Vehicles navigate a waterlogged Zoo Road Tiniali in Guwahati on Monday. Picture by UB Photos

Guwahati, May 26: The rains have returned and so has the city’s misery. As Guwahati sank in 11.5mm of rain over the past 24 hours, scenes of collapsing walls, uprooted trees and people wading through chest-deep water became a familiar sight.

Seven persons, including two minors, were injured when a boundary wall of Gurukul Grammar School, a private school on a hill at Gitanagar, collapsed around 4.30am and damaged two houses down the hill.

“I woke up to some sounds and before we could understand what was happening, a portion of my house was hit by debris. We were hurt but managed to crawl out,” said Gitumoni Baishya, a housewife who was among the injured. The rains also triggered a landslide in the Lichubagan area where a portion of a two-storied building on the hills collapsed. At Anil Nagar and Nabin Nagar — the two worst-affected localities — people used rubber boats, provided by State Disaster Response Force personnel, to wade through the water.

Office-goers faced a harrowing time. “I reached office at 11am instead of 9am. The water was waist-deep in front of my house and no boats were available,” said Priyanka Debnath, an employee of the state social welfare department and a resident of Nabin Nagar.

As residents struggled, state government agencies — including the Guwahati Municipal Corporation and the Guwahati Metropolitan Development Authority — pleaded helplessness. “We desilted many drains ahead of the Lok Sabha elections but it is impossible to improve the condition till a comprehensive scheme is taken up by the government to solve the waterlogging problem,” a GMC official said.

Chief minister Tarun Gogoi had inspected many localities in the city on May 10 following severe waterlogging and instructed the Kamrup (metro) district administration and the disaster management department to take immediate steps to improve the scenario.

Gogoi had blamed the waterlogging problem on mud sliding down from the hills of neighbouring Meghalaya, hill-cutting in and around Guwahati and dumping of plastic wastes in drains. He had also instructed the district disaster management authority to remove encroachment near Deepor Beel.

The meteorology department has said the region is likely to receive heavy rain and thunderstorms in the next 48 hours, so Guwahati is still not out of the deep end.