Vijayawada: Incessant rainfall left a trail of devastation across Andhra Pradesh on Sunday, with rivers Krishna and Godavari flooded, while streams were overflowing and inundating low-lying areas and agriculture crops.
Breaches were caused to roads, disrupting the vehicular traffic in several regions across districts, reports said.
According to a preliminary assessment, agriculture crops in about 1.11 lakh hectares have been damaged, including the horticulture crops in about 12,431 hectares.
Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu took stock of the evolving situations from the officials. He inspected some of the flood-hit areas and asked officials to also assess the extent of damage to crops and other assets apart from organising immediate relief to the affected people.
Home Minister Vangalaudi Anitha, agriculture minister K Atchannaidu and others reviewed the impact of the rains and floods with officials of their departments.
Vehicular traffic between Vijayawada and Hyderabad has been severely affected following the overflowing of Munneru rivulet on national highway at Ithavaram village of Nandigama mandal in NTR district.
Police stopped the plying of vehicles at Chillakallu toll gate towards Hyderabad and at Keesara toll plaza towards Vijayawada for several hours due to flooding.
The APSRTC was scheduled to operate 10,045 services from all 26 districts in the state on Sunday. Of these, 9,108 services were operated, registering the operation percentage at 91.
Train services were majorly disrupted in the state. In view of several trains getting terminated, the RTC arranged 38 buses at Rayanapeta to transport stranded passengers of the Tamil Nadu Express to their respective destinations. Some 22 buses were arranged at Kondapalli for stranded passengers of Godavari Express, 26 buses at Kondapalli for passengers of Charminar Express and 25 buses at Nuziveedu for passengers of a passenger train.
The energy department suffered a loss of Rs.101.838 lakh, due to the rains, in which APEPDCL’s share was Rs.16.85 lakh while APCPDCL suffered a loss of Rs.84.998 lakh mainly in Vijayawada, Krishna and Guntur areas under the influence of heavy rainfall in the last two days, as per official estimates.
Energy special chief secretary K Vijayanand visited the Narla Tatarao Thermal Power Station at Ibrahimpatnam and other facilities and reviewed the power supply and restoration scenarios.
AP Genco managing director KVN Chakradhar informed the special CS that floodwaters were entering the plant premises resulting in inundation of coal storage point, wagon tippers and conveyor belt.
To avoid any technical issues and for safety of equipment, units 1 to 6 were tripped; each one having a 210mw capacity. He was confident of restoration of power generation at these units soon.
In a tragic situation, a man who climbed up a building under construction, to escape the floods, was stuck there for some hours. His cries for help failed to get any response. He finally came down from the building and was found missing in the floods.
State disaster management authority managing director Ronanki Kurmanath said, “We are assessing the extent of damage or loss to crops and assets.”
