2 days ago
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The dependable of falling rainfall nary longer seems soothing to residents successful downtown Thiruvananthapuram.
Over the years, residents and businesses successful the city’s premier commercialized area, comprising Chalai, Thampanoor, Pazhavangadi, and East Fort localities, person travel to dread the rains.
When pre-monsoon showers pummelled the metropolis connected Saturday, the residents successful Pazhavangadi, for one, went into firefighting mode.
The stormwater overwhelmed the web of drains. The muddy silt-laden runoff backed up into the streets, flooding homes, swamping shops, and turning roads and footpaths into streams, inconveniencing residents, traders, motorists and pedestrians alike. The scenes of h2o rushing implicit roads and sidewalks were a staple of tv quality broadcasts that day.
Mini, who owns a stall successful beforehand of the Pazhavangadi Ganapathy temple, says she has seldom experienced flash flooding of Saturday’s magnitude. Ms Mini has owned the store since 2014.
Passengers instrumentality refuge connected elevated surfaces astatine the KSRTC autobus basal astatine East Fort pursuing terrible waterlogging caused by pre-monsoon thunderstorm connected May 30, 2026. | Photo Credit: FILE
“Wavelets triggered by postulation connected the flooded roads inundated shops, damaging stock. Cleaning operations outgo moving hours and high-priced labour”, Ms Mini told The Hindu.
Local residents said that the toxically polluted Amayizhanjan canal, a noxious achromatic unfastened sewer that doubles arsenic a convenient trash dump and a fertile breeding crushed for mosquitoes, which courses done the bosom of the city, overflowed, raising the spectre of diseases, including leptospirosis.
Delayed civic response
With canals and drainage systems backing up, polluted h2o flooded homes and businesses successful the locality. They alleged that the civic authorities’ effect to the flood was earnestly wanting. “Municipal workers arrived late. No Corporation higher-ups visited the flooded locality,” a nonmigratory said.
He said Saturday’s flooding was neither the archetypal nor the last, and clime alteration has spurred dense downpours that are progressively overwhelming the city’s clogged web of drains and canals.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-controlled Thiruvananthapuram Corporation had drawn flak for terrible waterlogging caused by a comparatively mild pre-monsoon spell. The Left Democratic Front (LDF) Opposition successful the assembly alleged that the Corporation’s pre-monsoon cleaning cognition was markedly slack. LDF counsellors said the worst was yet to come. Flooding-affected municipality residents took to societal media to vent their anger.
Mayor V.V. Rajesh had told reporters that the Corporation unsocial could not beryllium blamed for the flooding successful Pazhavangadi. He said different departments were progressive and called for associated action.
Last year, the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) had taken the Major Irrigation section to task for failing to execute 500 cleaning, desilting, and anti-clogging works on canals and drains crisscrossing the city.
(The writers, Sreenand M.S. and Karan Gopal, are interning with The Hindu Bureau, Thiruvananthapuram)
