Hyderabad floods: Parsigutta families escaped death by a whisker

A narrow drain, barely three feet wide and usually unremarkable, turned into a nightmare for Dasari Venkatesh and his neighbours at Vinoba Nagar colony in Parsi Gutta, Secunderabad, on Sunday night. 

Around 8 p.m., just as families were preparing dinner, floodwater gushed into their cramped homes, with low roofs and sunken below the main road, rising alarmingly fast.

For the locality, it was nothing new. At every instance of heavy rain, waist-deep water has become their reality. The decrepit retaining wall, part of which lay as a heap of heavy boulders now, hardly protected their homes, because water oozed from the catch-pits and flowed as a current from upper regions.

“But this time, it was really scary. The water rose very quickly,” says Venkatesh, pointing to the dampness on the brick wall of the house on the opposite side that indicated the level to which water had reached. On Sunday night, Secunderabad and Musheerabad areas received the highest rainfall of 12 centimetres.

The retaining wall reportedly collapsed when Venkatesh’s friend Dinesh aka Sunny tried to stop his motor bike from flowing into the drain. “During his attempts to stop the bike, it banged against the already weakened wall several times, leading to its collapse. Dinesh was dragged in an instant,” shares Srinivas, another resident. His body could not be found till news reached last.

Another nightmare was in store for Venkatesh’s family and his neighbours who lived in single-storey houses along the drain. Video clips circulating on social media showed water almost reaching the top of the door, and Venkatesh desperately hanging on to the door frame in order not to flow away. Screams of fright rent the air, sending shivers down the spine of onlookers.

“My niece was hanging on to this,” says Venkatesh gesturing towards a wooden beam jutting out of the roof. “I climbed over a nearby tree, got onto the roof and pulled her up.”

His neighbour Mohammed Ayub Baig’s house also got almost drowned in the perilous water, but thankfully, he and his family escaped. “Had the water risen even a foot higher, we all would have been history,” he says.

With no rescue efforts by authorities and homes thoroughly soaked, the families spent the night on the main road of Parsi Gutta, famished and exposed to rain. A beeline of VIPs, including the district collector and corporators, on Monday did not bring any relief, they say.

According to locals, the retaining wall was constructed 10 years ago, but was weakened due to pollutants. Respect for the water body is visibly absent, with apartment complexes and schools rising almost on the edge on both sides.

“We tried for home loans to be able to raise the height of our homes to escape inundation, but no bank was ready. The government should ensure that we get loans, or show us alternative accommodation,” Baig says.