October 12 remains etched forever in the history of Visakhapatnam.
It was on this day in 2014, the Steel City quivered like a fragile flower creeper when Hudhud, a Category IV super cyclone, made its landfall. In a matter of just a few hours, the entire city appeared as though it was a habitation in the wild, decimated of its beauty, greenery, and tranquillity by herds of crazy elephants.
The havoc wrought by the storm was only to be seen to be believed. Uprooted trees, some of them landing on vehicles parked in the front yard, snapped power and cable lines, twisted power poles, blown off hoardings, broken windowpanes, damaged sewer pipes were a common sight. Such was the velocity of the wind that a few cars put on display fell off the floor like toys after the glass façade of an automobile showroom located at Birla Junction on the National Highway blew off.
“The two-wheelers parked in the cellar of my apartment drifted to one corner, as though they were unclaimed vehicles piled up in a garage,” said N. Sai Sri Charan, a techie residing in Narasimha Nagar. The mess the storm created and the misery it brought about proved to be quite a task to handle. “Every person had to grapple with multiple tasks to set the house in order,” said N. Subba Rao, a branch manager in Union Bank of India.
Utter chaos
“There was utter chaos on the road as well. There was no way one could walk across, as huge trees and twisted power poles lay strewn all over. While people could bring some semblance of order in their houses, they had to wait for a couple of days before NDRF teams descended armed with wood cutters and power saws to clear the roads,” recalled A.S. Ravi Sekhar, LIC Branch Manager, of M.V.P. Colony.
“But the most striking aspect was the unity of purpose displayed by the people, young and old. Even children lent a helping hand to the rescue teams in clearing the tree trunks,” D.V.A. Narasimham, a retired VPT employee residing in Murali Nagar, said. In a lighter vein, he added: “Thanks to power outage, there were no daily serials on the telly, no video games for children, no chatting on the mobile and no SMSing either. This gave members of every family time to interact with one another.”
“I had no school for over a week, and this gave me an opportunity to do my bit. I, along with my friends, joined hands with the NDRF teams to clear the tree trunks cut to pieces,” said Anoop, a Class IV student then, of Murali Nagar.
“The calamity brought brotherhood of man to the fore. As I live in an apartment, water became a scarce commodity. What was stored got exhausted very soon. But the family of A. Lakshmi Narasamma that lives next to our apartment came to our rescue. They allowed almost 10 families to fetch water from their open well till power supply resumed. This saved us of the trouble of storing the precious liquid,” said A.N.V. Krishna Rao, a railway employee and Anoop’s father.
Airing a similar experience, Mr. Ravi Sekhar said: “There was a hand pump in a park from which people fetched water. They helped one another in drawing water from the pump.”
While the NDRF teams and electricians mobilised from other districts toiled hard, the residents joined hands to cater to their needs such as providing them food, tea and snacks.
“I prepared upma and served it hot to the rescue men, most of whom were from the North. They liked it very much that they preferred to have it the next day too,” said S. Subhadra of Narasimha Nagar.
While nature had shown man how fierce she can be, what was witnessed in the days that followed was a classic example of how man can spring back and emerge victorious by sheer team work and unity, observed Mr. Ravi Sekhar.
