Mumbai: Heavy rainfall drowned Mumbai and its nearby areas on Tuesday and it looked like there was little respite in sight with the Met department predicting more showers over the next 24 hours.
It has been raining incessantly since Monday, preceded by moderate to heavy showers over the weekend. Officials believe this is the heaviest and longest bout of rain since July 26, 2005 when the city was ravaged by floods.
To make matters worse, a high tide of 3.32 meters was also headed the city’s way on August 29.
he Navy has sent out five flood rescue and two diving teams to help people wherever needed.
Civic authorities asked people to keep indoors but it was too late for most, for those who had to wade through dirty brown waters to offices. At some places, vehicles could barely be seen above water. There were also the only-too-familiar sites of thick branches nestling on shattered windshields or dented car tops.
Traffic crawled on major arterial roads the whole day while waterlogging was reported from low-lying areas, some right at the heart of the city.
Dozens of flights and local train services were cancelled as rains lashed the coastal city of nearly 20 million people.
As the meteorological department warned that the Mumbai rains would continue for the next 24 hours many offices sent staff home early, fearing a repeat of 2005 floods that killed more than 1,000 people.
“Areas such as Mumbai, south Gujarat, Konkan, Goa and west Vidarbha will get extremely heavy rainfall in the next 24 to 48 hours. It is a serious situation. We have issued necessary warnings to the departments concerned, including airports,” A K Srivastav, head of climate monitoring and analysis at IMD Pune, told PTI.
“The weather, which has brought heavy showers over the Mumbai region, has been upgraded from ‘well marked low pressure’ to ‘depression’. It means it is set to bring more rains. Hence, we have predicted an extremely heavy rainfall,” he said.
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