PANAJI
Heavy and incessant rains lampooned Goa the entire Sunday causing havoc and destruction, including the catastrophe of three labourers being killed in a landslide when a retaining wall collapsed at Kundaim.
Heavy rains began early Sunday morning following up the overnight pouring. Soon, reports of water-logged roads, trees getting uprooted and causing widespread damage to property trickled in through the day from all parts of the State.
KUNDAIM TRAGEDY
The three labourers from a larger group living in a nearby hut were crushed when a retaining wall at Kundaim collapsed in the pounding rain.
The names of the labourers were provided as Dilip Yadav from Bihar, Mukesh Kumar Singh from Odisha and Trimal Nayak.
A fourth Ankit Kumar Yadav, also of Bihar, was injured in the incident.
The retaining wall collapsed around 3.30 pm as heavy rain lashed the area, instantly killing the three workers who lived in a hut near the factory in Kundaim.
Fire personnel from Ponda and Kundaim rushed to the spot even as Police Inspector Yogesh Sawant of Mardol Police Station along with a team arrived.
The bodies of the workers were removed with the help of an excavator and taken to the sub-district hospital in Ponda where they were declared dead on arrival.
HIKERS RESCUED
In Sattari, a waterfall in Pali trapped a group of some 80 hikers, triggering panic. Fire-fighters and the police were rushed there and they worked for several hours on the rescue operation to bring them to safety.
The incident occurred when tourists had come hiking to the Shivlinga waterfall got trapped with the sudden rise of water.
Mhadei Sanctuary officials with the help of personnel from the Valpoi fire station and the police then jointly launched an operation to rescue the trapped people which they eventually succeeded after a few hours.
Sources said the trapped group of tourists had crossed the rivulet to get to the waterfall while they were there, the water level in the rivulet quickly rose and they could not come back, sending waves of panic among them.
According to Girish Bailudkar, Zonal Officer of the Sanctuary, firefighters along with sanctuary staff helped the trapped tourists to cross the river and return to safety. Bailudkar also said that local villagers also supported the rescue work.
The incident prompted the government to ban entry of visitors to all waterfalls across Goa for a week including those which were earlier announced as low risk.
MESSY TRAIL
IN PANAJI
In the capital city, as usual the 18th June Road was waterlogged most part of the day with the Met office reporting 115 mm of rain in the 6-odd hours between 8.30 am and 3 pm.
The fire and emergency services personnel were kept on their toes as calls of houses being damaged and power lines being snapped with trees falling kept coming in.
A section of the Altinho hillock witnessed a mudslide along the road leading to the Court Complex from Mala. An excavator was pressed into service and order restored there.
By afternoon, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) upgraded the State's orange alert to red, warning that the heavy rain is likely to continue on Monday as well.
For Monday, however, the IMD has notified an Orange alert and yellow alert for three days thereafter.
Meanwhile, mini-floods were triggered by the heavy rain at several places and water entered homes in several locales across the State.
