KMC all set to tackle flood

KOLKATA: Waking up to the need to save the city from a fresh deluge, city mayor Sovan Chatterjee on Saturday asked officials of all civic departments to brace themselves for any possibility of an imminent flood. Fearing that the city could witness more rainfall over the next 24 hours, Chatterjee cancelled leaves of all KMC engineers linked to drainage, conservancy, water supply and other essential departments. According to KMC drainage department, the Alipore Met office warning of more rains on Sunday had led to the step. "The weather office haspredicted that 120mm rains might occur in next 24 hours," PK Dua, chief engineer(civil), said on Saturday. The Met department, however, said theweather would improve and Sunday would be no worse than Saturday. Thoughthundershowers are not ruled out, Alipore Met office director GC Debnath negateda repeat of Friday's nightmare.The KMC though, chose to be had adifferent take and decided to be on the alert rather than face flak for notdoing enough. On Saturday afternoon, Chatterjee held a video conference withexecutive engineers of all 15 borough offices and asked them to get prepared forheavy rain. "To be frank, we were caught off guard as the heavyrains that lashed the city on June 17 is unprecedented. We have learnt a lessonfrom Friday's deluge. Now we are well equipped to combat a similar situation forthe rest of monsoon," he said. The mayor also instructed KMCdrainage department officials to install heavy duty pump at Palmerbazar drainagepumping station so that storm water is drained out quickly. Three pumps in thispumping station failed to function after a power failure at a critical junctureon Friday when there was a downpour. This apart, the city mayorspoke to former mayor Subrata Mukherjee, the state public health engineeringdepartment minister requesting him to handover Duttabagan drainage pumpingstation, which is nearing completion, to the KMC so that large areas of northKolkata are spared from waterlogging in future. Though rain waterreceded from a number of major thoroughfares across the city such as AmherstStreet, College Street, Muktarambabu Street in the north, Camac Street, JL NehruRoad, Park Street in the central and Bhowanipore, Gariahat, Ballygunge in thesouth, the civic body officials struggled to drain out rain water from AliporeBodyguard lines, Kidderpore, Ekbalpore, New Alipore, Behala, Dhakuria, Dum Dumamong other areas. The mayor said all major drainage pumpingstations including Dhapa Lock, Ballygunge, Palmerbazar, Ballygunge and JodhpurPark would be modernized to give people relief from waterlogging during monsoon.Chatterjee however, felt that despite heavy rains, the KMC drainage systemworked effectively and that helped rain water recede from several areas. Whichare prone to waterlogging prone. In Howrah, the situation remainedcritical with large parts of the city continuing to remain inundated. Withfilthy water from open drains flowing into drinking water sources, doctorsfeared an endemic like situation if water was not drained out soon.The worst affected were Ramkrishnapur Lane and Cahruchandra SinghaLane in Shibpur, Panchanantala Road in Howrah town and Dharmotallah Road inSalkia. Howrah Municipal Corporation mayor Mamata Jaiswal admitted thatinundation was a problem and said it would take a couple of more days for theaccumulated water to drain out.