Aid workers and police today sifted through debris from landslides in Bombay suburbs and outlying areas, as the death toll from this week's torrential rains in western India climbed to 749.
Soldiers carried milk and food to residents cut off by flooding, while navy divers used inflatable rafts to reach villagers marooned since record monsoon rains hit Maharashtra state on Tuesday.
Hopes of finding survivors dimmed, however. "There is so much debris around. I don't think anyone can still be alive under all this," said aid worker Antar Gulab standing in front of mounds of red mud and boulders in a northern Bombay suburb.
Entire families were wiped out when boulders and mud from a hill crashed into shanty homes in Saki Naka.
Despite the mounting death toll, people continue to live in tin huts precariously perched on parts of the hill. Every monsoon police and civic workers say they caution shanty dwellers to move out due to the danger from loose mud, but their warnings are not heeded.
Half of Bombay's 16 million population lives in filthy shanties that often share boundary walls with plush residential apartment blocks.
As many as 376 of the dead were from Bombay, said Rehabilitation Minister Patangrao Kadam. He said reports of the devastation caused by the floods and landslides from several districts had made the government fear the death toll would increase beyond 750.
The rains had eased up in most parts of the state allowing relief teams access to previously inaccessible villages, he said. The sun briefly shone from a largely overcast sky for the first time since Tuesday's unprecedented deluge of 37 inches of rain paralysed the state's communication and transport network.
The government had declared a two-day holiday for educational institutions and private and government businesses after the downpour. Today, the state was reconnected with the rest of the country, with air and rail networks resuming services.
Power was gradually being restored to most sectors, but many shanties in northern Bombay and surrounding villages went without electricity and water for the third consecutive day.
But rumours sent a recovering city into a tailspin. At least 18 people, including seven children, died after being crushed in a stampede in a Bombay shantytown on Thursday night, sparked by rumours of a burst dam and a tsunami.
Today another rumour about an approaching cyclone jolted employers in Nariman Point, where most companies have their headquarters, and send workers home early.
Police arrested ten men for spreading rumours and drove around neighbourhoods overlooking the Arabian Sea in attempts to quell the rising panic, the city's police said. Officers talked to residents and made frequent announcements over loudspeakers that the rumours were baseless.
Cranes lifted rocks to clear the path for rescuers using spades to clear the rubble of wrecked homes in search of survivors.