Forty percent of the area’s telephone lines were knocked down by floods and power connections had to be disconnected for safety reasons, the minister said.
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Referring to the Rs. 940 crore released by the central government Jayalalithaa said the amount included Rs.133.79 crore of arrears from 2014-15 towards the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) and Rs.254.62 crore towards the second instalment of SDRF for the current fiscal.
Mr. Narendra Modi stated, “I have seen the damage and misery caused by extremely heavy rainfall”.
Rescue and relief efforts in the flood-affected areas of Chennai and nearby districts gathered momentum today even as a relatively dry spell since yesterday morning and the receding waters provided some respite for people in the city after three harrowing days. An intensified relief and rescue operation has been started by NDRF, adding ten more teams for the job and having rescued 9,000 people as of now. The government of India stands by the people of Tamil Nadu in their hour of need.
Gen Singh reached Chennai from Sri Lanka where he was on a visit. 57 other patients who were also on ventilator support have been shifted to other hospitals in the city, ” Tamil Nadu health official J Radhakrishnan told the BBC Hindi.
Torrential rain continued to lash southern India on Thursday, with floodwaters closing down a major airport in the capital of Tamil Nadu state and driving many residents in the coast region from their homes.
The water level has been rising steadily in parts of the city. The Army and Navy are working hard to evacuate thousands of people to temples, schools and wedding halls, but thousands more are estimated to be still stranded.
One video showed residents forming a human chain through perilously fast moving flood waters to rescue a stranded pedestrian.
Commercial carriers Air India, Indigo, Spicejet and Truejet will be operating 6 flights from Arakkonam naval base airport. The Met department also brought some cheer with its forecast that the low pressure will weaken over the next 48 hours.
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India’s fourth most populous city saw only slight rains on Thursday but water levels had not receded since a day earlier, when a massive release of water from a brimming reservoir swamped low-lying areas of the city.
