PUNE: Following the incident of flash floods in the city recently, the Disaster Management Cell of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has decided to take action to prevent such incidents in the future.
As a result, they are including flash floods in their disaster management plan and have decided to take the help of the College of Engineering, Pune (CoEP).
The CoEP will provide the technical expertise in order to tackle flash flood-like situations in the future.
On September 27, the city witnessed flash floods in Katraj, Kondhwa, Sahakar Nagar and Dhankawadi in which around 25 people lost their lives.
PMC Disaster Management Cell’s Smart Rain Tracker System registered 100 mm rainfall in just one-and-half hours. After that, a series of heavy rainfalls within a few hours were recorded in these areas.
According to PMC Municipal Commissioner Saurabh Rao, the major reasons behind this calamity were encroachments on nalas and diversion of natural streams. Thus, PMC took up the drive to remove encroachments on priority.
NEW CHALLENGE
Meanwhile, PMC Disaster Management Cell Head Ganesh Sonune said, “We saw flash flood as a new phenomenon in the city. Till date, we only concentrated on heavy rainfall, river floods, fire, landslide, building or wada collapse as disasters. So, from now onwards, we will include flash floods and update our disaster plan based on these calamities.”
“Till now, we did not consider flash floods as a disaster. This year, we recorded incessant rain in a short span of time in the city. Pune doesn’t have a controlled mechanism for the flash flood. This is a new aspect and we have to handle it in a different way. Increasing the carrying capacity of nalas and stormwater drain is one of the many solutions to tackle flash floods. We are going to take technical support of CoEP for it. PMC Stormwater Drain and Drainage Department, as well as other departments, will also be included while making the disaster management plan,” he added.
