Mumbai has been hit by heaving rains which has resulted in waterlogged streets, massive traffic jams and the cancellation of trains and flights.

After heavy rain battered the city, people on roads were forced to walk in waist-high water, abandoning cars to walk.

Deputy municipal commissioner Sudhir Naik said, "This is an exceptional situation. The high tide coupled with gusty winds affected the water-receding capacity."

India Meteorological Department (IMD) forecast "extremely heavy rainfall" in the next 24 to 48 hours in the western coast of Maharashtra, including Mumbai, and parts of Gujarat and Goa.

PM Narendra Modi tweeted, assuring the Centre would support the state in "mitigating the situation due to heavy rains in parts of the state."

"Urge the people of Mumbai and surrounding areas to stay safe and take all essential precautions in the wake of the heavy rain," the PM said.

Navy helicopters are on standby to meet any eventuality in view of heavy rains in Mumbai and its adjoining areas, while the NDRF too has been put on alert.</s>Mumbai: Two toddlers were among at least six people who died after floods caused by heavy seasonal monsoon rains destroyed homes and disrupted traffic in India’s financial capital, police said on Wednesday.

Train services resumed slowly and dozens of commuters began walking to work, Mumbai, a city of 20 million people is home to India’s two biggest stock exchanges and the headquarters of several major companies.

Some low-lying areas remained under water, causing vehicle pile-ups, after the city received nearly a month's equivalent of rainfall in a single day. Authorities ordered schools and colleges to shut following forecasts of more rain.

There are several stranded cars and two-wheelers on the roads that we are clearing,” said traffic police official Amitesh Kumar.

“We are not expecting any major traffic jams as the machinery is geared up and the rain forecast is also not as bad.”

Police said a 45-year-old woman and a 1-1/2-year-old child, members of the same family, died after their home in the northeastern suburb of Vikhroli crumbled late on Tuesday, while a 2-year-old girl died in a wall collapse.

In the neighbouring city of Thane, three people died after being swept away by floods, police added.

Several firms made arrangements to provide food and rest areas for employees stuck in offices, while officials of temples and religious bodies offered help to those stranded on streets.

Flights faced delays of up to 15 minutes, a spokeswoman for the Mumbai airport said, following several cancellations late on Tuesday.

The deluge revived memories of 2005 floods that killed more than 500 people, the majority of them in shantytown slums where more than half the city’s population lives.

Unabated construction on floodplains and coastal areas, as well as stormwater drains and waterways clogged by plastic garbage have made the city increasingly vulnerable to storms.

In a message on Twitter, Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered crisis-mitigation assistance to the government of Maharashtra.

More than 1,200 people have died across India, Bangladesh and Nepal in the worst floods to strike South Asia in years.

Click here for LIVE updates on the Mumbai rains</s>An unrelenting downpour has battered low-lying parts of the city since the early hours of Tuesday, with some areas receiving almost 12 inches of rain. Weather forecasts suggested that the rain will continue over the next 48 hours before it begins to decrease.

A 32-year-old woman died after falling into a drain filled with rainwater in Kalwa. In a different incident, the body of a 28-year-old man was discovered near a drain in Korum. A three-year-old girl also fell into the drain but is still missing, Deputy Municipal Commissioner, Sandeep Malvi, told CNN.

A further three people were killed in two separate incidents of huts collapsing, authorities have confirmed.

Vehicles gingerly made their way through waterlogged roadways as residents sloshed through flooded streets -- navigating waist-high water in some areas -- after being sent home early from offices and schools.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people in affected areas to be safe and "take all essential precautions in the wake of the heavy rain," in a series of posts on Twitter The Indian Navy has put flood rescue teams on standby at multiple locations across Mumbai in anticipation of worsening conditions. Since June, more than 1,200 people have been killed across India and neighboring Bangladesh following the catastrophic monsoon flooding which has spread across both countries, affecting more than 41 million people. According to a spokesman for the Red Cross, at least 950,000 houses have been destroyed after being submerged in the floodwaters. People continued with celebrations for Ganesh Chaturthi, a Hindu festival, in the city on Tuesday despite the persistent downpour. In the Parel neighborhood of Mumbai, Piyush Jain posted a video on Twitter showing inflatable dinghies being used to ferry people across stricken roads. Currently in Parel, boats are out. Stay safe guys. #MumbaiRains @RidlrMUM pic.twitter.com/JX1OXbcCeb — Piyush Jain (@PJ_CRACKER) August 29, 2017 Domestic airline operators -- including Vistara and Jet Airways -- tweeted flight diversions and cancellations to the coastal city of nearly 20 million people. "There are around 25 locations where there's intense waterlogging and they've had to divert traffic," Devendra Fadnavis, chief minister of Maharashtra state told reporters. "We're advising offices to give their employees the rest of the day off and leave as soon as they can." Stay indoors as far as possible.Move out only if it is very important. Due to waterlogged roads,Traffic not moving and slow at most places — Mumbai Police (@MumbaiPolice) August 29, 2017 India's National Disaster Management Authority has been updating its social media feeds with safety advisories and helpline phone numbers, while Mumbai police have cautioned people to stay inside their homes and to abandon vehicles stuck in water amid the deluge. Heavy rainfall caused chaos in the coastal city (above). A woman is seen (below) on the sea front during the heavy rain showers on Tuesday. Its official account also warned people of a high tide which was expected to hit the city in the late afternoon. "It has been raining so heavily that water from manholes is spilling onto the roads," local resident Aman Patel told Reuters. "It seems as if no measures have been taken. It has been raining so heavily that people are having a tough time." #MumbaiRains Five(05)Flood Rescue teams+Two(02)Diving teams ready 2render assistance at different locations across Mumbai @SpokespersonMoD pic.twitter.com/mpVwjeUdUt — SpokespersonNavy (@indiannavy) August 29, 2017 Local media reported that the downpour could become the worst in Mumbai since 2005, when hundreds were killed after the city received 39 inches of rain in 24 hours, according to the Regional Meteorological Centre. But officials downplayed the comparison. Rajiv Nivatkar, director of the Disaster Management Unit in Mumbai, told CNN: "It is not a flood-like situation because no one needs to be rescued."</s>MUMBAI, India (AP) — Torrential rains caused a five-story apartment building to collapse Thursday in the west Indian financial capital of Mumbai, killing 16 people and possibly burying more than a dozen more under debris, police said.

Rescuers, residents and police officers managed to pull 30 injured people from the rubble. Still, more than a dozen were missing and feared trapped beneath a huge mound of mud, broken concrete slabs and twisted steel girders.

The building was one of thousands in Mumbai that are more than 100 years old, with foundations that have been weakened by years of heavy monsoon rains. Last month, another four-story building toppled in the city’s suburb of Ghatkopar, killing 17.

Thursday’s tragedy occurred in a congested area of Mumbai’s southern Bhendi Bazaar area, following the city’s heaviest rainfall in 15 years.

Authorities were advising people living in an adjacent building to vacate after it developed cracks following Thursday’s early morning collapse.

It was not immediately clear how many people might be trapped in the toppled building.

“We are asking people to check if their family members are safe and accounted for,” officer Manoj Sharma said at the scene.

The building had housed nine families in apartments above a first-floor nursery school, but the collapse occurred before the toddlers had arrived for the day, police said.

Nearby resident Amina Sheikh tightly held her 4-year-old grandson’s hand as they watched the rescue efforts from a safe distance.

“This is my grandson. He used to go to school in that building,” she said, tearfully pointing at the rubble.

She had been getting the boy ready for school Thursday morning when she heard a loud boom and saw the building had crashed down. It was “an hour before his class began. That’s why my grandson’s life was saved,” she said.

Hours later, rescuers used earth-moving machines to lift concrete slabs and cement blocks as they searched for survivors.

Building collapses are common in India during the monsoon season, which is June to September. High demand and lax regulations encourage some builders to use substandard materials or add unauthorized extra floors.

Property prices and rents are among the highest in India as Mumbai has expanded manifold in the past five decades.

Meanwhile, the city was slowly limping back to normalcy after it was paralyzed by heavy downpours for two days.

Train services and public transport were halted and airports shut on Tuesday as roads turned into rivers and floodwaters seeped into many low-lying buildings. In many places, people had to abandon their vehicles and wade through waist-deep water to reach their homes.

Schools, colleges and offices that were shut Wednesday opened Thursday, but attendance was sparse.

Every year the city struggles to cope with the annual monsoon deluge, drawing criticism about its poor planning.

Since the start of the season, devastating floods across South Asia have killed at least 1,000 people and affected close to 40 million across northern India, southern Nepal and northern Bangladesh.

The rains have led to wide-scale flooding in a broad arc stretching across the Himalayan foothills in the three countries, causing landslides, damaging roads and electric towers and washing away tens of thousands of homes and vast swathes of farmland.

Associated Press writer Nirmala George in New Delhi contributed to this report.</s>Mumbai: As parts of India’s financial capital went under after more than 400 mm rainfall – the equivalent of 11 days of average daily monsoon rainfall in 12 hours – on 29 August, 2017, the deluge mirrored similar scenes in other cities this month, a consequence of increased concretisation and increasingly variable rainfall patterns, according to various studies.

This is the worst flooding since 2005 when, in 24 hours to 8.30 am on 27 July, 2005, in its worst ever flooding, Mumbai witnessed 944 mm of rain, with more than 500 people dying in that flood.

The rain came down in Mumbai much as it had in Chandigarh on the morning of 21 August, 2017. By afternoon, the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana had received 112 mm of rainfall, 23 times the city’s average daily monsoon rainfall. Similarly, on 15 August, Bengaluru received 37 times, and on 11-12 August Agartala received more than 11 times its average daily monsoon rainfall of the last five years.

In Chandigarh, a city of 1 million, commuters found it difficult to reach their destinations, and some had to abandon their cars and motorbikes on the roads. Many vehicles floated in the water–a reminder of similar images from Chennai during the November-December 2015 floods. Water entered buildings, and the urban administration of the country’s best-planned city descended into chaos.

Independence Day 2017 was unusually wet and waterlogged for Bengaluru. Heavy rains started around midnight, and by morning, 128 mm of rain had cascaded down on the city of 9 million. Localities in and around Koramangala in the southern part of the city went under water, with parked vehicles nearly submerging.

On 11 and 12 August, 2017, a heavy downpour drowned Agartala, the capital of Tripura in northeastern India. While the city of 438,000 received 102 mm of rainfall in one day, on the next there was 94 mm, and 196 mm in two days was more than the city could take. The city’s systems collapsed, and normal life was disrupted.

On 26-27 July, 2017, the downpour was in Ahmedabad, where within 24 hours the city of 5.5 million received 200 mm of rainfall. To make matters worse, due to heavy rainfall in the upper part of the Sabarmati river catchment, the authorities had to release water from the Dharoi dam. With the river hemmed in by perpendicular, concrete riverbanks as it flowed through Ahmedabad, there were serious threats of heavy flooding, and the administration reportedly evacuated more than 10,000 people.

With such cloudbursts becoming more frequent across India, these are the questions scientists are considering: Is the prognosis of extreme weather events becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change beginning to come true? Are Indian cities designed to withstand such events? What can be done to make them more resilient?

Recent research indicates that the intensity of these extreme weather events is increasing, according to Pradeep Mujumdar, chairman, Interdisciplinary Centre for Water Research (ICWaR) at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. Also, the intensity of urban events vis-à-vis non-urban ones is increasing.

“Though it is difficult to attribute any one event to climate change, there is much research results from across the world that is showing that the pattern of multiple extreme events in a season is happening due to the changing climate,” Mujumdar told indiaclimatedialogue.net, a website dedicated to climate-change reportage.

Chennai had a series of five “extreme precipitation events”, in scientific parlance, between November 8 and December 4, 2015. Before the city could recover from one event, it was battered by the next. The climax was the release of water from the Chembarambakkam reservoir upstream of the city, causing the Adayar river to jump its banks in Chennai.

The secondary runway of the Chennai airport, built over the Adayar river, was flooded and airport services were paralysed for days. To evacuate those who wanted to leave the city and were stuck at the airport, the Indian Navy helped operate civilian flights from the naval air base at nearby Arkonam.

ICWaR has been studying the urban flooding events in Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru in recent years. For Bengaluru, the team compared 26 general circulation models (or global climate models) along four “representative concentration pathways”–greenhouse gas emission scenarios up to year 2100, used by the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The conclusion: Climate change projections clearly indicate an increase in high-intensity rainfall.

Another report, published by the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru, confirms similar findings: Rain events greater than 100 mm have increased in number in the past 100 years, researchers Jagdish Krishnaswamy and Srinivasan Vaidyanathan wrote. There is an overall increasing trend of events exceeding 100, 150 and 200 mm since the 1900s. But there is an increasing variability in recent decades.

It was not possible to attribute the extreme rainfall in Chennai on 1 December, 2015, to climate change, a team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and the University of Oxford in the UK, said in a 2016 study.

Taken by surprise, cities struggle to predict rainfall intensity and its impact

It is this variability in rainfall that takes cities by surprise. Professional weather watchers of the India Meteorological Department and private individuals and agencies are able to say that it is going to rain over a particular city, but they cannot foresee its intensity and impact.

To improve prediction, global climate models developed by the IPCC need to be reconstructed for cities, said scientists.

Due to their higher population density, cities are vulnerable to greater loss of life and property than rural areas. Chennai, for instance, has a population density of 26,553 people per sq km.

Extreme rainfall also leaves cities at greater economic risk. The economic loss to Chennai from the flood of 2015 was estimated to be $3.5 billion (Rs 21,381 crore), according to annual estimates compiled by global reinsurance major Munich Re.

If extreme rainfall events become more frequent, cities need to be prepared for extreme flooding. They do not appear to be.

Why cities are not prepared for extreme rainfall

In Bengaluru, storm water networks are either blocked or not adequate, according to Veena Srinivasan, fellow at ATREE. Many of these drains also carry sewage, which should be separated and treated. With sewage mixing with stormwater, it is difficult to channel the excess rain water into local lakes.

Garbage also finds its way into and obstructs stormwater drains, floating out when they overflow.

Changing urban land use disallows water from soaking into the ground. “In normal grounds outside the city, nearly 80% of the rain is absorbed,” G K Bhat, chairman of Ahmedabad-based Taru Leading Edge, a development think tank, told indiaclimatedialogue.net. “Today, with concrete and tarmac all around, we are creating almost a near-total impervious area. Thus, the flood gets amplified in urban areas because of change in land use.”

While the July 2017 flood in Ahmedabad was not the most severe in the city’s history, it had a greater impact than in the past because of growing concretisation of open land.

In Chennai, the release of water from the Chembarambakkam reservoir upstream of the Adayar river on December 1, 2015, was thought to have triggered floods along the river. However, later studies proved that the reservoir water only added to water flowing in from the southwestern suburbs of the city beyond Tambaram.

“The main flow in the Adayar river was coming from these suburbs, and the Chembarambakkam flow only added to this,” Balaji Narasimhan, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, told indiaclimatedialogue.net. “In future, when these suburbs have more buildings and roads, the amplification of the flood could be even higher.”

Existing infrastructure is inadequate and prone to collapse

With the exception of planned cities, such as Chandigarh, and industrial townships, such as Bhilai and Jamshedpur, most Indian cities grow organically from a cluster of villages and small towns. Cities grow without adequate infrastructure, and whatever exists is inadequate for extreme rainfall.

“The existing infrastructure collapses quickly because it is designed for minor floods and not the kind of extreme events that we are seeing in the recent years,” said Bhat. “Even though guidelines have been laid out by the National Disaster Management Authority, urban planners and managers go for designs calibrated for milder events to reduce cost.”

Ironically, when Chennai flooded in 2015, it was the stormwater infrastructure laid down by the British more than a century ago in the older parts of the city that withstood the brunt better than drains installed in the newer parts of the city.

Without redesigning their infrastructure and preparing for extreme weather, India’s cities will increasingly succumb to its ravages.

A version of this story first appeared here on indiaclimatedialogue.net.</s>MUMBAI, India (AP) — A five-story building collapsed in India’s financial capital of Mumbai, killing 12 people and injuring 14 others on Thursday, after torrential rains lashed the country’s west. Another 25 people are feared trapped in the debris.

Rescue workers, police and residents helped pull 13 people out of the rubble and were looking for those buried in the huge mound of mud, concrete slabs and twisted steel girders. The residential building is located in a congested lane of the Bhendi Bazaar area in southern Mumbai.

Thousands of Mumbai buildings that are more than 100 years old are at risk of collapse, their foundations weakened partly by some of the heaviest rainfall that the city has witnessed in more than 15 years. Last month, 17 people were killed when a four-story building collapsed in the Mumbai suburb of Ghatkopar.

Authorities were advising people living in an adjacent building to vacate after it developed cracks following Thursday’s collapse.

A police official at the site said it was not immediately clear how many people were trapped in the building.

“We are asking people to check if their family members are safe and accounted for,” said Manoj Sharma. He said nine families lived in the building.

A nursery school was located in the ground floor of the building, but the collapse occurred before the toddlers had reached for the day.

Hours after the collapse, rescuers used earth moving machines to lift concrete slabs and cement blocks as they searched for survivors.

Building collapses are common in India during the monsoon season, which is June to September. High demand and lax regulations encourage some builders to use substandard materials or add unauthorized extra floors.

Property prices and rents are among the highest in India as Mumbai has expanded manifold in the past five decades.

Meanwhile, the city was slowly limping back to normalcy after it was paralyzed by heavy downpours for two days.

Train services and public transport were halted and airports shut on Tuesday as roads turned into rivers and floodwaters seeped into many low-lying buildings. In many places, people had to abandon their vehicles and wade through waist-deep water to reach their homes.

Schools, colleges and offices that were shut Wednesday opened Thursday, but attendance was sparse.

Every year the city struggles to cope with the annual monsoon deluge, drawing criticism about its poor planning.

Since the start of the season, devastating floods across South Asia have killed at least 1,000 people and affected close to 40 million across northern India, southern Nepal and northern Bangladesh.

The rains have led to wide-scale flooding in a broad arc stretching across the Himalayan foothills in the three countries, causing landslides, damaging roads and electric towers and washing away tens of thousands of homes and vast swathes of farmland.</s>Death toll from Mumbai floods jumps to 14, rain eases up (VIDEO)

MUMBAI, Aug 31 — Two toddlers were among 14 people killed in Mumbai after floods caused by heavy monsoon rains destroyed homes and disrupted traffic in India's financial capital, police said, but lighter-than-feared rain on Wednesday helped relief efforts.

More than 1,200 people have died across India, Bangladesh and Nepal in the worst flooding to strike South Asia in years. Several villages in the east Indian state of Bihar are still inundated, with people living in makeshift shelters for days amid widespread heavy damage to farmland.

Tuesday's deluge in Mumbai — nearly a month's average rainfall in a single day — had halted train services and led to flight cancellations.

More heavy rains had been forecast for yesterday, forcing the government to order schools and colleges shut, but in many areas the downpours were lighter.

"The city and suburbs received a few showers in the last few hours but rainfall wasn't heavy like yesterday," said KS Hosalikar, a senior India Metrological Department official.

"However in the next few hours Mumbai and adjourning areas are likely to get fairly widespread rainfall, which will be heavy in few pockets."

Officials said train and air services were operating normally late yesterday in the city, which is home to India's two biggest stock exchanges and several major companies.

People look at a flooded street during heavy rains in Parel neighbourhood of Mumbai August 29, 2017 in this still image obtained from a CCTV camera. — Reuters pic Police said a 45-year-old woman and a 1-1/2-year-old child, members of the same family, died after their home in the northeastern suburb of Vikhroli crumbled on Tuesday, while a 2-year-old girl died in a wall collapse.

In the neighbouring city of Thane, three people died after being swept away by floods, police added. Some died by falling into open manholes in flooded streets in various suburbs.

Mumbai Police spokeswoman Rashmi Karandikar said seven other people were missing in Mumbai.

In neighbouring suburbs six people were missing, said a police official, who declined to be named.

The deluge revived memories of 2005 floods that killed more than 500 people, the majority of them in shantytown slums where more than half of the city's 20 million people live.

Unabated construction on floodplains and coastal areas, as well as stormwater drains and waterways clogged by plastic garbage have made the city increasingly vulnerable to storms.

On Tuesday several firms made arrangements to provide food and rest areas for employees stuck in offices, while officials of temples and religious bodies offered help to those stranded on streets.

"Together, we can overcome any ordeal," the Mumbai Police tweeted. "Thank you all for showing what humanity is in the face of adversity!" — Reuters</s>At least 12 people were killed and more were still trapped after a century-old building collapsed in India's financial center of Mumbai on Thursday morning.

Mumbai has suffered recent torrential rain and flooding, along with other parts of India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Rescuers were still helping find and pull people from what The Associated Press described as a "huge mound of mud, concrete slabs and twisted steel girders" Thursday afternoon. The building was located in the Bhendi Bazaar area in the south of the Indian coastal city.

More than a dozen people had been rescued and sent to a hospital Thursday afternoon and several more may be still trapped in the rubble.

Manoj Sharma, a police official, told the AP that nine families lived in the building.

A nearby resident described the scene to Reuters. "There was a massive bang. We couldn't see anything due to the dust and smoke. Once the dust settled, we realised it was a building collapse," Amina Sheikh told the wire service.

According to the BBC, this is the third time a building has collapsed in Mumbai in under a month. Seventeen people died in July when a building collapsed in Ghatkopar, a Mumbai suburb.

Structural collapses — not just of buildings — are more common in India than in the West. A wall collapsed during a wedding in May in northern India, leaving 24 people dead. Last year, an overpass fell in Kolkata, killing 26 people. More than 70 people were killed when a seven-story building went down in Thane in 2013. Sixty-six people died in a four-story New Delhi building that fell in 2010.

Flooding and torrential rain are suspected of weakening poorly built structures. As the AP explains:



About 1,200 people have died in the recent floods in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.

NPR's Julie McCarthy explained on Thursday's Morning Edition why development has made Mumbai, in a similar way to Houston, particularly vulnerable to flooding:



"Many parts of Mumbai sit just feet above sea level. And this is one of the world's most populous cities — 20 million people. And it's a mecca for people migrating to the city for jobs. And that is driving construction. It's popping up on flood plains and coastal areas unchecked. And all that is also generating tons of garbage. And what have they discovered? That the waste is clogging the storm water drains which makes Mumbai even more vulnerable to flooding."</s>MUMBAI (Reuters) - More than 20 people aboard two buses and other vehicles are feared missing after a colonial-era bridge in western India was washed away in the early hours of Wednesday in a river swollen by recent heavy rains.

The two buses were on their way to Mumbai when the older of two parallel bridges on the Mumbai-Goa highway, said to have been built under British rule, collapsed near Mahabaleshwar, media reports quoted eyewitnesses as saying.

"The primary reason seems to be the high pressure caused due to flooding of river Savitri due to heavy rains," Devendra Phadnavis, chief minister of Maharashtra state, said on Twitter.

Mahabaleshwar is a hill station 230 km (140 miles) south of Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra.

"There is no confirmed assessment about casualties since the area is very dark. Administration will ensure speedy rescue and relief operations," Fadnavis said in another tweet.

O.P. Singh, chief of the state-run National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), said 80 rescuers, including divers, had rushed to the area but their efforts were being hampered by heavy rains.

"We have not even spotted the buses so far," said Rakesh Ranjan, deputy commandant of operations at the NDRF. He said the river's current was very strong.

Ranjan said 183 people have died and 7.7 million people have been displaced in four northeastern Indian states alone due to monsoon rains and floods so far this season.

In neighboring Nepal, 84 people have died and 37 were injured in incessant rains, with another 10 still missing.

At least 42 people have died in the flooding in Bangladesh, while around 1.5 million people have been affected, officials said.</s>At least five people were killed as heavy monsoon rain deluged India's financial capital Mumbai, causing transport chaos and forcing schools and many offices to close on Wednesday.

The coastal city of more than 20 million people is the latest to be hit by floods that have ravaged South Asia this monsoon season, affecting millions of people across India, Nepal and Bangladesh and killing over 1,200.

Authorities in Mumbai said at least five people had died since the intense rainfall began on Tuesday, making roads impassable and briefly shutting the suburban rail network on which millions of commuters depend.

“Five people have died in the Mumbai floods. Four of them including two children died due to wall collapse in the slums and another person died due to electric shock,” Tanaji Kamble, a local government official, told AFP.

Kamble said the rains had eased by Wednesday. “We are monitoring the safety situation across the city and things are returning to normal.” Cars were submerged and commuters waded through waist-deep water on Tuesday evening.

“I could not find any mode of transport and spent my night on the streets instead of trying to reach home,” said 62-year-old Gangadin Gupta.

He said many people had been left stranded for much of the night until the rail network reopened early Wednesday.

Residents of Dharavi, one of Asia's biggest slums and home to more than a million people, said much of the low-lying area was under water.

“Most of the shanties and houses in Dharavi were submerged in water and we lost all our valuables,” said Selvam Sathya, 45.

“All of us took refuge on the first floor of different buildings and the water only started receding this morning [...] I lost all my belongings in the flooding.” The transport chaos forced the city's famed dabbawallahs, who take hundreds of thousands of hot lunches from commuters' homes to offices every day, to cancel their delivery.

Many of the more than 5,000 dabbawallahs were left stranded in the city overnight, a spokesman for the Mumbai Dabbawallha Association told the Press Trust of India.

The flooding brought back memories of 2005 when around 950 millimetres (37 inches) of rain fell on Mumbai in just 24 hours, killing more than 1,000 people.

Electricity, water supply, communications networks and public transport were totally shut down during the 2005 catastrophe, which was blamed on unplanned development and poor drainage in the western city.

India, Nepal and Bangladesh all suffer frequent flooding during the monsoon rains which begin in June and last till September or October.

But the Red Cross has termed this year's floods the worst for decades in some parts of the region. It says entire communities have been cut off and many are short of food and clean water.

The east Indian state of Bihar has been particularly hard hit, with over 500 people killed this monsoon season.

Around 1.7 million people were reportedly affected by the floods, which are now receding.
At least 14 people are killed in the Indian city of Mumbai as nearly a month's average rainfall fell yesterday during the worst monsoon in years. More than 1,200 people have been killed across India, Nepal and Bangladesh.