A heavy downpour witnessed on Friday paralysed normal life in Guntur district. Colonies in several low-lying areas in the district were inundated forcing the people to wade through knee-deep waters while the road link to Amaravathi and Tadikonda mandals was snapped as the Kondaveedu vagu overflowed and breached the road near Lam farm.
The RTC partially suspended bus services to Amaravathi. The Nallamada drain was too overflowing. Several colonies in Gorantla, Lam, Amaravathi continued to be surrounded by water and the district administration continues to be on tenterhooks and the rain was showing no sings of abating.
An average rainfall of 20 m.m was recorded on Friday. The highest rainfall of 89.2 m.m was recorded at Pedakurapadu, while Bapatla received 70 mm and Guntur recorded 60.2 m.m. Rainfall recorded in this month so far was 36 per cent more than the normal rainfall.
District Collector B Ramanjaneyulu convened a meeting of Irrigation engineers to take stock of the situation and assess the sturdiness of Krishna river bund. The breach of the bund near Oleru near Repalle caused misery in 2009 as hundreds of acres was inundated and Repalle was surrounded by knee-deep water.
Paddy and cotton crops in hundreds of acres were partially submerged.
The damage was more profound in Repalle, Tadikonda and Bapatla mandals.
According to a report of the Department of agriculture, crops in 25,300 hectares were either fully or partially submerged. Cotton was the worst affected with crop. in 14,000 hectares submerged followed by paddy in 11,000 hectares, black gram in 550 hectares etc.
