Hundreds still stranded, plants closed in India's flood-hit Chennai (updated)

Madras Fertilizers

08/12/2023 12:15

(Adds port hit, fertiliser plant closed in paras 7-9)
    By Praveen Paramasivam
       CHENNAI, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Volunteers waded through
stagnant water to hand out food and supplies, and some
manufacturing plants remained shut in India's southern
tech-and-auto hub district of Chennai on Friday, four days after
cyclone Michaung lashed the coast.
    At least 14 people, most of them in Chennai and its state of
Tamil Nadu, have died in the flooding, triggered by torrential
rains that started on Monday.
    The cyclone itself made landfall further north in Andhra
Pradesh state on Tuesday afternoon.
    Authorities said some low-lying areas of the state were
still inundated and government officials and volunteers were
taking supplies to people stuck in their homes in slums and
other areas.
    The larger Chennai area is home to the Indian units of
several global firms including Hyundai Motor  005380.KS ,
Daimler and Taiwan’s Foxconn  2317.TW  and Pegatron  4938.TW 
which do contract manufacturing for Apple  AAPL.O .
    While many of them including Pegatron and Foxconn resumed
operations within a day or two of the cyclone making landfall,
some plants of the TVS group located in the worst-affected areas
are yet to open, industry sources said.
    Adani Krishnapatnam Port  APSE.NS  in Andhra Pradesh, said
on Friday the cyclone had "very badly affected" its operations
and it was declaring a force majeure period starting Dec. 3.
        Force majeure is a notice used to describe events
outside a company's control, such as a natural disaster, which
usually releases it from contractual obligation without penalty.
  
        State-run Madras Fertilizers  MDFT.NS  notified stock
exchanges that its Chennai plant has been shut and is
tentatively expected to resume operations within two to four
weeks.
        
  
        INFRASTRUCTURE QUESTIONED
  
    Information technology (IT) services providers told staff to
work from home for the week, while schools and colleges closed.
A few schools and colleges were converted into temporary
shelters.
    This week's floods in Chennai brought back memories of the
extensive damage caused by floods eight years ago which killed
around 290 people.
    In Andhra Pradesh, the damage from the cyclone was
relatively contained, with roads damaged and trees uprooted as
big waves crashed into the coast.
    Defence Minister Rajnath Singh visited Chennai on Thursday
and announced New Delhi will release a second instalment of 4.5
billion rupees ($54 million) to Tamil Nadu to help manage the
damage. The federal government has also approved a 5.6
billion-rupee project for flood management in Chennai, he said.
    Chennai residents questioned the ability of the city's
infrastructure to handle extreme weather.
    "Not only has urbanisation itself caused a problem, but the
nature of the urbanisation has preyed upon open spaces, holding
areas like marshlands and flood plains," social activist
Nityanand Jayaraman said.
    Experts have, however, said better stormwater drainage
systems would not have been able to prevent the flooding caused
by very heavy and extremely heavy rains.
    "This solution would have helped a lot in moderate and heavy
rainfall, but not in very heavy and extremely heavy rains," Raj
Bhagat P, a civil engineer and geo-analytics expert, said on
Wednesday.
($1 = 83.3720 Indian rupees)

 (Additional reporting by Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Editing by
YP Rajesh and Andrew Heavens)
 ((praveen.paramasivam@thomsonreuters.com))