Chennai rescue efforts hampered by heavy rains
Print Edition
RESCUE helicopters in Chennai were grounded yesterday by renewed rains that spread fear in the flood-struck Indian city, while the death of 14 patients at a private hospital added to the official toll of 280 confirmed killed in the disaster.
Waters that had started to recede rose again after a new cloudburst that sent residents running for shelter under trees and in shopfronts. Parts of the flat, coastal city remained under up to 2.5 meters of water for a fourth day.
Many residents have spent days stranded on rooftops since more than 345 millimeters of rain fell over 24 hours on Tuesday, the most for a century.
India’s fourth-largest city has boomed in the 21st century as a center for vehicle factories and IT outsourcing, but trash filled drains and building on lake beds in the rush to industrialization has made it more flood prone.
Military helicopters dropped food to residents stranded on rooftops and the defense ministry doubled to 4,000 the number of soldiers deployed to help the rescue effort.
Rescue teams urged people to leave inundated regions and hundreds thronged the streets in the morning seeking higher ground, or trying to rescue relatives.
In one of the most shocking incidents, 14 patients in the intensive care unit of the MIOT International hospital died after floods took out generators running life-support systems, Prithvi Mohandas, a doctor at the hospital, told reporters.
Tamil Nadu’s health secretary confirmed the deaths but said the cause needed to be investigated.
Despite rescue efforts, help had yet to reach many areas and city-dwellers grew impatient as it emerged that authorities had released water from brimming lakes without much warning.
V. Raghunathan, 60, living in the south of the city, complained about the lack of warning before flood gates were opened on some of Chennai’s 30 waterways.
“The authorities didn’t give us adequate information about water being released from a nearby lake. Before we could take action, my car had sunk and I had to move to the first floor of my apartment.”
The Tamil Nadu public works department said it did issue warnings, but the information apparently did not reach the public because of a breakdown in communications.
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