ANDHRA PRADESH
Life on the edge
S. NAGESH KUMAR
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Memories of the tsunami still haunt fishermen in the affected regions
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STILL APPREHENSIVE: What lies in store? PHOTO: AFP
For fishermen and and farmers along the 1,000 km-long coastline of Andhra Pradesh, accepting the travails of nature is a way of life. After a natural calamity, they get on with their liveswithout much ado.
This remarkable resilience is largely due to the lessons learnt after a killer tidal wave flattened Diviseema in Krishna district in 1977, snuffing out more than 10,000 lives. The tragedy, still fresh in the minds of old timers, is what has also helped the administration learn the ropes of disaster management. For example, once a cyclone warning is issued, evacuation of people at short notice, building temporary shelters and providing rations to those likely to become homeless and in distress is a part of the drill.
But, the tsunami on December 26, was very different as the then Collector of Krishna, K. Prabhakar Reddy, recollected that black Sunday.
"Please rush here, Sir. Something unusual is happening," was Radhakrishna, a Revenue Division Officer's frantic mobile phone call to Mr. Reddy, who was in Vijayawada. Just minutes earlier, a tidal wave had swallowed up over a dozen women and children. A second wave, two to three metres high, was hurtling towards the Manginapudi beach near Machilipatnam.
When the water receded, more bodies were found lying on the sand. In all, the tidal wave had killed 34 women and children, most of them tourists out for a dip in the sea on a full moon day of Margisa Masam.
Mr. Reddy, now an additional secretary in the Chief Minister's Office, continues the narration. "I felt the tremors around 6.30 a.m. in Vijayawada. I checked the seismograph two hours later and found the intensity to be around 2 to 2.5 on the Richter scale. A message was aired on television, asking people not to worry. All this was even as news was trickling in from Sumatra about the `tsunami', a term I had never heard of earlier."
Diffused fury
Unlike in Tamil Nadu, the fury of the tsunami in Andhra Pradesh was diffused and coastal villages were able to return to normalcy soon. The tsunami left 107 dead (and four others missing) in the Nellore, Prakasam, Guntur, Krishna, West Godavari and East Godavari districts and damaged property. The fishing community, 1.30 people, were the worst-hit as it lost 11,500 boats, swept away or damaged.
Reconstruction work by the State Government is now concentrated mainly in Prakasam and Nellore which bore the brunt of the tsunami. As against Rs. 317 crores sought by the Government towards tsunami aid, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sanctioned Rs. 100 crores. Apart from a host of voluntary and missionary bodies which pitched in with assistance, the State Government spent Rs. 50 crores towards immediate and medium term relief.
Once initial urgency of providing relief was over, reconstruction operations have become sluggish. Of the amount promised, the Centre has released about Rs. 41 crores. Official figures show that less than 7,500 out of 40,000 houses planned have been completed. This was/is part of a long-term programme of building houses at a cost of Rs. 40,000 each for fishermen (with 50 per cent Government subsidy) outside the Coastal Regulatory Zone and where the beneficiary must bear 50 per cent of the cost.
About 7,000 fishing nets (out of 34,000 nets to be procured) are yet to reach fishermen. While 8,657 damaged boats have been repaired, getting new boats is a promise still to be fulfilled. Several fibreglass boats in Prakasam purchased from Chennai have sprung leaks.
The Commissioner of Disaster Management, D.C. Rosaiah, summed up the situation by saying that "the tsunami phobia" haunts fishermen. Any variation in tides or advancement of the surf on the beach is attributed to the tsunami. "The Government has now included tsunami in the list of natural disasters," he said.
TSUNAMI A YEAR AFTER
