There are many unsung heroes in the Fani-battered regions of the state, working in the scorching heat to get things back on track – from power and water to food, Vishal K Dev, the commissioner-cum-secretary, Odisha Tourism and Department of Sports and Youth Services, recently said.
Many of them belong to government agencies while others represent the corporate sectors. However, there are some individuals who don’t come under these categories nor do they belong to any NGO. They spend money from their pocket and urge others to do so too to help the cyclone victims. Orissa POST caught up with some of them.
Kasturi Patnaik is a speech therapist from Bhubaneswar. She collaborates with a group of 10 to 12 people and has so far visited villages like Jaylunda, Dhankera, Kanti, Kothobada, Ghasa farm, Harirajpur, and Arisola of Puri district. Kasturi says, “We decided to help the victims with whatever resources we had with us. We pooled money and bought some dry foods. We managed to reach the people who had been starving for days and were living in school verandahs after their roofs were blown away in the cyclone. So far, we have distributed food among 700 cyclone-hit families. On the first day, we provided stuff like flattened rice packets, jaggery, sugar, biscuits, candles and torches. On another day, we offered cooked food to the affected people. Of course, hygiene was maintained during preparation of the food.”
“Though there was hardly anyone unaffected by the calamity, it was the children who needed urgent attention. Therefore, we took several packets of baby food and did our best to make the kids forget the trauma that they had gone through in the aftermath of Fani,” she adds.
Jagruti Panda, a stage anchor from Bhubaneswar, visited several cyclone-hit areas where people were in a miserable state. Along with her friends, she helped members of government agencies who were engaged in rescue operations. Jagruti says, “In the beginning, we visited one of the affected areas in Dandipur village in Nimapada, Puri district. There, we distributed around 200 packets with flattened rice, sugar, ORS, and biscuits. We also offered drinking water bottles to the NDRF team members who were clearing the routes and restoring power. People in many villages had removed the fallen trees and that helped volunteers to reach them. The entire district was ravaged beyond description. Apart from the collapse of all kutcha houses, most trees were uprooted. So, while visiting the affected areas, we asked people to plant trees once normalcy was restored.”
Eliza Rath, a lecturer in a nursing college of Bhubaneswar, visited many areas of Brahmagiri, one of the worst-hit regions of Puri district, with a group of 12 people. She says, “On day one, we went to Kela Sahi of Torana village in Brahmagiri where the residents were living under the open sky after losing their homes to the cyclone. We put up temporary tarpaulin sheds for many villagers to offer them respite from the scorching heat. We also visited other villages like Rendhagarh, Torana, and Raghunathpur and distributed biscuits, sattu, candles, match boxes, sanitary pads, baby food and mosquito repellant coils as people were in urgent need of these items. One of our friends, an MBBS student, also provided some over-the-counter medicines to the victims. We pooled about Rs. 50,000 and bought dry foods for the cyclone victims.”
BRATATI BARAL, OP
