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 Forecasts of more rain over the next 48 hours forced the army to
work on a war footing to rescue survivors trapped in inundated parts
of Chennai, India's fourth most populous city.
Chennai saw only slight rains on Thursday, but water levels had not
receded since Wednesday morning, when a massive release of water
from a brimming reservoir swamped low-lying areas of the city.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has blamed climate change for the
deluge, traveled to Chennai to get a first-hand view of a rescue
effort that has so far been halting.
"Chennai has become a small island. This is unprecedented," Home
Minister Rajnath Singh told parliament. "Rapid rescue and relief is
the need of the hour. We are working very hard to restore
normality."
 After auto manufacturers and IT outsourcing firms suspended
operations on Wednesday, state-run Chennai Petroleum shut down its
210,000-barrels-per-day oil refinery due to heavy flooding. The
cloudburst earlier this week dumped as much as 345 mm (14 inches) of
rain over 24 hours.
"We live in a city expecting that we will have access to basic
facilities. But today, we have no drinking water, no fresh food and
no control over our lives," said Sudha Raman Murthy, a mother of two
teenage daughters.
Soldiers set up 25 temporary shelters and community kitchens and
installed portable toilets. "We will have to resurrect an entire
city," said Abhijit Shaw, an army officer who was setting up a
makeshift maternity ward in a government building.
Floods cut off more than three million people from basic services
and hampered rescue efforts by the army, which has so far evacuated
18,000 people from rooftops and outlying villages.
City authorities were deploying bulldozers and bags of concrete to
repair collapsed roads, while several bridges were under water as
urban lakes in the low-lying coastal city of six million overflowed.
Train services and flights to Chennai, capital of Tamil Nadu, were
washed out and the navy has pressed fishing boats into service to
evacuate people from the worst-hit suburbs to temples, schools and
wedding halls.
A senior federal official said more than 1,000 people had been
critically injured and were rushed to government hospitals by
paramilitary forces.
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Additional rainfall of 100-200 mm (4-8 inches) was predicted from
Thursday through Sunday, keeping the situation critical for several
more days.
The federal government pledged $141 million in immediate relief and
launched a survey to assess losses to life and property. Assocham,
an industry lobby, estimated that the floods may cause financial
losses of over $2.25 billion.
Experts said haphazard construction, faulty drainage and a build-up
of garbage had contributed to the disaster.
"Chennai is stinking and it is shocking to see how it has collapsed
in the last 48 hours," said Anant Raghav, 56, a professor at the
University of Madras.
More than 5,000 houses were under water with many people still
trapped on rooftops, while others crowded in relief camps.
About 30 families have been sleeping rough under a flyover in
central Chennai for the last week after their huts and small
concrete houses were washed away.
Seema Agarwal, from the central district of Alwarpet, said she had
seen many angry people queuing at bus stops to leave town.
"There are people who haven't eaten for days," she said. "They have
seen their possessions float away from the house. Food, clothes -
all gone."
(Additional reporting by Abhiram Nandakumar in Bengaluru, Mayank
Bhardwaj, Manoj Kumar, Aditi Shah, Nidhi Verma in New Delhi, Writing
by Rupam Jain Nair,; Editing by Douglas Busvine and Nick Macfie)
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