J. Anthony Adimai, 30, from Neerodi ventured into sea in the early hours of November 29. The small mechanised boat in which he and five other fishermen went capsized when the cyclone hit.
Even as the crew members were desperately clinging on to the capsized boat, Anthony Adimai saw two of his friends give up and drown over the next two days.
“That was the most distressing and frightening sight I have seen. We were just two feet away from each other, but could not raise our voice to talk,” he says. Anthony Adimai and three others were rescued three days later by the Indian Coast Guard (ICG). However, one of them died in a hospital.
T. Jagan from Chinnathurai shows a video shot on a mobile phone by him and his friends in their boat, around 100 nautical miles away from the coast. In it, the body of a youngster can be seen floating on top of a few diesel cans tied together. “He must have been the sole survivor. Looking at the level of decomposition, he must have died two days before,” Jagan says.
A. Inthes of Poothurai had reliable information from fishermen returning in a damaged boat a couple of days after the cyclone that they saw 43 fishermen stranded in a slightly damaged boat, around 60 nautical miles away.
“Three of the four boats fishing in an area sank and all the survivors apparently got inside the fourth boat, which most likely included many of my family members,” he says.
Since then, he and his friends have been running from pillar to post to locate the boat, but their efforts have been in vain.
“If they are still alive, they would have drifted beyond 600 nautical miles now in the ocean current,” he says.
Stories like these are aplenty in Thoothoor and nearby Neerodi, Marthandamthurai, Vallavillai, Eraviputhenthurai, Chinnathurai, Poothurai and Enayamputhanthurai — places renowned for highly skilled deep-sea fishermen, accounting for a majority of the over 400 fishermen yet to be traced.
No early warning
The refrain in these villages is that the government machinery failed in providing warnings about the cyclone and compounded the damage through delayed rescue operations. The latter has the fishing community up in arms.
Rev. Fr. Churchill, general secretary, South Asian Fishermen Fraternity, says, “Some fishermen got a warning of ‘rough seas’ with winds at a speed of 40-50 kmph from the Fisheries department. They are used to such weather, but did not expect a massive cyclone.”
D. Christudasan of Thoothoor says a considerable number of lives were saved not by the ICG or the Navy but by fellow fishermen.
“A boat named Hosanna from our village, which was damaged, towed another damaged boat and reached the shore a few days later. It was immediately repaired and sent back to the sea to look for stranded fishermen. But they found only bodies floating in many places,” he says.
The disappointment with the Centre and State government went to the extent of slogans being raised at a massive rail roko at Kuzhithurai on December 7 with the demand that these villages be transferred to Kerala.
Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami, who visited Thoothoor on December 12 after sustained protests, did not meet the affected families in their villages and instead met a select group of victims at the auditorium of St. Jude’s College, barely 500 metres away from Chinnathurai. Union Minister of State for Shipping Pon. Radhakrishnan, Kanniyakumari MP, is yet to visit them, villagers claim.
“The ICG and Navy initially failed to take the help of fishermen, who have better knowledge of where to search,” says Rev. Fr. Anto Joris, Poothurai parish priest .
Story of neglect
Their long-pending demands for advanced communication equipment, a helipad and other infrastructure for rescue operations remain unfulfilled. “Every year, we lose around 25 fishermen in sea due to accidents, bad weather and other reasons,” Fr. Churchill says.
Justin Antony, founder-president, International Fishermen Development Trust, says that wireless communication equipment used by fishermen can reach only up to 40 nautical miles during rough weather and may get damaged easily. “We have been demanding Very High Frequency equipment and satellite phones,” he says.
