Church workers are struggling to organize food and drinking water for thousands of people a week after Cyclone Tauktae ravaged the coast of western India.
The May 17-18 cyclone killed at least 169 people and displaced some 200,000. Another 81 are reported missing.
It also destroyed an estimated 50,000 houses besides devastating standing crops, livestock, trees, electricity polls and roads, bringing normal life to a grinding halt.
“What we need urgently is food and water,” said Father Thomas Mathew, director of social work in Rajkot Diocese, which covers Gujarat state’s worst-affected districts of Gir Somnath, Bhavnagar and Amreli in the coastal belt.
“Our people have nothing to eat as the cyclone and heavy rains destroyed their stored food grains,” Father Mathew told UCA News on May 24 after completing an initial survey of the area.
“People here are dependent on groundwater from bore wells for their basic needs and they don’t have many open wells. With no electric power, it has become impossible for them to pump up water even for drinking.”
Some families have lost everything they had earned in their lifetime — houses, fruit trees and livestock
Blocked roads and a lack of facilities make it difficult for people to fetch and store water, he said.
More than 80 deaths were reported from Gujarat, where the cyclone battered 12 districts. Other victims were in the coastal states of Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra and two federal government-controlled territories — Lakshadweep and Daman and Diu.
“Our teams have visited many places. Some families have lost everything they had earned in their lifetime — houses, fruit trees and livestock,” Father Mathew said.
In one village in the Bagsara Hudko area, all the houses of some 100 families were destroyed. People lost their clothing, food, documents and everything they had, according to a church team’s report.
Many residents are sheltering in schools and other buildings. The cyclone blew off tiles and tin sheets from the roofs of houses and the heavy rains destroyed the walls, the report said.
In Darad village, which housed 3,000 families, people are surviving without food and water following power disruption.
One flour mill owner has a diesel-powered electric generator in Darad. Villagers and those in the surrounding area are recharging their mobile phones and grinding available wheat to make food, the report stated.
An electric generator on a farm is the only source for another village to pump water from a bore well. “People come in two-wheelers and collect drinking water from there,” the report said.
Our many teams are identifying the most needy to keep them alive in this crisis
Black marketing of petrol and diesel is rampant in affected areas, it said.
Father Mathew said church workers can provide at least one month of dry rations to the 15,000 worst-affected families.
“Our many teams are identifying the most needy to keep them alive in this crisis,” the priest said urging “everyone to extend their helping hands for our suffering brothers and sisters.”
As a Covid-19 lockdown and restrictions are in place, “it has become tough to collect food grains and other requirements of the people,” he said.
The storm also destroyed all the storage places of food grains and other edible items.
“We need to procure food grains from outside the state and the Covid-19 restrictions have become a huge block,” Father Mathew said.
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