Monsoon heaps untold miseries on Mangalore city

The country may be heaving a sigh of relief over the monsoon setting in after a slight delay. But Mangaloreans are cursing their fate as the onset of the seasonal rains in the middle of an infrastructure development programme has exposed how ill-equipped the city is to face a downpour of such magnitude.

Road asphalting and widening works have been taken up. But with work on most roads incomplete, and lack of storm water drains in many areas, has resulted in water-logging at all thoroughfares. The gushing rain water is also flooding roads with fender level soil.

Most low-lying areas of the city are under water. Shops, houses and offices are also filled with knee-deep water, making Mangalore resemble  a war-ravaged city with uprooted huge trees, electric poles, mobile towers and hoardings lying about.
According to the meteorological office, coastal areas of Karnataka have received over 582.1mm of rainfall in the last three days.

Compounding Mangalore’s agony is the city’s poor link to the world outside: its airport is still recovering from the after-effects of the May 22 Air India plane crash, the pothole-marked Shirady Ghat stretch of the Bangalore-Mangalore national highway 48 is virtually unmotorable, and repeated landslides have cast a cloud of uncertainty on train services between the city and the state capital.

Buses arriving from Bangalore and Mysore have been running late by a couple of hours every day, due credit being given to the bad roads.

KSRTC’s Mangalore divisional controller PB Karumbaiah said, “The visibility on the national highway stretch between Gundia and BC Road is poor. Buses from Bangalore, which usually take about six to eight hours to reach Mangalore, need two more hours now to cover the same distance.”

On the aviation front, flights have been landing late, and early morning arrivals are being diverted to Kochi and Kozhikode ever since the monsoon began. Landings are being allowed only after the skies clear up.