If it rains heavily, just stay at home, says GHMC chief

Hyderabad: The only way to avoid flooded roads in the city is not to venture out.  The city has 9,099 km of roads but only 1,556 km have stormwater drains alongside. Thus most roads turn into drains, said GHMC commissioner B. Janardhan Reddy on Thursday.

Other than the machines to clean four lakh manholes, the GHMC has no motors to pump water from flooded roads unlike in foreign countries. The only solution is to wait for the water to find its own way, which takes 2-3 hours. People have to put up with it, he added.

Dr Janardhan Reddy said, “Every road must have stormwater drains. The 6,000 km drainage system is not sufficient. The storm-water drains were built to service a population of 30-50 lakh and the city now has 1.2 crore people. An increasing number of houses do not lay separate sewer lines and connect to existing ones, thus increasing the burden.”

He added people add to the mess by dumping  waste in the nalas, or encroaching on them. “The best solution during heavy rains is not to venture out unless there’s an emergency,” he said.

Saroornagar gets 8 cm rain in 12 hours
It rained at several places in Telangana including Hyderabad on Thursday. However the intensity of the rain in the city was nothing like Wednesday. The maximum temperature recorded in the city was 31.8º.C The IMD has forecast one or two spells of rain for GHMC area for Friday.

From 8.30 pm on August 31 to 8.30 am on September 1, Saroonagar recorded the highest rain at 8 cm, followed by Golconda 7 cm, and Hayathnagar and Hakimpet 6 cm. In August, Hyderabad received 11 cm of rain against the normal of 19 cm, a deficit of 41 per cent for the month.

The Met department has warned of heavy rains at isolated places in the districts of Adilabad, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Warangal and Khammam  of Telangana.
For Friday, the Met department has forecast generally cloudy skies with one or two spells of rain or thundershowers in Hyderabad.