Officials of the irrigation department in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district ignored warnings about cracks in the Tiware dam, which burst washing away homes and killing at least nine people, residents and a local legislator said on Wednesday. The Tiware dam in Chiplun taluka in the Konkan region of the state burst on Tuesday night amid heavy monsoon rains. Locals said they noticed the cracks around six months ago and that they informed the irrigation department’s officials about them. Maharashtra water resource minister Girish Mahajan accepted that locals did complain about the cracks in the dam, built around 14 years ago. Following the complaints, the irrigation department officials told me that they carried out repair work also,” said Mahajan.

Source: Hindustan Times July 03, 2019 09:19 UTC