Mens mediene er opptatt av lokale "katastrofer" kan man internasjonalt i den
seriøse pressa finne stoff om de virkelige katastrofene. Her fra Daily
Telegraph om høstens orkan i Orissa-delstaten i India, en av de verste
orkaner som er registrert.
Karsten Johansen
Hell and high water
In India cyclones and the destruction that comes with them are almost a part
of life... but the cyclone that hit Orissa was very different. Marina
Cantacuzino reports from Kiada, one of 1,500 villages destroyed
ALTHOUGH the village of Kiada in the fertile coastal plain of Orissa lies
just six miles from the sea, some villagers had never seen the sea in their
lives and others did not even know what it was. But on the evening of
October 27 all that changed: the villagers did not go to the sea, the sea
came to them.
Devestation:'This used to be a beautiful place but now it's unrecognisable'
And it came to them with a vengeance - a 25-foot mountain of water, a tidal
wave stretching across 10 miles which swallowed the land. Until then, Kiada
was a relatively prosperous north-east Indian village of 1,400 herdsmen and
their families; once the sea had departed, only 500 people remained and all
that was left of the village was a wasteland. When I arrive several weeks
after the cyclone has hit, I ask if there is any picture to show me how
Kiada used to look and an old woman taps me on the shoulder, looking
indignant. 'If we couldn't rescue our own children, how do you expect us to
save a photograph?' she demands.
'This used to be a beautiful place,' says the village elder, Pandara Bohira,
'but now it's unrecognisable with the roads, houses and trees all gone.' He
remembers a Seventies cyclone. 'That was nothing compared with this one,' he
says. 'It only lasted for seven hours and all the houses in this more
prosperous part of the village survived. What was so terrible about this one
was the tidal wave which brought the water that settled at about 10 feet. A
few hours later, just as we were beginning to think the storm was abating, a
reverse undercurrent came and swept many more to their deaths.'
It was the worst cyclone in meteorological history, with one of the
highest-ever recorded wind speeds - 223 miles per hour. It lasted 24 hours
when most cyclones last no longer than three. Across Orissa 1,500 villages
were wiped off the map, at least 10,000 people were killed - probably many
more - and more than 1.5 million were made homeless.
Although it was a disaster that everyone knew was coming, no one had
conceived of its magnitude. For two days meteorological offices had issued
warnings on the radio about the build up of a 'super-cyclone'. But people
either didn't hear the warnings or didn't believe them. Then it started to
rain and by evening the winds had reached speeds of 155 miles per hour.
Three hours later, birds and then humans were being blown away. Visibility
was nil. Those that stood a chance had massed together in groups of about
50, linking limbs in a 10-foot-square human tapestry.
For 12 hours the people of Kiada remained like this until the sea arrived.
Then, as the mud walls of their houses collapsed, people clung desperately
to the bamboo roofs in an attempt to use them as rafts or scrambled to the
tops of the trees to find protection among the branches. 'I saw fathers
clinging to their children and then losing their grip,' says Pavitra Mohan
Swain, the village elected representative. 'It happened right in front of
our eyes. We were all helpless. Trying to save someone meant dying
yourself.' Next morning the survivors looked out on to a watery wilderness.
Das, a 45-year-old, looked at his wife and saw she had died by his side in
the treetop. Many more had been washed away. There was a silence. 'We simply
couldn't take it in, let alone talk,' says Pavitra.
As the water began to recede during the next 48 hours, Kiada and its horrors
began to emerge. Animal carcasses were floating in the once-picturesque
creeks, human victims were stranded grotesquely on mud banks and in
treetops. Pavitra points to one of the few banyan trees still standing.
'This was the tree trunk to which parents tied their children in the belief
that they would be safe from the strong winds, but then the tidal wave came
and they were all drowned.' More than a hundred people in the village died
in this way. 'You will understand why some of us have lost our minds,'
Pavitra says quietly, recounting the story of a grandmother who, having lost
her entire family in the cyclone, then refused to eat the few morsels put in
front of her and starved to death. 'How can I live when my children and
grandchildren have all died?' she said.
In the days that followed the cyclone, many died of hypothermia as the
temperature reached unseasonable lows. Their clothes ripped from their
bodies by the force of the tidal wave, everyone was naked, their skins
peeling and infected. 'We had no dignity left,' says Pavitra. 'We were
living off finger slices of coconut, giving the milk to the children and
sucking rainwater from the thatch. We had no blankets, no tools, no utensils
and the wells were contaminated by corpses.'
On the fourth day after the cyclone, with the water level at three feet,
some of the village men waded through the paddy fields to the nearest town
in the hope of getting relief but came back empty-handed because there were
no food supplies left. It was the same the following day but on the next
they returned with a little puffed rice and wheat which was eaten raw. Only
after 12 days did army and aid agency vans arrive with the first pre-packed
meals. It was also the beginning of a macabre kind of tourism, as people
came to steal possessions and gold teeth from the dead or simply to gape.
In Kiada, as in many villages across Orissa, the people have lost everything
- their tools, cattle, ploughs and homes. Apart from the human casualties,
out of 2,500 cattle in the village only 39 remain. Of the 1,000 sheep and
goats only one goat is left and of the 500 poultry only eight chickens
survived. The cyclone struck three weeks before the harvest and all their
plantations - paddy fields, sugar cane and vegetable crops - were destroyed.
'It will be 20 years before we can rebuild our community to how it was, and
we will be dependent on aid for months, possibly years,' says Pavitra.
Leading me to a nearby paddy, he points out two recently discovered corpses.
They lie where the full force of the mud and water dropped them, with their
hollow faces staring up at the sky. 'Who are they?' I ask. Pavitra shrugs,
guessing that they must be people washed down by the current from other
villages. He is clasping the hand of his neighbour, Shankar Pradhan, who
like him was reasonably well off before the cyclone. The eldest in a family
of five brothers, Shankar owned two acres of land and seven cattle. Nothing
remains of his livelihood. Of his family of 30 only seven are still living.
When I ask about his wife and children his words get lost - instead there is
just a cloud of silent emotion.
Most of Kiada's villagers are still numb with shock. They speak in a slow
monotone as they struggle to tell their tales. Though the human spirit is
resilient in these disaster-prone parts, the scale of this human tragedy is
beyond anyone's experience. Like the massive centuries-old banyan trees,
where children now hang from the roots, life has been turned upside down
here. Some of the villagers shake their fists or hold out their hands in a
desperate plea for food.
Their anger is directed against the government, which they accuse of failing
to offer aid and compensation. As Pandara Bohira, the 70-year-old village
elder, looks at me his face dissolves. Clasping my hand with his long, bony
fingers, he begs me for medicine for his grandchildren. His wife appears in
tears from behind the home he is rebuilding, clutching a child and holding
out her hand. These are people whose pride and social standing within the
village would have made such appeals for help unthinkable a few weeks ago,
but now in the wake of the cyclone even the village elder is having to
resort to begging.
On this fifth week since the cyclone, the emergency services are withdrawing
and the work of rebuilding these fractured communities is left to a few aid
agencies such as Oxfam, the only organisation working in Orissa before the
cyclone, largely involved in disaster prevention and poverty alleviation
work. It has been responsible for cleaning up contaminated wells and helping
to operate a Food for Work scheme which gives people food in return for
helping to build houses and clear debris.
For the time being the people of Kiada are concentrating on rebuilding their
homes and clearing the wreckage that surrounds them. But the soul has gone
out of this community and in the months to come the only thing that will
replace their industrious past will be the unending pursuit of food and
medicines. In a country with no national policy on disaster management,
progress is painstakingly slow and the fear is that just as the process of
reconstruction begins to take effect, disaster will strike once again in
this cyclone-prone region.
To give a donation, call Oxfam on 01865-313131 or send a cheque, payable to
Oxfam - Orissa Appeal, to Oxfam, 274 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 7DZ
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