Mumbai's rain woes continue

Mumbai's rain woes continued for another day as the city recieved heavy showers overnight which left some parts of the city water-logged.

As per the meteorological department, Colaba recorded 63.2 mm and Santacruz got 83.3 mm of rainfall since Wednesday. Incidents of water-logging were reported from several parts of the island city and suburbs like Vile Parle, Andheri Subway, Hindmata and others, civic officials said. Trains on both the Western and Central lines were running late by 10 minutes, railway officials said. Flight operations were normal, airport officials said.

In a pre-monsoon survey, Mumbai's civic body has claimed that post the floods witnessed in July 2005, it has succeeded in containing landslides and flooding at the usual spots, while incidents of houses collapsing and trees falling have witnessed a slight increase.

While there were 371 chronic flooding spots in 2005, it fell to 89 in 2009. The landslide-prone spots have also come down from 22 in 2005 to 15 in 2009, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai has said.

On July 26, 2005, an unprecedented 944 mm of rainfall, coinciding with a tide of 4.48 metres, marooned the metropolis and left over 400 dead. This year the civic body has identified 249 spots prone to water-logging, of which 55 are chronic. These include Milan subway, Andheri subway, Kalachowkie, Kurla and Dadar.

"We have done a lot of work to avoid a flood-like situation and also commissioned two pumping stations at Irla (Vile Parle) and Haji Ali. Because of these stations, areas such as JVPD Scheme, Versova, Grant Road and Nana Chowk will get relief from water-logging," a civic official said. "We had done work on a culvert near Milan subway and created a way out for rainwater. This year it will not get flooded," the official claimed.

Meanwhile, a two-year-old girl died and eight others were injured after a wall collapsed on a house following heavy rains at suburban Kurla in the wee hours of Thursday. The incident occurred at 3.30 am at Qureshi Nagar when a 15 feet wall collapsed on one of the houses in Yosuf Pathan Chawl, civic officials said. The girl, Jeeshan Abeed Hussain, was rushed to a hospital where she was declared dead. The injured, two men and six women, are recuperating at the Sion hospital, the officials said.

A wall had collapsed at the airport on Wednesday. "A portion of the wall around the international airport collapsed at 7 am on Wednesday. As the Mithi river runs close by, we have erected temporary fencing and will undertake reconstruction work soon," airport officials said.