Tirupati: Heavy rains bring down boulders on ghat road, traffic not affected

Tirupati: The unabated heavy rains on Tirumala hills resulted in minor landslides in some places and also the falling of a huge boulder on the second ghat road of the hilltop temple town. However, there was no hindrance to traffic on the ghat road to the uphill nor any damage as the boulder fell down at about 2 in the early morning when there was no vehicle movement.

According to TTD sources, the boulder which was fallen at the 12 km point on the ghat road, was removed using a crane while the workers cleared debris due to landslide on the road. A team of TTD engineering department staff keeping a close watch on the ghat road alerting the pilgrims to be cautious while driving on the hill road and frequent announcements alerting the pilgrims is also being made at the toll gate.

The heavy inflows into dams on the hills continuing while all the waterfalls gushing including the Malavanigunta and Kapilatheertham waterfalls meandering through the densely populated localities in the pilgrims city flowing with full force alerting the corporation authorities, who are keeping a round the clock vigil on the residential areas near the banks of the two streams and also on the low-lying areas in the city where water logging was reported in many localities due to rains.

The residents flocked Kapilathertham to have a glimpse of the waterfalls while many said that they are witnessing it for the first time such a huge flow of water gushing.

The continuous rains since December 3 crippled normal life and also hit hard the livelihood of hundreds of daily wage earners, vendors and others with no work or business due to the torrential rains. Meanwhile, official sources said that the district average rainfall increased to 77 mm this month till December 6.