Sixteen people died, three were injured and four more are feared drowned in rain-related incidents across the country on Monday, with the meteorological department predicting more rainfall activity in the coming days. Five members of a family, including three minors, were killed when a boulder rolled down and crashed into a slum colony due to incessant rains in Kalwa area of Maharashtra’s Thane district, three people are feared drowned in Raigad, and a four-year-old boy drowned after falling into an open drain in Palghar.
A woman and her two-year-old son were killed when a major portion of their house in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur collapsed on them due to heavy rains, and a 14-year-old boy died while three people were injured in Sambhal district in a similar incident. Three members of a family, including a mother-daughter duo, were killed and one person was reported missing after a cloudburst hit two adjacent villages in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi district, while a 27-year-old man drowned while filming a waterlogged rail underpass in Delhi and clicking selfies, and a body was retrieved from a flooded underpass in Gurgaon.
Also, two dead bodies were retrieved from under the debris of a house that collapsed in Gurgaon following heavy downpour the previous day. In rain-battered Maharashtra, 116 picnickers, including 78 women and five children, were stranded in the Kharghar hills in Navi Mumbai due to rains and had to be rescued.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) issued a ‘red alert’ for Mumbai, Thane, Palghar, Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts in the Konkan region and also for Pune, Satara and Kolhapur for extremely heavy rainfall over the next 24 hours. It also sounded an ‘orange alert’ for these districts from July 20 to July 23. The rest of the state is expected to receive heavy rains at isolated places and also light to moderate showers in the next five days.
Up north, the IMD said Delhi is expected to continue receiving moderate rainfall with some isolated intense spells till Tuesday. The city woke up to incessant overnight rains on Monday. It had recorded 70 mm downpour till 8.30 am that caused waterlogging in several parts of the city. The weather department issued an advisory of “slippery roads and traffic disruption” due to thunderstorm and rain. It also warned against “partial damage to plantation, horticulture, standing crops, vulnerable structures, kutcha houses and huts” due to rains and strong winds.
Moderate to heavy spells of rain may cause “occasional reduction in visibility” and waterlogging may occur in the low-lying areas, it added, and advised people to stay indoors, close windows and doors, and not to take shelter under trees. The city recorded a minimum temperature of 24.2 degrees Celsius, three points below normal, and a maximum of 26.5 degrees Celsius, eight notches below normal. The incessant rainfall led to waterlogging and traffic snarls on several vital road stretches in the city.
Heavy to very heavy rains lashed several parts of Rajasthan as well, with Behror in Alwar recording a maximum of 195 mm downpour, Neemrana 190 mm, Bansur 136 mm, Mandawar 124 mm, Buhana (Jhunjhunu) 117 mm and Ladpura (Kota) 101 mm from Sunday till Monday morning, the weather office in Jaipur said. Many other places recorded below-100 mm rains during this period.
In Haryana, normal life was hit as heavy rains lashed most places of the state, leaving roads and streets flooded. Rainfall was recorded in Gurgaon, Jhajjar, Bahadurgarh, Kaithal, Faridabad, Rewari, Sonipat, Ambala, Bhiwani, Palwal, Fatehabad, Rohtak and Panchkula. In Gurgaon, some roads including the one outside the Civil Hospital and some underpasses were flooded with rain water for some time. At other places, including Kaithal, Sonipat, Bhiwani and Palwal too heavy downpour affected normal life.
The Union Territory of Chandigarh, which also received rains, recorded a high of 27.7 degrees Celsius, six notches below normal. In Punjab, Ludhiana and Patiala, which received rains, recorded respective maximums of 27.9 degrees Celsius and 27.3 degrees Celsius, respectively. Amritsar recorded a high of 31.6 degrees C, three notches below normal, while Bathinda’s maximum settled at 34 degrees Celsius.
In Uttarakhand, most rivers in the state, including Ganga, Yamuna, Bhagirathi, Alaknanda, Mandakini, Pindar, Nandakini, Tons, Saryu, Gori, Kali and Ramganga, are in spate following intermittent rains over the last three days. Heavy rains also caused landslides bringing debris onto the roads at various places. Consequently, the Gangotri and Yamunotri national highways in Uttarkashi district got blocked at various points.
A bridge was also washed away on Uttarkashi-Lambgaon motor road cutting off several villages in Baragaddi and Dhauntari areas from the district headquarters. Two labourers who got stranded in a tunnel of the Chibro hydel project in Vikasnagar area of Dehradun district on Sunday evening are still trapped there. Efforts are still underway to rescue them but chances of their survival is thin, Kalsi police station in-charge Rituraj Singh said.
In Uttar Pradesh, light to moderate monsoon rains occurred at many places over the eastern part of the state and over most parts of the western region. Heavy rain is very likely at isolated places over the state on July 20, they said.
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