DHULIPALA: Fear lingers in the eyes of Sk Mastanvali of Reddigudem village in Guntur district, which got submerged when the Yedduvagu jumped its banks, flooding the entire region last Thursday. "If not for the breach in the railway bridge, our entire village would have been wiped out and I would not be here to recount the nightmare," he said. Though the damaged bridge and the washed-away railway track are expected to be restored in about a week or two, it will take years before Mastanvali and his fellow villagers will trust the Yedduvagu again.
Mastanvali and his friend Sk Janvali, who were at the railway bridge to lend a helping hand in the track restoration work on Sunday, said it looked doom when the tank overflowed.
"Though we climbed up to the roof of our homes with our families, we really had no hope. We were besieged by the flood. It was the breach of the railway bridge that saved us. After the bridge gave way, the flood receded in just one hour. That saved us," Mastanvali recalled.
No wonder the villagers are enthusiastic about helping to restore the bridge. The village is now limping back to normalcy with road connectivity restored Sunday morning and power back on by noon.
The village had been without power or road connectivity for three days. "People from Ganapavaram and other villages supplied food and water to us. It was they who came to our rescue, not the government," said Janvali, whose farm lies near the breached railway bridge.
With train wagons bringing in material to the site, railway employees are working day and night to restore the track, which was torn up at several places between Sattenapalle and Reddigudem. “The track
was washed away at 11 places over a 6 km stretch from the outskirts of Dhulipala to Reddigudem,” a higher official of South Central Railway said on the telephone from Hyderabad.
The flood gouged out an 800 m long, 8 m deep crater and swept away the railway track. Earth movers and dumpers are working nonstop to restore the track.
“We have never witnessed such devastation in four decades. It was first time that I realised, how destructive water can be. The farms between the railway track and the highway suffered maximum damage,” said P Badri, a farmer from Dhulipala village in Sattenapalle mandal.
Though flooded on Thursday, Sattenapalle bounced back to normalcy the next day, largely because its internal roads, most of them cement based, withstood the onslaught of rain. However, a low bridge at Medikonduru, some 17 km from Sattenapalle, was not that lucky and got eroded, forcing officials to use a new bridge under construction as a makeshift arrangement.