Fire and Rescue Services personnel, with help of villagers, rescued 75 cows and calves which had got trapped on a manal thittu (sand shoal) surrounded by Coleroon river near Kodalikaruppur village in Ariyalur district on Tuesday.
The rescue operation carried out meticulously went on for nearly five hours. A section of villagers had complained that a herd of cows which went to the manal thittu for grazing a few days ago had got trapped due to heavy flow of Coleroon water in the wake of the recent rains.
Acting on the complaint, a team of firefighters from the Jayamkondam fire station with a rubber boat fitted with an outboard motor and armed with other paraphernalia including life buoys and life jackets took a group of villagers in the rubber boat to the manal thittu to rescue the cows and calves.
The firefighters and the villagers helped the cows slowly move towards the side where the depth of the water and the flow were less for them to swim in order to reach the other side.
It was a meticulous operation in which the safety of the fire fighters, the locals involved in the rescue operation and that of the cows were all ensured, said P. Ambika, District Fire Officer, Perambalur, who led the rescue mission.
