Telangana: CRPF jawans among 115 people stuck at control room at Medigadda barrage

Hyderabad: As many as 115 people including 60 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), civil police and officials from the Irrigation department were stuck at the control room at Lakshmi barrage on Godavari River in Medigadda of Jayashankar Bhupalapalli district on Thursday after heavy inflows started reaching it.

The CRPF personnel, who were deployed for the security of the barrage and the State police personnel, rushed to the three-storeyed control room at the barrage where 10 employees from the irrigation department were already on duty. Since water at the control room reached at three-feet high, the district administration has started measures to rescue them when the last reports came in.

The magnitude of inflows was so high that the barrage was receiving record inflows of 28.46 lakh cusecs at 6 pm. In a tweet, the Central Water Commission said, “River Godavari at Kaleswaram in Bhupalapalli district of Telangana continues to flow in extreme flood situation at a water level of 107.56m with rising trend”.

With inflows likely to increase, officials were releasing water the same 28.46 lakh cusecs through 85 gates. At Kaleswaram, the Godavari River was flowing at 108.85 meters level which is above the highest flood level of 107.050 meters recorded on August 15, 1986, officials said. At 12 am on Thursday, the inflows into the barrage were 19.98 lakh cusecs and within an hour, it went up to 20.50 lakh cusecs and at 6 am, the inflows reached 22.15 lakh cusecs. Within three hours, the inflows touched 23.40 lakh cusecs and by 6 pm the inflows reached 28.46 lakh cusecs, they said.

They said they were closely monitoring the situation as the barrage was receiving record inflows. In Krishna basin, the Priyadharshini Jurala Project received one lakh cusecs of water at 9 pm on Wednesday and by 6 pm on Thursday, the inflows reached 1.40 cusecs. As much as 1.13 lakh cusecs of water is released from 23 gates, officials added.