Hyderabad: Twenty trees have been uprooted so far in the rains that wreaked havoc in the city this month, snapping power lines and causing long outage of power supply at Yapral, Alwal, AOC, Banjara Hills and Jubilee Hills.
The trees were uprooted because the continuous rains for two days on October 4 and 5 led to loosening of the soil. In the open areas of AOC, trees fell on the roads and traffic was disrupted for a few hours. Army personnel cleared the roads and the trees and their branches were placed on the side of the roads.
The major work of the disaster relief team of the GHMC in the September and October rains has been to remove huge trees which have fallen on the roads, electric poles and also cars. Trees have fallen in city areas on cars as they were parked below the tree.
Mr V.J. Phani who had a Swift car parked outside the compound wall in Banjara Hills in the shade of a tree, saw it badly da-maged as a big branch fell on it. He said, “It is very unfortunate that huge trees are giving way. Whi-le insurance will help us to recover the damages to the car, raising such huge trees takes a lot of time.”
The roots of a huge tree gave way and brought down not only the tree, but also the compound wall. Horticulturist Jyoti Srinivas explained, “The downpour was continuous and incessant, not allowing the water to flow away. In many low lying areas, the tree barks and roots were submerged in water for more than 24 hours and this is one of the reasons for them to give away. Most trees that fell in September and October were healthy ones.”
Pruning of trees is mostly done in May as it is to protect the tree from winds. But with these post-monsoon rains there is now a need to relook into how the base of the trees must be protected so that the chances of uprooting are minimised.
