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Heavy showers bring Gurugram to a halt, school kids stranded for hours
The worst hit were school children, since many buses and school vans were stuck for over three hours on key routes like Sohna Road, Golf Course Extension Road, MG Road, Southern Peripheral Road (SPR) and the National Highway 44
Gurugram: A heavy downpour on Wednesday brought Gurugram to a grinding halt with severe waterlogging and massive traffic congestion paralysing major roads and highways across the city. The heavy showers that caused this disruption saw the India Meteorological Department (IMD) record 38 mm of rainfall by 6.30pm of which 32.5mm of rainfall took place between 11.45am and 2.30pm, officials said.
The worst hit were school children, since many buses and school vans were stuck for over three hours on key routes like Sohna Road, Golf Course Extension Road, MG Road, Southern Peripheral Road (SPR) and the National Highway 44. Frantic parents waited on the roads, unable to reach their wards due to flooded streets apprehending that their cars would break down on inundated roads.
Traffic jams extended across several areas, including the Delhi-Jaipur Expressway, Southern Peripheral Road (SPR), and other arterial roads with water levels rising to two to three feet in places. Trees were uprooted in several areas across the city including in H-Block of DLF Phase-I which ultimately resulted in widespread power outages as the feeders were damaged. Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) officials said that as soon as the rain stopped post 3pm, teams scrambled to start repair work so that power supply could be restored.
Officials said that though supply was restored in a majority of areas, it could not be done where poles and wires had snapped after trees collapsed on them.
Narhari Singh Bangar, Commissioner of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG), acknowledged the scale of the issue. “We deployed 38 junior engineers across different wards, along with executive and chief engineers, to monitor and pump out waterlogged areas. Maximum complaints were received from low-lying areas such as Dayanand Colony, Basai, and places where illegal colonies have sprung up. These areas are particularly vulnerable due to their poor drainage systems,” Bangar said.
Vikram Singh, Executive Engineer at the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) said, “We had teams on the ground to ensure quick discharge of stormwater so that roads could be cleared.”
Traffic police deployed additional teams to manage the chaos, divert traffic, tow away broken-down vehicles and clear clogged roads. However, even with these efforts, large sections of the city remained inundated for hours.
Multiple systems converged to cause intense rainfall
Meanwhile, IMD officials said about 32.5mm intense rainfall was recorded by the automatic weather station in Gurugram within three hours’ time.
They said that 23.5mm of rainfall took place between 11.45pm and 1.30pm, 9mm more in the next one hour, 4mm between 2.30pm and 3.30pm and 3.5mm more between 3.30pm and 4.30pm.
Surendra Paul, director, IMD Chandigarh, said that a cyclonic circulation in the adjoining areas of Rajasthan and western disturbances combined together to cause the widespread rainfall in southern Haryana.
“The normal position of the monsoon trough around its mean position which is a low-pressure zone was also an added factor which further increased the intensity of the rainfall. These systems caused widespread rainfall in several areas of Haryana and Punjab in the last 48 hours,” he said.
Paul said that there was initially a yellow alert issued for southern Haryana including Gurugram and an orange alert was issued in the morning for three hours’ nowcast for the heavy rainfall.
“The widespread rainfall will continue to take place in southern and north-eastern parts of Haryana including Gurugram for next two to three days but the intensity and distribution will come down,” he said.
The IMD officials said that the city recorded a maximum temperature of 31.8 degrees and a minimum of 24.6 degrees Celsius. The AQI of the city on Wednesday was in satisfactory (54) category.
