Flooded with complaints, doing our best, says Vikram Kapur

Adding that every monsoon was a “learning experience” for the local body, the Commissioner said this year’s rainfall would help them prepare a better design of rain management model.

Kapur refuted allegations from media persons that the corporation was not being prepared for the monsoon. “It’s wrong to say that corporation was unprepared. We started preparing for the rain some six months back. But any planning is based on assumption. No one expected this much of rain to hit the city, not even the Met department. But, the fact is that relief measures cannot be undertaken on a war footing, as we are doing now, without planning,” he said.

On residents’ complaints that corporation has failed in reaching out to all areas where stagnation was reported, Kapur said the local body was doing the best it can. “We are being barraged by thousands of calls daily and with unprecedented rainfall, there has been an understandable bit of delay. Every house owner complains that they are affected but it is not physically possible for us to reach out to each and everyone. However, some 23,000 of our workers are at it tirelessly trying to restore normalcy and help people,” Kapur said.

According to WRD officials, water released from the reservoir was increased from 2,000 cusecs to 18,966 cusecs in the early hours of Tuesday and later to 23,398 cusecs in the evening as the reservoir continued to receive heavy inflow. The level in Poondi reservoir, which is one of the four reservoirs supplying drinking water to the city, nearly reached its full capacity of 140 ft, the official said.

The river flows through Melsembedu, Valliyur, Tamaraipakkam, Jagannathapuram, Ediyanchavadi, Manali New Town and Vallur before joining the sea at Ennore. With the heavy discharge, the river banks has breached in a few places leading to floods in Ediyanchavadi and Manali New Town.

“Water entered hundreds of houses in Ezhil Nagar in Manali New Town on Tuesday morning. Power supply has been suspended as water level increased. We are suffering without essential supplies and no help is coming from the government,” complained S. Hussain, a local resident.

As against its full capacity of 3231 million cubic feet, the level in Poondi has touched 2,776 mcft and continues to receive 22,810 cusecs. Meanwhile, the inflow into Chembarambakkam reservoir came down to 2362 cusecs on Tuesday evening from 12,000 cusecs on Monday night. Red Hills and Sholavaram reservoirs have storage of only 2062 mcft and 698 mcft.

Several hashtags relating to flood situation in Chennai are currently the most trending topics in Twitter with thousands of Chennaiites using the popular social media network to post updates and seek help.

People are providing information and warning others on waterlogged areas, sharing helpline numbers, crisis relief efforts and safety tips using #ChennaiRains, #ChennaiFloods and #ChennaiDrowning hashtags.

On Twitter, users can find information on flooded areas, forecast updates, train schedules, taxi services, helpline numbers and crisis relief programmes through Tweets. Additionally, photos and videos are shared on the platform, providing citizens with a real-time view of what is going on in Chennai, which is paralysed after rain in the last few days.

Twitter user Sunitha Sarathy, who was flying from Singapore from Chennai on Monday, posted an aerial snapshot of marooned Chennai, In another tweet, she said no taxi services at airport, lot of passengers suffering, especially women travelling alone. Her tweets had a good response.

Superstar Rajinikanth’s daughter Aishwaryaa R. Dhanush also expressed her concern and posted a comment using #chennaifloods and #chennairains saying, “Hoping that life in Chennai will get back to normalcy soon. Stay safe”.

Meanwhile, a group of NGOs along with volunteers who launched a Facebook page titled ‘Chennai relief work 2015’, is being flooded with requests for help and getting relief materials also. Selva Ganapathy, a volunteer and technical superintendent in department of chemistry, IIT-Madras, said so far their group has helped 10,000 to 12,000 persons providing food and distributing other relief material like blankets, mats etc.

On Tuesday alone, they served food for 5,000 people stranded in areas like Medavakkam, Saidapet, Kolathur, Velachery, Pallikaranai and Perungudi.