Downpour drowns city

Downpour drowns city
Roads Inundated, Trees Uprooted, Traffic Disrupted
TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Bangalore: Welcome rain in the last two days turned into a downpour on Thursday evening. The 46.2 mm rain brought with it untold misery: many areas in the city were flooded resulting in traffic pile-ups. Overflowing drains and uprooting of trees completed the grim picture.
Cambridge Layout, for instance, had commuters struggling on the roads flooded with drain water. Dr Ajith, a resident, said the area was prone to flooding.
Areas on the HAL Airport Road too were flooded. M Chandra Reddy, president of the HAL 2nd stage residents’ welfare association, said: “The rain was bad enough and overflowing drainwater added to the problems. In many houses, the water level was above 3 feet and people had a long evening scooping the water out of their homes,’’ he said.
Ejipura had medium rainfall, according to the residents, but flooding was reported in areas including Ashwini Layout and Indira Gandhi slum. Traffic came to a standstill on the intermediate ring road and Koramangala 4th and 6th blocks due to water-logging, Anil Kumar, a resident of Ejipura, said. Yellamma temple in Ejipura was also flooded.
Traffic logjams were reported from many areas in the city’s central business district as well as locations in the southern parts, including Bannerghatta Road and Hosur Road. On K G Road and Ambedkar Veedhi, traffic inched through for close to an hour. In Basavanagudi, overflowing stormwater drains led to traffic snarls on some of the roads. Traffic was held up near the Cauvery junction underpass, after it was flooded.
Incidents of uprooting of trees were reported near the Domlur bus stop, behind the BTS garage in Indiranagar and Malleswaram.
More rain
The weatherman has predicted similar spells of rain in Bangalore, over the next couple of days. A Muthuchami, director of the Met department, put this year’s monsoon in Bangalore as “more than normal’’.
The department has noticed a gradual fall in the amount of rainfall in coastal Karnataka, while the trends show a rise in rainfall in the interior parts of the state.