Maharashtra rains: 138 rain-related deaths recorded since June says report; maximum casualties in Mumbai, Pune

In India, according to an  _India Spend_ report , as many as 6,585 people lost their lives due to rain-related natural calamities — such as cyclone, floods and landslides — in the country over three years ending 18 July, 2019, a government  reply to the Lok Sabha said on 23 July, 2019. This amounts to nearly 2,000 deaths every year, on average. According to a  Times of India report, Maharashtra has recorded 138 deaths since June in rain-related incidents and most of the deaths were recorded from Mumbai, followed by Pune, Ratnagiri, Mumbai city, Thane, Nashik, Dhule, Aurangabad and Buldhana. The Southwest Monsoon is in full swing, causing heavy rainfall in several areas across the country. In Maharashtra, 16 deaths have been reported in the last seven days according to officials. Over 1.32 lakh people have been shifted to safer places in western parts of the state with the flood situation remaining especially grim in Kolhapur and Sangli districts of the region on Wednesday following heavy rains. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued an ’extremely heavy rain’ warning for Pune, Satara, and Kolhapur districts on 7, 8 and 9 August. Rain-related deaths in Mumbai, Pune In August, 16 deaths have been reported in rain and flood-related incidents from western Maharashtra in the last seven days [caption id=“attachment_6917711” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The site of the wall collapse at Pimpripada, Malad. Twitter/ @ANI[/caption] In the month of July, on 2 July, 31 people were killed and 90 injured in a wall collapse in the northern suburb of Malad in Mumbai . Two persons also died in another incident in Malad after they were locked up in a car flooded with rainwater on the same day. One person was electrocuted in Vile Parle and a security guard was killed in a wall collapse in suburban Mulund. Seven were killed in rain-related incidents in Pune and Buldhana. In Pune, six labourers were killed and three injured after a retaining wall of Sinhgad institute at Ambegaon area collapsed after midnight on shanties housing workers early 2 July, while in Buldhana district, a 52-year-old woman was killed on the spot by a bolt of lightning. In a separate incident, at least three people were killed and one injured in a wall collapse incident early on 2 July in Kalyan, in Thane district. The wall of National Urdu School, opposite Durgadi Fort in Kalyan, fell on the nearby hutments killing two women and a three-year-old boy. On 3 July, the Tiware Dam in Ratnagiri district had a breach in the dam due to heavy downpour, leading to a flood-like situation in downstream villages, killing 20. In the month of June, in Pune, at least 15 people died on 29 June after a 60-ft-wall wall of a residential complex collapsed near talab masjid in Pune’s Kondhwa area. Mumbai experienced heavy rainfall in the first week of July 2019, with some parts receiving the second-highest rainfall in July in 45 years that brought the financial capital to a halt. While linking a particular event to climate change requires extensive analysis, it is clear that the increasing rate of intense rainfall events over Mumbai and the Western Ghats is due to rising temperatures, Roxy Mathew Koll, climate scientist at the  Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, told IndiaSpend. With inputs from agencies