I did not want to get into any blame game, says BMC chief Ajoy Mehta

Addressing a press conference at the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) headquarters, Ajoy Mehta was evasive if the lessons learned lessons post July 26, 2005 deluge.

During the PC, Mehta said that measures adopted after the 2005 deluge helped the city return to normal sooner and mitigated the problems to a large extent.

The 2005 deluge had seen over 946 mm of rainfall in 12 hours while the Tuesday deluge saw over 325 mm rainfall in 12 hours. "Of this, 60 percent of the rainfall took place between 3 pm and 5 pm. Around 23 locations had rainfall over 200 mm while 26 of them had rainfall over 150 mm. In one hour, there was 90 to 100 mm rainfall in Worli, Bhandup, and Kurla," he said.

After the 26/7, a series of measures that included Brihanmumbai storm water disposal system (Brimstowad) project, increasing number of pumping stations and carrying capacity of drains from 20 mm to 50 mm, were rolled out. "The water carried was 300 mm. That is six times their carrying capacity," said Mehta.

Asked whether the BMC's plans to tackle heavy rains had failed and whether the right lessons were learned after the 26/7 deluge, Mehta simply said, "We are coming back to the same question again and again." Mehta said that all authorities co-ordinated well and that he did not want to get into any "blame game".

Around 6,000 liters of water was removed by pumping stations every second from five pumping stations. "Fifty sewer pumping stations too were pressed into action with 110 pumps removing 3,756 mm of water which was double the capacity of 1,700 mm water," said Mehta.

The municipal commissioner asked citizens not to self medicate for fever, headache and vomiting, and urged them to ensure that there is no mosquito breeding due to collected water. He also urged people to boil water before drinking it for the next few days, as there could be chances of water contamination.