Uprooted trees in Navi Mumbai’s Karawe village on Thursday. (Photo by Narendra Vaskar)
Over the last two days, 361 instances of tree fall have been recorded across Mumbai with 275 in the island city alone.
High intensity rain and thunder accompanied by high speed winds, reaching up to 70 kmph and occasionally gusting to over 100 kmph, were witnessed in south Mumbai on Wednesday evening, resulting in the uprooting of 141 trees. Of them, 112 were from the island city.
Intermittent rain at night led to the collapse of 220 more trees. Around 40 to 50 trees collapsed after a part of the retaining wall of the Ridge Road on N S Patkar Marg collapsed late at night.
In the afternoon, a tree fall incident in Kurla had left a 39-year-old man injured. The wind speed in south Mumbai on Wednesday was equivalent to the post-landfall effect of severe cyclonic storm Nisarga (90-100 kmph), which was recorded in Mumbai on June 3. The BMC had had reported 117 tree falls — 39 from south Mumbai, 40 from the eastern suburbs and 38 from the western suburbs. Most complaints had come from A ward — Colaba and Marine Drive — where 12 tree falls were reported.
BMC had earlier said that over 70,000 roadside trees had been trimmed ahead of monsoon.