Bad condition of the city
Traffic crawls on the North Coimbatore Flyover in the city on Wednesday after the subway got flooded. (Right) Water stagnating in the underpass near Kikani School.The bad condition of the city’s storm water drains was once again exposed by the rain that began on Tuesday morning and continued the following day.Vehicles struggled to pass through stagnating water in an underpass, avoided two subways that were getting flooded by the hour and, as a consequence, crawled on congested flyovers.A burst in the underground drainage line at the Thadagam Road-Lawley Road junction left sewage stagnating in that area. Slushy road margins pushed passengers waiting for buses on to the roads and people had to walk through pools of water on the roadside or risk accidents. “Fortunately, there is no torrential rain,” Mayor R. Venkatachalam said on Wednesday while travelling across the city to assess rain damage. “Storm water drains are a problem. We will make a study during this rain and take up repairs in the coming financial year,” he said.But, the Corporation was in a state of preparedness to tackle any problem that might be caused by the rain forecast for the next couple of days.“Work began in the morning to remove the blocks in the drainage on Thadagam Road. Officials have been instructed to have a quick response machinery to solve any rain-related problems,” the Mayor said.Sullage lorries and other equipment were kept ready to pump out stagnating sewage or rain water.
Mr. Venkatachalam said the civic body had carried out some flood prevention works before the monsoon. These included the removal of silt from storm water drains and the construction of retain wall along canals such as the Sanganur Canal.This had averted flooding in the areas in Ramanathapuram and Saibaba Colony where water stagnated for weeks after the heavy rain in November 2006.The flooding of the Puliyakulam Road (on which Carmel Garden School is located) had been tackled with the recent road re-laying and storm water drain works, the Mayor claimed. But, the Mayor admitted that most of the rain-related problems in the city were yet to be solved.
Barring the Sivananda Colony underpass, the others continued to suffer water stagnation.While the Mayor said the Corporation made arrangements to pump water out of the Avanashi Road subway, the situation at the Somasundara Mill underpass seemed hopeless. The underpass near Kikani school had close to two ft. water.The Mayor was relieved that there was no problem at Sivananda Colony because the drains had been reconstructed. Water stagnation in the Avanashi Road subway pushed all vehicles on to the flyover. The situation was the same at North Coimbatore Flyover.
Mr. Venkatachalam said that though these were problems that occurred during every rain, the Corporation would focus on the areas affected by the recent downpour to provide a permanent solution.The Mayor said the civic body had solved 25 per cent of the problems, but the rest continued to torment the city. “With the recently regularised layouts also needing storm water drains, the target to be achieved is back to 100 per cent,” he said.
