Unexpected rains are not new to Bengaluru and on Saturday, the city received a bout of heavy rainfall for a couple of hours. As usual, storm water drains got flooded in many areas, traffic snarls were experienced in several parts of the city and in addition, the roof of Namma Metro's Indiranagar station began to leak.
According to Srinivas Reddy, Director of Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre, rains are expected to hit Bengaluru for the next two days as well. "There is a trough of low pressure in the Arabian Sea, which is now passing through parts of Telangana. Due to this, coastal Karnataka and interior parts of southern Karnataka has witnessed rains and will do so for the next two days," Srinivas Reddy told TNM.
The rain, which began at around 5.45 pm on Saturday continued for a couple of hours. The storm drains in Koramangala and Silk Board got flooded and the sewage began flooding the streets in no time. Madiwala too witnessed inundation and BMTC buses had a hard time trying to maneuver through the vehicles, resulting in slow moving traffic. The recently laid TenderSURE stretch on Cunningham Road too say water levels rising.
Angry residents took to Twitter and blamed the city's civic body for not maintaining the storm water drains. Traffic snarls were witnessed in the Central Business district, KR Puram, Outer Ring Road, Banashankari, Banaswadi and near Kempegowda Bus Station. Slow moving traffic was witnessed on the Hebbal Flyover, on the way to the airport. Commuters had to brave two and more hours of traffic to get to the airport.
The rain also brought with it powercuts across the city. Residents of Indiranagar, parts of Koramangala, New Thippasandra, Kengeri Satellite Town, parts of Banashankari, Whitefield and Austin Town experienced power cuts.
"There have been unscheduled power cuts since the last two days in pockets of the city as maintenance work is being carried out for the transformers. The power cuts were only for a small pockets in given areas. However, today, the power cuts occurred as the flow of electricity was too high and could have resulted in damages," a Bescom official said.
A minor traffic accident occurred at Old Airport Road and traffic police rerouted the traffic from HAL for 30 minutes. Trees were uprooted in several parts of the city. According to the BBMP Tree Cell, the civic body received five calls of trees being uprooted, including one near NIMHANS, which led to severe traffic jams.