Maharashtra: Heavy rains batter Thane, Palghar
(Sourced from PTI)
Heavy rains pounded Maharashtra's Thane and Palghar districts adjoining Mumbai during the night and on Thursday morning, which caused inundation and boulder crashes at various places, disrupted train services, and marooned some villages, officials said. Teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were roped in to rescue hundreds of stranded people, they said. "Train services were suspended," district authorities said.
Rail tracks at Umbermali Station near Kasara were submerged up to the platform level and there were boulder crashes in the Ghat section. A bridge at Sapgaon in Sahapur taluka of Thane suffered extensive damage, leading to traffic movement on the bridge being suspended. The Modak Sagar dam in Sahapur started overflowing and two of its gates were opened to release the water.
Some villages in the Sahapur taluka were marooned. Local authorities with the help of the NDRF rescued hundreds of people from those places. In Bhatsai village, stranded people could not come out and were shifted to a school in the locality. In Vashind, floodwaters entered a housing complex and its residents were shifted to a Zilla Parishad school with the help of the NDRF.
In Bhiwandi taluka of Thane, a number of people stranded in the water-logged areas of Padgha, Kawad, Ganesh Nagar, and Khairpada were rescued with the help of the NDRF and the Thane Disaster Response Force teams, tehsildar Adik Patil said. A number of people were also rescued from flooded localities near the banks of the Kamwari river in Bhiwandi, another official said.
The Nashik-Jawhar route was closed following a landslide and operations there are likely to resume by Thursday evening, Palghar Collector Dr. Manik Gursal said in a message, and asked people to use the Trambak-Deogaon-Khodala route. Various places witnessed flooding in Vasai, Virar, and other locations in Palghar, but no loss of life was reported so far, officials said.
