Vijayawada flood relief work gathers momentum, mostly based on feedback: Andhra CM

Amaravati: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday said flood relief and rehabilitation work in Vijayawada has gained momentum, noting that the government machinery is going ahead based on public feedback from the affected places.

Naidu expressed hope that a major part of the flood would recede by Thursday, while the government is working towards bringing normalcy as soon as possible.

The chief minister said that the government is eliciting feedback from the victims through an interactive voice response system (IVRS) thrice a day on how to plan the rescue work.

“We are taking people’s opinion on how to plan. Doing all the work based on IVRS. I am requesting everyone only one thing. If you can give me proper feedback, we will analyse it and take the best foot forward,” said Naidu, addressing a press conference at NTR District collectorate.

Noting that Budameru’s breaches could not be closed yet, the CM said some more rainfall was recorded in its upper reaches today.

Naidu said IT Minister Nara Lokesh and Irrigation Minister N Rama Naidu are working towards closing the breaches as they caused maximum damage to Vijayawada city.

Besides gathering information on rainfall in the catchment areas of the rivulet, the CM said the government is analysing how it will impact downstream and what sort of alert system should be adopted.

“After analysing, we will see how to alert. 7 mm of rainfall fell in the catchment area and due to this up to 5,000 to 7,000 cusecs of water could flow downstream. That too only in three to four hours,” he said.

Since August 29 to September 4, the Andhra Pradesh Alerts Cell Broadcasting Platforms and Common Alerting Protocol have disseminated 7.49 crore alert messages to telecom subscribers on depression, rainfall and the precautions to be taken.

According to the TDP supremo, Budameru caused maximum flood damage to Vijayawada than Krishna river flood water inflows, which amounted to a peak of 11.43 lakh cusecs.

However, he observed that the Prakasam Barrage, which was designed to withstand inflows of up to 11.9 lakh cusecs, could have been damaged had there been 40,000 more cusecs of water.

At 11.43 lakh cusecs itself, he said Bhavanipuram, Ibrahimpatnam, Mulapeta, adjacent national highway and several other villages were inundated.

The CM said the current Vijayawada predicament is a result of the double whammy of floods minorly from Krishna river and majorly from Budameru. Moreover, he noted that 20 years of development, encroachments and indiscriminate construction also contributed to the disaster, especially at a time when 11,000 cusecs capacity Budameru was stricken with 70,000 cusecs of floodwaters.

“Had Budameru not been encroached, and its breaches closed, then the problem would have been solved to some extent. Town (Vijayawada) has expanded, land values inflated and encroachers came to occupy the streams and hence this disaster,” he said, adding that surveys have been ordered on all these places.

Further, he called on intellectuals to come forward with ideas on how to find a permanent solution and also work towards diverting Budameru waters into Kolleru lake or Krishna river to avoid a recurrence.

Meanwhile, the entire government machinery is working tirelessly over the past five days to alleviate flood victims’ woes.

A few thousands of officials are working towards the relief of over 6.4 lakh people in the southern state, especially in Vijayawada.