Cyclone Vardah: Flight operations resume at Chennai airport

A day after Cyclone ‘Vardah’ ripped through Chennai, the city presented a scene of devastation with thousands of uprooted trees, broken billboards and snapped telephone and power cables besides low-lying areas reporting waterlogging in India. Flight operations resumed this morning in the storm-hit city which was limping back to normalcy. The storm, which was the most intense to have hit the Tamil Nadu capital in two decades and left four persons dead, snapped communication lines, flattened homes, and threw into disarray rail, road and air traffic as it crossed the Chennai coast on Monday. However, with the rains having abated since morning, people came out on the streets and some of them queued up at roadside tea stalls. Office-goers were seen waiting at bus stops and railway stations with few services being operated. Southern Railway said skeletal services resumed in the MMC, Sulurpettah section while that on the busy Tambaram-Chengalpattu route were yet to be operated. Flight operations, which were suspended at the Chennai airport, have resumed. “Flight operations have resumed at Chennai airport today (Tuesday) morning,” Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju tweeted.