CHENNAI: When our home drowned, we were caught unaware. The water came from the sewer drain, toilet, and the road. My parents, who were over 60 years old, were home alone. Nobody came to tell them if there was a flood, nobody came to check if they were okay, and nobody came after the event to see if they were fine,” said Krupa Ge at her talk ‘The Day Chennai Drowned’ held at Arkay Convention Centre
on Wednesday.
The journalist and writer, after providing a detailed explanation of the water bodies and reservoirs in the city, explained that the cause of the flood was due to four reasons — the effect of the El Nino, the poor or non-existent stormwater drainage in the city, the unscientific or nonexistent desilting of the rivers, and the unchecked encroachments on the city’s canals and rivers.
“The official line said that this was a one in a 100-year rain. The media, too, bought into this. But this does not excuse the fact that it happened, in fact, we should be even more prepared for something like this,” said Ge. She explained that the belief that the Chembarambakam Reservoir had to be opened lest the reservoir would breach was untrue. She explained that the week before the rains, in late November, when there was no downpour, the reservoir could be opened. Quoting the 2016 CAG report, she explained that the Reservoir could have released 12,000 cusecs of water instead of 24,000 cusecs into the Adyar river, instead of unleashing the stored water onto the unprepared city.
Ge also highlighted the dated emergency response plan was ineffective and needed to be improved upon for the city to have an effective solution set in place should another disaster follow again. “The only disaster plan for Chembarabakkam is from the 80s. It still referred to Chennai as Madras. It recommends that if such a disaster occurs, the best way to notify the authorities was to use a ‘cycle messenger’,” said Ge.
Ge also stated that the economic impact of the floods went largely undocumented. She places the estimated loss at R3 billion, factoring in other causes such as demonetisation, implementation of GST and the 2016 Vardah cyclone. The most affected, according to Ge, were small and medium industries run by first generation entrepreneurs.
The debris that remains
Journalist and writer Krupa Ge, on the cusp of releasing her new book centred on the Chennai floods of 2015, spoke in great detail about the incident — from the reasons for the flood, to the ways it can be prevented in the future — while also critically analysing the government’s role in the same