Deluge

Hi all

I got this forwarded email from a friend in Bangalore about the recent torrential downpour in Mumbai, India. It included the heaviest daily rains in the country’s history, and over one thousand people died in the state of Maharastra. I think the city is getting back to normal now, but now there seem to be heavy rains across North-Eastern China. Here in London we barely ever get extremes of weather and it’s fascinating to hear about how people have coped with the disruption and, in some cases, the loss of their homes. What’s the most extreme weather you’ve ever witnessed?

Tuesday, 26th July 2005

10:00am:
(Bombay) Mumbai was having a regular rainy season day. All of a sudden clouds gathered and downpour started and within the blink of an eye rains had taken over the whole city into its dark vision. Mumbai was having the heaviest downpour ever recorded. People thought it was normal rains of the rainy season and would stop in some time.

2:00pm:
Whole of the city was covered with the globe of darkness and seemed like it was 8:00pm at night. There was no end of the rains... which had started around 10 - 11 am. Visibility was so poor you couldn’t see further than the next building. The whole city was under the spell of rains and light fog. It was a chilly rainy atmosphere which made everyone freeze out of the terror of further flooding to come.

4:00pm:
Whole Mumbai city was at a standstill. Government had declared high alert. Local transportation from trains to buses were all halted. Mumbai city was experiencing the heaviest rain-fall but no one ever had thought that this rain will bring such havoc to the city.

8:00pm:
Mumbai, the city that never sleeps, was at a standstill. Local city transportation was totally out. Whole Mumbai's population was stranded and left out with nothing and nowhere to go. All roads, streets, by-lanes and even highways were submerged... flooded from 2.5ft to 6ft. There was no chance of moving a centimetre. All roads were jam packed with traffic.

Mumbai under water, city at a standstill... all office goers were left behind with no mode of transportation to take them home. They could not move out into the rains and take the challenge to walk down home in chest-level flooded roads and streets. The only option which they were left with was to remain calmly in their offices, the safest place on such a rainy, dark night.

Those who left early from their jobs to go home were stranded at stations and bus stops. They were helpless and had to sleep there for the night.

Mumbai was hit by the Century's heaviest rainfall, 94.4 centimetres in a single day, swamping the previously recorded highest rainfall of 83.82 centimetres at Cherrapunji in Meghalaya in 1910! Cherrapunji is officially the world's wettest place.

State Government declared two days (Wed & Thurs) officially off. All government offices, banks, schools, colleges, courts were all closed until Mumbai came out of this Natural Disaster.

Thursday, 28th July 2005.
The day after rains...

Workers at
Government offices, national banks, schools and colleges have a holiday. Only a handful of trains are running.

On the roads Western and Eastern Express Highways are still waterlogged. Some traffic is squeezing through, but barely. The Pune-Mumbai corridor was closed but controlled traffic flow has been allowed to resume.

At airports: Call your airline. Authorities hope to resume some operations, but water-logging and power at airport still a problem. Even if some flights arrive or land, don't expect normalcy.

ATMs: Most didn't work on Wednesday because of power failures and downed communication links. Bankers say they will try their best to make them run on Thursday.

Phone calls: Cell phones working but many dropped calls and errors. Landlines down in many western, eastern suburbs and Navi Mumbai because telephone exchanges have no power. Standby batteries are drained, gensets out of diesel.