ELECTION 99
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

'We never imagined this storm would wreak such havoc'

M I Khan in Jagatsinghpur

There is hardly any corner of the coastal Jagatsinghpur district of Orissa which was not ravaged by last week's cyclonic storm.

In Jagatsinghpur town itself, except for a few concrete buildings, almost all small and big houses and business establishments have been flattened, leaving practically no trace of the busy marketplace that existed till Thursday evening.

As we went from one place to another in the town and nearby areas, everything appeared to have changed with entire villages destroyed by the gales and floods, leaving hundreds of villagers homeless.

"Cyclones used to hit us several times every year, but we never imagined that this storm would wreak such havoc," said the middle-aged Gagan Biswal of Gamura village near Jagatsinghpur.

Others echoed Biswal's sentiment. Many people admitted to rediff.com that they had heard the warnings on radio and TV, but never felt the need to take extra precautions. "It was the experience of a lifetime," said 70-year-old Banka Behera of Jagatsinghpur town.

But people fear now for the remote villages in the interiors of the district, from where there is no information as all communication links have been totally cut off. A district official involved in the relief operations admitted as much. "How can we gather information if all the communication links are totally out of reach," he said.

It is almost impossible to reach villages hardly 5 km from the main roads owing to the floodwaters. Several pucca and kachha roads have been washed away. Local workers of the ruling Congress as well as the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and Biju Janata Dal agreed that the casualties could be greater in the interiors.

A senior BJD MLA, Panchanand Kanungo, said a proper estimate of the toll would be difficult to make at present, but going by the loss of lives in Jagatsinghpur town and the villages nearby, he said the storm must have killed hundreds in Jagatsinghpur district alone.

In a nearby village Basantpur, a young villager, Harichandan Nayak, said several old people were just swept away by the floods or high-velocity winds.

But the villagers were more upset by fast-spreading rumours that another storm was due to hit coastal Orissa again. And with no communication from local authorities, such rumours were making people more fearful.

Though state government officials in Bhubaneswar and the district administration claimed that relief-and-rescue operations are on in full swing in all the cyclone-affected areas, including Jagatsinghpur, several people complained that they had not received kerosene, food or even polythene sheets for temporary shelters.

Tell us what you think of this report