Heavy rains lash Mumbai, other parts

After a lull of three days, Mumbai and large parts of Maharashtra experienced torrential rains yesterday, throwing life out of gear. Five people were killed in a wall collapse in Amravati, officials said. Some parts of Mumbai received between 4 and 8cm of rains since yesterday morning, raising hopes that the water deficit would be checked this year. Several low-lying areas in the financial capital and suburbs were either waterlogged or flooded, creating massive traffic snarls on both the national highways and other major roads. Water logging was reported from parts of Borivli, Kandivli, Jogeshwari, Andheri, Santacruz, Bhandup, Sion, Byculla, and some areas in Dadar, Worli, Goregaon and Kurla experienced flooding. Suburban train services were disrupted on the Western Railway, Central Railway and Harbour Line with 10-20 minutes delays, hitting office-goers and students. Elsewhere in the state, most districts of the coastal Konkan, eastern districts of Vidarbha, northern parts of the state, Marathwada and western Maharasthra received heavy rains yesterday, bringing cheers to the water-starved farming community. Torrential downpour in Thane’s major towns like Kalyan, Dombivli, Vasai, Virar, Palghar and Dahanu led to flooding on the roads with vehicular movements virtually crippled for hours. As a precautionary measure, some schools in the district were closed early to enable students reach their homes safely. Farmers in the parched districts of Marathwada were happy as the region received rains after a gap of over three weeks. In a rain-related tragedy, five people were killed and four injured when the wall of a Lord Krishna temple crashed at Kaundinyapur village of Amravati district in eastern Maharashtra. The incident occurred on Sunday evening and the bodies of the victims were removed from the debris early yesterday. The weather bureau has forecast heavy rains over Mumbai and other parts of the state for the next two days. l After a few days of lull, the southwest monsoon has once again become active in Himachal Pradesh with some areas in the state experiencing heavy rainfall, a weather official said. “Heavy rainfall occurred at some places with no appreciable change in the maximum temperatures. But the minimum temperatures fell by one to 2 degrees Celsius in the past 24 hours,” an official of the meteorological office in Shimla said. From gulftimes