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Rain brings relief to citizens

- Photo: Ashoke Chakrabarty

Cooling things: A massive build-up of clouds before it rained in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday.

BHUBANESWAR: Even as many interior districts of the State continued to reel under heat wave conditions and sunstroke deaths increased to 21 on Tuesday, people in several coastal districts heaved a sigh of relief as it rained heavily late in the afternoon.

The areas that were hit by thunderstorm and rain include Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Angul, Keonjhar, Paradip and Chandbali. There was, however, no report of any casualty.

The rain that was accompanied by heavy winds also uprooted scores of trees and disrupted power supply in most of the rain-hit regions.

In Bhubaneswar, people had a tough time as almost all parts of the city plunged into darkness as soon as the thunderstorm started.

The situation did not improve even after the rain stopped around 9 p.m. Electricity played hide and seek till late in the night.

In several low-lying areas of the city, the residents had to wade through deep rainwater.

At places, the main roads remained under water for quite some time.

While Bhubaneswar and Cuttack experienced a rainfall of 8.0 mm by 5-30 p.m., 17.0 mm rainfall was recorded in Angul. Keonjhar received a rainfall of 10.0 mm, meteorological centre source said here.

The weatherman said that thunder-squall was likely to occur over isolated places of the State during the next 24 hours.

In case of Bhubaneswar, the weatherman said that the city would have a cloudy sky on Wednesday with the maximum day temperature of around 36 degrees Celsius.

The heat wave situation, however, remained unchanged in the worst-hit towns of Sundargarh, Titilagarh, Jharsuguda and Malkangiri.

The mercury level remained above 40 degrees Celsius in these places.

Although a total of 97 heat wave-related deaths had been reported from different districts of the State so far, an official manning the State-level control room of the Revenue and Disaster Management Department said that 52 deaths were found to have occurred due to other reasons. Verification reports were awaited in the remaining 24 cases.

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