As flood waters receded in some parts of rain-ravaged Chennai,
the impact of the devastation has slowly begun to emerge with rescue teams
stumbling upon a few bodies inside buildings that were marooned.
The most tragic among them was the drowning of an
engineer-couple trapped inside their office in Ekkatuthangal. Two days ago,
rescue personnel had found the body of an elderly couple in Defence Colony at
Nandambakkam.
With many parts of Chennai, Kancheepuram, Tiruvallur and
Cuddalore still submerged, it is feared that the scale of human tragedy could
be higher. Sunday’s rains and the forecast of a wet Monday and Tuesday have
heightened the anxiety of the National Disaster Response Force, the Coastal
Security Group and the Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Services personnel making
their rescue and relief missions much more complex.
Meanwhile the State government went on an overdrive to make its
relief operations more visible by despatching Ministers to distribute milk and
other essentials to the affected people at different locations to fend off
criticism that it was doing little on the ground to alleviate the sufferings of
those rendered homeless. It also brought in 2,000 sanitary workers from other
Municipal Corporations to clear the city’s piled-up garbage.