“Our situation was pathetic. We did not have anything to eat or wear. We shared each other’s clothes and drank rainwater. I saw women and children being washed away in the floodwaters. If I had to stay there for another day, I would have jumped into the water in desperation and tried to swim to another place,” said 25-year-old Syed Zaki, who reached his R.T. Nagar home here on Wednesday after being stranded in a Srinagar building for three days.
Mr. Zaki, an employee of a private airline, was in Srinagar to attend his relative’s wedding. When he reached on September 7, there was no transport. “Only big lorries were there to transport people to the city and I hopped on to one of them,” he said.
However, the lorry could not go beyond Lal Chowk. “We stayed in the lorry for a day and managed to get to a building nearby... After the bridge across the Tawi collapsed, the water-level in city rose at an alarming pace. The second floor of the building we were in got submerged soon...”
Mr. Zaki, along with some policemen, Army personnel and a few others, were stranded atop the building. A chopper came near their building on Tuesday. “People were too weak to even climb up the ladder to get into the chopper,” he said.
J.K. Rao (58), an engineer from Mangalore, along with six family members, survived the ordeal. They were travelling by car from Pahalgam to Srinagar when they were held up on the highway at Awantipora.
“On one side there was the Jhelum, on the other a hill. Luckily for us, there were guest houses on this hill where we were stranded for four days. But they were well stocked with food as they usually are prepared for eventualities,” he told The Hindu from New Delhi while waiting for a flight back home.
Nearly 62 people who were stuck along with them in other vehicles had taken shelter in the guest houses. Army rescue personnel, who were scouting for tourists everywhere, found them and airlifted them to Chandigarh the next day.
Singing praises for the Army and local people, Mr. Rao had stinging remarks against the local administration for failing to provide immediate relief. “What message is it going to send to the tourists who visit J&K from all over the world?”
