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Villagers show resolve to face flood fury

— Photo: Ashoke Chakrabarty

Height of misery: A few families of Terabatia of Khurda district taking shelter on rooftop with their belongings as low-lying areas are submerged by floodwaters on Saturday.

KANTAPADA (Cuttack): Forty-year-old Gagan Behari Swain in Alapur village in Cuttack district had just shifted a pair of bullocks to a safer place when huge volume of water started inundating his village boundary on Saturday.

But instead of fleeing the spot, he returned to the village.

He was not alone. More than 30 young men were rummaging around anxiously if anybody was left behind in the village.

People of this flood-prone village were seen best prepared to face one of the most devastative floods that the Mahanadi system ever had.

"Since Friday evening we started shifting women and children to safer places ensuring that there was no loss of human life in the village. We are only worried for the crop, which will surely remain submerged for many days," Mr. Swain said.

It was a bright sunny day on Saturday but there were hardly any women and children present in villages close to Devi and Kushabhadra rivers.

An eerie silence was prevailing everywhere.

About five breaches that had occurred to embankments of two rivers had made them speechless.

The water could enter their villages any moment.

However, villagers had not lost their sense. Making best use of their cell phones, they called each other to ensure that everything was alright.

About 3,000 hectares of standing crop was facing submergence and the fodder area for cows would be lost, said Panchanan Kanungo, former Finance Minister who was going round villages and taking stock of the preparedness.

Besides crops, cattle is the strength of this region that falls under Kantapada and Niali block.

Mr. Kanungo said about 10 gram panchayats along the Devi and Kushabhadra rivers supplied milk to Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.

By afternoon of Saturday, the space on embankments of the river Devi was getting filled by people from flooded villages. The exodus was gaining strength while women described how big the flood was.

"This time we fled with our valuables without having a second thought of what will happen to our houses," Sosati of Arisola village said.

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