Rains bring mixed bag of pain, gain

Heavy rains lashed the city, especially the suburbs, on Tuesday, with an electrician losing his life after being electrocuted while attending to a complaint at Wadala. However, the showers also brought good news in their wake, as Upper Vaitarana and Bhatsa — the two remaining lakes that are yet to overflow — are now on the brink of crossing the full supply mark.

According to information received from BEST, Santosh Sakharam Lad (47), the electrician, died around 6 pm while attending to a complaint regarding the disruption of power supply in a slum area at Gajanan Kasturba Zopadi Sangh, Wadala. Sources said that he was fatally electrocuted while carrying out the repair work.

The suburbs received heavy rainfall in the afternoon. From 8.30 am to 5.30 pm, the Colaba and Santacruz weather stations recorded 15.4 mm and 86 mm of rainfall in the city and suburban areas respectively. The weather department has predicted intermittent rains in the island city and suburban areas over the next 24 hours.

The heavy rainfall also caused two incidents of walls collapsing in the city. At Vikhroli Parksite, two people, Manojkumar Yadav (32) and Sachin Odke (30), after a portion of Giri Chawl collapsed on the neighbouring Mane Chawl. The roofs of three houses were also damaged as a result of this incident.

Traffic movement, moreover, was slow due to the re-emergence of potholes on roads that were repaired for the Ganesh festival. Lal Bahadur Shastri Road in Ghatkopar has once again been riddled with several potholes due to the heavy rainfall. According to figures that the BMC has furnished, 4,450 complaints regarding potholes have been received thus far.

“Roads have again been damaged in the city, which shows that the repair works carried out for the Ganesh festival were substandard in nature,” said civic activist Nikhil Desai.

On the plus side, though, good rainfall in catchment areas have ensured that the Upper Vaitarana and Bhatsa lakes have almost reached their overflow mark. These are the only two remaining lakes of the seven lakes supplying water to Mumbai that are yet to cross the full supply mark.

According to civic officials, Upper Vaitarana, whose full supply mark is 603.51 m, has reached the level of 603.48 m. Bhatsa, with an overflow mark of 142.07 m, has reached the level of 141.76 m.

Traffic thrown out of gear as office-goers bear the brunt Heavy rains across the city affected rail and road traffic on Tuesday. Office-goers — be it motorists or local train commuters — had an exceptionally harrowing time since most means of transport were affected, which inconvenienced them while they were on their way to work and, later, returning back home.

In the case of Central Railway (CR), the Harbour Line saw a delay of almost 15-20 minutes during the peak hours when the engine of a train heading from Panvel to Thane failed between Nerul and Juinagar, stalling it for 35 minutes. This had a cascading effect on the Panvel-CST line as well.

On the mainline, ongoing work at Diva resulted in a speed restriction of 20 kmph, which affected the punctuality of services, with some trains on the slow line delayed for almost 30 minutes. CR saw around 50 trains delayed and 10 trains cancelled due to these reasons.

Western Railway (WR) trains, though, were relatively punctual, with only a 10-minute delay that took place due to limited visibility. “There was no major issue as such. But, yes, we rain one train a bit slow as visibility had decreased due to the rains,” said a motorman on the condition of anonymity.

Road traffic, too, took a hit since the rain was at its heaviest during the morning and evening rush hours. Areas such as Lower Parel to Worli and further down to Bandra, Gulmohar Road from Club Millennium towards Mithibai College, Dharavi and Andheri were badly affected.

Important routes, such as the one from the airport towards South Mumbai, and the areas outside Metro stations, like the ones at JB Nagar and Azad Nagar, were also affected due to heavy water-logging.

Plus, prominent flyovers and arterial roads such as the Western Express Highway, Santacruz-Chembur Link Road, the Kalanagar flyover and Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road witnessed bumper-to-bumper traffic in the evening.