GHAZIABAD: Two people died, a building collapsed and 96 flats in two adjoining housing societies had to be evacuated as heavy rain caused mayhem in Noida and Ghaziabad on Thursday morning, showing how fragile NCR’s public infrastructure is.The emergency evacuations happened in Ghaziabad’s Vasundhara (Sector 4) where the showers triggered a mudslide that washed away an entire section of the road between Vartalok and Pragya Kunj, exposing the underside of their perimeter walls. Scores of residents rushed out to the compound in panic, fearing the ground under the societies was in danger too.The cave-in that happened at 8.30am created a crater 20 feet wide and 30 feet deep. It happened after a portion of the wall of a huge trench dug on a 4,000-square-metre plot next to the road got washed away, taking a piece of the road with it. The trench was dug five years ago for a realty project caught in a legal tangle, officials said.“The sight was frightening. It is just few a metres from my flat and I could see water gushing into the giant sinkhole,” said Raj Kumar Tiwari, who lives on the ground floor of Vartalok, and had rushed out after hearing a “thunderlike” noise. Two blocks in Pragya Kunj (32 flats) and four in Vartalok society (64 flats) were evacuated and all approach roads to the area were sealed off.In the evening, a portion of a house’s ceiling collapsed on a 14-year-old girl — Class IX student Anjali — in Ghaziabad’s Shaheed Nagar area, killing her. In Vijay Nagar’s Siddharth Vihar Extension, five members of a family suffered injuries after rainwater inundated their house and a portion of it collapsed.The heavy showers, which began early on Thursday and lasted till around 10.15am, also threw traffic in Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad out of gear as huge snarls were reported form almost all major thoroughfares.

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