PICKING UP THE PIECES
As lakhs of Malayalis return to their homes to retrieve the fragments of their broken lives, Kerala tries to hold itself together with help from volunteers and relief in cash and kind. The state’s real test remains those still in the camps
As lakhs of Malayalis return to their destroyed homes, Kerala tries to steel itself for the real test that’s coming
As Sanija, 36, from Pandanadu village in Chengannur taluk of Kerala’s Alappuzha district, hangs clothes out to dry near the heap of rubble that was once her home, her face betrays no expression. A few clothes are all that she could salvage from her two-room home after the floods began on August 14. The swelling Pampa river, furious with water from the dams which were forced to lift shutters after continuous rains of over a week, drowned 10,000 homes in Pandanadu, just two months after it had taken Sanija’s husband Suresh, a fisherman. Widowed, and with three young children to fend for, Sanija used to stitch clothes for a living. Now she finds her sewing machine too rendered useless. “Everything is lost. I have no more tears left in my eyes,” she says, as her father Padmasanan, 72, points to more household appliances, including a TV and a fridge, lying deep in the rubble.
Like Sanija, lakhs of people in Kerala are reliving the trauma each day, picking up the pieces of their lives after the worst flood in close to a century killed over 400 and displaced over 700,000. Although the rains have abated since, with some parts of the state witnessing a largely dry spell from August 18 to 26, the floods have left a trail of destruction and despair that will take months, if not years, to repair. As on August 27, there are still about 200,000 people stuck in 750 relief camps as the government endeavours to send them home and reopen schools that doubled up as relief centres. Many of those returning home find there is still no clean drinking water or electricity. In Kuttanad, a major rice producer and a picturesque locale known for its backwaters, several homes in Mithrakari, Payippad, Edathua and Kainakary are still waterlogged, with villagers living in relief camps in Alappuzha and Chenganassery. In Idukki district, where over 50 people died and over 30,000 fled their homes to relief camps at Devikulam, Peerumedu, Thodupuzha and Udumbanchola, thousands are still without clean water and electricity. The popular tourist destination of Munnar wears a desolate look, and the villages of Matupetty, Kundala and Rajamala, that were inundated, will take months to return to normal.
TALL TASK AHEAD
The rebuilding of Kerala will be no simple task. Homes have to be rebuilt, but that is just one aspect. Most people have lost their livelihood, farmers their agricultural land and livestock, shopkeepers their shops along with supplies, small-scale factory owners their goods. In several places, schools, hospitals and primary healthcare centres need major repairs. Massive clean-up operations are on in several places, but much more remains to be done. Bridges have to be repaired, as well as roads; in several areas in Alleppey and the hilly Idukki and Palakkad, many roads are yet to be restored. Several lakh vehicles have been damaged, and no one knows how fast or how much they’ll be able to recover from the insurance companies. The Kochi airport reopened on August 29 after being shut for
almost two weeks. The tourism sector, which contributes over 12 per cent to the state’s revenues, has been crippled, with over 80 per cent cancellations in tourism spots and resorts, despite the Onam season. The state has cancelled its popular Onam festivities, including the famed boat races.
But Kerala is fighting back. Even as the state machinery concentrates on disaster management and rehabilitation, working overtime and cancelling all leave despite the festive season, help is pouring in from non-resident Malayalis and others. The Chief Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund had received Rs 714 crore till August 27. The state electricity board has been able to restore connections of 200,000 people under ‘Mission Reconnect’, but some 2.55 million still remain without power. Some hundred-odd employees of the Andhra Pradesh electricity board helped in the effort.
But beyond an already stretched administrative machinery, it is the participation of lakhs of volunteers that is adding teeth and speed to relief and rehabilitation. In the temple town of Aranmula in Pathanamthitta district, nourished by the Pampa river, the state’s third longest after the Periyar and Bharatapuzha, Suresh Kumar, 48, a volunteer engaged in cleaning up homes, points to the steps leading to the Sree Parthasarathy Temple. Flood water had reached up to the seventh step of the temple, which stands at least 25 feet above the ground. The road leading to the temple, normally
bustling with shops selling everything from puja offerings to cheap ornaments to toys, is deserted. Two youngsters salvage a steel structure they used to sell their wares on from a couple of feet of dried clay, left behind by the floods. Within a two kilometre radius, some 1,500 homes were inundated for days. Kumar and a team of more than 100 volunteers have been visiting home after home, helping people clean out the slush, retrieve documents from half-sunk almirahs and throw out things that have been rendered useless. He and his team, dressed in uniform to be easily identifiable, wear surgical masks as they battle the slush and filth. They need to be wary of snakes and rodents, too. But they are determined. “No clean-up will be possible without these volunteers, because the residents, already tired from the tragedy, find it very hard to do the humongous work themselves,” says Kumar, before the team leaves for another location on motorbikes.
GETTING SETTLED, FAST
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan set the tone for the massive clean-up of homes, debris and slush just days ahead of Onam on August 25. Replying to a question on the mammoth task ahead, he said with a smile, “We are going to do it together.” Volunteers, ranging from party workers of all hues to NGOs to small friends’ circles, gave up Onam festivities to help thousands of families attempt a return to normalcy.
Government estimates peg the extent of losses at Rs 20,000 crore, but the actual sum could be twice as much, some say. It is only when people return to their homes, offices and shops that they will be able to assess the real extent of the damage. Krishnan Kutty, 64,who runs a provision store in Nedumudi in Kuttanad, opened his shop for the first time after the floods on August 27 to find most of his goods damaged. “I can only throw away all this,” he says, as he pulls out sack after sack from his shop and throws it into a garbage pile nearby. He will now have to drain out the stagnant water inside which was beginning to smell strongly.
Battling floods is not unusual for the inhabitants of Kuttanad, a region where much of the farmland lies below sea level. But the floods this time shook them to the core. “We were struggling, with water rising by a foot every hour,” says Subaida, 47, from Ramankary village. She and her family clung to their belongings till the last before fishing boats rescued them. She is wary of immediately leaving the NSS Hindu College in Chenganassery that had been home to 142 refugee families, since there is no drinking water and nothing to go back to, with vast tracts of crops having been destroyed.
Rehabilitation efforts are gaining pace. The number of relief camps has come down substantially from the 3,274 on August 20, thanks to the steady number of those returning home. There were close to 4,000 people across various camps and at relatives’ homes in Mannancherry village in Alappuzha, a majority of them from Kuttanad, says Suresh, president of the local panchayat. Some families had as many as 40 relatives staying in a single home during the floods, straining their resources. It was then that succour from various groups started flowing in, including a consignment of drinking water, clothes, medicines, cleaning material and provisions from Mumbai. At a relief camp in Aranmula, 850 residents from the flooded Ezhikkad Colony were even served a feast on Onam day. But cooking three times a day for such large numbers stretched rations, forcing camp managers to convince inmates to return home. Some camps in Alappuzha struggled with poor sanitation, but various agencies were soon pressed in to address them.
However, like every other largescale relief and rehabilitation effort, there have been shortfalls too. There have been complaints of relief material not being distributed efficiently, getting piled up at railway stations and in camps awaiting distribution, suggesting that the administration and volunteers have been stretched and need fresh motivation. Most volunteers have
taken leave from work or have utilised their Onam holidays for relief work and need to return to their daily routines at the earliest. With schools scheduled to reopen on August 29, the pressure on relief camp managers and inmates have only increased.
BATTLING ILLNESS
But many, like Nikhil, 24, who did an MCom at the NSS Hindu College, are staying put. He has volunteered to help run the relief camp here. “The people here are like extended family,” he says. The camp gets doctors to conduct medical check-ups of inmates. A team from the state government’s Ayurveda department under Dr P.S. Sreekumar is conducting daily check-ups and educating inmates on hygiene after they get back to their homes. Medicines are outsourced and sometimes made by the department itself, says camp convenor Dr S. Asha. The focus is also on extending psychiatric help. Akhil, 28, a civil engineer in Aranmula, is part of a team which is instrumental in getting doctors from Mumbai to visit as many camps as possible. Thanks to medical aid, most camps have managed to keep infectious diseases at bay, he says, as he divides his time between volunteering and cleaning up his own home. With many shops in the affected areas still closed, a few of the migrant workers from UP, Bihar and Bengal have offered to work as daily labour to help clean up homes.
Epidemics are known to closely follow floods. According to the World Health Organization, floods can potentially increase the transmission of communicable diseases, both water-borne such as typhoid, cholera, leptospirosis and hepatitis A, and vector-borne, such as malaria, dengue and dengue haemorrhagic fever and yellow fever. Contamination of drinking water facilities is a major risk in flooding. While the state health authorities are focusing on arresting the diseases at the camps, they are also mapping disease patterns to detect any signs of an epidemic. On August 28, a letter from the state’s Directorate of Health Services warned of a sudden increase of leptospirosis from Thrissur, Palakkad, Kozhikode, Malappuram and Kannur districts. ‘Any fever with myalgia (muscle pain) to be taken as leptospirosis and to be treated accordingly,’ the letter said.
Dr Asha says her team is spreading health awareness by advising those returning home to drain wells and put bleaching powder, use insecticides to prevent breeding of mosquito larva, boil water for drinking, and even natural remedies to repel snakes and rodents. There is also a massive thrust on disposal of waste material and carcasses.
STATE SUCCOUR
Since people left homes in panic during the floods, plans are on the anvil to retrieve certificates and lost documents, using the database of various departments in the state, aided by a software which is being developed. Adalats will be held across the state from the first week of September to facilitate duplication of these documents. However, there is more misery in store for those without any documents, like a migrant family from Tamil Nadu living near the Aranmula temple. Not only have they lost all their belongings in the flood, they are also being denied relief material at a nearby camp without sufficient proof, says Vellatai Daspandi, 54. Meanwhile, the state has offered Rs 10,000 each to the 391,000 families affected by the flood. Small-scale businesses which were destroyed will be given interestfree loans of Rs 10 lakh each, and a moratorium of one to one-and-a-half years to repay their debt. Also to be extended are loans for rebuilding and repairs of homes, with no margin for amounts up to Rs 5 lakh, as well as for farming.
Kerala has seen its biggest disaster in living memory. As it deploys all available resources to battle the crisis and rehabilitate the affected, it also needs to quickly insulate the state from such calamities in future.