Ganesh Pandit, 28, a resident of Yamuna Bazar, was busy cleaning his house on Sunday afternoon, clearing away the mud and silt deposited by floodwaters after the Yamuna inundated his neighbourhood last week. But he was a worried man — he was just informed that the Yamuna had again breached the evacuation mark of 206m.
The Yamuna breached the evacuation mark of 206m on Sunday. (Sanchit Khanna/HT Photo)
“I’ve spent around ₹5000 on cleaning up the muck. It will all go to waste if the area is flooded again,” he said.
The Capital on Sunday was on high alert after the Yamuna breached the 206-m mark. The Central Water Commission’ Upper Yamuna Division has forecast that the river’s water level is likely to gradually rise to 206.7m by 2am on Monday, at which point, it is likely to “remain steady”.
The development meant that the Delhi government advised people living in low-lying areas along the Yamuna to return to relief camps. “The government has made arrangements for water, food, medicine in these relief centres. We have once again started munadi (public announcements) in the flood prone vulnerable areas. If people have returned to such areas, they should come back to the relief camps,” Delhi minister Saurabh Bharadwaj said.
But even as the government’s advisory came, Sarla Yadav, 70, another resident of Yamuna Bazar, was counting her losses, pointing to her now-ruined television, cooler, gas cylinder, and kitchen utensils strewn on the road in front of her. Her children are boatmen, but three of their four boats were ruined in the flood. She said, “We had tied the boats to trees, but they still floated away. In all these years, I have never seen the water level in this area rise like this… We are not going back into our house yet because the levels are rising again…”
Meanwhile, at the Monastery Market near Kashmere Gate, shopkeepers who were just starting to see signs of revival, anticipated that the market would get flooded again. Tenzin Gonpo, 42, who runs a clothes shop with his brother, said, “We are expecting the water to come into our shops again, but we are hoping that it won’t destroy the entire shop…”
Having already incurred a loss of around ₹3 lakh, Gonpo and his brother placed their clothes on racks high on the wall of their store.
Mohammad Salauddin, 62, continued to keep his shutters down on Sunday. The owner of a clothes shop, Salauddin had come to the market on Sunday morning, hoping to open his shop, but after hearing that the river had once again risen, he decided against it. He said he had incurred losses of ₹2-3 lakhs.
Further down the road, a pile of clothes, televisions, utensils, and wooden furniture lay on the floor. Two scrap dealers asked residents if they could pick everything up, to which residents asked them to take it all away.
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