Bengaluru: Everything was three feet under water here

After Sunday night’s downpour, among the many victims were 240 students of a govt school in KR Puram where computers and study material were damaged.

Foodgrains stocked at the anganwadi centre in Triveni Nagar, KR Puram, being salvaged on Monday | pushkar v

BENGALURU: Just about everything on this campus was soaked — school computers, food grains stocked in the anganwadi and files in Block Education Office.
Government Higher Primary School at Triveni Nagar in KR Puram was forced to declare a holiday on Monday for all its 210 students after teachers found the school under waist-deep water after Sunday night’s downpour. The school may reopen for Teachers’ Day on Tuesday. The rain damaged brand new computers apart from record books and teaching material. Even till late afternoon on Monday, teachers, staff and the school principal hadn’t finished taking stock of the damage.

Finding all classrooms for classes from 1 to 8 wet, principal T H Thimmegowda said classes will resume on Tuesday only if the condition is better. All the wet computers and an LCD television screen have been dumped in one room.Surrounded by classrooms full of books and teaching material in tatters, chart papers and posters, Susheelamma, who teaches students of Classes 1 to 4, said, “I have been teaching here since 12 years. This has happened for the second time. All my students’ records are wet.”

Clockwise from top: While some children dry their books and other study material at Triveni Nagar Government School at Krishnarajapuram on Monday, others have a tough time trying to clear water from their flooded classrooms at the school; Locals wade through an inundated road in Nanda Gokul Layout in Thanisandra; Officers of Block Education Office at Triveni Nagar put out documents to dry on a stage |

While the aayah had mopped the water from some classrooms, a few more were still filled with sludge. The remains of books left in cupboards were put out for drying, some readable, some not.
“Since there is no electricity, we haven’t plugged in any of the computers yet, but all CPUs must have conked off since they were closer to the floor. Of the 13 computers, five are brand new. The batteries and adapters are not working,” Thimmegowda told Express.

An anganwadi on the same premises was also flooded. The staff were seen stacking bags of rations on higher ground. An Integrated Child Development Scheme official from Women and Child Development Department said they are yet to get a report of how much food grains have been lost.
The other building on the premises is that of the Block Education Office. On the stage where children recite morning prayers, office files were spread out to dry. “Only 30 per cent of our files are digitised. We are yet to check which documents are unreadable. All our systems are kaput. There is loss of `5-6 lakh,” Salim Pasha, the Block Education Officer said.