Due to haphazard cleaning, several new spots such as Bandra, Malad, Chembur, Ghatkopar and Worli were flooded after Friday’s heavy downpour
Mumbai : Even though there was a month’s delay in the outbreak of the monsoon, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is still struggling to tackle the flooding problem reported across several areas of the city after heavy rain on Friday.
According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), Colaba received 101.0 mm and Santa Cruz received 47.8 mm rainfall in the 24 hours ending 8.30 am Friday. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has said that the city is likely to continue receiving heavy rainfall over the next two days. “The weather conditions are favourable and the city is likely to get heavy rainfall with frequent showers in two days,” said an official from IMD, Mumbai.
A high tide alert of waves as high as 4.36 metres was sounded on Friday morning. However, according to the reports provided by the disaster management department of the BMC, several new spots such as Bandra, Malad, Chembur, Ghatkopar and Worli were flooded after Friday’s rain, apart from the chronic flooding points such as Parel TT and Hindmata in the city.
Contractors who supply pumps to de-water the city roads and put it into the storm water drains found that several pumps were not operational during the heavy rainfall.
A civic official said, “We have collected ward-level reports on flooding spots, which are being examined by a consultant. Flooding is mostly taking place at the chronic flooding spots. Wherever the pumps aren’t working, we will impose fines on the respective contractors.”
From June 1 to July 10, 1,734 potholes have been reported as compared to 8,646 potholes in the same period.
56 WATER-LOGGING SPOTS IDENTIFIED
Meanwhile, the Mumbai traffic police has identified 56 spots in the city which are vulnerable to water-logging and has deployed extra manpower to manage traffic jams this monsoon.
The most important spots out of these 56 are Dharavi Junction, Santa Cruz-Chembur link road, Khar subway, Milan subway, Andheri subway and Dahisar subway. In all, 300 extra traffic policemen have been set aside to manage severe traffic jams during water-logging.
“The worst-hit spots are Hindmata and Parel TT. There is almost always water-logging and we have increased the number of traffic policemen to 15 there,” said B K Upadhyay, Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic). Ordinarily, at every junction there are only one to two traffic policemen manning the area.
The police is managing the traffic using diversions. Vehicles at Hindmata are being diverted to P D’mello road, people coming from the suburbs are now being asked to use the Eastern Express Highway instead of the Western Express Highway to come to South Bombay to help ease traffic.
To help with water-logging, the traffic police has notified the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to pump out the water as soon as possible to help disperse the traffic quickly. “BMC is the chief agency we have to coordinate with here,” Upadhyay said.
The traffic police has 61 towing vehicles, with two to three in each of its traffic divisions, which are used as and when required. Help is also being taken from NGOs to get real-time updates. One such NGO is Traffline, which through its website and mobile application gets constant updates of traffic jams from people travelling on roadways. It then notifies the traffic police which rushes to the spot to decongest the said area. The NGO has been working with the traffic police since Ganpati festival last year.
No rain-related vehicular fatalities have been reported yet. Only one incident of flooding was reported at Halav bridge in Kurla, where the water coming down from the bridge had flooded a shanty.
