Hundreds are still trapped, factories closed in Chennai, India

CHENNAI:

Volunteers waded through stagnant water to distribute food and supplies, and some manufacturing plants remained closed in India’s southern technology and automotive region of Chennai on Friday, four days after Cyclone Michaung hit the coast.

At least 14 people, most of them in Chennai and Tamil Nadu state, have died in floods caused by torrential rains that began on Monday.

The cyclone itself made landfall further north in the state of Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday afternoon.

Authorities said some low-lying areas of the state were still flooded and government officials and volunteers were taking supplies to people stuck in their homes in slums and other areas.

The greater Chennai area is home to the Indian units of several global companies including Hyundai Motor ( 005380.KS ), Daimler and Taiwan’s Foxconn ( 2317.TW ) and Pegatron ( 4938.TW ) which undertake contract manufacturing for the Apple (AAPL.O) .

Read more: Chennai flooded as heavy rains from Cyclone Michaung lash southern India

While many of them, including Pegatron and Foxconn, resumed operations within a day or two of the cyclone’s landfall, some TVS group factories located in the worst-hit areas are yet to open, industry sources said.

Adani Krishnapatnam Port ( APSE.NS ) in Andhra Pradesh said on Friday that the cyclone had “very badly affected” its operations and that it had declared a period of force majeure from December 3.

Force majeure is a notice used to describe events beyond a company’s control, such as a natural disaster, which usually relieves it of a contractual obligation without penalty.

State-owned Madras Fertilizers ( MDFT.NS ) informed bourses that its Chennai plant has been shut down and is expected to resume operations within two to four weeks.

The infrastructure is questionable

Information technology (IT) service providers told staff to work from home for the entire week, while schools and colleges were closed. Some schools and colleges were turned into temporary shelters.

This week’s floods in Chennai brought back memories of the widespread damage caused by floods eight years ago, which killed around 290 people.

In Andhra Pradesh, damage from the cyclone was relatively limited, with roads damaged and trees uprooted as large waves crashed ashore.

Defense Minister Rajnath Singh visited Chennai on Thursday and announced that New Delhi would release a second tranche of 4.5 billion rupees ($54 million) to Tamil Nadu to help manage the damage. The federal government has also approved a Rs 5.6 billion flood management project in Chennai, he said.

Residents of Chennai have questioned the ability of the city’s infrastructure to handle extreme weather events.

“Not only has urbanization itself caused a problem, but the nature of urbanization has preyed on open spaces, holding areas like swamps and floodplains,” said social activist Nityanand Jayaraman.

But experts said better stormwater drainage systems could not prevent flooding caused by very heavy and extremely heavy rains.

“This solution would help a lot in moderate and heavy rainfall, but not in very heavy and extremely heavy rainfall,” Raj Bhagat P, a civil engineer and geoanalytics expert, said on Wednesday.