Sluice gates of two out of three dams on the fringes of the capital had to be opened in a phased manner between Tuesday midnight and Wednesday evening for the first time since incessant rainfall lashed Ranchi.

The Getalsud (also called Rukka) and Gonda reservoirs are flushing out excess water to maintain their safety levels, engineers said, adding that the exercise would continue because Ranchi had witnessed more than 205mm rainfall in the past 24 hours.

Tapeshwar Choudhary, executive engineer of Gonda, said the dam level had crossed 127.2ft, which was well over the danger mark. "The dam is 128ft deep. Of the three sluice gates, two have been kept open to bring down the water level to a safe 124ft," he said.

Water from Gonda Dam flows into the Jumar river, which is a tributary of Subernarekha, before reaching Getalsud Dam via Kanke and other areas. A junior engineer at Gonda said an alert had been issued in these areas, asking people to relocate to safer places.

Out of the seven gates at Getalsud Dam, four have been opened in a phased manner since Tuesday night. Against its 36ft capacity, the water in the dam had crossed 34ft. Sources maintained that Getalsud had to be emptied further to accommodate water from Gonda.

Water from Getalsud had flooded Hundru Falls and its adjoining areas around Wednesday afternoon. Raj Kishore, a paryatak mitra, said out of the 300 steps that lead to the waterfall from ground level, 280 steps were submerged by 4pm. "Over a dozen makeshift shops and hotels are inundated and tourist entry has been banned," the guard said.

Amid 205.8mm rainfall in the past 24 hours, daily life remained paralysed in and around the capital.

Areas like New Bandhgari, Ayodhapuri, Pundag, Kokar, Doranda and Ashok Vihar remained heavily waterlogged, with scenes of people wading through knee-deep water common. Uprooted trees, caved-in roofs and broken boundary walls were reported from many places.

A 30ft boundary wall of the IAS Officers' Association campus in Morabadi collapsed on Wednesday morning, affecting vehicular movement in the area. In the afternoon, the boundary wall of JAP-I grounds collapsed, damaging around half a dozen cars parked nearby. At Harihar Singh Road, a truck got caught in a yawning crater while at a locality in Ratu, an under-construction sewage chamber caved in, resulting in a big crater in front of a school.

Hatia Dam, where the water level has reached 30.6ft against a total capacity of 37ft, will end rationing of supply to the city from Thursday. For close to a year, water supply was made only three to four days a week. Now, it will be supplied daily, executive engineer Sashi Sekhar said.

"Roads have become non-motorable in heavy rain once again, but Ranchi Municipal Corporation is doing precious little," said Kamal Singh, a shop-owner.

"Like every year, this year too our locality is flooded. Water has entered our homes," said Sanjay Kumar, a resident of New Bandhgari.

A resident of Panchsheel Nagar on Ratu Road, Dilip Kumar said they spent a whole night removing water from their houses using buckets.