The spell of heavy rain that battered many parts of the Nilgiris in October has led to sections of Ooty-Gudalur Road caving in, causing problems for motorists.
Officials from the National Highways said that though there were only a couple of areas along the stretch where the damage was severe, there were multiple landslips and reports of trees becoming uprooted during the heavy rain last month.
Due to the intense rainfall, a few sections of road along Ooty-Gudalur Road caved in, causing troubles for motorists using the road to get to Udhagamandalam and Coonoor from Gudalur and vice-versa.
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Motorists said that in sections where the road had caved in, the highways had positioned sandbags and reflective stickers to caution motorists to slow down when passing the stretch, leading to the road being narrowed to only allow a single lane of traffic at a time.
“During the weekends, when the numbers of tourists entering the district from Kerala increases substantially, these areas become bottlenecks where traffic jams occur frequently,” said R. Senthil Kumaran, a Gudalur resident, who works in Udhagamandalam, and goes back to Gudalur during the weekends.
The motorists have called on the highways to expedite repair works along the sections of the road which were damaged last month, as they fear another spell of rain could lead to even more damage to Ooty-Gudalur Road.
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The officials from the National Highways said that efforts were being undertaken to implement engineering solutions to ensure that the roads along these sections were not damaged once again in future during intense rainfall.