After days of keeping weather experts on their toes, cyclone Fengal made landfall on the Tamil Nadu coast over the past weekend and left several districts and Puducherry reeling by dumping close to 50 cm of rains within 24 hours in some places. While Chennai, the habitual victim of the northeast monsoon’s fury, was spared this time, people in Villupuram, Cuddalore, Kallakurichi, Tiruvannamalai and Krishnagiri districts—the worst hit—are still picking up the pieces. This is the second time in two years that TN districts have received record rainfall; last December, Thoothukudi was overwhelmed by over 90 cm in a day.
TN is no stranger to natural disasters. Disaster management systems were boosted after the 2004 tsunami. The state is now accustomed to dealing with cyclones, especially along the coast and in the capital. However, it is clear that the state machinery is stumbling in its preparation for such huge rainfall events that may well be the new norm. Unlike 2023, the state cannot blame meteorologists for failing to provide sufficient warning—red alerts for the districts affected were in place for days.
While shelters were opened and rescue personnel put in place, it is becoming clear that the state failed in dam management—a matter that has triggered a wave of criticism from the people as well as opposition parties. The state released a whopping 1.68 lakh cusecs of water from the Sathanur dam into the Thenpennai river in the wee hours of Monday, flooding scores of villages. While the state insists sufficient warnings were issued, field reports suggest they were not received or were not specific enough to act on. In many places, people moved to safer ground only on seeing the river level rise or flooding in the streets.
The government has defended its actions but has failed to convincingly answer why, despite the alerts, water from the dam, which was already near full capacity, was not released in advance, as has been done elsewhere. It has drawn comparisons with the 2015 Chennai floods, a man-made disaster caused by the sudden release of 29,000 cusecs from the Chembarambakkam dam into the Adyar. While Chennai has learnt the lessons of 2015, clearly they are yet to percolate through the rest of the state machinery.