A wall of water with a roaring sound is how Shivshankar Singh remembers the beginning of destruction around him. The worker at Indian Oil petrol station was chatting with his colleagues as the rain continued to beat down on Tuesday night.
“Around 1.15 a.m., there was a big sound and even before we could realise it, there was water everywhere. Vehicles moving on the road got swept away. You can see one of them,” says Mr. Singh pointing to a SUV perched on the side on the road.
Elsewhere on the road in Gaganpahad area, there were signs of destruction as if some giant had tossed around vehicles and uprooted electric supply lines.
A pre-fabricated toilet was tossed yards away from where it was installed by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation officials. A few cars and container trucks could be seen nearly 50 metres from the road crushed, crumpled and covered with sand and debris.
Large scale devastation
While one stream of water roared down the Old Kurnool Highway and swept through the gap in the under construction flyover, another stream swirled around the Celebration Convention function hall and slammed the wall of the flyover. The water swept away a house where three bodies have been fished out and one boy is still missing. “Many vehicles got washed away. Though they are saying only three persons are dead, we saw other people being carried away by the waters,” says Mallesh, another employee of the petroleum outlet pointing to a waist-high mark reached by the flood.
“It will take time to restore traffic on this road. Right now we are focussing on rescue effort,” said a police official.
Kin recounts horror
Four persons, including a four-year-old boy, were swept away in the rains in Gaganpahad area, which comes under RGIA Police Station limits, late on Tuesday night.
The house was built on a small plot of land near a function hall.
“I was in the godown when the house was swept away. Tanima and Amer are siblings, and their bodies have been recovered along with Tahir, who is my nephew. Eight-year-old Ayan is still missing,” said Muhammad Imran sitting near a shop beside AH43 that connects Hyderabad to Bengaluru.
Imran pointed to a clump of wet bushes to show where the temporary house used to exist. “The water from a nearby lake overflowed and swirled over the wall sweeping away the house and its inhabitants,” said a police official on the site.
The function hall and a row of shops were saved from the damage as the water rose nearly 15 feet from the ground and swirled around it.
