8 killed in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry as Cyclone Fengal dumps record rains

Chennai: Cyclone Fengal, which remained stationary for several hours even after landfall, bucketed down record rains of 50 cm and 48 cm in Villupuram district in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry respectively, swamping several villages and towns that were inaccessible for the whole of Sunday, leaving at least eight persons dead.

Chennai, which bore the brunt of the cyclonic storm with winds gusting up to 90 kmph before its landfall, took baby steps towards limping back to normalcy, even as air and train operations resumed though many flights were either delayed or cancelled.

Mailam in Villupuram district had a record 50 cm rainfall, and Vaanur (41 cm), and Nemelli in Chengalpattu district (46 cm) with residents recalling that they never saw such downpour in their lifetime. The 46 cm rainfall in Puducherry was a record for the UT, where the previously recorded highest rainfall in a day was 24 cm in 2004.

The situation in Villupuram, and Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu, and Puducherry was grim as heavy rains continued to lash the three districts for the whole of Sunday, making rescue and relief operations tough. The Indian Army joined the National Disaster Response Force in rescuing about 600 people from marooned areas using boats and other equipment in Puducherry, while the NDRF along with SDRF continued evacuating people in low-lying areas in Villupuram and Cuddalore to safety.

Video footage and photos from the rain-affected districts in TN and Puducherry showed cars floating in knee-deep water, inundation in apartment complexes, and heavy waterlogging in main and interior roads, confining lakhs of people to their homes. Many arterial roads in Puducherry looked like water bodies as volunteers pitched in to distribute food packets, even as hundreds of trees were uprooted.

In Villupuram, many villages were still cut-off with rescuers finding it difficult to reach them, even as the bus stand in the district headquarters and Tindivanam were under water, while water entered the ground floor in many residential localities in Cuddalore, a town prone to cyclones.

As the two and three-tier towns struggled to handle the flood situation, social media was abuzz with questions on the obsession of governments in focusing on the impact of the Cyclone only in metro cities. They sought to know why rescue teams weren’t sent on time to Puducherry and Villupuram despite weather bloggers predicting that the cyclone will bring huge rains to the region.

With the real magnitude of the crisis yet to be revealed, Chief Minister M K Stalin dispatched his deputy Udhayanidhi and five ministers to Villupuram and Cuddalore districts along with a battery of senior bureaucrats to oversee rescue and relief operations.

While four persons died in Puducherry, another four people lost their lives in Tamil Nadu due to Cyclone Fengal, which took several hours to touch the land with ridges disallowing them from moving, one of the reasons cited for the historic rainfall in the region.

With the rains now shifting focus to interior districts, at least half a dozen districts in Tamil Nadu declared holiday for schools on Monday.

Puducherry Chief Minister N Rangasamy blamed “high tides” in the sea which didn’t allow rain water to drain into the ocean for inundation and said the situation will be under control once the rain stops. The district administration, gauging the situation, declared conversion of schools and colleges as relief centres to accommodate people affected by the floods.

Motorists found it tough to drive on the Chennai-Tiruchirapalli national highway with heavy rains lashing the stretch from Tindivanam to Ulundurpet. The magnitude of the destruction left by the Cyclone is expected to be revealed only when rains recede, rescue personnel said.

Cyclone Fengal has been one of the tough cyclones to predict in the past few years with the MeT department changing its forecast from time to time due to truant played by the weather system.

In Chennai, all subways closed for traffic due to heavy water stagnation were reopened, while water receded from arterial roads, though many interior ones were still full of rain water.