November 3, 2015
Even as the Corporation Mayor P. Rajkumar lashed out at the Corporation officials for not being prepared for monsoon rains in the monsoon handling meeting held at the Corporation here on Tuesday, heavy rains continued to inundate the city roads here on Tuesday.
Coimbatore received a maximum of 84 mm rainfall on Sunday turning the city roads and subways into a deluge. The rains further exposed the poor maintenance of drainage system in the corporation as people had to wade through the flooded roads. Some of the roads were temporarily closed and the subway bridges including the Avinashi flyover and North Coimbatore flyover were submerged up to the railway tracks.
Frustrated with the poor preparations for the monsoons, the Mayor came down heavily on the corporation officials for poor management of drainage during the monsoons.
Corporation Commissioner K. Vijayakarthikeyan also advised the officials to set up an accessible control room in all zones of the corporation so as to initiate flood relief activities immediately.
“A 24-hour manned control room would be made operational at the zonal offices and the workers in the stations should be reachable whenever necessary and their mobile numbers should be furnished and made public,” he said.
He further added that a mobile unit too should be stationed at each zone, so as to rush for flood relief whenever necessary. “Flood relief centres should also be set up in some schools and all the staff working in the centres should be accessible,” he added.
The staff was also told to be equipped with the necessary infrastructure to address power shutdowns and water stagnation. “We should avert any epidemic and should also intensify desilting in all the wards during the monsoons,” he informed.
Zonal officials shared their concern about water flowing from the roads into the houses because of the level of the road being higher than the level of the houses. “While laying roads, we tend to lay a new road on the existing one and that increases the level of the roads compared to that of the houses. This is the problem with most of the areas,” said one of the zonal officers.
The officials also demanded that drainage should be constructed to avert the flooding of subways especially in the case of Avinashi flyover as waters from the nearby areas flooded the subway.
Both the Mayor and Commissioner asked the officials to conduct a survey and give proposals to all the areas so as to start the work immediately.
Meanwhile, S. Panneerselvam, the Head and Professor of the Department of Meteorology at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, said that there was an expected rainfall of 25 mm on Tuesday and added that rains would continue for the next five days.
“Coimbatore is expected to receive 18 mm on Wednesday, 10 mm on Thursday and 16 mm each on Friday and Saturday”.
A desperate traffic police personal near Railway station told Covai Post that water had flooded so much in the area that the commuters coming out of the station were wading through knee-deep water. The carbortors of vehicles were also getting chocked. Even after repeated calls, corportaion officials did not turn up, he said. “Ive been trying my best to clear the drain but I am unable to do it myself,” he added.