Though it has been about a week since high winds blew the roofs off 92 houses at midnight, the residents of Kujambail hamlet are yet to recover from the shock. However, they are slowly rebuilding their houses.
One can see remnants of the cement sheets on the kucha road leading to the hamlet. Mahantesh and Sharada’s one-and-a-half-month-old child, Arjun, who was sleeping in a cradle made of a sari tied to the iron angle of a cement sheet, was lifted owing to the strong winds and thrown away about 100 m away in an open area. Neela, Mahantesh’s sister-in-law, said: “It happened all of a sudden at midnight. The roofs were blown away. There was no time to react. Mahantesh located the child after it started crying. The severely injured child is now being treated at Wenlock Hospital in Mangaluru,” she said.
Manju, a relative, said Mahantesh could not afford to pay the treatment charge of a private hospital in Manipal, hence, shifted the child to Wenlock Hospital. Mahantesh works as a driver.
Sridhar, another resident, said that after the cement sheets were blown away, he had to use tarpaulin as a temporary measure.
“I am a heart patient. I am still terrified when I think of that night. We are slowly trying to rebuild our houses,” he said.
The scene is no different at Puttige and Padigar villages, where, besides damage to houses, a large number of arecanut, coconut, and other trees were uprooted.
Girija Shetty had built her house just a year ago at Puttige. “What can we do? The wind was so severe, it blew off the tin sheets of my house. Nearly 200 arecanut and coconut tree in the nearby fields too have been uprooted,” she said.
Since a large number of electricity poles were damaged, personnel of Mangalore Electricity Supply Company (MESCOM) were seen replacing some of them at Puttige.
Many trees were uprooted at Padigar village too. Kamala Poojary, a resident, said that a huge tree fell on her house.
“My daughter-in-law Rekha and six-year-old grandson Nischal were injured,” she said.
Prema Kulal said that her house too was damaged after a tree fell on it. “We have been given Rs. 1,000 as interim relief. This is not enough,” she said.
