JOIN USPulichintala project gate breaks off, flood alert sounded in two Andhra Pradesh districts
A flash flood alert has been sounded in Guntur and Krishna districts after one of the 24 gates of the Pulichintala project broke off in the wee hours of Thursday due to the high pressure outflow.
The multipurpose project on river Krishna in Guntur district has a storage capacity of 46 TMC and has been receiving huge inflows from the upstream Nagarjuna Sagar project, because of the rains in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana.
Andhra Pradesh water resources minister Anil Kumar Yadav inspected the site and said an enquiry will be initiated to know the cause.
The incident took place at 3:30 am when the dam gates were being raised. The hydraulic gate No 16 fell off in the waters. Project engineers are taking the help of experts from Polavaram etc places to fix the gate by Friday evening.
Authorities are increasing the discharge to six lakh cusecs for the water level to become conducive for fixing a stop-lock gate. “The work can be carried out only if the storage is brought down to 10 TMC,” Yadav said.
While the inflow was two lakh cusecs, the discharge at Pulichintala at 6 pm was recorded as 5.05 lakh cusecs, which is expected to go upto six lakh cusecs by Thursday night.
The inflow at the downriver Prakasam Barrage at Vijayawada was over 1.13 lakh cusecs at 7 pm. People living in the downstream areas in the city are warned to move to safer places as the rapid floodwater flow would be around four lakh cusecs by midnight.
Krishna district collector J Nivas has cautioned the people not to venture into the river for any reason.
People living in the low-lying areas near the Pulichintala project are a worried lot, expressing concern over the safety of the dam. Officials, however, assured that there is no threat to the project.