Is Bengaluru prepared for a Chennai-like situation? Think again!

If reports from Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre are to be believed, Bengaluru can soon become the next Chennai in terms of suffering from rainwater floods.

The agency has stated in the past few years, rainwater runoff, which means the water that drains away, has almost doubled in Bengaluru. This has increased the possibility of flooding in the start-up city.

"In the urban flood forecasting system, we get forecast exclusive for Bengaluru. I can run models to predict floods and we have worked out the capacity of each drainage network," Srinivas Reddy, director, KSNDMC, told ET.

Reddy, however, thinks that Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) the municipal corporation of Bengaluru has not done enough on its part to avoid such dangers.

"Historically, we know where inundation occurs. Even 20mm rainfall for one hour can cause flooding in parts of the city. If rainfall exceeds 12.5mm for 15 minutes -the threshold value -an alert is sounded to ward-level authorities. We are ready to give them our analysis. BBMP has to be ready. We don't know what their priority is," Reddy continued. He further stated that he didn’t get any response when he requested for a meeting with BBMP, three months ago.

BBMP Commissioner G Kumar Naik, on the other hand, thinks that Bengaluru is well-prepared for any imminent flood danger.

The news and reports about the safety of Bengaluru has come after Chennai received a whopping 1218.6mm rainfall in November, which is almost thrice its monthly quota. Bengaluru too recorded 290.4mm of rain, marking the highest rainfall in 100 years.

Talking of facts found by a recent study by IISC, the drainage system in north Bengaluru, an 18-km stretch roughly between IISc and Kodigehalli, can’t be solely relied upon, and most drains there do not have the required capacity to handle extreme storm events, which can very well lead to urban floods.

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