Tamil Nadu's coastal districts receive heavy rains, expected to continue for a week

Meanwhile, Chennai airport operations are back to normal, all essential services restored in city

After a two-day respite, Chennai received heavy rain on Tuesday night and moderate rains on Wednesday. However, the southern coastal parts of Tamil Nadu, including Cuddalore, delta regions and others have reported heavy rainfall. Met department says on Tuesday the highest recorded was 22 cm at Vedaranyam in Nagapattinam district.

The forecast is for the next one week the state, mainly coastal parts of Tamil Nadu barring Chennai, Kanchipuram and Tiruvallur districts, which have seen highest rain fall in the last 100 years, will continue to receive rain.

For Chennai the forecast is moderate rains in intervals during this week, according to Met Department forecast.

Rehabilitation and cleaning up exercises continued in the city, with the help of hundreds of people who came from other municipalities and corporation from other parts of the state. Reports stated that around one lakh tonnes of plastics needs to be cleared from the city.

Schools and colleges have remain closed for over a moth now in Chennai and will remain closed till December 13, while offices and factories have resumed work since day before. They were working partially, as many workers could not report to work. IT companies have given flexibility for employees to work from home.

To mitigate the working days loss, few companies are planning to operate on Sundays for the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, heavy rain continues in delta and coastal districts of Tamilnadu.

Districts which are reporting high rainfall includes Kanyakumari, Thanjavur, Tuticorin, Nagapattinam, Thiruvarur, Cuddalore, Nellai and many parts of the state.

Over 50,000 acres are hit by flood in the delta region alone.

Transportation restored

Airport, railway stations, bus services, autos, power and other essential services have been fully restored in Chennai.

Chennai airport was opened for passenger services on Sunday with three Air India flights to Port Blair, Hyderabad and Delhi and Jet Airways and IndiGo flights to Bangalore. On Monday, round-the-clock operations for both domestic and international started. But there were only 21 departures and 21 arrivals.

The first airline to commence full-fledged services from the airport with all its 34 flights taking off on Day One was Spicejet.

Chennai Airport Director Deepak Shastri said operations are back to normal in the domestic and as far as international service are concerned, eight airlines have commenced services on Tuesday, and seven more airlines have started service on Wednesday and five more to start tomorrow.

Rail services were also restored, said Southern Railways, adding that seven services were suspended today since connecting trains did not come.

Bus services have also been restored to and from Chennai. Transport department said around 3,000 buses are connecting southern districts and other neighbouring states from Chennai.