On August 19th morning Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy, Bengaluru Development Minister K J George, Mayor Padmavathi, BBMP Commissioner Manjunath Prasad along with host of BBMP officials met the residents and apologized for the blunder BBMP made for working during monsoon and breaking the retaining walls. However, a record rain (12-18 cm across city) of the century made things worse for the residents.
Minister Ramalinga Reddy has been visiting the area from Day One and monitoring the situation to bring back to normal.
Mohan Raju
On 15th August 2017 Independence Day, ST Bed residents lost their freedom to go out of their homes. Heavy overnight rain not only restricted their movements but dirty water from Rajakaluve (Storm Water Drain) entered their houses from the broken retaining walls. The walls were broken by the contractor to enter the drain to rebuild the retaining walls as well as to desilt the drain.
Residents had to go through various kinds of problems and incurred heavy losses because of the inept, senseless way of working by the contractor and was not supervised properly by BBMP / SWD drain officials. Commercial establishments, hotels and some of the residents dumping waste into Storm Water Drain, all added cumulatively to create a manmade disaster which the residents had to pay heavily for no fault of theirs. Many blame the rains to escape but the real flooding happened because of water gushing with great force from the broken retaining walls from various places in ST Bed Storm Water Drain. The magnitude and impact of the floods are much more than one can think. It is disgusting and baffling to comprehend how can one work in middle of the monsoon on storm water drain desilting and retaining walls rebuilding, it should have been completed well before the monsoon and broken retaining walls to allow JCB to enter inside the drain to work should have been rebuilt well before the rainy season starts.
Majority of residents valuable things were damaged badly, like Washing Machines, Music Players, TV’s, Cots, Sofa, Beds, expensive Cars, Motorcycles to name a few. Who will compensate is the query everyone asks, guilty should be punished and they should be taught a lesson is on every ones lips.
Mr. Kalyanan had to shift his grand child to his friends place as his house on ground floor as he has not built first floor.
Mr. Chandrasekhar had to shift his bedridden father to first floor with great difficulty. The havoc is over and residents are slowly returning to normalcy, but we will unitedly fight for the cause with government agencies and officials concerned for justice with active involvement of RWA.
On 8th cross and 1st ‘A’ main in S T bed cars parked in basement of an apartment was completely flooded and several expensive cars were totally submerged in dirty water.
Mrs. Jacob slipped and fell down inside her house and dislocated her shoulder. Mr. Gopal residing on 6th cross slipped and fell on the road and fractured his leg.
Mr. Bali Rangasami residing on 6th cross, his bedroom was flooded with 3 feet water and he was literally floating on the water as he woke up. He lost quite a lot of his electronic gadgets and water entered his cars.
On 19th morning Transport Minister & MLA Ramalinga Reddy, Minister K J George, Mayor Padmavathi, BBMP Commissioner Manjunath prasad along with host of BBMP officials met the residents and apologized for the blunder BBMP made for working during monsoon and breaking the retaining walls, record heavy rains made things worse for the residents. Pics Mohan Raju
