(Pic by S.R. Raghunathan)
CHENNAI: Even on Friday, when the city seemed to be returning to normalcy, major cell phone networks continued to be mired in connectivity problems.
Padma, a woman in her late fifties, at the Chennai Central railway station said that she and her son reached Chennai on Thursday morning from Mumbai. But she is now looking for him.
“I have not been able to reach him or any of my other family members as their mobile phones had no signal,” she said.
In another instance, the Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Service helpline team was unable to contact its personnel. “Their numbers are not reachable and we are finding it difficult to coordinate and keep in touch with each other for our operations,” said a TNFRS official.
The 108 emergency ambulance service too announced that due to the issues with cellphone connectivity, they have enabled wireless communication to their emergency response centre in collaboration with the Chennai City police for which, people requiring emergency had to just seek help from the nearest policeman.
R. Jyotsna, who lives in Delhi, said she had not been able to reach her parents in Valasaravakkam for the last two days. Most cell phone networks faced a barrage of messages online from angry customers asking when the problem would be set right.
On Friday morning, residents were seen venturing out of their inundated areas and trying to make calls from vantage points where cellphone reception was available.
In a few areas, including parts of T. Nagar, Kotturpuram. Jafferkanpet, Velacherry and Saidapet, residents faced problems with their landlines. An EB official, who is coordinating restoration work at Madipakkam, said he was not able to contact his colleagues who work at other offices.
Rescue volunteers too said that they were often at a loss about how to proceed with their work as a majority of the public remained unreachable. A majority of the distress posts on social media had to do with people living away from the city and expressing concern about not being able to reach their families.
On Thursday night, Vodafone tweeted stating that they would help people with information about their friends and family in the city if people could send them a message on twitter with the person’s name and Vodafone number. The service provider offered that two hours after they received the message, the person would be given an SMS with the last-called location of the person they were trying to trace. Skype also made international calls to landlines and mobiles in Chennai, free through their service in lieu of the floods.
(With inputs from Vivek Narayanan)
