Residents of MS Maktha in Khairatabad woke up late on Thursday night, to the rude shock of rain water seeping through their door crevices. Pandemonium prevailed in the next couple of hours as rain flooded their streets and ravaged their ramshackle homes. Residents of the slum had to grab whatever they could and run to safer localities.
About 300 to 400 homes had to bear the brunt, which were close to the Balkapur storm water drain emptying into Hussainsagar. Most of them were daily wage earners and small time workers. “All the ration for the month has become wet.
My belongings are floating in knee deep water. Every year this has become a recurring phenomenon,” curses Bano Bi, who works as an ‘ayah’ in a private hospital.
Unable to afford a pump set and forced to manually empty water, she could not attend her duties on Friday.
Shakir Khan, a tailor, faces the same predicament. His home was in knee deep water during the night, and he had to leave along with wife and children. Coming back in the morning, he found all the belongings floating.
“Since morning, we did not have a drop of water to drink, even while our home is full of it. We could not cook for obvious reasons, and no one offered us even chai,” says his wife.
GHMC’s disaster rescue forces did visit the locality as early as 4 a.m., which was when Mayor Bonthu Ram Mohan too arrived to supervise the relief operations. However, there were isolated streets inside besieged by water even after 12 noon., by when all the rescue teams deserted the slum.
A statement from GHMC attributed the sudden flooding to collapse of the drain’s retaining wall.
