The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Their woes are yet to end

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Nov 30, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Their woes are yet to end

City Bureau

— Photo: A. Muralitharan

A view of the inundated Kamakoti Nagar in Pallikaranai Town Panchayat.

Chennai: Residents of low-level areas in the city and suburbs are still besieged by two problems: water-logging and power cuts.

Several localities in Tambaram, Perungalathur, Perumbakkam, Pallikaranai, Anakaputhur and Pammal continued to remain under sheets of water. A resident of Kamakoti Nagar in Pallikaranai said their locality was literally cut off as the link to Velachery Main Road was under four feet of water.

E. Rajasekar, councillor of St. Thomas Mount Panchayat Union, said residents in many localities of Perumbakkam and Nookkampalayam were marooned. Water-logging was a recent phenomenon owing to the construction of massive complexes along Rajiv Gandhi Salai. These structures blocked the natural flow of rainwater run off from Nookkampalayam hillocks into the Buckingham Canal through the ‘Okkiyam maduvu’ at Thoraipakkam.

Engineers of the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board said the heavy rains in Kancheepuram district had resulted in flow of water on the Vegavathi and the Cheyyar rivers that joined the Palar at the ‘Tirumukkoodal’ in Pazhayaseevaram near Wallajahbad and improved groundwater level.

Still inundated

R.V. Ramani, a resident of Rajaji Nagar First Main Road, said a stretch of the road and part of the All India Bank Employees’ Association Colony at Thiruvanmiyur opposite the RTO was submerged in three feet of water. “For three days we have been trying to get the Corporation officials to help us,” he said.

Ganapathy First and Second Streets of Avvai Nagar, Thiruvanmiyur; Valmiki Street and Kamaraj Avenue were water-logged. The Thiruvanmiyur beach was strewn with garbage washed up in the floods. Residents fear an outbreak in diseases if the cleaning is not taken up at once.

Transport continued to be a problem for those who wanted to shift some of their belongings as autorickshaw drivers and call taxi services refused to take the risk of coming to inundated streets.

In the dark

In Venkatachalam Street in West Mambalam, water was knee-high and for the third day the area remained without power supply. Residents of Railway Colony First Street in Aminjikarai have had no electricity for three days. “There is no water stagnation in our street but power supply has not been restored. We carry water from the sump downstairs,” K.P. Guruprasad said.

An official of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board said that in north Chennai, power supply had been restored in all localities except for Muthamizh Nagar. As the meter boxes in a number of houses flooded in localities in the south and west, including Madipakkam, Ullagaram-Puzhithivakkam, Choolaimedu, Kodambakkam, Valasaravakkam, Nesapakkam, Poonamallee, Tambaram West, Padappai and Old Perungalathur, the TNEB had only been able to partially supply power in these areas.

In Velachery, a number of areas, including VGP Selva Nagar, Anna Nagar, Bhuvaneswari Nagar and Ram Nagar, power supply had been cut off. The official said that staff were engaged in identifying the streets, where electricity could be provided.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu