'City devastated, give us time, will bring it to normal'
Kolkata: The city wore a battered look on Thursday after super Cyclone Amphan, the strongest to hit the coast of Bengal after 1999, plundered Bengal including its capital, leaving thousands of uprooted trees and lampposts, hundreds of broken shanties and scores of people homeless and atleast 72 dead.
The cyclone that hit Kolkata on Wednesday evening has uprooted more than 8,000 trees and blocked traffic movement in main thoroughfares.
There was not a single road, lane or bylane that was not affected. "This is an unprecedented situation, but we will have to restore normalcy at the earliest. Our main focus now is to remove the uprooted trees from the main thoroughfares and normalise traffic movement, give us time and we will bring life back to normal," said Firhad Hakim, Chairman of the board of administrators', who visited the Esplanade area on Thursday morning.
He said that all the drainage pumps were working and all the roads will be free from accumulated water.
KMC's workers of solid waste management department swam into action from early Thursday morning to remove the trees and by afternoon the traffic movements along Sarat Bose Road, Chittaranjan Avenue, Ashutosh Mukherjee Road, Harish Mukherjee Road, Shyambazar Five Point Crossing, Bhupen Bose Road became normal.
The pace of conservancy workers intensified after the city experienced sunshine at around 2:30 pm. Senior officials of solid waste management said that by Thursday morning life in city will be nearly normal.
Rabindra Sarabor Lake and its neighbourhood was the worst victim of Amphan. 300 trees inside Rabindra Sarabor Lake, that include Krishna Chura, Radha Chura, Kodom, Bokul, Banyan, Bottle Brush were uprooted.
The storm caused extensive damage to the seats, greens and fencing at the lake. Five passenger's sheds were also damaged and 100 CCTVs were smashed. The approximate cost of damage is expected to be around Rs 1 crore. "It was a strange experience. I got up at 6 am on Thursday and saw the devastation, I never ever dreamt that the lake would face such damage," said Ronojit Sanyal, a resident of Green View.
The 2 km stretch from Golpark to Mudiali stood silent witness to the devastation. All the trees on the stretch got uprooted, along with the stretch between Southern Avenue - Sarat Bose Road crossing to the Lake Gardens Railway Station approach Road.
The KMC deployed electric cutter machine to cut the uprooted trees and heavy-duty pay-loaders were also deployed to clear the road.
Senior Civic officials of Parks and Squares said that it would be difficult to replace the trees that got uprooted. Most of these trees are more than 50-year-old and used to provide shelter to the birds. In Rabindra Sarobor Lake alone more than 200 birds lost their lives.
The city received 248.6 mm rainfall in the past 24 hours. Dhapa pumping station received 122.6 mm, while Topsia, Ultadanga, Kalighat and Chetla received 181 mm, 132 mm, 214.5 mm and 172 mm rainfall respectively. All the pumps are working and water from important areas like Sarat Bose Road, AJC Bose Road crossing, Rabindra Saroni and its neighbourhood, Moulali and its adjoining areas, Kumartulli and Shobhabazar are free from water logging. Water logging from Belgachia and its adjoining areas, Thanthania and its neighbourhood, Strand Bank Road and Burra Bazar have been cleared.
