Just about to retire for the night after dinner, the residents of the ground floor house in the three-storey building in Kamalanagar literally had the ground beneath their feet giving away. All residents living in the six houses in the building managed to rush out safely from the dilapidated building.
Heavy rains were attributed for the weakening of the foundation of the building.
October, November and early December were among the wettest months in the recent past for the city. Several buildings came down, rendering families homeless suddenly, while the heavy rains flooded low-lying areas and damaged many roads across the city. With the rains not letting up for days, life in the city was thrown out of gear.
According to the data available, the normal rainfall for this period is usually 212.8 mm. However, the city received 581.7 mm, which is a 173% departure from normal.
‘Valley of potholes’
Heavy rains also caused a lot of damage to the city’s roads, resulting in potholes — a pet peeve of Bengalureans. The constant drizzle, waterlogging and potholes compounded the problems of the motorists, who had to also deal with the incomplete development works taken up by Bengaluru Smart City Ltd. in the central business district and by the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board on the city’s outskirts - so much so that the city earned the moniker of being a “valley of potholes”.
Groups of citizens performed a ‘homa’, while the Aam Aadmi Party announced ‘pothole habba’ (festival of potholes). Though several deadlines to fill the potholes and repair worn out road surfaces have whizzed past, the condition of many roads across the city continue to be poor.
BBMP’s Chief Commissioner Gaurav Gupta said the water ingress due to continuous and often heavy downpour had led to the deterioration of road surface. “We have now taken up repairs on a war footing. We have also taken up asphalting of roads that were already approved. Several of these road works could not be taken up over the past four-five months due to heavy rains,” he said and added that saturation of the substrata had led to instances of wall and building collapses.
Over the past few months, waterlogging and flooding of low-lying areas were reported on an almost daily basis. The flooding of Kendriya Vihar, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research and Manyata Tech Park hogged the headlines. During an inspection of the flooded areas, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai remarked that the existing rajakaluves were narrow and not sufficient to carry the huge volume of discharge. He had directed the officials to draft a master plan to not just minimise flooding, but also to improve the drain network.
Mr. Gupta said that of the 842 km of the storm-water drain network, 428 km had already been remodelled and strengthened. In the next phase, 128 km will be taken up, he said. “This is not just capital intensive, but is fraught with field level problems, such as encroachments that need to be cleared after surveys,” he said.
Climate change
However, this is not enough, said M. Inayuthullah, director, Water Institute, University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering, who is also an advisor to the BBMP. He stressed on the need to recompute the carrying capacity of drains and volume of discharge, apart from detailed data monitoring for better analysis and integrated departmental efforts at the micro watershed level.
“The need of the hour is proper planning on storage of excess water that we receive during the monsoon months,” he said and pointed to changes in rainfall patterns owing to climate change and rampant urbanisation.
The rajakaluve system (storm-water drains network) is completely disturbed, while the drainage system needs to be replanned. “While there are several practical problems on ground faced by various civic agencies, there are solutions and technology available to tackle them. The real issues of application of these solutions on ground and time, project management can only be handled if all departments work together on a common platform,” he said.
