Chennai: The Chennai airport opened on Saturday for a small number of flights bringing relief supplies for the rain-hit state.
The airport was also used for helicopters carrying relief material for the flood affected areas. Partial operations have begun at the airport amid intermittent rain.
Since the airport was shut because of too much water logging, this is the first set of flights to operate.
"We started technical flights from Chennai airport. But we are unable to resume commercial flights as the basement of the airport is still waterlogged and power supply of the terminal building has not been restored completely. It might take at least 2-3 days to clear the airport for operations," the Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Mahesh Sharma, said.
India's fourth-largest city, Chennai has boomed in the 21st century as a centre for vehicle factories and IT outsourcing. But trash-filled drains and building on lake beds in the rush to industrialisation and prosperity has made it more prone to flooding.
Despite combined rescue efforts by the military and civilian emergency services, help has yet to reach many areas. Residents were angered by reports that authorities had released water from brimming lakes without much warning.
In one of the most shocking incidents, 18 patients in the intensive care unit of the MIOT International hospital have died since Wednesday, Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan said, after floods took out generators running life-support systems. An enquiry will be conducted into the tragedy, he said.
Military helicopters dropped food to residents stranded on rooftops and the defence ministry doubled to 4,000 the number of soldiers deployed to help the rescue effort.
Facing criticism for its handling of the crisis, a battery of senior Tamil Nadu officials defended the government at a press conference at the state's water-logged headquarters on Friday evening.
They said authorities have so far evacuated 127,580 people. More than half of them from banks of rivers are now sheltered in relief camps and are being treated for fever and infections to prevent an epidemic.
V. Raghunathan, 60, a manager at an interior design company living in southern Chennai, complained about the lack of warning before flood gates were opened on some of Chennai's 30 waterways.
"The authorities didn't give us adequate information about water being released from a nearby lake. Before we could take action my car had sunk and I had to move to the first floor of my apartment."
The Tamil Nadu public works department said it did issue warnings, but the information apparently did not reach the public because of a breakdown in media and phone communications. The Chennai edition of The Hindu newspaper did not go to press on Thursday, apparently for the first time in 137 years.