person died in another wall collapse at Phool Bagh Colony in the same locality. “Four persons sustained serious injuries and are undergoing treatment at Owaisi Hospital,” the ACP said.
Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation’s disaster management wing personnel, with the assistance of the local police and residents, pulled out the bodies from the debris. Teams of the National Disaster Response Force were also used to help GHMC personnel to remove the debris and check for survivors.