Road after road in the city remained waterlogged even on Wednesday evening, and residents of some of these neighbourhoods complained they had been living without power for more than 36 hours.
By the end of the day, power utility CESC said it had restored electricity everywhere in the city except the Udita housing complex off EM Bypass. The complex was still under water, and the utility said it would be too risky to restore the supply there.
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation struggled to drain water from Udita and many other areas.
Tens of thousands of cars were either partially or completely submerged in water as it rained deep into the night. Many of them were heading to service stations on Wednesday. Many more could not be moved.
Most workshops declined to pick up cars as they were short of staff and space. “We are receiving hundreds of calls,” said an official at a Maruti Suzuki workshop.
Tow vehicles charged ₹4,500 for rides that would otherwise cost ₹1,500 or less.
The Alipore Met Office has forecast rain in Calcutta for the next few days, with a warning that its intensity and spread might increase from Saturday.
A 43-year-old man, employed under the daily wages scheme by the Rajpur-Sonarpur municipality, died on Wednesday afternoon after he went inside a manhole in Sonarpur’s Millan Pally to pick up plastic. He collapsed inside the manhole and was later brought out by his fellow workers.
A pole marks out an open manhole near Ballygunge Place, Kolkata
The chairperson of the Rajpur-Sonarpur municipality, Pallab Das, said Jayanta Ghosh had not been assigned the job of going into the manhole and had done so on his own. “We took him to Sonarpur Rural Hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival. He was not assigned the duty to go inside and pick plastic,” Das said.
Nine people died of electrocution in the waterlogged streets of Calcutta on Tuesday.
That toll rose to 11 on Wednesday with the deaths of Ghosh and Badal Garu, who was electrocuted at Garia’s Nandi Street.
A system moving east to west along the north Bay of Bengal triggered in five hours the heaviest rain Calcutta has received in 40 years.
After being rained in on Tuesday, many stepped out for work on Wednesday morning but they were greeted by roads still under knee-deep water.
Many said they had expected the water to recede by Wednesday morning as it barely rained after Tuesday. They were wrong.
A KMC official said the rain was so intense and so heavy that there was no dip in the water level at the sumps in the pumping stations on Tuesday. It was only from early Wednesday that the water level started to dip. “We were running all pumps to drain water, yet fresh water was coming in and filling the sumps. The force and volume of the incoming water were very high,” said an official.
Ballygunge was among the worst in terms of waterlogging. Jamir Lane, Swinhoe Street, Ballygunge Place and Anil Moitra Road weremarooned.
At Anil Moitra Road, residents were furious on Wednesday afternoon about the power cut since Tuesday morning’s rain. “We cannot even use a pump to drain water from our basement,” a resident said around 4.30pm.
A housing complex a few blocks away managed to hire a diesel generator to run the pumps.
Residents in pockets of Survey Park said they had no power till Wednesday evening.
AJC Bose Road was under knee-deep water. “I had to wade through knee-deep water from Rabindra Sadan Metro station to Belle Vue Clinic. People held shoes in their hands and walked on waterlogged roads,” said a man in his 40s.
Further south, Patuli, Baghajatin and Kasba had multiple roads under water.
In the north, Sukeas Street, Vidyasagar Street and Amherst Street were among the most waterlogged neighbourhoods. When The Telegraph visited Amherst Street around noon on Wednesday, the water was waist-deep.
With Puja three days away, most organisers are still reeling from the impact of the rain and waterlogging.
Puddapukur Youth Association had to cancel its inauguration scheduled for Wednesday. “There is water inside our pandal. Some of the idols had to be shifted to prevent damage,” said one of the organisers there.
The waterlogging damaged stocks in hundreds of shops and stalls on footpaths. At Gariahat and Hatibagan, many were busy retrieving whatever they could on Wednesday afternoon.
They used buckets to remove the water inside their stores.
Dasharath Poddar, who owns a garment store along Rashbehari Avenue, said “materials worth at least ₹5 lakh” had been damaged. “This is a huge loss for us. Business was hit as we could not open the shops. The damage to materials made it worse,” said Poddar.