Emergency workers, including the Indian armed forces, rescued more than 120,000 people Wednesday and Thursday (December 2 and December 3), and operations are ongoing, K.S. Kandaswamy, deputy commissioner of Chennai Corporation, told CNN. Chennai-based writer and social activist, Nityanand Jayaraman, writing for the BBC says,”The floods are a wake-up call for India’s teeming cities that were built with the expectation that the environment would adjust itself to accommodate the need for the city to grow”.
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Police and government officials said they were investigating the deaths of 14 patients on life-support after a power failure in the intensive care unit of MIOT International, a private hospital.
Climate change has been shown to make extreme weather events like flooding more likely and more intense, but it’s hard to say how much climate change played a role in any one weather event, including India’s floods.
As rains halted on Thursday and early Friday, some shops opened in parts of flooded Chennai including Mylapore and Teynampet. India’s Meteorological Department projects a few more days of heavy rainfall next week.
The Indian army, navy, air force and national disaster relief teams have been deployed.
So far, 1.15 million people have been evacuated from low-lying areas and 350,000 rescued and lodged in 5,000 temporary relief camps that have been set up across the city.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan said in a Facebook post that he hoped this will be of some help to those affected by the floods, and “demonstrate Singapore’s solidarity with the people of Tamil Nadu during this hard period”.
Illegal building that has taken place over the past two decades has added to the crisis we are now witnessing.
Radhakrishnan, the health secretary, said yesterday that while the immediate rescue operations were tapering off, the main focus of the administration in the coming days will be to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.
Coast guard sailors load a truck Saturday with items to be distributed to those affected by flooding in Chennai, India.
Officials at the power utility told IANS that electricity supply would be restored as the waters – which have turned virtually the whole of Chennai into a lake – recede. There were reports of heavy rainfall near Chennai airport on Sunday morning.
Union civil aviation minister Mahesh Sharma said “we started technical flights but the commercial flights will not be able possible as the basement in the airport is still filled with water”.
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Home Minister Rajnath Singh has described the situation in Tamil Nadu as “alarming” and promised all help to the state government. With the IMD predicting more rains, he said his teams were determined to reach more and more areas so that relief material is provided before the pouring begins.
