As many as 3,000 cellars were inundated with rainwater after the second wave of rain and floods on Saturday.
The GHMC after last week’s devastation had identified 3,000 cellars as having been submerged. The civic body, along with public and private participation, cleared 2,877 of them, leaving 123 to be cleared.
However, Saturday’s rain, accompanied by the breaching of lakes, inundated more cellars. Now, over 3,000 cellars need dewatering. Besides, over 75 areas in the city have been living without electricity and their transformers are submerged or otherwise affected by water.
According to highly placed sources, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao convened a meeting and asked the corporation to evaluate the number of cellars which were submerged on Wednesday. He instructed the staff to deploy men and machinery immediately and restore normalcy.
Following his instructions, the civic authorities deployed additional staff and hired over 100 JCBs to dewater the submerged areas. However, Saturday's spell has brought the GHMC's job to the scratch. Dewatering is underway in 75 areas, including LB Nagar, Karwan, Malkajgiri, Secunderabad and most parts of the Old City.
“This would be a Herculean task and the staff is under tremendous pressure to redo the job with another cyclone fast approaching”, said a senior GHMC official.
