| Rain wreaks havoc in Jammu amid Corona crisis, Birwan bridge damaged | | |  Early Times Report
Udhampur/Poonch, June 6: An overnight downpour damaged a key bridge in Udhampur district of Jammu and Kashmir, officials said on Saturday, as authorities announced its closure till the completion of necessary repair work. A major portion of the Birwan bridge on old Jammu-Srinagar national highway near Udhampur got washed away by the heavy rains, the officials said.
They said though the bridge was already under repairs and was only open for one-way traffic for the last three months, the latest damage rendered it unsafe. Udhampur District Development Commissioner Piyush Singla immediately ordered closure of the bridge for vehicular traffic and asked the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) to speed up restoration work.
The traffic was diverted to Jammu-Srinagar national highway due to the closure of the bridge, which is connecting over two lakh population besides being vital for the movement of security forces, the officials said, adding all Udhampur-bound traffic has now to cover additional 18 km to reach the district headquarters. The BRO, which is looking after this road, has moved its men and machinery to ensure early restoration of the bridge, the officials said.
Due to continuous rains, people are facing a lot of difficulty and hard work.
It is said that due to the cloudburst late evening in Deengal village of Poonch district, so much damage has been done. During this time one car, tractor and five motorcycles were swept away.
While the paddy crop on about 70 kanals of land has also been washed away with the waste, on the same side, due to the strong flow of water in the drain flowing in the village, some part of the road was washed away and many houses also got water.
Due to which a lot of people have been wasted. At present, no loss of life has been reported. According to the villagers, it started raining suddenly at 5:30 pm on Friday evening and there was a loud explosion after a few moments. With that, the drain in the village flooded. It seemed that instead of this sewer, there was some big river, whose waves were rising seven to eight feet high. It seemed as if the water of the drain would drain everything.
The water surge had taken a terrible form. Before we understood anything, a Maruti car, a tractor and five motorcycles were swept away by breaking the flooded banks of the drain. Many vehicles were also damaged.
The car swept away two kilometers: The owner of the car told that I was standing fifty meters away from the drain and sitting in a friend’s house that the cloud burst and the car flowed two kilometers away. The car is completely destroyed. Kabir Hussain, Nazir Ahmed, Mohammad Bashir, etc., people whose water entered the houses.
They told that when the area was flooded in 2014, we had asked the district administration to build a dam, but after that no one has come here. Due to this, we have suffered so much today.
Thankfully our children survived, who were present in the houses during the flood. On the other hand, as the flood waters receded, a large number of people came out of their homes and started searching for vehicles that were washed away. Where they took a motorcycle in a good condition and pulled one out of the drain in a badly damaged condition.
|
|
