Mumbai, July 3:Nine people died after a small dam at Chiplun in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district gave way on Tuesday night after heavy rains, officials of state police and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) said on Wednesday.
The mishap happened on Tuesday night the dam, filled to the brim because of heavy rain, burst, flooding six villages and washing away 13 houses downstream. Some 3,000 people from Dadar, Akle, Riktoli, Ovali, Kalkavne and Nandivase were evacuated, officials said.
Information at the irrigation department showed that local MLA Sadanand Chavan’s company Khemraj Constructions had built the dam, which had a storage capacity of 0.08 Thousand Million Cubic feet (TMC) of water.
Rescue teams found 10 bodies but 18 people are still missing.
“We are still carrying out searches for those missing,” irrigation minister Girish Mahajan told reporters in Mumbai.
Mahajan said engineers from the irrigation department, which managed the dam, conducted repairs two years ago after villagers noticed were cracks on the structure.
“We have now ordered in inquiry into the incident,” Mahajan said.
Chavan, a Shiv Sena leader, told reporters that he had complained of cracks on the wall of the dam.
“My brother’s company had built the dam almost 15 years ago. The dam was to be maintained by the irrigation department. After I got complaints of the leaks from the dam four to five months ago, I
had warned the officials to carry out repairs to the dam. I don’t know if they carried out any work. But if they have done so it appears to be of poor quality,” Chavan.
Meanwhile, opposition Congress and Nationalist Congress Party blamed such accidents on the state government and said government authorities did not conduct appropriate structural audits of bridges and dams in the state, leading to several accidents in the past few months.
