Friday’s rain fury: Five hours of rain paralyses Hyderabad

The lack of attention on the part of the different wings of the city administration was clearly palpable, with even flyovers curiously witnessing flooding in the aftermath of rain.

Hyderabad: When it rains, it pours. And surely, when it rains in Hyderabad, hapless denizens are left to fend for themselves with inundated streets, flooded colonies and rainwater gushing into homes.

Heavy rains on Friday threw up bitter experiences for scores of commuters as almost all the major road stretches went into agonisingly long gridlocks. In the busy city corridors, the vehicles were stranded and when they moved, they did so at a pace that would have put even a snail to shame.

---

From Madhapur, Gachibowli, Manikonda to Punjagutta, Musheerabad to Dilsukhnagar, the scene on the roads was the same. Two-wheelers and cars struggled to wade through inundated road stretches, pedestrians were forced to be tentative with every step of theirs in the puddles along the road corners.

The inundation spread over existing bad road conditions and commuters were not sure where they would encounter an open or broken manhole, run into a peeled-off road surface or a crater.

The lack of attention on the part of the different wings of the city administration was clearly palpable, with even flyovers curiously witnessing flooding in the aftermath of rain. The visuals of flyovers at Kondapur and Gachibowli with heavy inundation went viral on social media.

For many commuters, a distance usually covered in minutes stretched into an hour or more. At Serilingampalli railway station, the road under the bridge clogged with flooding and completely cut off connectivity.