Flooding, outages, snarls: It’s raining misery in Noida

Noida: Heavy rain since Sunday left its imprint across the city. From waterlogging to outages and cave-in on the Noida-Greater Noida Expressway, the city found itself in a civic mess.
While choked drains led to flooding, branches of trees fell on power lines and caused long outages. Among the areas that were inundated was the Surajpur collectorate. Sector 30 was in the dark for the longest time — there was no power in the area from 1pm on Sunday till 11am on Monday.
“The lack of preparedness came to the fore on Monday. Our area (Delta 1) was under water because the contractor hired by the Greater Noida Authority had not bothered to clean the drains. There have been intermittent outages for the past few days too,” said Rishi Pal, the RWA president sector Delta 1 Greater Noida.
Roads near Omaxe Mall and Sector Beta 2 in Greater Noida were also under water. A tree fell on the Surajpur-Kasna road near Kailash Hospital, but was removed in some time. “There could have been a major accident had the tree fallen on some vehicle,” said Harinder Bhati of Beta 2.
In Noida Sector 11, a 33KV cable box exploded on Sunday midnight, leading to an outage for a few hours. Though the cable box was fixed, intermittent power cuts continued through Monday.
Parmod Verma, the RWA president of Sector 30, said a tree had fallen on a high tension line, causing the wires to snap. “There was power cut from 1pm on Sunday till 11am on Monday. Not only had a tree fallen on the HT line, a few overgrown branches were also touching the wires. On Monday morning, the branches were pruned after repeated complaints to the Authority. This work should actually have been done before the monsoon itself,” he said.
There was waterlogging in Sector 29 from an overflowing drain. “Sludge from a drain passing though Arun Vihar has spilled on to the roads, leading to flooding in Ward 2 and 2A and sectors 28, 29 and 37,” said Colonel Shashi Vaid (retd), a resident of Sector 28. Residents here also complained of power cuts.
In Sector 34, residents complained of waterlogging and 5-6 hours of outages. KK Jain, the secretary-general of the Federation of Noida Residents Welfare Associations (FONRWA) and a resident of Sector 34, said that even a mild shower was enough to cause waterlogging in the area. “We have requested the Noida Authority to find a permanent solution to this problem,” he added.
Sanjeev Kumar, the RWA general secretary of Sector 51, complained that outages had always been an issue in the area. “There is a tendency to cut electricity supply even when there is little rain. Now, they do not restore power even after the rain has stopped,” said Kumar.
Some residents said had the Authority engaged in regular pruning of tree branches, the problem of power cuts could have been addressed somewhat. “This is the negligence of the horticulture department. People stayed without power through the night. There has been no respite despite so many complaints,” said Rajiv Chowdhary, a resident of Sector 61.
By Monday afternoon, officials in the Greater Noida Authority had deployed pumps in waterlogged areas, such as the Haldauni turning, Kulesara and the underpass at Knowledge Park 2.
AK Arora, general manager (projects) at the Authority, appealed to residents to inform them about waterlogging at 0120-2336046-49.
Meanwhile, Gurgaon residents woke up to a slight nip in the air on Monday morning following intermittent rain overnight, compelling many to turn off their fans anticipating the early onset of winter. The Met department, however, said winter hasn’t arrived yet and predicted a rise in mercury by two-three degrees Celsius in the next few days.
In the past 24 hours, the city recorded 42mm of rainfall. Some low-lying areas such as sectors 4, 7, 9, 9A and 10 and Basai Road, among others, reported waterlogging due to the showers, though traffic movement largely remained unaffected on Monday.
The minimum temperature was recorded at 19.8 degrees Celsius — four notches above the normal — while the maximum temperature was 30 degrees Celsius, two degrees below the season’s normal. The relative humidity index oscillated between 84% and 96% throughout the day.
According to the IMD’s weekly forecast, there will be partly cloudy skies on Tuesday, with mist or shallow fog in the morning. The minimum and maximum temperatures are likely to hover around 21 and 28 degrees Celsius, respectively