Bombay. Waterworld?
Tuesday, July 26, 2005. Bombay. It rained and rained and rained…
My journey homeward that evening, included a seven hour drive (covering just over two miserable kms, after which I parked my car along the side of the highway and proceeded on foot), a two and a half hour walk, quite a bit of which was in thigh to waist-deep water and during which I covered about 10 kms.
Terrible, miserable, pathetic. And yet, with the grace of God, just that. The horror stories which surfaced in the next week made one realise just how bad some people had it. Things may have been siginificantly different, even life-savingly different, if our infrastructure was organized the way it should have been. I hope that the enormity of this calamity will have some effect on the concerned authorities. Somehow, I don’t feel very optimistic :(
The last week was also illustrative of how technology could be invaluable in our day-to-day life. If it worked, that is. Unfortunately, mobile phone services simply couldn’t cope, landlines went kaput and internet access was for all practical purposes non-existent. I’m not saying that these services don’t work in and of themselves. Leaving aside for the moment the crazy loads they must have been subjected to during that time, there’s not much that they could have done if there was no electric power for long durations. And it would be equally difficult for the Internet access provider, whose network operation center on the ground floor of a building was submerged under water. As were large portions of the city.
Bringing us back to planned infrastructure. Under worst case conditions, the weakest link matters. Sometimes, we may not even realise there is a link there. The city needs to be prepared for worst case situations. Besides setting up disaster management operations, it’s time to examine our infrastructure again. And begin to redesign if needed, for a better and safer future.