A few senior engineers of the Kaleshwaram project were away on a foreign visit when the river Godavari and its tributaries were in spate and were understood to have returned home only on Thursday, hours before the pump houses at Annaram and Medigadda were flooded.
Sources in the Irrigation Department stated that their visit abroad was initially rejected by the sanctioning authority citing the monsoon/flood season. But, they believed to have convinced the higher authorities and went ahead with their visit. They returned as the flood situation started getting grim from the irrigation facilities point of view.
A senior engineer, who was on the visit, said they had been in constant touch with field engineers of the project as well as higher authorities and were monitoring the situation and giving instructions to the concerned. In addition to their instructions, two senior Engineers-in-Chief (ENCs) from Hyderabad kept monitoring the situation constantly and coordinated with project engineers.
