Breach to Yeleru canal halts traffic on National Highway

Traffic comes to a halt on the National Highway as floodwaters flow on to the road at Pisinikada near Anakapalle in Visakhapatnam district on Sunday. Photo: A. Manikanta Kumar

The National Highway turned into a sheet of water with the Yeleru canal breaching near Pisinikada, bringing traffic to a grinding halt.

For Kumar Giri, a lorry driver who was taking steel plates from Jamshedpur to Vijayawada, it was a long halt at Pisinikada where he reached at 8 p.m. on Saturday with the logjam stretching for kilometres.

He had to wait for the traffic to clear till 10 a.m. on Sunday to reach Elamanchili. He waited there for the traffic flow to improve as he did not want to take a chance carrying a heavy load. “Even for poor quality of dosa, they are charging heavily,” he complains.

For Deepak, an operator at Brandix Apparels at Achyutapuram, it was a pretty bad experience. With the tyre of his motorcycle going flat, he had to push until he finds a mechanic. With no trains to Visakhapatnam, road transport is the only option. Traffic from near Kasimkota to Pisinikada continued to be regulated till evening with water still flowing on the highway. The divider on the highway had to be broken at several places to let the water onto the other side.

A bus load of passengers returning from Hyderabad had to wait for four hours near Kokkirala before water subsided and traffic was allowed to resume.

“We had no food or water and no way to even buy it,” said Lakshminarayana from Kurupam.