ednesday brought less rain over Nellore district, but enough for people in Gudur and Nayudupeta revenue divisions of Nellore district to spend a day in dread of floods from the swollen rivulets Kaivalya, Kalangi, Pambaleru and Swarnamukhi, which are still in some fury due to inflows from upland catchments.
The authorities said the rains are expected to ease in the next two days. Wednesday was not as wet as it had been for the previous two days. The highest rainfall was recorded at Tada with 168 mm by Wednesday morning.
But the scene turned grim at Madhureddy Colony near Gudur where flood waters entered the village and residents made frantic appeals for help. The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) rushed in boats to rescue them and shift them to safer places.
At Nancharampeta in Chillakur mandal limits, NDRF teams continued their search for a man who has been missing since the downpour of Monday night. He had gone to attend to some work at a prawn tank and stranded amid the raging Kandaleru.
The Ganga-Cauvery and the Lucknow-Chennai express trains were halted for a brief while at Doravarisatram en route to Chennai because the tracks down the line were under water. During the brief emergency halt, four young men from Bihar got down from the Ganga-Cauvery Express intending to catch a bus to Chennai. They were soon caught in the swirling waters and had to be rescued by the police.
The reservoirs in the district are brimming after a fortnight’s copious rain. Unable to keep the waters pent up, irrigation officials raised 10 gates of the Vakadu barrage near Sullurupeta as a precautionary measure to prevent flooding of nearby villages and farms. The Somasila dam, fed for the past three weeks, now has 72 tmc ft in storage.
Several towns and villages in rural Nellore are cut off due to inundation. Traffic between Gudur and Venkatagiri was stopped on account of overflowing streams. For a few hours on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, the national highway from Sullurupeta to Tada came under two feet of water and vehicular traffic was stopped to let the flood recede.
APSRTC buses are not plying from Nellore and Chennai on account of the unprecedented floods over on the Tamil Nadu side. Services to some interior places from Nayudupeta, Sullurupeta and Gudur in southern parts of the district are affected too.
The district administration has put up relief camps at over 50 places in Nayudupeta and Gudur divisions and made room for 5,000 people temporarily relocated from vulnerable localities, collector M. Janaki said.
Farmers, who had welcomed these rains when they began around Diwali, are now a sated lot. Any more rain, and the rabi crop will be lost.
It seems there is no end to our problems. If these heavy rains continue for two more weeks, all our crops would be gone.
- L. Ramanaiah,resident of Madhureddy Colony, Gudur.
