Heavy rains continued to batter Mumbai, its surroundings and large parts of Maharashtra for the third consecutive day, hitting normal life, disrupting rail and road traffic here on Monday, an official said.

The city’s lifeline, the Western Railway (WR) and Central Railway (CR) were running late by around 15-20 minutes due to waterlogged tracks at various points on the network, causing misery for millions of morning-peak hour commuters.

The city was lashed with 144.47 mm of rain, the eastern suburbs got 107.21 mm and the western suburbs received 131.32 mm till 8.30 a.m. It has continued with short spells of the break.

After the Gokhale Bridge incident in Andheri which left one woman dead, the WR on Sunday announced continued closure of the northern carriageway and the footpaths — the Kalanagar road overbridge(ROB) – south cantilever portion footpath at Mahim, the old Vasai Road ROB and the skywalk portion at Malad foot overbridge (FOB) as a precautionary measure.

There was waterlogging for the second day in several low-lying areas like Dadar, Sion, Parel, Kurla, Vidyavihar, Andheri, Malad and Jogeshwari suburbs hitting road traffic and pedestrian movements.

The BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said the catchment areas of all the lakes supplying drinking water to the city of 18 million, received good rains, bringing a cheer to the Mumbaikars.

In the past 24 hours, Mumbai received an average of 144.3 mm rains, making it one of the wettest spells in the current monsoon, with forecast of heavy to very heavy rains in the entire coastal belt over the next 48 hours till Wednesday, the IMD said.

Since the past 72 hours, six people were killed in rain-related incidents in the Mumbai metropolitan region (MMR) in different districts.

After heavy rains, several big and small rivers, streams and ponds in the tourist hotspots like Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Tungareshwar Wildlife Sanctuary, Karnala Bird Sanctuary, Tansa Forest Sanctuary, Yeoor Hills and other areas in MMR, besides the Vaitarna, Surya and Ulhas Rivers in the MMR, overflowed.

Around a dozen tourists trapped near a swollen waterfall in Ratnagiri were rescued by a group of mountaineers and hikers, and some schools in flood-prone areas have declared a precautionary holiday on Monday.

At least 10 people were killed on Wednesday when a fire broke out in a firecracker godown in Telangana’s Warangal Rural district, police said.

Firefighting personnel were at 1.30 p.m. still trying to douse the blaze in the godown near Kotalingala village, about 135 km from Warangal town.

About 15 people were reported to be inside when the fire broke out, the police said.

Witnesses said they heard huge blasts prior to the fire.

Five injured people were shifted to the MGM Hospital in Warangal town.

The cause of the fire was being ascertained.

Seven Amarnath Yatra pilgrims were injured on Wednesday in an accident on the Jammu-Srinagar highway in the Ramban district.

A vehicle carrying the pilgrims to the Kashmir Valley met with the accident in Chanderkote area of Jammu and Kashmir, a police officer said. The injured have been shifted to hospitals.

Five pilgrims died on Tuesday after a landslide hit the Brarimarg-Railpathri area on the Baltal trek stretch in the Ganderbal district.

Authorities on Wednesday halted the passage of pilgrims towards the Cave Shrine from both Baltal and Pahalgam base camps due to bad weather.

Rail traffic on the Kalka-Shimla track — a world heritage site — was disrupted on Wednesday in Himachal Pradesh owing to landslides following rainfall, an official here said. Nobody was injured.

“Traffic on the rail line would be normalized soon. Work on clearing the muck and huge boulders that has completely blocked the tracks is on,” a senior railway official told IANS.

Landslides were also reported at several places near Koti town in Solan district, some 65 km from the state capital. However, no train have been canceled so far.

Toy trains — as they are popularly called — run on the century-old Kalka-Shimla rail line. Each train has seven coaches and can accommodate nearly 200 passengers.

The 96-km-long narrow gauge railroad — originally built to ferry Europeans to Shimla, the then summer capital of British India — was chosen by the Unesco as a world heritage site in 2008.

Over 1,500 Indian nationals returning after pilgrimage at the Kailash Mansarovar in Tibet are stranded in Simikot in Nepal’s Humla district due to heavy rain and bad weather.

“Bad weather is hampering the rescue operations. Some of the pilgrims are stranded in Hilsa, close to Nepal-Tibet border, while some are stranded in Simikot,” said Pranav Ganesh, First Secretary at the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu.

The Embassy said there were 525 pilgrims stranded in Simikot, 550 in Hilsa and another 500 more in Tibet.

It said the situation was continuously being monitored and as soon as the weather got better, the pilgrims would be rescued through helicopters and brought to Nepalgunj.

“As of July 3 morning, the weather situation remains inclement and there is very little chance of operating evacuation flights,” said the Indian Embassy.

Weather conditions across Nepal have worsened since Monday due to perpetual downpour in which at least a dozen people were killed.

The Embassy said it has placed its representatives in Nepalganj and Simikot to ensure proper food and lodging facilities for the pilgrims. The police have been asked to take care of those stranded, it added.

In Simikot, Indian officials are providing medical help to the elderly pilgrims. The Indian government has also set up hotlines for the stranded people to contact their families.

The Indian mission has asked all tour operators in the region to try hold pilgrims back in Tibet as far as possible since the medical and civic facilities on Nepal side were inadequate.

The Embassy is also trying to use Nepal Army helicopters for evacuation.

Areas near Indo-Bangladesh border in West Bengal have witnessed a steep decline in arsenic-related diseases over a period of three years after setting up of a cheap and sustainable surface water purification plant.

“In course of periodic medical checkup of a group of patients suffering from arsenic-related diseases, it was revealed that this water purification system has become a boon for them (villagers),” sociologist and founder of Sulabh International Bindeshwar Pathak, the brain behind the water project, said.

Many of the villagers living here were forced to migrate to nearby places before they tried, in vain, every attempt to rid the water of the poison. The cost was too high. They had to pay for every drop of purified water they would fetch from distant towns or cities. Diseases related to the consumption of carcinogenic arsenic contaminated water had even claimed lives in the region.

But life started changing three years ago when Sulabh International Social Service Organisation (SISSO), in collaboration with a French company, 1001 Fontaines, installed a Rs 20-lakh pond-based water treatment plant in Madhusudan Kanti Village of North 24 Parganas district, some 100 km from Kolkata.

The cost of establishing the plant in Bangaon subdivision, that can produce 8,000 litres of potable water per day at a cost of 10-20 paise a litre, was shared between the French organisation, Sulabh and the villagers.

“The villagers and local NGOs maintain this. It is a self-sustainable project with active participation from the villagers and generate employment,” Pathak said.

“This is the first time in the world that we have succeeded in producing pure drinking water at a very nominal cost by this new technology and villagers may get direct benefits,” he added.

“It is being sold at 50 paise after including other costs like distribution, storing, etc. Even people in neighbouring villages can also safely use this water,” the Sulabh founder further said.

Sulabh and the French organisation have also established pilot projects in North 24 Parganas, Murshidabad and Nadia districts of the state, where at many places people are forced to drink arsenic-contaminated water.

Pathak believes the entire problem of arsenic-contaminated water could be solved if the West Bengal government took interest and replicated the model.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), arsenic is a natural component of the earth’s crust and is widely distributed throughout the environment — in air, water and land. It is highly toxic in its inorganic form.

Long-term exposure to inorganic arsenic, mainly by drinking contaminated water, eating food grown or even prepared with this water, can cause skin lesions and cancer.

WHO says inorganic arsenic is naturally present at high levels in the groundwater of a number of countries, including Argentina, Bangladesh, Chile, China, India, Mexico, and the United States.

The monsoon has entered Madhya Pradesh covering Dhar, Alirajpur, Burhanpur, Barwani, Khargone, Jhabua and Khandwa districts and has brought heavy rains to the state capital, bringing down the mercury by a few notches.

The monsoon entered the state from the southwest side, the Met office said. In the past 24 hours, Indore has received 8.6 mm of rain, while Dhar 14.2 mm, Damoh 30 mm and Gwalior 3.8 mm.

The weather office has predicted heavy rains for Dhar, Jhabua, Alirajpur and Barwani and scattered rains at all other places with thunderstorms and lightning. Humidity was unusually high on Tuesday.

A cyclonic circulation had developed over south Gujarat and Konkan region while a trough was extending from Gujarat to southwest Rajasthan.

Bhopal recorded a maximum of 35.5 degrees Celsius and a minimum of 24.6 degree Celsius. Indore’s maximum was 32.4 degree Celsius while it recorded a minimum temperature of 23.2 degree Celsius. Gwalior was at a high of 43 and a minimum of 24; and Jabalpur 36.8 and minimum 27.9 degrees Celsius.

BY:ANDREA PRINCY

In today’s busy world we forget to notice the beautiful nature around us, the nature which gives birth to fresh air which leads to good health and this nature is indescribable to fathom the beauty it consists but sometimes we don’t consider nature as our wealth but we go ahead to deforest them thus making our greenery Earth into Concrete Jungle.
We fail to be selfless and follow our pleasure principles to get things done by hurting nature. The seed of selfishness that we sow is pathetically reaped by our generations who can only see buildings in the near future. But nature generously gives us pure oxygen to breathe and plays an important role in human life.

The recent studies show us that more than nine out of ten of the world’s population lives in places where air pollution exceeds safe limits according to WHO, and this tragic pollution kills more than one million seabirds and 100 million mammals every year. This same pollution that we face also effects the people who live in high – density Air Polluted Area by increasing the risk of lung cancer by 20% and it also effects three million kids every year. Because of the deforestation, the town faces a huge problem of pollution and even the village covered by trees are losing their richness for industrialization.

This is the freighting results of what the present generation is up to. If the current rate of deforestation continues, it takes less than 100 years to destroy all the rainforest on the Earth.

But… the good news is that it’s never too late to enter into a world of Aforestation, a world of luscious Nature and to get on to clear off the controversy which is faced between humans and nature. If we pacify with nature, the nature in return gives a Beauty for the World. A beauty which is undeniable, and which brings a lovely smile on depressed people and indeed blesses us with wealthy – health and a peaceful mind!
Let us not destroy the marvelous handy works of God but let us acknowledge and be grateful for what He has done for us by greeting the nature every morning instead of saying Goodbye!

Articles published in this website need not neccessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board

Heavy and incessant rains, since the onset of the southwest monsoon in Karnataka this month, have raised water levels in the state’s reservoirs, said an official on Monday.

“The water levels in the reservoirs in the Cauvery river basin have gone up due to the rains in the catchment areas over the last fortnight,” Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC) Director G.S. Srinivasa Reddy told IANS here.

Kabini reservoir in Mysuru district has been filled up to its maximum capacity of 16 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) due to the monsoon rains, and the district authorities have been releasing the excess water back into the river.

The water level of Krishna Raja Sagar (KRS) dam in Mandya district has gone beyond 100 feet of its total 124 feet capacity due to the incessant rainfall, Reddy said.

“The water level in KRS dam is the highest it has been in nearly a decade. But the water inflow into these dams in the Cauvery river basin has come down over the past two days as rains have receded,” he added.

Copious rains had also sent rivers like Cauvery, Tunga, Bhadra and Netravathi into spate, flooding roads and highways, submerging bridges and causing landslides in the Western Ghats that disrupted train and bus services in coastal, central and Malnad regions of the southern state.

Overall, the districts of the state have recorded an average of 96 per cent excess rainfall in the first fortnight of this month.

According to the data from the India Meteorological Department’s Bengaluru centre, coastal and southern districts like Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Uttara Kannada, Bagalkote, Belagavi, Dharwad, Gadag, Haveri, Mysuru, Shivamogga, Hassan and Kodagu have received a large excess of rainfall.

While Ballari, Chamarajanagar and Mandya have received normal rainfall, Bengaluru Urban, Bengaluru Rural, Ramanagara and Tumakuru districts have been facing a deficit in rainfall.

The monsoon, which currently has a subdued activity in the state, is expected to have a revival after June 22, when Bengaluru and other surrounding districts are expected to witness the monsoon rains, the weather office said.

Landslides experienced at four more road bends on Charmadi Ghat section of the highway on account of heavy rainfall on Wednesday June 13 have put further burden on road clearance and restoration work that is currently on. The road as of now continues to pose danger and is currently out of access for vehicles.

The forest department has launched an operation to clear the trees which have fallen across the road and those which are precariously positioned near the road. On Wednesday 13, backhoes worked relentlessly to make the route roadworthy again. Officials of national highways authority and revenue department visited the spot and inspected the progress of ongoing work on Wednesday.



So far, landslides have been experienced in all the 11 road bends of Charmadi Ghat. The hillock crashed on the road on third fourth, sixth, seventh, and ninth bends. In the sixth bend, the protective wall built to stop landslide has been crumbling and its stones are falling apart one by one, giving rise to safety concerns. In the eighth bend too the protective wall is showing signs of crashing. Although backhoes worked day and night on Tuesday, their work at night has been made impossible because of risk factor posed by a huge mound of mud which got deposited on a backhoe on Tuesday night. If the rainfall continues unabated, the road might become unavailable for several days at a stretch, locals fear. As per the current estimate, clearance work might be completed by Thursday evening unless unexpected exigencies are encountered.

Police have been stopping and diverting vehicles entering the ghat section at Ujire. However, some vehicles have been taking alternative routes but they too were blocked at Charmadi Ghat. Over 50 trucks could be seen queued up at this gate. Officials have been arranging for these vehicles to turn back.

National highways authority’s Mangaluru division official, Subba Rao, taluk executive officer, Basavaraj Ayyannavar, PWD executive engineer, Shivaprasad Ajila, and other officials visited the spot to take stock of the situation. Puttur assistant commissioner, Krishnamurthy, said that a final decision will be taken after reviewing the situation on Thursday.

In the meanwhile, hillock slid down and got deposited on the highway near Joginamath adjacent to Jog Falls on national highway 206 between Honnavar – Tumakuru – Bengaluru. The hillock crashed at 5.30 am on Wednesday, bringing along several trees with it. As a result, vehicular movement was blocked for four to five hours.