Delhi comes to a halt as downpour floods roads, snaps power, razes walls

TNN

New Delhi,21 Jul 2013: It was a deluge that the city was totally unprepared for and in no time washed away the false claims of government and municipal agencies that they had done their job. An amount of Rs 23 crore - PWD spent Rs 20cr and the three corporations Rs 3cr - got drowned in the downpour in the capital on Saturday. About 100.3mm of rainfall between 12.10pm and 2.30pm brought the city virtually to a halt, flooding roads, underpasses and colonies, snapping power, stalling traffic, damaging cars and bringing down walls. At least two Metro stations got inundated and had to be closed while the showcase T-3 terminal at IGI Airport once again got partially flooded.

 

That it was the third heaviest in a day in 10 years - 123mm - made matters worse and plunged the city into a crisis. Within hours, all the agencies - PWD and the corporations - and the political parties were indulging in a blame game even as people struggled to make their way through waterlogged roads. Guiding them through this mess were the men of Delhi Traffic Police and other cops, standing in the knee-deep dirty water, drenched but determined. Additional CP (Traffic) Anil Shukla could barely hide his disgust as he blamed the improper geometric design, clogged drains and repeated laying of tar on roads for the situation which his men were trying to deal with to the best of their ability. Delhi Police had put about 3,000 men on the roads.

 

 

PWD, however, was quite clear that it had done its job and the heavy downpour was to be blamed. "We have completed desilting of the roads under our purview. But this was unprecedented rain - it was like putting three glasses of water into one glass. The stormwater drainage system is old and cannot deal with this," said PWD minister Raj Kumar Chauhan. Meanwhile, the three BJP-ruled corporations were blaming the PWD for the flooding of colonies. "The main drains are with PWD. As desilting has not been done properly, water is flowing back into the small drains. As a result, the colony roads are submerged in knee-deep water. At several places, the main drains are clogged," said Subhas Arya, leader of the house in the South Delhi Municipal Corporation. "This problem never occurred in the past when the main drains were with us," he added with a straight face. This Punch and Judy show could have raised a few laughs if it wasn’t so tragic for the people of the city.

 

Massive traffic jams were reported from across the city. The worst-affected areas were central, south and east Delhi. Entire road stretches around India Gate and commercial hubs Connaught Place and ITO, which has several government offices, were choked with vehicles for hours as the water level rose dramatically at Tilak Bridge, which had to be closed to traffic. This led to the Barakhamba flyover getting clogged with people rushing to take that route. Among the other stretches affected were Mathura Road and Bhairon Road along with Purana Qila.

 

 

Ring Road and Outer Ring Road were under water at various points - Pitampura and Moolchand were particularly bad. Traffic crawled on Lala Lajpat Rai Marg (Defence Colony) for hours. The cops had a hard time getting vehicles to move for over an hour between Kashmere Gate ISBT and ITO and on the Mathura Road-Purana Quila stretch. Thousands of commuters were stuck as the rain kept falling in sheets and cars broke down.

 

South was no different. With a road caving in near Saket Metro station, creating a 2ft-deep crater, traffic was diverted on Anubrata Marg, leading to chaos on Mehrauli-Badarpur Road. Waterlogging was reported from the Moolchand underpass, Nehru Place, Savitri turn, Chittaranjan Park, Greater Kailash and Andheria More. On Aurobindo Marg, near Green Park, the water level was close to four feet. "A sewer line was overflowing and traffic had to be diverted. It took us a lot of time to clear it," said a PWD official.

 

In east Delhi, Anand Vihar remained waterlogged till late into the night. With Krishna Nagar and Laxmi Nagar flooded, traffic on Vikas Marg was affected. The DND flyway traffic too was left crawling as were the commuters trying to enter Delhi from Ghaziabad through NH-24. In west and north Delhi, heavy jams were reported from Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar, Azadpur-Model Town and Moti Nagar. With water gushing into the underpasses at Pitampura, Dwarka and Shakti Nagar, motorists were stuck for hours.

 

"We were on the road but mere diversions were not enough until the water level went down. Our men will remain posted at their positions till midnight till the situation at the hotspots - Saket, Tilak Bridge and Anand Vihar - improves," said traffic chief Shukla. It did not help though that the traffic signals stopped functioning at quite a few places even as people watched stalled ambulances with sinking hearts.

 

"Waterlogging leads to three things - there is a general slowing down of traffic, there is a tendency to use the extreme right lane as motorists fear taking the left lane will eventually lead to the vehicle breaking down and there are a lot more breakdowns than on normal days. All these contribute to jams," said a traffic police officer.

 

"I am stuck near Pragati Maidan for the last three hours and I have just moved a few feet. I had to finally wade through a pool of water at least four feet deep," said Rajiv Rathi, an IT professional on his way to Noida from India Gate. Several bus and autorickshaw passengers who were stuck for hours got down and walked through knee-deep water to reach their destinations. At several places, taxis and autos fleeced passengers. Northern Railway services were hit as 13 trains which were to pass through Delhi got delayed due to flooding at some stations.

 

Around 120 waterlogging complaints were received (21 such calls were treated as major) and at least three people were reported injured due to wall collapses in outer Delhi.

 

While the traffic helpline numbers were bombarded with complaints, PWD, which is now responsible for maintenance of the drainage system on all arterial roads, claimed that it received less than 20 complaints on Saturday. PWD officials were unapologetic. "It was due to the high intensity of the rain. It poured continuously for two hours. Often the outfall points get clogged with waste lying on the roads. This blocks the passage of water," said an official. "Moreover, close to 30-40% drains in the city are unmanageable as they carry sewage. We have to clean them regularly," said an official.

 

While PWD minister Chauhan said there was no consolidated assessment of the money spent on desilting in the run-up to the monsoon this year, he would agree with the estimate that around Rs 20 crore was spent on desilting. "We have 20 zones. Going by that assumption, we must have spent at least Rs 20 crore," he added.

 

His party, meanwhile, was accusing the BJP- ruled municipal corporations for the chaos and demanding resignation of the three mayors over their "total failure". Holding the corporations responsible for "failing" to improve the drainage system, senior Congress leader and chief minister Sheila Dikshit’s parliamentary secretary Mukesh Sharma said the Delhi government has been providing adequate funds to them in the past few years.

 

"All three mayors must resign immediately owing responsibility for the flood-like situation in Delhi. Normal life has been severely affected as people were stranded on the roads for hours," said Sharma.