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Monsoon rains hit Mumbai
01/06/2006 12:16 - (SA)
Mumbai - Millions of Mumbai's residents awoke on Thursday to flooded roads, traffic snarls and delayed train services after the city's first monsoon downpour brought the city to a crawl.
At least 17 people were injured when three walls collapsed in different parts of the city after the rains lashed the city a week earlier than expected and caught civic officials off-guard.
Monsoon rains have also damaged homes and destroyed farmland in the southern coastal state of Kerala where some 11 people have died this week.
Water-logged roads and traffic snarls during the monsoon are not unusual in this city of 16 million people. A deluge last July turned streets into rivers, and people died trapped in cars submerged in water or suffocated under landslides that washed away shanties.
A record 94 centimetres fell in a 24-hour period last year on July 26 and nearly 500 people died in Mumbai over the next few days in torrential rains that snapped electricity and telephone lines and halted air and rail services, largely cutting off the city from the rest of India.
A year later, Mumbai's residents are angry that civic officials have done little to minimise flooding.
"The drains are choked, roads are flooded, trains are late. Rain water mixed with filth is entering homes. What has changed since last year?" said an exasperated Tony Pereira, a bank executive waiting for transport on a waterlogged road in suburban Mumbai.
"This is only the start of the rains. How will people commute and get to work when the rains really start?"
Civic authorities had launched an ambitious plan to concrete Mumbai's tar roads and broaden drains, but residents complain of crumbling infrastructure and shoddy work.
- AP
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