billion (€80 million or US$100 million). The financial impact of the floods were manifested in a variety of ways: The banking transactions across the counters were adversely affected and many branches and commercial establishments were unable to function from late evening of 26 July 2005. The state government declared 27 and 28 July as public holidays. ATM networks of several banks, which included the State Bank of India, the nation's largest national bank; ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, and several foreign banks like Citibank and HSBC, stopped functioning from the afternoon of 26 July 2005 at all the centres of Mumbai. ATM transactions could not be carried out in several parts of India on 26 July or 27 July due to failure of the connectivity with their central systems located in Mumbai. The BSE and the NSE, the premier stock exchanges of India could function only partially. Electronic trading platforms of the brokerage houses across the country remained largely inoperative. In partial trading, the Sensex, India's most tracked equity index closed at an all-time high of 7605.03 on 27 July 2005. The Exchanges, however, remained closed for the following day. Effect on Mumbai's links to the rest of the world For the first time ever, Mumbai's airports (Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport and Juhu Aerodrome) were shut for more than 30 hours due to heavy flooding of the runways, submerged Instrument Landing System equipment and extremely poor visibility. Over 700 flights were cancelled or delayed. The airports reopened on the morning of 28 July 2005. Within 24 hours of the airports becoming operational, there were 185 departures and 184 arrivals, including international flights. Again from early morning of 31 July, with increase in water logging of the runways and different parts of Mumbai, most of the flights were indefinitely cancelled. Rail links were disrupted, and reports on late evening of 30 July indicated cancellation of several long distance trains till 6 August 2005. The Mumbai-Pune Expressway, which witnessed a number of landslides, was closed the first time ever in its history, for 24 hours. According to the Hindustan Times, an unprecedented 5 million mobile and 2.3 million MTNL landline users were hit for over four hours. According to the .in registrar (personal communication), the .in DNS servers in Mumbai had to be reconfigured because the servers were not operational. Transport stats 52 local trains damaged 37,000 autorickshaws spoiled 4,000 taxis damaged