In one village, rising tide waters bring back nightmare of cyclone
nNEW DELHI: When the gale died down and the squall ended in the early hours of May 21, Chandan Patra thought the worst was behind him.
Cyclone Amphan tore the roof off their modest two-room house in Harinhula village in the North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal and smashed most of their belongings, but everyone in the family was safe and the hutment was still standing.
Their biggest worry was the water swishing around on the floor – the cyclone had smashed at least 22 river embankments in the area, allowing waters from the Bidyadhari river to gush through – but Patra estimated that in another week, the water level would plummet as relief reached the village. He was wrong.
Roughly three weeks after the fiercest cyclone to hit the region in a century, water levels are rising once again, courtesy the fullmoon tide that threatened to maroon the entire village this weekend.
“We are regularly getting relief material and food, but we are not sure how long our house will stand the gush of water. It is our home after all; we built it after much hardship. How do we abandon it?” asked Patra.
The village of roughly 1,200 people is in an under-developed part of the state that is dependent on agriculture and manual labour. Patra’s father is an agricultural labourer, his brother is unemployed and his sister is studying in a local college.
Their nemesis, the Bidyadhari river, is one of the scores of waterways that form a unique interconnected network of channels, marshes and salt lakes in the Sunderban
delta.
A lifeline for the local population – dominated by marginalised castes, for who the local assembly constituency is also reserved – are the decades-old embankments that protect the area against storm surges. Local residents allege these structures were slowly weakening because of insufficient maintenance – hastening soil erosion in the area. “Over the years, we have lost chunks of land to the river,” said Shyamal Mondal, a local school teacher.
Amphan crushed 22 of them, but within weeks, local residents and the administration were able to rebuild about 20.
“About 500 labourers worked day and night to repair the embankments. But in two big ones, the water pressure was so high that it was dangerous to work there. These have not been repaired,” said Mondal. As a result, columns of water gushed on Saturday towards the low-lying Harinhula that falls right in the direction of the current.
Two additional factors are complicating relief. The area is without power because Amphan uprooted all electricity poles in the vicinity and the lingering threat of Covid-19, which has infected at least 1,000 people in the district. “The damage is extensive. We are trying our best and giving relief and food to the locals,” said Usha Rani Mondal, the local legislator.
She said the water surge was too much for the workers to bring it under control. “It may take up to one month for the water to completely go down,” she added.
But for Patra and his family, the threat is more immediate. “We don’t know if our house will remain standing when the water surges again. Where will we go?”