Rain, clogged drains leave streets flooded

Noida: An overnight rain and clogged drains left streets in Noida and Greater Noida under knee-deep water. Although it did not rain on Tuesday morning, the authorities took time till afternoon to drain out the water using pumps.
Just like waterlogging on the usual stretches, the other fallouts of rain weren’t surprising either. Vehicles negotiating puddles and craters at snail’s pace led to traffic snarls at various places. Noida’s power infrastructure also gave in like other times. Residents of several sectors complained of long power cuts and voltage fluctuations.
The weather department has predicted rain for the next few days and a subsequent dip in temperature. The maximum temperature on Tuesday was 31 degrees Celsius while the minimum was 26.
One of the major reasons for the waterlogging was the city’s clogged sewers, which had overflown. “These days, even a few minutes of rain is enough to flood the city.The water should have drained off when the rain stopped last night. Since the drains are clogged, the water from it overflows. So, the city’s streets remain under knee-deep water for hours,” said Sanjeev Kumar, the RWA general secretary of Sector 51.
Similar was the situation in Sector 105. “Most drains in our locality are full. This year, we are witnessing a bad case of waterlogging,” said Divya Krishnatreya, a resident. In sectors 12, 30 and 19, too, residents complained of flooded streets from overflowing drains. Traffic was the usual casualty of waterlogged streets. As vehicles moved slowly, traffic jams were reported till late afternoon in Kalindi Kunj and the stretch from Surajpur to Kulesara in Greater Noida. Here, cops from the Ecotech 3 police station waded through the water to guide the traffic.
With rain and wind came the power cuts too. Sector 12, residents said, remained without power for almost five hours between 6.40 am and 11am. Shashi Vaid, who lives in Sector 28, said his area had no power for about an hour. Anju Pachauri of Sector 36 complained of rapid voltage fluctuations. The only saving grace was that the rain had brought down the mercury to the late 20s. The power department blamed it on local faults. “It was a local fault in the transformer,” said an official.
In Greater Noida, the Haldoni More had turned into a shallow pond just after a few minutes of rain. But local residents were hardly surprised. “It’s like this every year. The drains here are not equipped to handle the flow of water,” said Devendra Tiger, president of the Federation of Residents Welfare Associations, Greater Noida. Ghaziabad, meanwhile, was spared the traffic mess with light rain in the morning, but an overcast sky through the day. However, there were puddles here and there.
“It drizzled for about an hour in the morning,” said DK Pandey, a resident of Arihant Harmony in Indirapuram. “That was enough to fill the potholes with water, but there were no major disruptions in traffic,” he added.