Seven people including three children belonging to two families were crushed to death in different incidents of wall and building collapse as heavy rain lashed the twin cities early on Wednesday morning.
Bilkis (27) and her two daughters Zeba (two) and Maria (five) were killed in a wall collapse at Bholakpur (Musheerabad). In another incident, an under-construction wall collapsed on a hut where the family of Balaswamy Yadav (40) was sleeping, killing him, his 18-year-old daughter Parvati and 11-year-old son Bhaskar (11) on the spot. His wife Chennamma (35) later succumbed to injuries at a private hospital.
Mayor B. Rammohan, Municipal Minister K.T. Rama Rao visited Gandhi Hospital, where the bodies were taken for post-mortem, consoled the family members and later, announced an ex-gratia of up to Rs.4 lakh each through various government schemes to kin of the deceased.
Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao condoled the deaths and gave instructions for increasing the compensation. Water logging of roads, colonies, inundation of low lying areas especially slums and traffic jams in almost all the main roads became the feature from dawn to noon. Schoolchildren and office goers bore the brunt as the skies opened up with great force.
Three to five centimetres of rain was recorded by the GHMC rain gauges in different circles till 8 a.m. itself and by noon the rainfall was more than 11.8 cm at Amberpet, Malkajgiri 9 cm, Saidabad 8.7 cm, Qutbullapur 8 cm, Khairatabad 7.7 cm, Ameerpet 6.5 cm, etc.
The Met department had forecast the rain following a depression in the Bay of Bengal and GHMC personnel including the Commissioner B. Janardhan Reddy, senior staff and field personnel fanned out to different parts of the city to tackle emergencies as alarm one and later alarm two were sounded when there was no let-up in rain. The Mayor too arrived at the GHMC head office to personally monitor the relief measures.
Roads and areas in Banjara Hills, Begumpet, Secunderabad, Nampally, Dilsukhnagar, Nagole, Ranigunj, L.B.Nagar, Uppal, Mettuguda, Tarnaka, Shankarmutt, Musheerabad, Vidyanagar, Malakpet, Filmnagar, Kacheguda, Koti, Abids, Basheerbagh, Bowenpally, Marredpally, NTR Marg, Madhapur and several others were inundated.
Dr. Reddy appealed to people not to venture out till there is some let-up unless for emergencies as the municipal sanitation staff and traffic police struggled to bring some order to the chaos.
A new outlet built near the Marriot Hotel at Tank Bund was opened to let out 120 cusecs of water from Hussainsagar lake as it reached the full tank level of 513.4 metres.
Commuters faced a harrowing time as buses were held up in jams and MMTS trains too had to be cancelled on a few routes as rainwater submerged the tracks and entered stations.
The situation eased in the afternoon when the rain stopped and traffic movement also became smooth in a couple of hours. The Met office has forecast heavy rains for the next 48 hours.
