Heavy rains clobbered Mumbai yesterday, seriously disrupting road and rail traffic, officials said yesterday.
According to the India Meteorological Department, Mumbai received over 36cm rain.
The IMD has forecast another wet day today with heavy rain as the municipal authorities urged people to avoid stepping out unless necessary.
The Bombay High Court declared a holiday and certain high-profile matters like the bail appeals of Bollywood actress Rhea Chakraborty and her brother Showik are now expected to come up today.
The BrihanMumbai Municipal Corp (BMC) Disaster Control said water-logging was reported from the traditional flood-prone areas of south and central Mumbai like Dadar, Wadala, Parel, Sion, Matunga, Worli, Mumbai Central, Kurla, Chunabhatti, Mazagaon, Masjid Bunder and Byculla.
Several areas in the suburbs like Goregaon, Malad, Dahisar, Kurla, Ghatkopar, Mulund and subways at Dahisar, Santacruz and Mankhurd were flooded.
Following an alarming increase in the water levels of the Mithi River, around 50 people in Kranti Nagar slums of Kurla were shifted to safer locations early yesterday and sent back home after the situation eased.
The Central Railway has suspended suburban services from the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus to Thane and Vashi.
Special mail/express trains have been rescheduled, said a spokesman.
Similarly, submerged tracks compelled the Western Railway to suspend all suburban services between Churchgate and Andheri but after the situation improved, the services were run between Churchgate and Bandra.
“Heavy rains have been reported from Mumbai and Thane suburbs in the last 12 hours with some places recording 150mm plus rainfall,” said K S Hosalikar, deputy director general of IMD.
Mumbai’s public bus service operator BEST has cancelled or diverted its operations on at least 18 routes around the city.
There were at least eight big and small incidents of house collapses or wall crashes, a minor landslide in Jaifalwadi in Tardeo, around 40 complaints of electrical short-circuits, besides 12 incidents of trees or branches falling, but there were no casualties.
Two security guards trapped in a flooded lift died while struggling to open its door, police said.
The security guards had gone to the waterlogged basement of Nathani Residency building in Agripada to restore water supply to the complex around 8am but were trapped in the rising water level.
In a bid to escape, they got into the building lift and closed its door, but the flooded lift failed to start and even the door failed to reopen, the police said.
They pressed the alarm, after which some building residents rushed down to save them, but could not reach them due to increased water-logging.
By the time the fire brigade personnel arrived and managed to cut the lift roof, the two men had died.
The downpour however brought cheers to Mumbaikars as the BMC reported that all seven lakes supplying drinking water to Mumbai were virtually brimful.
For the first time in three years, of the total capacity of 14,47,363 million-litres, the lakes saw a record total storage of 14,30,152 million-litres (98.81%), compared with 98.59% in 2019 and 93.61 in 2018.
With the season-end bounty, civic officials say there is comfortable stock to last up to December 2021 and even longer if required with disciplined water usage.
Other parts of the coastal Konkan like Sindhudurg, Ratnagiri, Raigad, Thane and Palghar were also battered by heavy rains disrupting normal routine and resulting in floods in many towns and sea-side villages.
Commuters wade through a flooded street following heavy monsoon rains in Mumbai yesterday.
