Vadodara district continued to reel under the after-effects of 20 inches of rain within eight hours, even as the state government intensified rescue and relief operations. With close to 500 mm of rainfall till 8 am on Thursday, the city got respite only for a few hours.
The entire district was rained in, with Savli and Desar recording 80 mm and 70 mm of rainfall respectively. Five additional teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and four columns of the Army were pressed into service for rescue operations. Four NDRF units have already been deployed in the district.
In Channi, four men died after a wall collapsed on them. Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said on Thursday that close to 5,000 people were evacuated and 75,000 packets of food were distributed in affected areas. Most of the evacuees lived around the Vishwamitri river, whose water-level rose after the Ajwa dam overflowed. "The rising water-level has resulted in waterlogging in Vadodara," said Rupani, adding it could drain away if it stopped raining for five hours.
(Vadodara district recorded close to 500 mm of rainfall on the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday - PTI)
Many parts of Vadodara city did not have electricity for several hours after 48 feeders were shut down as a precaution. The state government said that three of the eight talukas in the district were severely affected and seven villages were marooned. A total of 159 roads were affected, of which three were state highways passing through Vadodara; 47 internal roads have been rendered inaccessible by floods. Meanwhile, the Met department predicted extremely heavy rainfall in Vadodara, Banaskantha and Sabarkantha on Friday as well.
