Anger spilled on to the streets when senior ministers Natham Viswanathan, Sellur Raju and Gokul Indira visited R K Nagar, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa's constituency, where people gheraoed and heckled them forcing them to make a hasty retreat.
Chennai city and suburbs on Friday started picking up crumbs of life with flood waters receding in several areas but lakhs of people continued to suffer from lack of supply of essentials including water, power, milk and food items. Tragedy stuck a noted private hospital when 18 patients were said to have lost their lives when a sudden black out on Wednesday caused snapping of oxygen supply in the ICU.
However, Tamil Nadu Health Secretary Radhakrishnan had a word of caution saying all the deaths could be due to ventilator failure or lack of oxygen supply as deaths have occurred over a period of three days. The cause of deaths was being probed. Anger spilled on to the streets when senior ministers Natham Viswanathan, Sellur Raju and Gokul Indira visited R K Nagar, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa's constituency, where people gheraoed and heckled them forcing them to make a hasty retreat.
Similar scenes were witnessed in several areas where ventilated their anger at officials complaining lack of any help from authorities in their hour of distress.
Intermittent rains in the city in areas like Kodambakkam, T. Nagar, Adyar and Kotturpuram and suburban Tambaram today threatened to revive the ghost of flooding again but the weatherman has forecast only light rains for Chennai in the next 24 hours. Heavy to very heavy rains have been forecast for south coastal and interior districts and Puducherry.
Arterial Mount Road and several other important roads were opened for traffic today after three days of disruption bringing a slight sense of normalcy as water levels in Adyar and Cooum rivers and other channels came down following reduced discharge of water from Chembarambakkam, Puzhal and Poondi rivers dotting the city's outskirts. Mobile phone services, which had taken a severe beating following the heavy downpour on Tuesday, were partially restored even as other services such as ATMs continued to remain shut.
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