VIJAYAWADA: Heavy downpour for almost three hours in the wee hours of Sunday, inundated several low-lying areas across the city, paralysing normal life. The efforts of the municipal corporation officials to prevent water stagnation on the roads did not yield desired result as desilting works of several drains was still underway.
As per the IMD reports, the city received two-centimetre rainfall on Sunday morning, after which Eluru Road, KT Road, low bridges near Kaleswara Rao Market and Rajiv Gandhi Park witnessed waterlogging. Traffic snarls were reported near the Panja Centre and Chitti Nagar localities after the low-lying areas getting inundated.
Several residents expressed ire against civic body officials for not coming up with a permanent solution for preventing water stagnation on roads.“If the drains across the city were desilted on time, then this situation would never have come. Due to the lack of serious attitude towards the problem, it has become a routine affair for the residents to wade through the roads and streets filled with rainwater, mixed with sewage,” G Bhagya Lakshmi, a Vijayawada resident said.
Following the complaints made by the residents related to waterlogging, the corporation officials swung-into-action and started pumping out the stagnated water to the side drains. Meanwhile, several localities in the Krishna Lanka area continued to be submerged. Around 1.69 lakh cusecs of floodwater was released from the 70 gates of Prakasam
Barrage into the downstream of Krishna river. With this, majority of the houses in Bhupesh Gupta Nagar, Geeta Nagar, Ramalingeswara Nagar and Ranigari Thota were inundated. Even though the district administration and VMC officials directed the residents to shift to the rehabilitation centres, a large number of the residents did not move in order to protect their household articles and property.
1.69 lakh cusecs of floodwater released
Several localities in the Krishna Lanka area continue to be submerged under the floodwater. Also, around 1.69 lakh cusecs of floodwater was released from the 70 gates of Prakasam Barrage into the downstream of Krishna river. This resulted in majority of the houses in Bhupesh Gupta Nagar, Geeta Nagar, Ramalingeswara Nagar and Ranigari Thota to get inundated again