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More 'will die' if relief fails to reach them

Pratap Patnaik in Jagatsinghpur

More than 95 per cent of the 15 million inhabitants in the thickly populated coastal region of Orissa stayed on in the villages despite being warned of the severe cyclonic storm.

They did so simply because they did not have a choice. ''Where should I have gone leaving behind my property and belongings?'' asks Ram Shankar Bhoi, a farm labourer of Supa village. ''The government warned us to remain in a safe place, but the authorities did not provide us any alternative place,'' he added.

The cyclone extracted a heavy price from Bhoi though he and his family managed to survive. All that he had, his two-room mud house, a cow, a coconut tree, a few sarees and dhotis besides the rice and some money saved up for his eldest daughter's wedding in December were all lost amid nature's fury.

He and his family -- wife, son and two daughters -- escaped as they had taken shelter at the village sarpanch's house.

Every villager one met during a tour of the district had stories of the horror wrought by the cyclone.

In Chandpatna village, Radu, a 50-year-old labourer went out on Friday evening (October 29) to rescue a goat lying trapped under the fallen roof of a shed. But the velocity of the wind was so high that he was swept away for one kilometre and he dashed against a mango tree. His body was found on Sunday morning.

His son Krishna was angry with the government for failing to take any preventive measures. Informed about the compensation of Rs 100,000, he said derisively, ''Will the money speak to me?''

In Kokidhia village, Nanda, a 40-year-old man, went out during the night to attend nature's call but was drowned in the Gobari, a tributary of the river Devi.

Trying to gather whatever was left of his belongings from the debris of his house, Nrushing Mohanty, an 80-year-old retired government official of Naugaonhat village, said, ''I had never seen such a furious cyclone in my life.''

The coastal belt had experienced at least 10 cyclones in the last quarter century, but the magnitude of devastation this time was unimaginable.

This correspondent found bodies floating in canals and rivers, carcasses of domestic animals, birds and wild animals strewn all over the fields.

Most of the corpses remain unidentified and could have been swept in by the tidal waves and flood waters from different villages.

Road communication with the district headquarters, some 65 kilometres away from Bhubaneswar was restored yesterday with the help of the Rapid Action Force sent by the Andhra Pradesh government.

The people were starving for the past six days as whatever food stocks they had were either lost in the debris or turned stale. Most of the villages were also under knee-deep water.

Ten helicopters carrying food materials had been making futile sorties being unable to find dry spots to drop the supplies. However, authorities said with the receding of flood waters and opening up of roads, relief materials would be sent through trucks and tractors.

The most affected were Balikuda and Naugaon blocks. Trilochan Kanungo, the newly-elected member of Parliament from the district, who was going around on a two-wheeler, said unless relief measures were undertaken on a war-footing, many more deaths would take place. The carcasses and bodies would also have to be disposed of at the earliest, otherwise epidemics would follow.

Most of the villagers, lacking the means to provide a decent funeral, were dumping the bodies and carcasses in the rivers to be carried away to the Bay of Bengal. ''After all the hype about giving a decent burial for the mercenaries and Pakistani regulars at the Kargil front, the country was letting the bodies of its own citizens to be swept away by the rivers,'' remarked a retired soldier.

The state government could have arranged community dwellings during the cyclone in offices or school buildings, stored sufficient food materials at the block or tehsil level offices for distribution immediately after the cyclone. Polythene and tarpaulin sheets could have also saved many of the houses which crumbled due to rain, many of the villagers said.

Considering the extent of damage to the power and telephone network, villagers do not hope for restoration in the next three or four months. At many places, people are using the lines for drying their cloths.

The apprehension of the villagers is voiced by Bhimsen Mohanty of Naigaonhat. ''If power is restored in a fortnight, people could prepare for the kharif crop. Otherwise many would die of starvation.''

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