Death toll rises to 42 as heavy rain wreaks havoc in Mumbai

Mumbai: As heavy rains continued to lash large parts of Mumbai and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, nine more lives, including five of a single-family, were lost on Monday taking the toll in the past two days to 42, up from 33 on Sunday, officials said.

In yet another landslide, a five-member family was wiped out and three others rescued when a portion of the Gholainagar hillock in the Parsik hills locality caved in and crushed several hutments in the Kalwa suburb of Thane.

The incident occurred this afternoon when loose rocks and soil from the hillock suddenly started moving and falling onto the huts below, catching many of the victims unawares.

While the locals managed to rescue three persons, teams of the SDRM, Thane DRF, Fire Brigade and others later retrieved the bodies of five members of a single-family living in a tenement which was one of the two that bore the brunt of the mudslide.

Another seven persons are still feared trapped under the mounds of wet mud and efforts continue to search for them.

In other casualties, a 9-year-old boy fell and disappeared in an open drain in Mira Road, two men were drowned in different incidents in Thane, while a youth was washed away by floodwaters in a local river in Palghar.

Three persons had a miraculous escape when their car was trapped in floodwaters in Belapur town and pushed into a lake nearby, but they were later saved by rescue teams and the car fished out with a crane.

Several areas in the urban localities were inundated and villages in the coastal Konkan belt flooded in the incessant rains that pounded different areas.

While there was a minor landslide in one of the hillocks near Neral on the route to Matheran hill station, the Mumbai-Goa Highway traffic was virtually at a standstill owing to the downpour with local rivers in Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg swelling above danger levels.

Consequently, scores of low-lying villages and towns were under 2-3 feet of water for several hours, hitting normal life in the coastal belt on the busy Mumbai-Goa Highway.

The Konkan Railway cancelled, diverted or short-terminated several trains on the Mumbai-Kerala sector owing to ingress of water and slush in the Old Goa Tunnel between Karmala-Thivim stations in Goa, hitting operations on both sides.

The power loom town and warehousing hub of Bhiwandi in Thane was battered with heavy rains since Sunday night leading to flooding in most parts, hitting the local industries and the operations at warehouses of major e-commerce companies that are located here.

The main road connecting Vasai-Nalasopara town in Palghar was flooded with traffic grounding to a halt for several hours before the floodwaters receded.

In the famed town of Raigad - the hub of Ganesh idols manufacturing industry - flooding hit the cottage industry in a big way with the local artisans staring at massive losses ahead of the Ganeshotsav festival.