सोमवार, दिसंबर 07, 2015

Chennai Rains: Climate change, unplanned real state construction and unpreparedness

Water-water everywhere

Floods in Chennai during Nov.-Dec. 2015:
The first point is Oct 15- Dec. 15 is the North-East (NE) Monsoon season in Tamilnadu.  The South West (SW) monsoon does not touch Tamilnadu while the rest of India (initiated from Kerala) is gripped by the SW monsoon.  There are geographical details.  NE monsoon sometimes was also known as the receding portion of the SW.

Children happy
This is a different question that why children are happy when the schools are closed!  There appears to be nothing interesting, rather fear in the schools.  Anyway.  When it was raining in Chennai during mid-Nov, the business was usual as it was time for the NE monsoon.  Children were happy  due to closure of school for a day just before Deepawali.  No one expected that it will be full one week holiday during Nov.14-21 2015!  After a few days of dry days, it started again.  This time the worst was yet to come.  While he schools were closed, children were receiving home work via their websites. Eeryday there were updates on their websites.

Storage of water in man-made reservoirs
Chembarambakkam is the one of the reservoirs in Kancheepuram district about 30 km from Chennai.
Chennai looks forward for the year long drinking water from the much awaited NE monsoon.  Therefore this period of rains is generally welcome rains.  Now and then, there is an update on the capacity and current level of the reservoirs (other one being Puzhal lake and Pondi reservoirs). Both the newspaper images are from The HINDU of second week of Dec. 2015.



Unplanned houses  near the wetlands
About 20 years back for example, there were rice fields in the Velachery area  with a  few houses around.  As on date, there are high rise buildings, star hotels and Asia's biggest shopping mall! People are proud of "their house" nearby!  The mushrooming of such real state -unplanned "developments" has contributed to the  inundation that lasts longer.  There should be some rules, but rarely followed.  Its not like NainiTal, where  I was told that  there is no way one can construct a house now. Even renovation is not possible.

Climate dynamics and carbon footprint
Kyoto protocol and 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Paris are the buzz words.  While the rise in the temperatures is expected to increase the rains like this in future, no one is really worried about.  When the reservoirs went passed their capacity, huge water had to be released!  This is child's play?  Horrible.  How can a reservoir release water without any plans beforehand?  Same is true for the earth quake prone Narmada or Tehri dams.  The unpreparedness of the all the government machinery in present and past for anticipating the floods from such water release into the areas (and informing in advance) was exposed during Dec. 1-3.

Blackout in Chennai
It was 72 hours before we could get electricity restored.  It was time to do YOGA, look at your old literature, classifying laboratory screws, optics and stands, read some books while using left out candles from Deepawali.  The flash light that keep in my office bag and a few others that I kept on charging time to time were handy.  All the students bought one candle each, obviously the stores ran out of candles.  Stores also ran out of essential commodities- except the cosmetics, there was not even a biscuit on the shelves.

Airport closed, Trains cancelled/ partially cancelled, no Taxis but boats on the water logged streets.

We hope that there will be rethinking on the development and planing of the city along the old cities with more drains and seepage area.  Also the disaster management could be revisited.

Prem
Dec. 7th 2015



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