One killed as rain-battered Mumbai grinds to halt, schools and colleges shut (2nd Lead)

Mumbai, July 8 (IANS) A woman senior citizen was killed as monsoon abruptly hit Mumbai with full force, with 300 mm rains recorded in just six hours on Monday, throwing flights, railways and road traffic into chaos, stranding lakhs of commuters, and leading to closure of all educational institutions.

The overnight downpour battered Mumbai, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region and the entire coastal Konkan region, with the country’s commercial capital reeling under 300 mm rainfall from 1 a.m. to 7 a.m., the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said.

The IMD has forecast heavy to very heavy rains for the next couple of days in Mumbai, Thane, Palghar, Raigad, Ratnagiri and other parts of the state, leading to schools and colleges being ordered shut in Mumbai, Raigad, Ratnagiri, and Sindhudurg as a precautionary measure.

Chief Minister Eknath Shinde visited the State Disaster Control Room and the BMC Control Room to monitor the rains and flood situation in the state and city while assuring round-the-clock alertness to tackle any eventuality.

Congress Legislative Party Leader Balsaheb Thorat slammed the MahaYuti regime saying that the total breakdown in Mumbai and the sufferings of commuters indicated that the government had not made any preparations to tackle the situation.

Mumbai woke up to waterlogged roads and railway lines, flooding in low-lying areas, and water flowing into homes, shops and offices with subways going under 3-5 feet of water and rendered inaccessible for commuters.

By 8 a.m., the BMC notched heavy rainfall figures in south Mumbai (116 mm), eastern suburbs (169 mm) and western suburbs (166 mm) and more rain continued through the day, which increased by an average of 33 mm till evening 6 pm.

Water flooded the homes of many in Haji Siddiqui Chawl in Santacruz leading to a short-circuit and a fire in which Shanta K. Acharya, 72, was killed.

Mumbai reported another 10 incidents of houses or wall crashes, 12 short-circuits and 40 instances of trees or branches falling around the city.

Commuters rushing to their workplaces encountered either delays or cancellations of suburban local trains – the city’s lifeline which transports over 8.50 million people daily.

The Western Railway (WR) said that there were around 10-minute delays due to waterlogging on the tracks at Matunga-Dadar but it deployed high-capacity pumps to drain the floodwaters.

However, the Central Railway and its Harbour Line took the brunt of the rain with major disruption in its suburban and long-distance train services, leading to huge crowds waiting at almost all the railway stations on its network.

The CR rescheduled 15 long-distance trains scheduled to depart to different parts of India, cancelled one train and short-terminated one train, both in the Nashik region.

Besides, important trains that ferry thousands of commuters on the Mumbai-Gujarat, Mumbai-Pune, Mumbai-Kolhapur sectors, were also hit by cancellations or massive delays or getting stranded at stations en route. The CR Mumbai suburban section experienced huge disruption with train services only normalising after hours as the water levels receded during the afternoon.

Railway tracks were flooded near Kalyan, Dombivali, Ulhasnagar, Thane, Bhandup, Kurla, Sion, and Wadala, hitting smooth operations.

In Mumbai, several subways including Santacruz, Andheri, Jogeshwari, Malad, Kandivali, and Dahisar were flooded with 3-5 feet of water, and east-west traffic was halted. Several housing complexes were waterlogged in Dahisar, Borivali, Kandivali, Malad, Jogeshwari, Andheri-Versova, Juhu-Vile Parle, Santacruz, Sion, Wadala, Kurla, Ghatkopar, Powai, Bhandup, and other places.

Scores of big and small vehicles were either stuck or submerged partly-fully in different areas of the city, which were removed by cranes and incidents of tree falls and other minor incidents, though there are no reports of any casualties so far.

The operations at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport were hit with around 27 incoming flights getting diverted to airports in Gujarat, Indore or Hyderabad between 2.22 a.m. to 3.40 a.m. owing to heavy rains. The CSMIA and carriers like Air India, SpiceJet, IndiGo, Vistara and others issued advisories to air passengers to check on the status of their flights before starting for the airport.

In some relief, the Powai Lake in Mumbai, which supplies water to industries, overflowed after the rains, and other lakes showed improvement in water levels, recording up to 18 per cent of the season’s total till July 8, said the BMC.

–IANS

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