Anantapur: The Papagni bridge collapsed in the wee hours on Sunday following heavy rains in the region cutting off the vital road connectivity between Kadapa and Anantapur.
No loss of lives was reported as revenue and police officials have been restricting traffic on the bridge for the last two days which was being sued by tens of hundreds of vehiclists every day.
According to officials, a temporary road will be laid after the floods receded as it will take more than a year to construct a new bridge across the Papagni river.
The Kadapa administration, meanwhile, has been unable to list the total number of deceased washed away in floods. Though 29 persons were listed out of the ‘dead or missing’, many bodies were not traced due to the heavy flow in the Cheyyeru reservoir. Sources said about 100 persons were missing in several parts of the Kadapa district, mostly due to the floods of the Annamayya project, and the death toll rise.
The revenue officials were preparing the deceased list through the staff of Grama Sachivalayams and tahsildar offices under the Annamayya project’s downstream areas. So far, 14 bodies were recovered while the rescue teams continued the search.
Manda Sreenivasulu, 48, former gram panchayat sarpanch of C. Kamdulavaripalle and his son Syamkumar, 24, who were travelling in an RTC bus towards Rajampet were among the passengers of the RTC bus that got stuck in the floods in Cheyyeru. Syam Kumar was set to take a flight to Kuwait. Sreenivasulu’s body was traced after a day while Syamkumar’s body was found a kilometre away after two days. Syamkumar had two children and his wife Lakshmi Devi pregnant.
In another tragic incident, two siblings have washed away while their father managed to save himself in the Mandavya river in Chinnamanem mandal of Kadapa district on Sunday. Ameer Bhasha of Chakibanda village along with his two children – daughter Sadia, 19, and son Jasin, 12, were on a motorcycle heading for Kalakada in Chittoor district to attend a function. Ameer Bhasha parked the motorcycle close to the river due to the heavy flow on the road closer to the riverbed and then tried to cross the road by walk. He couldn’t notice the heavy flow and the three washed away in the floods. Ameer rescued himself while his two children were washed away.
Circle inspector Lingappa entered the waters and tried to rescue the victims, noticed the body of Jasin and brought it on his shoulders to the road at Goralveedu.
In another incident, rescue teams saved Chandrika and her daughter Tanusree stuck beneath the debris of a building in Kadapa town by cutting the window.
Sanitation measures and temporary restoration of roads were taken up by the civic staff in the villages and urban parts to avoid the spread of communicable diseases.
The urban parts of Rajampet, Kadapa, along with flood-hit villages had no water supply because of massive damage to drinking water schemes and electricity lines. The Gandikota project constantly showed heavy inflows of more than 92,000 cusecs from the Mylavaram dam and 1.55 lakh cusecs of outflows towards the Pennar river. The Gandikota reservoir has about 24 tmc- ft of water.
SCR acted on a war foot to restore the badly damaged railway track between NAndalur-Hastavaram railway stations. Two tracks were badly hit for more than a km and the authorities set a target to restore the tracks in four days.
