16 September,2011 07:46 AM IST | | Anurag Jadli
With total chaos on the roads due to heavy showers, people had to spend hours before they reached their destinations
The national Capital received a heavy downpour on Thursday evening, recording 96.1 mm of showers in the city. Just like last week, the rain this time brought back problems of water logging, leading to total traffic chaos, and flight disruptions. Many office goers had to face problems in reaching their workplace on time.
From light showers in the morning in south Delhi area, the rains progressed towards the evening all over the city, sources in the Met department revealed.
Raindrops on roses...and everything else: Traffic jam and
water-logging at Dwarka flyover, waitingu00a0 vehicles at Subrato Park
According to police sources, vehicular movement was slow due to water logging, which caused traffic problems in many parts of the Capital. There was water logging in most of the parts of Delhi - Dhaula Kuan, Kirbi Place, Rani Jhansi road near Filmistan and Palam flyover from Dwarka towards the domestic airport. Water logging was also reported in Laxmi Nagar and Anand Vihar area of East Delhi.
Clogged roads near Delhi Airport, struggle on Vikas Marg
The weather station located in Ridge recorded 24.4 mm of rain, followed by Ayanagar, which recorded 15 mm. Palam recorded four mm and Lodhi Colony had one mm of showers during the same period.
Au00a0few enjoying the respite from heat, in New Delhi on Thursday.
Pics/Rajeev Tyagi, Imtiyaz Khan
The minimum temperature was recorded at 25.6 degree Celsius, while the maximum was recorded around 36.2 degrees. "It took hours to clear the water that had collected on the roads. Till then, we had to divert traffic on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, Delhi Gate and adjoining areas," Satyendra Garg, Joint CP Traffic, said.
"After the heavy downpour, all roads were flooded with water and there was a scene of complete chaos. Every year we face this problem. It is high time that MCD wakes up and solves the drainage problem in the city," said Swati Anand, a PR executive at a private firm.
"It feels as if all hell broke loose on the roads. It took me three hours to drive home from Hauz Khas to Karol Bagh. Poor management of traffic and drainage system has lead to all these problems. Rains hardly bring joy anymore," said Parul Vaid, another PR executive at a firm. Gaurav Salwan, who works with a multi national company said, "Commuting from Gurgaon to Delhi seems like a journey from Delhi to Jaipur. It took me to four hours to reach my house because of the rains.
Cloudburst at Delhi airport
If the rain spell that hit the Delhi airport on Sunday afternoon had decided to grace Mumbai instead, the entire airport would have submerged, claimed Delhi Met department officials. The airport region, as per Delhi airport officials, was hit by a cloudburst with unprecedented downpour in the last almost 50 years, with 117 mm recorded within an hour. A flight was diverted and four others were asked to make a "go-around", said the officials. Water-logging on the arrival side of the IGI Airport inconvenienced passengers. Finally, the airport operator arranged the delivery of commuters' baggage on the conveyor belts at the international side, as a precautionary measure, said a DIAL spokesperson. Jet Airways flight 9W-2632 was made to "go-around" around 2:45 pm. But as it was still unable to land due to the heavy downpour, it was finally diverted to Jaipur at 3:15 pm. Four flights of IndiGo, JetLite, Kingfisher and Air India, which were scheduled to land between 2:15-3:15 pm, were made to do a "go around". The rains led to clogging and overflowing of drains adjoining the arrival forecourt of Terminal 3, with excess water spilling into the domestic arrival area. DIAL's engineering team was deployed in the affected areas to restore normal operations. After the heavy rains, the operations on the airside were normal, the spokesperson said, adding that the runways were fully operational and all flights were landing and taking off as scheduled. The traffic to airport from Delhi was badly affected as roads were flooded.
