Down in downpour

Life in the capital and elsewhere in the country was in an utter shambles yesterday due to incessant rain for the last four days.

Thirteen more deaths in rain-induced incidents were reported in Cox's Bazar yesterday, raising the toll to 21 in the coastal district in the past couple of days. Two others were killed in Bandarban on Thursday.

Flash floods inundated more areas, leaving several thousand people marooned in Narayanganj and Chandpur.

In the capital, waterlogging and traffic chaos caused untold miseries to city dwellers.

The met department forecast that rain was likely to continue today raises fears of a worse situation on the first weekday.

Almost all the roads, alleys and thoroughfares in Dhaka remained under rainwater for most of yesterday, largely due to inadequate and dysfunctional storm sewer system.

Filth and human waste coming out of the sewers added to the sufferings of the city people.

"My daughter and I got smeared with filths on our way back home from her school," said Afroza Shipon of Mohakhali area.

"Is there any authority at all to take care of waterlogging?" she said in exasperation.

Hosne Ara Begum of Shantinagar area was frustrated over the city corporation authorities' failure to address waterlogging, though recurrent and persistent in her area.

"With any amount of rain, the roads in the area get inundated. Traffic movement collapses and the residents suffer a lot," she said.

A similar situation was seen in Mirpur, Kalyanpur, Shewrapara, Mohammadpur, Shahjahanpur, Khilgaon, Demra, Badda, Kamalapur, Jatrabari and elsewhere in the capital.

It usually takes around half an hour for Abdus Sobhan Tarafdar to commute from Keraniganj to his workplace in Farmgate.

But yesterday, it took him over two hours.

"I had to change several routes to avoid traffic congestions … though it was weekend," he said.

Tired of being stuck in traffic for around two hours, Sobhan left his car at Karwan Bazar and walked to his office.

According to Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authority officials, the existing storm drainage can deal with 20-millimetre rainfall at a time. If the rainfall exceeds this limit, it takes hours for water to recede.

And between Friday morning and Saturday morning, the city experienced rainfall thrice its drainage system can sustain.

During this time, 67mm rainfall was recorded in the capital and 263mm in Cox's Bazar, according to the met department.

Light to moderate rain would continue across the country today due to an active monsoon and low over Bangladesh and adjoining areas, the met office forecast yesterday. However, the intensity of rainfall was likely to come down.

Meanwhile in Cox's Bazar, unrelenting rain induced fresh mudslides in Teknaf upazila, claiming two lives yesterday. Bodies of 11 others, killed in flashed floods and other rain-triggered incidents, were recovered.

Several lakh people living inside the Dhaka-Narayanganj-Demra (DND) embankment were marooned in one to four feet deep water, reports our Narayanganj correspondent.

The affected were facing an acute crisis of drinking water as fears of a spread of water-borne diseases rose.

In Chandpur, flash floods triggered by continuous rain have inundated a large number of houses, roads and croplands in low-lying areas, reports our correspondent there.

A few thousand people living in 30 chars [shoals] of the Padma and the Meghna rivers were marooned by floodwaters as the rivers swelled due to rain over the past four days.