The community, mainly families of powerloom workers sandwiched in one square kilometre, watched in collective horror as their homes disappeared under 15 feet of water in a couple of hours amid a steady torrential downpour coupled with high tide conditions at around 7.30 pm yesterday.

As water continued to gush in from the nearby creek, residents, bedraggled and scared, were evacuated to a slaughterhouse where they spent the night till the waters began to recede this morning. Police along with the local youth dragged women and children to safety with the menfolk away at work. Hysteria peaked as a mad scramble for the rooftops began. Household articles were first hoisted atop the weak, tin structures but soon the residents themselves clambered up. Watching their belongings float among the swirling muddywaters, Idgah's residents dragged themselves to safety in makeshift bamboo craft held together by rope. Tyre tubes helped keep heads above water even as hopes and belongings quickly sank amid the human flotsam. Rescue operations continued till around 1.30 am, by which time most of the residents had been accommodated in the local slaughterhouse. By daybreak, the tide had waned and the floodwaters began to recede. Residents trudged back to their wrecked shanties: one-third of them found none.

Hasinabi Begum says yesterday's Eid-e-Milad will be permanently etched in her mind. ``We also lost the Koran Sharif, which was washed away with all our belongings,'' she sobs, clutching on to her three-year-old son Aslam. Hasinabi's neighbours, most of them sitting desolately on their doorsteps, were shovelling the muck out of their kuccha homes.

Arifa Sheikh (10), who was helping her mother mop up the floor, asks: ``Will our homes be flooded again if it rains tonight?''

Mohammed Ali Bhatukali (65), who has beenresiding here since 1958, says: ``I thought it was qayamat itself,'' recalling the fearful cries of women and children yelling for help from the rooftops as the waters rose without let-up.

Bhagwanrao Tarde at the Bhoiwada police station, under whose jurisdiction Idgah falls, says the water had risen to around 15 feet in the low-lying area of the slum, which is located near the creek. ``The nullahs leading to the creek brought the water into the area,'' he says.

Adds a resident, Anwar Hussain: ``We tried to put out bamboos and rope rafts to rescue people but when the waters rose further we arranged for tyre tubes because the women were too scared to board the rough craft.'' Residents say they are grateful to the police, who also passed around `vada-pav' in the slaughterhouse, where they spent the night. Commissioner of Police Bhujangrao Mohite, DCP (Zone II) Sanjay Saxena and other senior officers supervised rescue operations.

Residents, however, allege that civic and fire-brigade officials had nothelped out. Fire Officer M M Narkar told Express Newsline: ``If the police are making themselves out to be such heroes, who do you think cleared the trees which came crashing down on the main roads here?''

He says he and his team had patrolled the township to clear the roads but could not say why none of them had turned up at Idgah during the flooding.

Senior residents like Mohammed Ali say that the slum experiences minor flooding every year when heavy monsoon showers coincide with high tide. But, he observes: ``This year, the the nullahs were not cleaned, which further aggravated the problem.''

Officials of the Bhiwandi Nizampur Municipal Council concede that none of the nullahs had been desilted before the monsoon. ``The chief executive officer (CEO) kept putting off the work saying it would violate the Election Commission's model code of conduct which is in force for the local panchayat elections,'' a senior official reveals.

CEO V C Nandgaonkar could not be reached because ``he had not turned up''according to his staff. He was neither on leave nor had he telephoned his office to say he would be absent.

DMP fails

The failure of local civic authorities and the fire brigade to be of any assistance to over 3,000 people, who were marooned in flash floods at Bhiwandi on Tuesday night, has cast serious doubts on the much-hyped Disaster Management Plan (DMP) of the state government.

The voluminous DMP largely focuses on improving co-ordination between various agencies like the police, fire brigade and the municipality. But except the Bhoiwada police, none of the other two agencies' even bothered to visit the spot on Tuesday.