Bengaluru rain: For residents, it is flooded streets outside, overflowing toilets inside | Bengaluru News
Bengaluru: The heavy rain found Bengalureans in many localities cornered by a double crisis: Flooded streets outside and sewage-soaked homes inside!This ‘caught between the devil and the deep sea’ situation wasn’t confined to low-lying areas; it also reached upscale localities such as Koramangala, BTM Layout, HSR Layout and Sarjapur Road.“We can’t step out because our streets are submerged. We can’t stay indoors because our water is contaminated. Even flushing the toilet floods the bathroom with sewage,” fumed Vanitha R, a resident of Koramangala 4th Block, while pointing to the waist-deep water on the street outside her house. Even underground water sumps turned into toxic pits, rendering drinking water unsafe.Saraswathamma Gopal Reddy, 73, a resident of Sector 7 in HSR Layout who is all set to fly to the US Tuesday to meet her son, received a shock when she found cockroaches and sewage gushing out of the toilet commode on the ground floor in the early hours of Monday. She waded through 1ft-deep water to find a way to clean the ground floor of her house with help from construction workers nearby and tenants of the same building. “We quickly turned off the motor that pumps water to the overhead tank.We now have some water for us and our tenants.”Residents from across the city saw their sumps being polluted as water gushed in from stormwater drains. “The toilet overflow seems to be the result of manholes being opened up. This was done to drain rainwater from the roads. However, houses in low-lying areas seem to have faced the worst of this,” said Uma Mani, a civic activist and resident of HSR Layout.Dilip Puranik, 46, a resident of ST Bed area in Koramangala II Main, has been at the receiving end of the same problem every alternate year for a decade. “When it rains for more than 2-3 hours, water comes into the house as the SWD nearby overflows,” Puranik said, while cleaning the 2ft-deep dirty water in his house. Bijay Kumar, a resident of Kasavanahalli Road (off Sarjapur Road), said he has almost given up trying to resolve the issue of dirty water making its way into his house. “Water from the drain gets inside the bedroom and kitchen too. This has been the situation for 15 years now. We are tired complaining. We spend over Rs 30,000 to put a motor and clean the sump.” Suresh Bhaskaran, HSR Sector 4 RWA president, said the fragile drain system is buckling under the pressure of heavy commercialisation of the area. “The area has hotels and a cluster of IT offices mushrooming. Fortunately, schools are closed, or that would have been another mess.”
