A sudden downpour wreaked havoc in Hyderabad on Monday, causing suffocating traffic for over five hours and the deaths of seven people in the city and its surrounds.
In the city and in nearby districts of Telangana, thunderstorms and heavy rains caused buildings to collapse, cars to be crushed, shopping areas to be inundated, and crops to be destroyed.
Four persons died due to lightning at Narayankhed, a town in Sangareddy, a district on the outskirts of Hyderabad. They were two pairs of mothers and sons: Shakunthala, 46, and Chandrakanth, 23, as well as Basamma, 45, and Ravi, 25.
Starting at 5pm, the capital city received more than 13 centimetres of rain in five hours. In Singadikunta, a slum in the upscale neighbourhood of Banjara Hills, a 30-year-old man named Yadulla and his four-month-old son died when a wall collapsed on their hut. In the Hussaini Alam area of the old city, a 35-year-old rickshaw puller, Afsar, died of electrocution when a live wire fell on him.
The state government announced Rs 4 lakh to the next of kin of all the deceased.
Several colonies plunged into darkness for more than four hours as wires snapped, disrupting the electricity supply. Commuters were stuck in gridlock and buses outside the city found that they could not enter.
The storm caused busy thoroughfares to overflow with sewage. Cyberabad, a hub of prominent IT companies, was completely inundated in knee-deep waters. Hundreds of cars were submerged. Techies waited in their offices till late at night.
The emergency response teams of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) evacuated 100 people from Singadikunta; 45 people from Krantinagar, where low-lying houses were submerged; and 28 people from flooded slums in Shivajinagar.
“We are providing food packets and water sachets to the people who were evacuated to safer areas till the water recedes in their localities,” said S Srinivas Reddy, the GHMC zonal commissioner.
GHMC Commissioner G Janardhan Reddy issued an advisory last night requesting people not to leave their homes unless there was an emergency. On Tuesday morning, Reddy withdrew the warning, though the GHMC released a statement advising continued caution.
According to the Hyderabad Meteorological Department (HMD), the heavy downpour qualified as a “cloudburst”, an extreme, momentary surge of precipitation.
“It is quite common to have such a cloud formation in a short period of time due to increase in relative humidity,” said YK Reddy, the director of the HMD. “In Hyderabad, the humidity increased from 87 per cent to 97 per cent in a span of 24 hours, and that resulted in a sudden cloudburst.”
The HMD forecasted more rains of similar intensity in Hyderabad and other parts of Telangana over the next 48 hours.
