Mumbai: Flooded out on day 1

MUMBAI: The monsoon arrived like a wet slap in the face, blowing away the BMC's claims of rain-readiness and also its much-touted disaster management plan.
Fortunately, it was the weekend with many offices and schools closed, else many more thousands would have been stranded. The BMC, which had promised to update its website every 15 minutes and send text messages, did not even take calls from journalists.
The Colaba weather bureau recorded 83.3 mm in Colaba and 161.7 mm in Santa Cruz over a 12-hour period starting 8.30 pm on Friday. This is of course a far cry from the 944 mm recorded at Santa Cruz on July 26, 2005, when 300 people lost their lives in Mumbai. Yet, the havoc created by the first showers indicates that the civic administration has learnt precious little from 26/7.
Almost all arterial roads from the island city to the suburbs, except for the western island freeway, were knee deep in water after midnight. The water had barely receded after high tide at 2 am when the heavens opened again in the morning and the downpour went on until 3 pm on Saturday, when it was time for the high tide again. This brought Mumbai's local trains to a halt for a couple of hours. Although road traffic had eased by the evening, rail traffic took longer to recoup.
Ironically, the top bureaucrats, including chief secretary Johny Joseph and civic chief Jairaj Phatak, were attending a national disaster management meeting at Mantralaya.
Phatak said, "We did not expect 160 mm of rainfall." The city receives about 2,500 mm of rainfall over two months (June 15 to August 15).