Water woes in Odisha after Puri, Bhubaneswar get record rainfall

Two people were learnt to have died in an incident of wall collapse in Kendrapara district but there was no official confirmation.

Odisha capital Bhubaneswar received 195mm rainfall in 24 hours, breaking a 63-year-old record, as rain clobbered large parts of the state and prompted authorities to issue a flood alert, officials said on Monday.

Two people were learnt to have died in an incident of wall collapse in Kendrapara district but there was no official confirmation.

The pilgrim town of Puri also broke the 87-year-old record with 341mm of rain in a single day. The coastal town had received 210.8mm rain on September 2, 1934, officials said.

Vehicles were seen floating on water near Iskcon temple in Nayapalli area of the state capital where gushing water swamped homes and markets. An ambulance which had got stuck on way to a hospital was seen being pushed to a dry patch of road by locals. Some houses in Dumuduma locality built on farmland have developed cracks, locals said.

Identical scenes were witnessed in Puri, Cuttack and Paradip. Officials said municipal authorities have deployed over 100 pumps in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack to drain out the water.

Heavy rain, triggered by a deep depression, has been battering Odisha over the last few days.

Waterlogging was reported from several areas of Bhubaneswar as the state capital recorded 195mm rainfall in 24 hours till 8.30am on Monday.

On September 9, 1958, the city had received 163mm rainfall, they said.

The depression over the northwest Bay of Bengal intensified into a deep depression and crossed the coast near Chandbali in Bhadrak district on Monday morning, following which the weather office issued alerts for 13 districts.

The system is very likely to move west-northwestwards across north Odisha, north Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh over the next 48 hours, the weather office said.

It issued a ‘Red’ warning, predicting heavy to very heavy and extremely heavy rains in Sambalpur, Deogarh, Angul, Sonepur and Bargarh.

• India