Panic in Chennai again after fresh rain; toll 350

Occasional heavy rain on Friday evening threatened to revive the ghost of flooding in Chennai even as the battered city and its suburbs battled hard to pick up pieces of life.

While lakhs of people in the coastal city’s worst-hit areas continued to face acute shortage of essentials, including water, power, milk and food items, a tragedy unfolded at the noted MIOT Hospital in Mannapakkam where at least 14 patients (PTI said 18) in the ICU, including five women, lost their lives because of electricity failure.

The hospital authorities were running the medical equipment through generators after the power supply was cut off but the flood water damaged many of them.

Top state officials, however, said not all deaths occurred because of lack of oxygen or failure of the ventilator.

While on one occasion, the officials said the hospital abandoned its patients, at another they said the government did its best to keep the services up even in private hospitals. State's Chief Secretary K Gnanadesikan said the deaths will be probed.

The death toll due to rain related incidents rose to 350 with around 50 people losing their lives in less then two days. As many as 43 bodies were also brought to the Government Royapettah Hospital.

Ministers heckled
The unending predicament also saw people venting anger at their Assembly representatives. Senior minister Natham Viswanathan, Sellur Raju and Gokul Indira were gheraoed and heckled by the people after they visited R K Nagar—the constituency of Chief Minister Jayalalitha—forcing them to make a hasty retreat.

Similar scenes were witnessed in several areas where people hit out at the officials complaining lack of any help from them in the crisis hour.

Viswanathan, the state’s power minister and the chief secretary later said in an official press conference at the Secretariat that relief and rescue operations were taking place in full swing and even termed them “extraordinary”.

The minister also described the Opposition’s criticism of the relief operations as politically motivated with an eye on the Assembly elections scheduled early next year. He claimed people in the worst-affected areas refused to leave their homes but accepted only food relief.

Heavy rain resumed in Chennai and its suburbs on Friday evening as the new low pressure over the Bay of Bengal still remaining stagnant. The weathermen though predicted light rain for Chennai in the next 24 hours, there was forecast of heavy to very heavy rain in Puducherry.

A senior official of Regional Meteorological Centre told Deccan Herald on Friday evening that apart from rain, strong squally wind blowing at 55 kilometres per hour would also prevail over North Tamil Nadu and Puducherry and South coastal Andhra Pradesh in the next 24 hours.

The public transport across several districts, including Chennai, was hit. The city airport was ready for partial resumption of flight operations from Saturday morning with the AAI finding the runway safe for landings and departures. Over 1.64 lakh people have been housed in 460 relief camps in four flood hit districts.