Rains pound Mumbai, throw life out of gear; heavy downpour forecast for Tuesday

Mumbai: The southwest Monsoon picked up momentum in Mumbai, bringing heavy showers. Heavy rains lashed the metropolis and Thane district throughout Sunday night and continued on Monday morning, causing water-logging at several places and slowing the movement of suburban trains, thus causing inconvenience to office-goers.

Two persons were killed on Sunday evening when a tree fell on them near Metro Cinema in south Mumbai, said an official from the disaster management unit of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). A 13-year-old boy was killed and his parents were injured when an adjacent wall collapsed on their house at Wadol village in Ambernath taluka of Thane around 2.15 am on Monday, the district civic body's regional disaster management cell chief Santosh Kadam said.

In another incident, a 65-feet compound wall of a housing complex in Thane city collapsed in on Monday morning, crushing two cars and another vehicle, he added, as per PTI. Also, in Mumbai, a huge part of a compound caved-in at Antop Hill area in Wadala. Around 15 cars were damaged with some vehicles getting buried under the debris.

"The Santacruz weather station recorded 231.4 mm rainfall in the last 24 hours. So much rainfall is categorised as extremely heavy showers," IMD Mumbai Director Ajay Kumar told PTI. "This is the first extremely heavy rainfall recorded in Mumbai in the current season," he said. The rain intensity has gone up since Sunday afternoon and is expected to continue further, Kumar added.

Owing to the heavy showers, several parts of the city, like Dharavi, Sion, Matunga, Hindmata, Malad, Kurla, Andheri subway, Bhandup, Worli and Lower Parel, were flooded with water up to two to three feet, and vehicles got stuck in some places. "Traffic has been diverted from Sion, King's circle, National College in Bandra, Siddharth Hospital in Goregaon, Chembur Phatak, Pratiksha Nagar in Sion, Milan Subway in Santacruz and Powai area of the city," a statement issued by civic body had said earlier on Monday.

Meanwhile, a container had broken down on a bridge at suburban Vikhroli near Eastern Express Highway on Monday morning, because of which vehicular movement in the area was slow, the Mumbai Police had said earlier. Local train services of the Central Railway (CR), Western Railway (WR) and on the Harbour Line corridor were running late by 5 to 10 minutes, officials had said earlier on Monday.

Certain diversions were made due to water-logging on few routes of bus services of the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST).

The BMC disaster management helpline number is 022- 22694725 and 022- 22694727. 

(With PTI inputs)