No stranger to heavy flow, Cauvery river carried 4.56 lakh cusecs in 1924
The Cauvery is handling about 1.5 lakh cusecs of water, and the quantum is likely to go up to two lakh cusecs. But the river is no stranger to such a heavy flow.
On July 26, 1924, the river saw a flood of 4.56 lakh cubic feet per second (cusecs), according to History of Cauvery Mettur Project, a 1987 publication of the Central Board of Irrigation and Power (CBIP). Originally written by C.G. Barber in 1936, it was revised by A. Mohanakrishnan in the 1980s.
Col. W.M. Ellis, chosen for drawing up a scheme for the Mettur project, had originally provided for 2.5 lakh cusecs because the previous high was 2.07 lakh cusecs in 1896.
Another publication on the history of the project, written by former superintending engineer in the Water Resources Department R. Subramanian and published last year, states that the site originally proposed for the dam was about 1.6 km downstream of the present one.
It was because of the 1924 floods that the site was shifted upstream.
The Hindu extensively reported, during July 28-August 2, 1924, about the havoc in a number of areas in the Cauvery basin and the heavy damage to several towns such as Kumbakonam, Sirkazhi, Needamangalam, Chidambaram, and Bhavani.
As train services were disrupted between Chennai and the part of the State south of Porto Novo (Parangipettai), the authorities ran train-cum-steamer-cum-train services. The train services were operated up to Port Novo. From there, steamer services were operated up to Nagapattinam. From that point, train services were run for people to go to any station in the south, up to Dhanushkodi.
According to the newspaper, the rail line breached at 12 places between Vaitheeswaran Koil and Sirkazhi and at 12 more places between Sirkazhi and the Coleroon, “the largest being 3,000 feet wide,” it said.
There were also complaints from members of the public that the authorities had neglected their places. One such complaint came from residents of Srirangam.
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