A man wades through knee-deep water in front of a hospital in Bhubaneswar. Pictures by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Oct. 25: Fire service personnel today rescued 183 people who were stuck in their house on the city outskirts as incessant rainfall for the last four days caused severe waterlogging in these areas.

Rainwater entered the ground floor of a private hospital at Acharya Vihar forcing the authorities to shift patients to other floors.

It has been raining relentlessly in the city for last five days submerging many low-lying areas and causing heavy waterlogging in other localities. The meteorological department officials here said that 115mm rainfall was reported in the city on Thursday, while it was 64mm on Wednesday.

Fire officials said that their teams today rescued 178 people from Raghunathpur and five from Tankapani Road as their houses were submerged in rainwater.

“Besides, many of eight of our teams are deployed at various places in and around the city to remove water from the slums and residential areas by using our pumping machines. We have been working in co-ordination with the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation and the district administration,” said assistant fire officer Ramesh Majhi.

The civic officials said that they were trying to remove rainwater from the residential areas so that the walls of the houses in these places did not collapse, causing more problem to the people stuck in these areas.

Sources said that many places in the city witnessed heavy waterlogging because of the rain yesterday and last night. Acharya Vihar, Jayadev Vihar, Ekamra Villa, Forest Park, Tankapani Road, Bomikhal, GGP Colony, Old Town, and many areas on the outskirts of the capital city are under water.

The municipal corporation has deployed four pumps to extract floodwater from Jharana slum area near New Forest Park Colony. The Public Health Engineering Organisation has also deployed three pumps at various places to remove floodwater.

Rainwater also accumulated at Acharya Vihar Square on NH-5 yesterday. The highway authorities installed a pump to remove rainwater from the square. But instead of going into the drain, the water entered into a private hospital creating panic among the patients and their relatives. The hospital staff were in a fix as the ground floor of the building was filled with knee-dip water. They immediately shifted the patients from ground floor to upper floors.

Water had accumulated on the premises of another private hospital and medical college at Pandara. The hospital officials, however, said that they had proper drainage system that could remove the water from the campus.

Brundaban Bastia, chief engineer of drainage division, said: “Now, we are renovating four channels and will take up work with two others. But the civic body has to take care of their health as we are given the contract only to renovate.”