BHUBANESWAR: With house filled with waist-deep water, Prasant Bhusan and his family at Gouri Nagar in Old Town of the city had no other options expect to wait for the water-level to recede.“It was just a repartition of what we suffered on Monday.
Drain water had entered into our living space and household furniture were submerged. Taking shelter on the upper floor was the only choice we had as the entire Gouri Gardan remained flooded,” said Bhusan whose family remained stranded till evening.
“If we had tried to keep the doors on ground floor open, it would have damaged other properties as well,” the young man said while explaining the ordeal he and his family faced. Around 80 houses in Gouri Garden were flooded with water after Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) failed to resolve the waterlogging issue of the area.
Bringing further torment for the residents and commuters this week, the low pressure-induced rain that lashed the city for over 24 hours inundated several low-lying areas. The overnight spell also exposed BMC’s unpreparedness and repeated failures in containing waterlogging menace of the ‘Smart City.’
Several areas including Jharpada, Nayapalli Behera Sahi, Jagamara and Sailashree Vihar were completely waterlogged, while a flood-like situation crippled the normal life and brought traffic to a grinding halt. Residents of Gouri Garden, Behera Sahi, Jharpada Mahadev Nagar and other low-lying areas were left in lurch and remained stranded and house locked for hours due to extreme water-logging, while BMC’s failure in effectively dealing with the menace in these areas, where the water-level remained at waist-deep, was also conspicuous.
Like the previous rain, this time too storm water entered into houses of the residents damaging properties. “Pumping out water every time when the area is waterlogged is not a permanent solution. However, this is how our civic authorities are working to deal with the menace,” Bhusan rued. “The situation could have been avoided if authorities had taken up desilting work of drains on time,”said Narasingha Dalai, a resident of the locality.