‘Humne Ghar ka darwaza tak band nahi kiya, bass jaan bachakar bhaage’ — Kranti Nagar residents return home to destroyed furniture, ration
Spurred by two consecutive days of over 200 mm rainfall, water level in Mithi River rose to 3.9 metres on Tuesday morning, nearly breaching the danger mark of 4.2 metres.
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In a preemptive move, the BMC and the Mumbai Police launched an evacuation operation and shifted over 350 residents of the slum to the nearby Magandas Nathuram School. (Express photo)For residents of slums along the low-lying lands of Mithi River, the early hours of Tuesday was marked with trepidation and tension. As torrential rain lashed Mumbai in the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday, Ashish Gautam (22), a resident of Kurla’s Kranti Nagar, kept checking through the night whether the water had breached their homes.
“By 7 am, the water started entering our house and in a couple of hours, it reached waist-level. Soon, the BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) started making announcements and we escaped our homes. While this area is prone to flooding, water generally recedes within a couple of hours. However, this time the situation was very bad,” said Gautam.
Spurred by two consecutive days of over 200 mm rainfall, water level in Mithi River rose to 3.9 metres on Tuesday morning, nearly breaching the danger mark of 4.2 metres. As the river swelled and a major drain along Kranti Nagar overflowed, the streets of the low-lying area near airport lands in Kurla were left inundated Tuesday morning. In a preemptive move, the BMC and the Mumbai Police launched an evacuation operation and shifted over 350 residents of the slum to the nearby Magandas Nathuram School.
Nanda Parmar, whose family of 12 members escaped in the nick of time, said it was by 8 am Tuesday that the water entered their home. “Humne ghar ka darwaza takk band nahi kiya, bass jaan bachakar bhaage (We did not even shut the doors of our houses. We just ran for our lives).”
“My granddaughter is only two-and-a-half years old. For us, nothing mattered then except our safety. First, we ran to the market and later, we went to the BMC school,” she added.
While the river level receded to 3.6 metres by Tuesday afternoon, the BMC and NDRF teams remained on standby and residents took refuge in the civic school Tuesday night where they were provided with food and water.
On Wednesday, as showers across the region subsided and flood water receded, the residents returned home in Kranti Nagar to find their possessions damaged in drain water. The slum dwellers spent their entire day cleaning their homes, salvaging their belongings and ration.
Parmar, who returned to her home Wednesday evening, said, “We had stocked over a month’s ration… But we had to throw it all away as it was all dirty… from rice to pulses and masalas.”
Sunil Kumar (38), who has been residing in the locality for 15 years, said ration, clothes and furniture in his house were damaged as knee-deep water entered the place. “Outside our home, the water had risen up to shoulder-level, making it difficult to even escape. My children, being very young, were rescued by the BMC staff,” said Kumar, who resides in a house near Datta Mandir with his wife and three children.
Another resident of the area added, “Nearly a month of our ration was damaged as water entered our home and even the furniture are destroyed.”
Since the July 26 deluge in 2005, the BMC carries out annual desilting of Mithi River ahead of monsoon as a flood mitigation measure. However, this year, the civic body couldn’t complete the work due to the ongoing investigation into the Mithi River desilting scam by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
According to BMC records, only 75% of pre-monsoon desilting work was done at the Mithi River, while the post-monsoon desilting work is already under way where the authorities have achieved 10 per cent progress so far.
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