Nellore: After struggling for three days, National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) officials with the help of state roads and buildings engineers restored traffic on the National Highway at about 8 pm on Thursday.
A large number of police personnel was deployed to ensure that vehicles moved slowly on the makeshift road, which was a breached at three places between Manubolu and Gudur following heavy rains on Monday night.
While one half of the National Highway was breached at two places, a 30-metre stretch on both sides wad washed near Manubolu. Hundreds of goods vehicles were stranded from Ongole to Manubolu and Chennai to Gudur because of the damage to the road.
Transport minister Sidda Raghava Rao arranged for granite boulders from Chimakurthy and Chittoor to fill the breached road and supervised the operation along with NHAI general manager A.B. Rao.
Meanwhile, APSRTC has suspended bus services to Chennai, Tirupati and Bengaluru for the third consecutive day which has led to a revenue loss of Rs 60 lakh for the RTC.
NHAI fails to assess flood data
The failure of the National Highways authority of India (NHAI) to assess the impact of rainfall, flood and data pertaining to discharge of the previous decades in the Nellore region, especially in Gudur division, is one of the major reasons for the breaches to the National Highway in three places between Manubolu and Gudur.
The breached area is located between Pambaleru and Kandaleru rivulets and shrinking of water outlets owing to encroachments led to swirling flood waters merging and breaching the highway.
A small bridge at the spot collapsed. Transport minister Sidda Raghava Rao admitted this while speaking to DC at the breach site. He said that NHAI should have studied the previous flood data before designing the road and advised them to construct a bridge at the breached points to prevent such incidents in future.
Meanwhile, Sarveypalli MLA Kakani Govardhan Reddy advised NHAI to take the help of the Army to install a steel structure temporarily while expressing doubts over the robustness of the temporary road.
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