Due to torrential rains that have claimed at least 14 lives, Chennai airport has suspended all aircraft arriving between 1.15 and 6 p.m. Departures will proceed as planned. “The decision was made with the safety of travellers in mind,” the airport stated. Eight Tamil Nadu districts, as well as Puducherry, are expected to get extremely heavy rains, with gusts gusting to more than 45 kilometres per hour. The districts of Tiruvallur, Ranipet, Vellore, Tirupattur, Tiruvannamalai, Kallakurichi, and Salem, as well as Chennai, have issued weather alerts.
A depression is approaching towards the state’s northern shore from the southwest Bay of Bengal. It was 130 kilometres east-southeast of Chennai and 150 kilometres east-northeast of Puducherry around 8.30 a.m. It is predicted to move west-northwest this evening and cross.For the fourth day in a row, schools and colleges in Chennai and other districts have been shuttered, while several areas of the capital city have been flooded for the fifth day in a row. People have been instructed to stay at home as much as possible, and to leave only in an emergency, according to the administration.
Heavy rain hammered numerous Tamil Nadu districts yesterday and this morning, especially the state’s northern districts, which include Chennai and the surrounding Chengalpattu, Tiruvallur, Kancheepuram, and Villupuram. A top official told news agency ANI this morning that at least 14 people have died. Residents in locations such as Periyar Nagar (a low-lying region in Chief Minister MK Stalin’s Kolathur seat) showed NDTV how flooding had wrecked their homes, and claimed they had given up hope that the government would remedy the problem, which is a yearly occurrence in the flood-prone city.
“So far the governments haven’t addressed our concerns. We hope at least the new government (Chief Minister Stalin’s DMK-Congress alliance swept to power in the April-May election) will do something for us. We are tax-paying citizens,” Godwin Ebenezer, a resident of Periyar Nagar, told NDTV. Mr Stalin, meanwhile, blamed the earlier AIADMK regime for doing a “shoddy job” handling the ₹ 5,000 crore project to fix the city’s storm water drains. “We have done up to 60 per cent of the work in six months. After the rainy season, we will set the rest of Chennai right,” he said, after the madras High Court asked the city’s civic body: “What have you been doing since 2015?”
Apart from air travel, storms have wreaked havoc on automobile and rail traffic in Chennai, with 13 subways inundated and waterlogging in numerous areas. The majority of services between Chennai Central and Tiruvallur have been halted due to water on the rails at Avadi and Ambattur, according to Southern Railway. Northern lines to Gummidipoondi are also experiencing delays.
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