Intense rainfall cripples Bengaluru, hundreds evacuated

Bengaluru: Over 4,000 houses, half a dozen apartment complexes and hundreds of cars were ravaged by incessant rain that pounded the IT capital since the wee hours on Tuesday and threw normal life into disarray.

The situation in the Kendriya Vihar apartment complex in Yelahanka was grim as the rescue team had to deploy twelve inflatable boats and stretchers to evacuate close to 1,000 residents, including the late President A P J Abdul Kalam's 73-year-old niece Mehbooba Begum, who was bedridden.

Bengaluru's northern areas suffered a major impact as at least 30 residential localities, some of them well-planned layouts with luxury homes, were under knee-deep water for several hours.

At Kendriya Vihar, the services of National and State Disaster Response Forces (NDRF) were used to evacuate residents from 4 am. According to the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC), Yelahanka received a whopping 190 mm of rainfall, followed by GKVK (Jakkur), which received 186.4 mm. The inccessant rain had hampered rescue operations.

According to officials, over 100 lakes -- which is more than half the total number of lakes in the city -- overflowed and storm water drains could not handle the excess water. As a result, a large part of the Bengaluru had come to a standstill as motorists spent hours to even cover a kilometre of stretch. The road leading to the Kempegowda International Airport too was inundated for a long time with even a BMTC bus struggling to move through the flooded road.

BBMP's chief commissioner Tushar Girinath said Bengaluru north area received up to 150 mm of rainfall in just two hours. "All the lakes in the Hebbal series are full. Around 4,000 houses are affected. We are undertaking relief measures. The process of evacuating residents of Kendriya Vihar is underway as the apartment complex is filled with 6 to 8 feet of water. In other areas, there was no need for evacuation," he said.

Some of the major areas that were flooded included Kogilu Cross and the international airport road service road in the far north, Sai Layout and Manyata Tech Park in the north, Hosa Road and Sarjapur Road in the southeast, and Murphy Town in central Bengaluru.

The situation was no different on Outer Ring Road, where a large number of tech and multi-national companies are located. The road was completely gridlocked on Tuesday evening.

Traffic police requested road users to avoid the ORR between Iblur and Marathahalli and at Bhadrappa Layout, where vehicle movement in either direction stopped completely due to waterlogging.