THUNDERSTORM BATTERS HYDERABAD
A man inspects the site of a house collapse in Hyderabad on Tuesday. Structures collapsed, crops destroyed, cars were crushed and areas were inundated after sudden thunderstorms and heavy rains lashed Hyderabad and neighbouring cities on Monday evening.
HYDERABAD: A sudden downpour wreaked havoc in Hyderabad on Monday, resulting in suffocating traffic for over five hours and the deaths of seven people in the city and its surrounds.
In the city and in nearby districts of Telangana, thunderstorms and heavy rains caused buildings to collapse, cars to be crushed, shopping areas to be inundated, and crops to be destroyed.
Four persons died due to lightning at Narayankhed, a town in Sangareddy, a district on the outskirts of Hyderabad. They were two pairs of mothers and sons: Shakunthala, 46, and Chandrakanth, 23, as well as Basamma, 45, and Ravi, 25.
Starting at 5 pm, the capital city received more than 13 centimetres of rain in five hours. In Singadikunta, a slum in the upscale neighbourhood of Banjara Hills, a 30-year-old man named Yadulla and his fourmonth-old son died when a wall collapsed on their hut.
In the Hussaini Alam area of the old city, a 35-year-old rickshaw puller, Afsar, died of electrocution when a live wire fell on him. The state government announced ₹4 lakh to the next of kin of the deceased.
The sudden downpour was initially described as a “cloud burst” by some Hyderabad Meteorological Department (HMD) authorities considering its magnitude, but director of HMD Y K Reddy later clarified that it was not exactly a cloud burst, but certainly intense rainfall.
“One can call it a cloud burst if there is a minimum of 10 cm of rain in a span of one hour. In this case, the rainfall was around 13 cm in a span of five hours. We can say it was very heavy rainfall,” Reddy told HT.
Though such heavy rainfall is rare, it is not unusual to have a cloud formation in a short period of time due to increase in relative humidity. “In Hyderabad, the humidity increased from 87% to 97% in a span of 24 hours, and that resulted in a sudden downpour,” Reddy said. Several colonies plunged into darkness for more than four hours as wires snapped, disrupting the electricity supply. Commuters were stuck in gridlock and buses outside the city found that they could not enter.
The storm caused busy thoroughfares to overflow with sewage. Cyberabad, the hub of prominent IT companies, was completely inundated in knee-deep water.
The emergency response teams of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) evacuated 100 people from Singadikunta; 45 people from Krantinagar and 28 people from flooded slums in Shivajinagar.
On Tuesday morning, the city breathed easy with rains taking a break.
The GHMC released a statement advising continued caution.
The HMD forecasted more rains in Hyderabad and other parts of Telangana over the next 48 hours.