6 killed, 18 missing after Tiware dam breaches in Ratnagiri

Mangalore Today News Network

Maharastra, Jul 03, 2019 : Rescuers found the third body on Wednesday even as 21 others are still missing after a dam failed in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri on Tuesday night amid heavy rains in the area, officials said, Hindustan Times reported.

 

The Tiware dam, built two decades ago, breached at around 10pm on Tuesday in Chiplun taluka of Ratnagiri district washing away seven to eight houses, Ratnagiri district’s guardian minister Ravindra Waikar said.

The missing people belong to four families in the area, officials said.

As many as seven villages were also flooded after the dam breached. There are 1,000 residents in these villages and the contact to them has been partially cut off after the flooding.

“After complaints from the villages, I had inspected the dam a few days ago and noticed there are cracks. The administration did not act,” Chiplun MLA Sadanand Chavan said.

Officials of the civil administration and police, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams and volunteers are involved in search and rescue operations.

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Heavy rains have killed more than 30 people in the state and disrupted rail and air traffic in Mumbai, prompting officials to shut schools and offices on Tuesday.

Twenty-three people were killed and 79 injured as heavy rain brought down a retaining wall of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) reservoir on hutments on a hillock in Kurar village in Mumbai’s Malad around 1am on Tuesday.

Three people died when a school wall collapsed in Thane district’s Kalyan town, 42km north of Mumbai. In Pune, six people were killed in another wall collapse on Tuesday, after a similar incident on Saturday killed 15.

Mumbai recorded its second-highest July rain in a single day on Tuesday in 44 years after the July 26, 2005, floods that killed more than 1,000 people. It was the highest with 944mm in 24-hours after the torrential downpour, especially in the suburbs, between Monday night and Tuesday morning. However, the quantum of rain was the highest 24-hour July rain in 10 years.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) failed to issue the correct forecast on Sunday or Monday morning for extremely heavy downpour from late Monday night to early Tuesday that inundated India’s financial capital. The city recorded 375.2mm (exceptionally heavy category) rain in 24 hours, with 241mm recorded over a nine-hour period.

The weather department has forecast that the city and its suburbs are likely to receive intermittent rain with heavy to very heavy showers at a few places in the next 24 hours.

Traffic across the city was hit after several roads were waterlogged. Commuters faced traffic jam on the Western Expressway and the BKC to Mankhurd flyover also saw a traffic jam due to water logging on Eastern Expressway.

Several local and long-distance trains were cancelled amid reports of tracks being flooded stranding passengers on various stations. Local train services were severely hit and Central Railway’s (CR) main and Harbour lines came to a near standstill for over 16 hours, owing to incessant rain and flooded tracks.

Local trains on both lines, which were disrupted around 11pm on Monday, resumed by 4.30pm on Tuesday. Train services on Western Railway (WR) were operational with a delay of 15 minutes till Vasai Road and 45 minutes beyond that, as the tracks were waterlogged.

As many as 201 flights were cancelled and 370 delayed after a SpiceJet plane overshot the runway while landing at the Mumbai airport amid heavy rainfall late on Monday night.

The plane remained stuck on the runway and could not be cleared until late Tuesday as the only Disabled Aircraft Retrieval Kit (DARK) in India was in Mangaluru to clear an Air India Express plane, which overshot the runway there on Sunday.