Rain claims 21 lives in M'rashtra

At least 19 people were killed in 24 hours till Saturday evening, Maharashtra Chief Secretary Johny Joseph said. Seventy-two people were also rescued from various parts of the state in the same period. Two people were earlier killed in Chandrapur. 

In the 48 hours to Saturday evening, Vengurla in Ratnagiri district recorded 442 mm of rain — the highest in over three decades—followed by Kudal which recorded 422 mm, a district official said. Thirteen people, including eight of a family,  were killed in a landslide in the hills of Ratnagiri on Friday.

On Saturday, a man driving along a flooded road was washed away with the vehicle before he could be rescued in Sindhudurg district. In Sholapur district,  six people were killed in different incidents.

In eastern Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district, a woman was killed when she was struck by lightning on Friday night.

Life has been thrown out of gear since Thursday with torrential rain in the entire southern Konkan belt comprising Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts.
Moti Lake in the centre of Sawantwadi town overflowed for the first time in over a century and Sindhudurg district, bordering Goa, has recorded over 370 mm of rain in the past two days, said a district official.

Most major towns and villages in the coastal areas have been under two to three feet of flood water as local rivers swelled with the heavy rain.

The flood waters have left many homes, plantations, bridges, highways and other roads badly damaged.

Traffic on the Mumbai-Goa highway had come to a standstill since early Saturday.  Several thousands of tourists on both sides and en route were stranded. Nearly 100 people travelling in three luxury tourist buses spent on Friday night on the roofs of their vehicles as flood waters entered the vehicles on the Mumbai-Goa highway. Ratnagiri district officials finally managed to put a team in place and rescued them Saturday afternoon.