CHENNAI: This must have been one of the longest nights Chennaiites have spent in recent years. Waiting for a cyclone to strike. Wondering what the morning would bring.
It rained through Wednesday and, as the wind strengthened at nightfall, Tangedco switched off power supply in many neighbourhoods, partly because of system failure and partly to prevent accidents. Greater Chennai Corporation’s new drains in the core city seemed to have done their job, as not many roads were inundated.
The East Coast Road to Puducherry, which lay in the path of cyclone Nihar, was closed to all but essential traffic. Hoardings along ECR and parallel OMR were removed on a war-footing, so that they didn’t fly loose in the gale. The Marina and other beaches were off limits to the public, with police chasing away selfie-takers.
The city had virtually shut down by early evening. No flights would take off between 7pm on Wednesday and 7am on Thursday. Metro rail and MTC buses stopped running by 8pm. Cabs and autorickshaws virtually disappeared as night fell. The government had declared a public holiday on Wednesday and most people stayed home, stocking up on food and water, charging their phones, laptops and power banks. One neighbourhood shop said it ran out of candles two days ago.
“In our area, power supply was cut around 3am and it was restored only by 9am. A tree had fallen on an electric line,” said M Patel, a resident of Puzhuthivakkam. Parts of T Nagar, K K Nagar, Tambaram, Velachery, Madipakkam, Nanganallur, and Thiruvanmiyur in South Chennai and Washermenpet, Royapuram and Pulianthope in North Chennai went without power. In Semmenchery, there was no electricity from Wednesday noon, said a resident.
News that water was being released from Chembarambakkam, the largest of the city’s drinking water reservoirs, caused a ripple of unease as citizens remembered how the delayed release of water in 2015 worsened the floods. By evening this had become a serious worry, at least for those living along the Adyar. Bridges over the river attracted the usual crowd of people watching the water rise. Police chased them away.
About 600 people were housed in 16 relief centres in the city by evening and two community kitchens set up at Gopalapuram and Chintadripet fed the needy.
The whistling wind in the evening brought memories of Cyclone ‘Vardah’ that in 2016 uprooted hundreds of trees across the city. The much-maligned Greater Chennai Corporation was very prompt on Wednesday, answering distress calls about trees falling. There wasn’t much, however, the civic body could do about flooding in many suburbs where incomplete and inchoate storm water drains had long given up.
Enterprising residents of flood-prone Velachery parked their cars on the bridge at Vijayanagar junction to escape flood waters that had inundated the housing colonies. At the time of writing this report, the storm was projected to make landfall in the early hours of Thursday between Chennai and Puducherry. And, outside the window, the wind was howling.