Chennai

The day-long rain left Chennai struggling as water-logging was reported in many parts of the city, especially in the suburbs, forcing people to stay indoors. The roads were empty with very few vehicles plying. Access to some of the metro stations was disrupted due to water-logging. However, there was no disruption in work at the Ambattur Industrial Estate.

Due to panic-buying since Monday afternoon, the grocery shops and supermarkets ran out of essential items like bread, biscuits, butter and curd. Even in the e-commerce apps like Swiggy’s Instamart and BigBasket, these items ran out of stock quickly.

Some of the flood-affected areas included parts of IT corridor (Old Mahabalipuram Road) and heart of the city like Velachery, Taramani and Guindy. Water entered the houses of low lying residences in Taramani. Many firms allowed their employees to work from home.

Rajesh, a resident of Velachery said, on Monday the city received just 4-5 cm of rain, and on Tuesday another 6-7 cm. The city is badly set up to handle rain, he added.

The State government machinery has been active since Monday evening ensuring that the streets are free of water-logging. Nearly 80 boats from Foreshore Estate were shifted to low lying areas in Chennai as a precautionary measure to rescue people in case of flooding. Despite all the measures, the city struggled to handle the rains.

Business as usual

It was business as usual in units at the Ambattur Industrial Estate. Rains have not been very heavy today. A red alert has been issued for Wednesday. Keeping fingers crossed, said an official.

Global Capability Centres and Chennai Auto Auto Ancillary Industrial Infrastructure Up-gradation Company have taken adequate steps to Drain the rain water, he added.

Luckily water has not entered most factories as yet and power is available. But if rain continues the water level on the roads go up and water will enter the factories, said an official of another manufacturing unit.

“As the monsoon sets in, flooding in low lying areas comes to our mind. Last year during floods not only the common man but many industrial units lost their property. Knowing this the government has been preparing well and has been proactive with their flood mitigation measures, the results are seen with very few roads inundated,” Milan Wahi, Chairman, CII Chennai Zone and Managing Director, Lotte India Corporation Ltd.

“I am sure the coming months will prove beneficial for industries as they will be better informed and planned despite the rains causing havoc,” he added.

Meenu Singhal- Socomec Regional MD, Socomec Greater India, a specialist in in Low Voltage (LV) Power Switching, Monitoring, and Power Conversion products, advised companies that the first step to take in times of crisis was to make a backup of important data. Heavy rains and flooding can impact the working of the UPS and other electrical equipment of the data centre. Keeping the UPS under cover and in a dry place is important. Handling natural calamities like floods needs presence of mind, technical acumen and swift action.

Chennai airport

A number of flights – both domestic and international – from and to the Chennai airport were cancelled on Tuesday.

Chennai Metro

The Chennai Metro Rail Ltd in a bulletin at 4 pm on Tuesday said there was water-logging from Main Road till St Thomas Mount Metro station. Access to enter the station by road was cut off. Passengers were requested to use the foot over bridge in St Thomas Mount suburban railway station for interchanging purposes to access the metro station.

Waterlogging in B-Road, Koyambedu was observed, and passengers were requested to access Koyambedu Metro Station through foot over bridge from Poonamallee High Road, with landmark as the Rohini Theatre side.

Rail traffic affected

After water-logging over Bridge no. 14 between Basin Bridge and Vyasarpadi, the Southern Railway cancelled some of the trains, including Sapthagiri, on Tuesday evening.

Low pressure

Meanwhile, the India Meteorological Department said the well-marked low pressure area over southwest and adjoining southeast Bay of Bengal moved west-northwestwards and lay centered over southwest and adjoining southeast Bay of Bengal at 11:30 hours of Tuesday.

It is likely to move west-northwestwards and intensify into a depression over southwest Bay of Bengal during the next 12 hours. It is likely to continue to move west-northwestwards thereafter and reach near north Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and adjoining south Andhra Pradesh coasts by October 17 early morning as a depression, according to the meteorological department.

In the last few weeks, the United States has been hit by two hurricanes, Helene and Milton.

Oliver Milman, an environment reporter for Guardian US, tells Michael Safi: “The rapid analysis found that global heating had caused the rains to be heavier, the winds to be stronger, and in both the cases of Helene and Milton. Storms of this size were made about twice as likely because of the climate crisis.”

Why have these storms not put the climate crisis front and centre in the presidential campaign?

Oliver tells Michael that the environment is a complicated issue for Democrats, because oil and gas production in the US has hit a record high under Joe Biden’s premiership. Oliver also discusses the disinformation and conspiracy theories that have been spread – in part by Donald Trump – in the aftermath of the hurricanes.

Support the Guardian today: theguardian.com/todayinfocuspod

Support The Guardian

The Guardian is editorially independent.
And we want to keep our journalism open and accessible to all.
But we increasingly need our readers to fund our work.

Support The Guardian

David Stuckenberg, cofounder and chief operations officer at Genesis Systems, explains that the WaterCube uses proprietary liquid and solid sorbents—materials that absorb water—that essentially “form a handshake with the water in the air.” The machine then heats these materials to extract the water.

Atmospheric water generators typically require a substantial amount of energy to run, but Stuckenberg claims the company’s materials work 400 percent better than those that are currently commercially available, and that they have a very high affinity for water.

But the tech comes at a steep price. The WaterCube delivered to St. Petersburg is listed at $860,000. The company just started selling a second, smaller device for home use called the WaterCube 100, which retails for $20,000 and is about the size of an HVAC system. That device can generate about 100 to 200 gallons of water per day. Efficiency ranges from 0.07 to 0.8 kilowatt-hours per gallon of water and costs anywhere from $10 to $80 a day to operate, depending on cost of energy and humidity. A WaterCube can run on either solar or conventional energy.

The machines make more water in a humid environment and work well in atmospheric humidity down to 40 percent. Stuckenberg says the company is constantly improving its technology and is working with the US Department of Defense to be able to generate water at 10 percent humidity.

The WaterCube connects to a building’s water supply so that water doesn’t have to be harvested directly from the machine. “The systems are designed to connect to anything from a garden hose to a hospital water system, and provide water that goes through four steps of filtration before it leaves,” Stuckenberg says.

After Typhoon Mawar hit the US territory of Guam in May 2023, Genesis Systems worked with the US Air Force to test the WaterCube 1000 in a disaster response scenario on the island.

At their current price, and for the amount of water they’re able to generate, these devices are unlikely to be the sole source of water in these types of situations anytime soon. According to figures published by the US Department of Energy, a hospital the size of All Children’s would typically use anywhere from 10,000 to 90,000 gallons a day, depending on the services provided, age of the building, and water use practices. That’s far more than the 2,000 gallons that the larger Genesis Systems unit is able to produce in 24 hours.

Still, in scenarios where water can’t be restored or transported immediately to an area, these devices may be able to serve as a bridge or a supplementary source of water. But in order to be useful, they need to be in the right place at the right time, and the logistics of moving an 18,000-pound machine in a disaster situation can be tricky.

According to a hospital spokesperson, All Children’s didn’t end up needing to draw water from the device; shortly after it was d­elivered, the city’s sewer system was functional and water service resumed with a boil advisory. “We were able to modify our operations accordingly,” the spokesperson said on Friday. Over the weekend, Florida’s AHCA relocated the WaterCube to a shelter where it can be quickly moved to another location if needed.

A children’s hospital that lost access to water in the wake of Hurricane Milton is now using a device that can collect drinking water directly from the air, in a test of how such atmospheric water harvesting systems could be used to respond to disasters.

“When a hospital has both water and power you’re good,” says David Stuckenberg at Genesis Systems, the Florida-based company that designed the apparatus. The system uses absorbent materials called metal organic frameworks to concentrate moisture from air pumped through the machine, then releases pure water when the material is heated by around 8°C.

Such atmospheric water harvesting systems have long attracted interest because of their ability to operate independently of other water infrastructure. A small but growing number are installed to supply daily water to off-grid communities, and they have been used in cities with poor water infrastructure or arid places where water supplies are unreliable, as well as for military operations. An Arizona-based company called Source that makes solar-powered “hydropanels” has even started selling its air water in cans.

Another way these flexible systems have been used is to respond to disasters that leave communities without a reliable clean water supply. As Hurricane Milton approached Florida’s west coast, Jason Weida, the secretary of the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, saw an opportunity to try this out.

With Hurricane Ian in 2022, Weida saw how water issues and power outages required some hospitals to close for weeks, with evacuation sometimes required days after the storm itself had passed. He learned about Genesis Systems’ technology while touring damage from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall on 26 September. “I thought, “Wouldn’t this be great for next year’s hurricane season?” he says. “Little did I know that two weeks later we would be preparing for Hurricane Milton.”

Ahead of Milton’s landfall on 9 October, the system was brought to a staging ground for the state’s disaster response. Soon after the hurricane passed, a truck brought it to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg where leaking water mains had interrupted the hospital’s water supply. Weida says this particular hospital was a priority because of how challenging it would be to evacuate newborns from the hospital’s large neonatal intensive care unit.

On 10 October, workers hooked up the shipping-container sized system to a generator, and it is now producing up to 2000 gallons of drinking water per day while the hospital’s regular water supply is being fully restored. Stuckenberg says the system can operate more or less anywhere humidity is above 10 per cent, although it becomes less efficient as humidity declines. He estimates that the system installed in Florida’s humid air uses about 0.8 kilowatt hours of electricity per gallon of water, putting the cost of running the system at 10 to 20 dollars per day.

There are other ways to guarantee water supply in an emergency, from trucking it in in tanks or in bottles, or using reverse osmosis systems. After the Hurricane Ian experience, some hospitals dug their own wells. But Weida says harvesting it from the air is a remarkably flexible and rapid way to secure water supply. “Redundancy is extremely important,” he says. “This provides another layer.”

Atmospheric water harvesting systems can be an “important tool” for disaster response when water supplies might be offline for an extended period of time, says Paul Westerhoff at Arizona State University, and are well-suited for places with relatively high humidity like Florida. However, he says their reliance on electricity, often from a generator, has been an issue during past disasters.

Topics:

A children’s hospital that lost access to water in the wake of Hurricane Milton is now using a device that can collect drinking water directly from the air, in a test of how such atmospheric water harvesting systems could be used to respond to disasters.

“When a hospital has both water and power you’re good,” says David Stuckenberg at Genesis Systems, the Florida-based company that designed the apparatus. The system uses absorbent materials called metal organic frameworks to concentrate moisture from air pumped through the machine, then releases pure water when the material is heated by around 8°C.

Such atmospheric water harvesting systems have long attracted interest because of their ability to operate independently of other water infrastructure. A small but growing number are installed to supply daily water to off-grid communities, and they have been used in cities with poor water infrastructure or arid places where water supplies are unreliable, as well as for military operations. An Arizona-based company called Source that makes solar-powered “hydropanels” has even started selling its air water in cans.

Another way these flexible systems have been used is to respond to disasters that leave communities without a reliable clean water supply. As Hurricane Milton approached Florida’s west coast, Jason Weida, the secretary of the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, saw an opportunity to try this out.

With Hurricane Ian in 2022, Weida saw how water issues and power outages required some hospitals to close for weeks, with evacuation sometimes required days after the storm itself had passed. He learned about Genesis Systems’ technology while touring damage from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall on 26 September. “I thought, “Wouldn’t this be great for next year’s hurricane season?” he says. “Little did I know that two weeks later we would be preparing for Hurricane Milton.”

Ahead of Milton’s landfall on 9 October, the system was brought to a staging ground for the state’s disaster response. Soon after the hurricane passed, a truck brought it to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg where leaking water mains had interrupted the hospital’s water supply. Weida says this particular hospital was a priority because of how challenging it would be to evacuate newborns from the hospital’s large neonatal intensive care unit.

On 10 October, workers hooked up the shipping-container sized system to a generator, and it is now producing up to 2000 gallons of drinking water per day while the hospital’s regular water supply is being fully restored. Stuckenberg says the system can operate more or less anywhere humidity is above 10 per cent, although it becomes less efficient as humidity declines. He estimates that the system installed in Florida’s humid air uses about 0.8 kilowatt hours of electricity per gallon of water, putting the cost of running the system at 10 to 20 dollars per day.

There are other ways to guarantee water supply in an emergency, from trucking it in in tanks or in bottles, or using reverse osmosis systems. After the Hurricane Ian experience, some hospitals dug their own wells. But Weida says harvesting it from the air is a remarkably flexible and rapid way to secure water supply. “Redundancy is extremely important,” he says. “This provides another layer.”

Atmospheric water harvesting systems can be an “important tool” for disaster response when water supplies might be offline for an extended period of time, says Paul Westerhoff at Arizona State University, and are well-suited for places with relatively high humidity like Florida. However, he says their reliance on electricity, often from a generator, has been an issue during past disasters.

Topics:

A children’s hospital that lost access to water in the wake of Hurricane Milton is now using a device that can collect drinking water directly from the air, in a test of how such atmospheric water harvesting systems could be used to respond to disasters.

“When a hospital has both water and power you’re good,” says David Stuckenberg at Genesis Systems, the Florida-based company that designed the apparatus. The system uses absorbent materials called metal organic frameworks to concentrate moisture from air pumped through the machine, then releases pure water when the material is heated by around 8°C.

Such atmospheric water harvesting systems have long attracted interest because of their ability to operate independently of other water infrastructure. A small but growing number are installed to supply daily water to off-grid communities, and they have been used in cities with poor water infrastructure or arid places where water supplies are unreliable, as well as for military operations. An Arizona-based company called Source that makes solar-powered “hydropanels” has even started selling its air water in cans.

Another way these flexible systems have been used is to respond to disasters that leave communities without a reliable clean water supply. As Hurricane Milton approached Florida’s west coast, Jason Weida, the secretary of the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, saw an opportunity to try this out.

With Hurricane Ian in 2022, Weida saw how water issues and power outages required some hospitals to close for weeks, with evacuation sometimes required days after the storm itself had passed. He learned about Genesis Systems’ technology while touring damage from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall on 26 September. “I thought, “Wouldn’t this be great for next year’s hurricane season?” he says. “Little did I know that two weeks later we would be preparing for Hurricane Milton.”

Ahead of Milton’s landfall on 9 October, the system was brought to a staging ground for the state’s disaster response. Soon after the hurricane passed, a truck brought it to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg where leaking water mains had interrupted the hospital’s water supply. Weida says this particular hospital was a priority because of how challenging it would be to evacuate newborns from the hospital’s large neonatal intensive care unit.

On 10 October, workers hooked up the shipping-container sized system to a generator, and it is now producing up to 2000 gallons of drinking water per day while the hospital’s regular water supply is being fully restored. Stuckenberg says the system can operate more or less anywhere humidity is above 10 per cent, although it becomes less efficient as humidity declines. He estimates that the system installed in Florida’s humid air uses about 0.8 kilowatt hours of electricity per gallon of water, putting the cost of running the system at 10 to 20 dollars per day.

There are other ways to guarantee water supply in an emergency, from trucking it in in tanks or in bottles, or using reverse osmosis systems. After the Hurricane Ian experience, some hospitals dug their own wells. But Weida says harvesting it from the air is a remarkably flexible and rapid way to secure water supply. “Redundancy is extremely important,” he says. “This provides another layer.”

Atmospheric water harvesting systems can be an “important tool” for disaster response when water supplies might be offline for an extended period of time, says Paul Westerhoff at Arizona State University, and are well-suited for places with relatively high humidity like Florida. However, he says their reliance on electricity, often from a generator, has been an issue during past disasters.

Topics: