Record monsoon soaks Bombay, paralyzes city
By Ramola Talwar Badam Associated Press Published July 28, 2005
BOMBAY -- The rain looked like a solid wall of water and it just kept coming. Soaked, frightened parents walked for hours Wednesday to reach their children. Motorists spent the night marooned on traffic islands, watching bodies float past.
Victims were crushed by falling walls, trapped in cars or electrocuted as phone networks collapsed in torrential downpours--the strongest rains ever recorded in Indian history.
Every year, Bombay is brought to a halt for a day or two by heavy monsoon rains that drench the country between June and September and often leave hundreds dead nationwide. But scenes like these have never been seen in this cosmopolitan city, which is home to India's financial and movie industries.
"Most places in India don't receive this kind of rainfall in a year," said R.V. Sharma, director of the meteorological department in Bombay.
About 200 bodies were recovered after 37 inches of rain fell in one day, and an additional 100 deaths were feared across Maharashtra state, where Bombay is the capital, said R.R. Patil, the deputy chief minister.
Traffic was backed up all night and into Wednesday across Bombay, with drivers abandoning their vehicles on roads turned into waist-high rivers.
Rajesh Khubchandani, a businessman, left his car and spent 15 hours marooned with several other people on a traffic island. "We saw two bodies floating past. I don't know how they died," Khubchandani said.
At one point, about 150,000 people were stranded in railway stations, state-run All India Radio reported. Others stayed for hours on buses and trains surrounded by swirling water.
"We were stuck in a bus all through the night with nothing to eat or drink. It was impossible to get out because there was water all around," said Yamini Patil, a government employee.
Television footage showed crowds of people scrambling for food parcels dropped from helicopters by navy rescue teams as the bodies of two men lay sprawled in the streets of a Bombay neighborhood.
While Wednesday's precipitation was still being totaled, officials said parts of the city had been hit by up to 37.1 inches of rain Tuesday, much of it falling over just a few hours.
Maharashtra's top elected official, Vilasrao Deshmukh, ordered a two-day work stoppage Wednesday to keep workers at home and called out the military to help.
"Inflatable rafts will be used to reach stranded people. Please try to stay where you are," Deshmukh said.
As floodwaters started subsiding Wednesday afternoon, the city began, just barely, to function. The road into Bombay's financial hub was cleared, though the two main highways, as well as hundreds of smaller roads, remained gridlocked. Skeletal train services connecting downtown areas to the suburbs resumed Wednesday afternoon, and flights at the airport resumed later.