On the evening of May 10, heavy and prolonged rainfall caused severe flooding in various districts of Tashkent. Many streets, intersections, underground passages, tunnels, courtyards and basements of residential buildings and offices were flooded.
The press service of the city administration, citing data from Uzgidromet, reported that in some areas precipitation reached 35 mm. Most of this amount fell in less than two hours. According to Uzgidromet, the average precipitation over 24 hours from 8:00 May 10 to 8:00 May 11 was 24 mm, which is more than half of the monthly norm for May in Tashkent (44.1 mm).
The existing stormwater drainage system in the city is designed to handle up to 20 mm of precipitation per day. The authorities have developed a master plan to gradually increase the system's capacity to 36 mm per day. During the heaviest rain, the city's drainage infrastructure faced a sharp short-term load close to the future design parameters.
In some places, the situation was aggravated by local factors: clogging of drainage systems with debris, unauthorized constructions, blocking of ditches and irrigation systems, or their use for parking lots and other economic needs. The city administration noted that each such interference, though seemingly insignificant, directly affects the operation of the entire drainage system on a city scale.
To eliminate the consequences, specialists and teams from emergency services, drainage-collector systems, canals, utilities and other specialized organizations were involved. More than 60 units of special equipment worked on site. As a result of the measures taken, the effects of the flooding were eliminated within an hour.
The city administration received reports of flooding from 23 addresses in 8 districts. Working groups conducted a preliminary study of the situation at each address and identified necessary measures. In particular, issues of increasing the capacity of certain sections of the system, construction of irrigation systems at 5 sites, installation of additional siphons (pressure water conduits) with a diameter of 800 mm at one facility and 500 mm at a number of other sections, as well as installation of additional pumping units and water intake grates are being considered.
According to Uzgidromet, heavy rainfall over the past 24 hours was also observed in the mountainous areas of Tashkent region (Chimgan — 32 mm), Jizzakh (Jizzakh — 26 mm) and Samarkand regions (Samarkand — 22.4 mm).
Source: www.gazeta.uz