It was Fright night on Friday for many in Anepalya

The woman of the house, with help from other family members, spent long hours on Friday night emptying the kitchen of four bags of soggy rice.
A family in Anepalya saves whatever rice they can after rains inundated their kitchen on Friday. Four bags of rice, which was their only ration, was left soaking wet | Nagaraja Gadekal
A family in Anepalya saves whatever rice they can after rains inundated their kitchen on Friday. Four bags of rice, which was their only ration, was left soaking wet | Nagaraja Gadekal

BENGALURU: The woman of the house, with help from other family members, spent long hours on Friday night emptying the kitchen of four bags of soggy rice. This was the only ration left for her family of four. The scene played out at Anepalya in Neelasandra, one of the worst affected areas on Friday night. Similar was the plight of most residents there.

The residents of about 10 houses at one end of Anepalya spent a sleepless night as water entered their homes and they were forced to stay outside till early morning. Rafeeq Khan, one of the residents, said, “The drains were partially clogged with garbage and hence water overflowed from them. It took us until morning to clean up everything. This reminded us of a day last year when bicycles were floating outside and we couldn’t open our doors because of the water.”

Amreen Taj, a resident of Anepalya, was among those who had to clear out the water from her house with buckets on Saturday morning. She said, “The water began to enter on Friday night and its level increased to this much,” she said, pointing to a mark on the leg of a cot. While Amreen managed to sleep in her house, many others had to move to neighbours’ homes to spend the night.

Syed Salim, another resident, worked overnight to help people and was supervising an excavator which was clearing the way for water to flow into the nearby storm water drain (SWD). He said, “The reason why water accumulates here is because this SWD hasn’t been desilted in a very long time. If that is done, all these problems will end.”

Salim estimated that water entered about 40-50 houses in Anepalya. The BBMP ward corporator Balakrishnan G said desilting will be carried out on Monday.

The extent of the problem was lesser in Bilekahalli, where the streets were filled with water and entered the basements of buildings.

At Rupa Purushottam’s house, a pump was used to clear out water from the basement throughout Saturday. Another resident of the area, referring to the water-logging, said, “The nearby SWD is not being desilted.”

However, the ward corporator K Narayan Raju said desilting had been carried out just four months ago, and added that the water-logging was because some areas were low-lying with respect to the SWD.
He said, “We’ve built a new drain for low-lying areas, so the problem shouldn’t occur again. Also, one of the reasons SWDs get clogged is that people throw so much garbage into them.”

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