Chennai: While the IMD has forecast more rains in the next three days, environment experts attending the Paris climate change summit have said, the crisis is a ‘full blown consequence ‘ of global warming.
“We are now experiencing the full blown impacts of climate change. The extreme rainfalls that Chennai is experiencing is a direct outcome of our warming planet,” said Chandra Bhushan, Deputy Director General of Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).
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Torrential rains have pounded Chennai and its suburbs along with Puducherry, triggering a deluge that has completely disrupted normal life. Army and disaster management forces have been deployed in Chennai to undertake rescue on a war footing.
A man moves to safe place from flooded Kotturpuram during heavy rains in Chennai (Photo: PTI)
“The global average temperature has increased by less than 1 degrees. Think what will happen if temperature increases by 2 degree,” Mr Bhushan said. But not all of the destruction Chennai has witnessed can be blamed on Mother Nature increasing temperature by a degree. The city — along the highly volatile Bay of Bengal — has faced fierce storms and floods several times before. It happened in 1998, it happened in 2005 and now, 10 years later the photos emerging from the city are similar. In 1976, Adyar broke through its banks and caused some damage. In 2015, the costs tripled.
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Much of the city’s ill-planned infrastructure boom has been built upon ticking weather bombs. An entire airport has been constructed atop the Adyar river’s unpredictable flood plains, the Koyembedu bus terminus - servicing hundreds of inter-state buses each day sits on top of another flood-prone area, its mass transit system rests atop the Buckingham Canal and the Pallikaranai marshlands and a dozen special economic zones housing automobile and IT firms are basically rushed settlements disturbing drainage systems.
A temple is partially submerged in flood waters of an over-flowing Adyar River in Chennai (Photo: AP)
The IT corridor especially is guilty of rampant construction. Along the Rajiv Gandhi highway, there are no clear holes for rainwater to disappear and Chennai this season has had tonnes of it. These are basically wetlands prone to flooding and not fit for mass urbanisation.
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In fact, just in September activists pleaded with the government to stop the construction a new road along the Adyar River bund. The road was laid to welcome participants of the Global Investors Meet but activists had expressed fears that it will soon become a new shortcut to Nandambakkam.
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Rescuers try to evacuate a man stranded in the floods by an over-flowing Adyar River in Chennai (Photo: AP)
But badly planned roads has also troubled the movement of water. The crucial Chennai Bypass linking NH45 to NH4 chokes the east flowing drainage flooding Anna Nagar, Porur, Vanagaram, Maduravoyal, Mugappair and Ambattur areas.
The city of Chennai and its surroundings reportedly once had 650 water bodies. Today, the burdened city just has 27 of those and there’s just 855 km of stormwater drains for its 2,847 km of roads.
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