The river flows in all fury during the rains in its upper reaches and has washed away two bridges constructed successively on the Grand Trunk Road. The great stone bridge across the river near Barhi, in Hazaribagh district, built around 1848, was washed away in 1913, after a fall of of rain in 24 hours. The narrow iron bridge, which was built to replace it, withstood the strains of troop movement during the Second World War, but gave way in 1946, with another great flood. A new bridge built in the fifties has withstood the fury of the river.

There is another bridge on the Grand Trunk Road, across the Barakar, connecting Barakar, a small town bearing the same name in Bardhaman district of West Bengal with Chirkunda in Jharkhand. With heavy traffic in the heart of the coal belt, the bridge built in the mid–19th century is in need of repairs. A new bridge has been built, to the north, on the bypass running from Kalipahari, before entering Asansol to Nirsa in Dhanbad district.

The huge volume of monsoon water was carried down the valley and used to create havoc with floods in the lower Damodar basin. Annual rainfall over the basin varies between with an average of 1200 mm of which 80% occurs during the monsoon season from June to September. In order to harness the river (along with the Damodar), the Damodar Valley Corporation planned and implemented independent India’s first multipurpose river valley project. The first dam of the project was constructed across the Barakar at Tilayia.

See also
Maithon
Fury of the river
Tilayia