Tamil Nadu: The north-east monsoon, 50 per cent in excess in the State, claims over 200 lives and destroys crops and infrastructure.
A SERIES of weather systems, including a cyclone that missed Chennai narrowly, saw the skies open up over Tamil Nadu between November 4 and December 5, the period when the north-east monsoon is most active. Most of the 561 mm of rainfall that the State received between October 1 and December 6, which is 50 per cent over the normal of 375 mm for the season, is said to have come during this period. It claimed the lives of 203 persons, including scores of children. In these days of specialised disaster management, this is seen as an unacceptably high toll.
Officials say the deaths occurred from viral fever, electrocution, collapse of walls and roofs of mud houses, lightning strikes and flash floods in jungle streams or on causeways. But what they do not reveal is how many of these 203 persons drowned in deep pits dug by machines engaged in sand quarrying on riverbeds. The Palar, the Cheyyar, the Kosasthalayar, the Kedilam, the Vellar, the Then Pennaiyar, the Kollidam and the Tamiraparani are some of the rivers on which this illegal activity takes place.
On November 6, Ajay (10) and Vijay (15) drowned in the Palar river near Vayalur, close to Kalpakkam in Kancheepuram district. Ajay died on the way to hospital after he was rescued from the water. The body of Vijay could not be found. The same day, two brothers, Azaruddin (17) and Ziauddin (12), drowned in the Palar near Arcot town in Vellore district when they went to bathe in the river.
The Vellore district administration had issued warnings asking people not to wade into the Palar as the swollen river had made it impossible to detect the huge pits created by quarrying near Devadanam and Periapettai villages.
On December 2, the Tamil language newspaper Dina Thanthi had a picture of a lorry lying on its side on the bed of the Cheyyar river at Kambarajapuram near Wallajahbad in Kancheepuram district. The lorry had reached the riverbed to be loaded with sand.
The issue came into sharp focus when a Madras High Court Bench, on December 2, banned sand quarrying on the entire stretch of the Tamiraparani river in Tirunelveli and Tuticorin districts. The Bench observed that the river had been devastated by indiscriminate quarrying, with or without the connivance of the Public Works Department and the local authorities. The Division Bench, of Justices R. Banumathi and S. Nagamuthu, issued the ban order on a batch of public interest petitions, including one filed and argued by R. Nallakannu, the 85-year-old leader of the Communist Party of India (CPI).
The judges noted that the river was being plundered despite court orders in other cases. They directed PWD officials to fill all pits and trenches in the river using the sand that had already been quarried.
What is worrying environmentalists is that the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government has earmarked 92 quarrying sites on the Palar riverbed in Vellore district alone that will supply sand for the construction of 21 lakh concrete houses under the Kalaignar Housing Scheme.
The rains brought into focus the deplorable state of not just rivers but also irrigation canals, lakes, tanks and ponds, most of which had been overgrown with water hyacinth, Acacia nilotica trees or thorny shrubs. Farmers were critical of the State government's failure to ensure the desilting of waterbodies and the removal of the vegetation in them that blocked the flow of water and led to the flooding of surrounding areas.
The rains also highlighted the massive and systematic encroachment of hundreds of lakebeds across the State. As these lakebeds turned into sheets of water, the encroachers smashed bunds to let out water, which then flooded the nearby villages and brought untold misery on their residents.
The rains this year cut a swathe of destruction across the State. Paddy on 15 lakh acres (1 acre = 0.4 hectare) lay submerged but the full extent of the damage would be known only after the water drained away. About 5,0000 head of cattle died. As for dwellings, a total of about 3.2 lakh units, excluding huts, were affected. About 8,000 huts were destroyed and 40,000 were damaged.
About 1,200 huts were fully or partially damaged in Villupuram district. Paddy on 1,558 hectares was submerged and horticultural produce on 290 hectares was damaged. In the Kalvarayan hills in the district, tapioca cultivated on 389 acres had started rotting.
In the coastal districts, including Chennai, fishermen could not put out to sea for nearly a month. Many of their catamarans and nets were damaged.
On December 6, I. Mariadoss, 60, a fisherman, was standing on the beach at Foreshore Estate, Chennai, and scanning the sky. He and his friend, M. Duraipandi, were desperate to go fishing; they had not gone for a week. We don't have money even to drink tea. Our tenements are leaking and water has entered our houses. You visit our tenements and you will be appalled that human beings live in such conditions, Mariadoss said.
This was the time of the year when they caught a variety of fish, but this year bad weather had held back a few hundred fishermen from Kasimedu, Tiruvottriyur and Mamallapuram. As a result, the price of fish shot up in the market. What was available had come from Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.
Several thousand kilometres of roads in the State suffered extensive damage, and even on highways traffic moved as if in a slalom.
The State Cabinet met on December 7, with Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi presiding, and decided to allot Rs.500 crore to provide relief to those who had lost their crops or dwellings and to repair roads, lakes and ponds. The government decided to ask the Centre for Rs.1,607 crore under the National Disaster Relief Fund for executing permanent repairs to roads, lakes and ponds.
Earlier, eight senior Indian Administrative Service officers were asked to tour the nine affected districts and prepare reports on the loss of lives and the extent of damage to infrastructure, crops, and so on. The districts included Nagapattinam, Tiruvarur, Thanjavur, Cuddalore, Villupuram, Tuticorin, Tirunelveli, Pudukottai and Ramanathapuram.
Of these districts, Cuddalore, Villupuram, Kanyakumari, Tiruvarur and Nagapattinam were the worst affected. In Cuddalore, watered by the Then Pennaiyar, the Kollidam, the Kedilam, the Vellaru, the Paravanaru and the Manimuktha rivers, 145 villages were marooned. The Veedur, Komukhi and Manimuktha dams were almost full.
In Villupuram district, most of 835 lakes were full and the rest were fast filling up. Villupuram district received 139 cm of rain this year against the normal of 106 cm, a surplus of 24 per cent.
In the coastal Nagapattinam district, 50 per cent of the crops were affected by floods. There were breaches in the banks of several rivers, including Ayya Vayyanaru and Harichandra.
Water flooded the precincts of several temples, including the Ramanathaswamy temple at Rameswaram, the Jambukesvara temple in Tiruchi, the Uthirakosaimangai temple in Ramanathapuram district and the Marundisvarar temple near Tiruthuraipoondi. Lightning damaged the Raja Rajan gopuram (tower) of the Brihadisvara temple in Thanjavur and another temple at Tirukazhukunram, near Chennai.
Most of the big lakes, such as the Veeranam and Madurantakam lakes, surplussed. The Stanley reservoir, popularly called the Mettur dam, which is the lifeline of the farmers in the Cauvery delta in Tamil Nadu, brimmed over. The Pechiparai reservoir overflowed and other important dams such as Sathanur, Vaigai and Azhiyar were almost full.
The Cabinet met on December 6 after the officers returned to Chennai with their assessments. In many places, farmers complained that a whirlwind tour would not give the officers the full picture of the extent of damage.
Good monsoonY.E.A. Raj, Deputy Director-General of Meteorology, Regional Meteorological Centre, Chennai, said: The north-east monsoon has so far been very good for the entire State. As on today [December 7], there has been 48 per cent surplus for Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. The monsoon normally sets in on October 20 and withdraws by December 27 for coastal Tamil Nadu. It withdraws early in Salem, Erode, Karur and the interior parts of the State. He was confident that we can definitely expect more rain until December 27.
The north-east monsoon is a volatile monsoon, Raj said. It is chaotic. It does not have the stability of the south-west monsoon, which covers a huge area and is driven by well-known synoptic components. The north-east monsoon covers a smaller region Tamil Nadu, south Andhra Pradesh and south interior Karnataka. Tamil Nadu is the major beneficiary. He argued that since the north-east monsoon was not driven by well-known synoptic components, it was difficult to predict it. Based on dynamic models, meteorologists were able to predict only five days ahead whether it would bring rain.
Except for Kanyakumari district and the rest of the coastal region and the hilly Nilgiris district, most of the districts in Tamil Nadu receive an annual rainfall of less than 100 cm. Pechiparai in Kanyakumari district received 250 cm of rainfall this year against the normal of 200 cm. Devala in the Nilgiris, which is described as Tamil Nadu's Chirapunjee, receives an annual average of 405 cm. Vedaranyam, on the coast, receives a seasonal rainfall of 106 cm between October and December. Tiruchi, Madurai, Karur, Salem, Erode and Coimbatore came under the dry-farming tract in the State, the Deputy Director General said. Karur and Coimbatore regions receive an average rainfall of less than 60 cm.
Raj, who has a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, squelched the impression that cyclones that head towards Chennai generally skipped Chennai in the last hour. He explained: When cyclones form, they head towards the Pole. Cyclones, which approach Chennai, headed towards the North Pole.
Studies showed that cyclone activity over the Bay of Bengal had neither increased nor decreased during the north-east monsoon, he said. Chennai received only 7 cm from the Jal cyclone on November 7 and it weakened before it crossed close to Chennai. Between 1961 and 2009, in the October to December period, 33 depressions, cyclonic storms and severe cyclonic storms crossed the Tamil Nadu coast. In the same years and period, 45 depressions, cyclonic storms and severe cyclonic storms crossed the Andhra Pradesh coast.
He refuted a suggestion that Ramanathapuram district, which is dubbed a dry area, had received good rainfall in the past five years. Ramanathapuram district normally received 85 cm of annual rainfall. The district was called, perhaps derisively, vaanam paartha bhoomi (the land which looks up to the sky for water) because of its soil condition and because the potential for evaporation was very high there, Raj said.
This monsoon season brought some cheer for Chennai on the water supply front. Four reservoirs the Satyamurti Sagar at Poondi, Red Hills, Chembarapakkam and Shovalaram that supply water to Chennai received copious inflows. As a result, water had to be let out from them and it ended up in the sea. This highlighted, again, the need for new lakes, which can store surplus water from the reservoirs, plans for which have been in cold storage for many years.
There was some relief for the northern districts from December 7, but more misery was in store for the southern districts of Kanyakumari and Tirunelveli. Unprecedented rain lashed these areas from the morning of December 7, turning especially Kanyakumari district into a massive sheet of water. In the 24-hour period, the district received rainfall ranging from 16 cm to 26 cm. The Sri Kandansasta temple at Marthandam near Nagercoil was almost submerged.
