Ninety-year-old Kecchala Bhadram Reddy is one of the 300-odd villagers from P. Agraharam of the Devipatnam Mandal taking shelter at a flood relief camp being organised by the district administration near Rampachodavaram. Sitting on a stairway at the camp, he gazes at the overcast sky waiting for normalcy.
He has seen many floods during his lifetime, including the 1986 ‘freak floods’, which claimed many lives. But never a flood like this. Narrating his experiences, Mr. Bhadram Reddy says, "The 1986 floods was a fury of nature. But, this is manmade." He was referring to the cofferdam constructed at the Polavaram project site.
"It is a routine practice for us to move to safer places for a couple of days whenever the Godavari was in spate. Taking shelter in relief camps is also not new. The villagers would not have suffered like this had the government provided houses, and paid proper Relief and Rehabilitation (R&R) packages. Who is to be blamed?" asks his associate Talluri Rami Reddy.
Back in their village, a few youth chose to stay put in their houses fearing that their valuables would be stolen. Senior citizens at the camp are worried about their safety. So is the case with Talluri Jogaratnam of the same village who moved to the camp along with her three-month-old baby.
Floods continue to inflict agony on people in many other villages too in the mandal. Mulapadu, Ganugulagondi, Enugulagudem, Pochammagandi, Anguluru and Dandangi are still marooned in floodwaters. Authorities have deployed five boats to rescue stranded villagers from 32 habitations inundated in the floods. The boats are said to be grossly insufficient. A doctor and his associate, posted at a camp in Devipatnam school, had to wait for long hours for a boat to reach their destination.
Wordy duels between the villagers and helmsmen over travelling in the boat is a common sight. The helmsmen allege that the people are making trips to their villages for "trivial reasons", which the villagers refute stoutly. "How can we leave our family and belongings behind," they retort.
The State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) teams and helmsmen are worried as the villagers are not wearing life jackets. "See the spate of the river. Who would be responsible if some untoward incident happens?" asks Rambabu, a helmsman, carefully steering his boat avoiding nearly submerged utility poles, transformers and houses. He switches off the engine until the boat crosses the dangling telephone and power cables. Tall palmyra and other trees submerged in the waters make it look as if the boat is sailing past some shrubs. Occasionally, carcasses of dogs and logs of wood float by.
Villagers’ woes
S. Lakshman is a victim of the lack of transportation. He lost his mother S. Achhiyyamma, who suffered an injury while on her way after collecting the cooked food. Her body was lying in the inundated house. He was seen pleading with every helmsman to allow him to carry the firewood to another shore. Narrating his travails, he says initially, there was a problem finding dry firewood. Later, the helmsmen were not willing to shift the firewood, he says.
Though villagers like him have no issues with the cooked food being provided to them, they are not happy with the supply of essential commodities supplies. K. Venkat Rao dismisses the officials’ claims on the supply of rice, kerosene, edible oil, potatoes and red gram dal saying that the supplies did not match the number of families. Nagu, another villager, points out that the kerosene was supplied when the flood-warning signal was raised. It was not sufficient as more than a week passed, he says.
"There is no power supply even after a week. it is a big challenge for us to save newborn babies from mosquitoes," said Venkata Lakshmi, another villager.
Changing models
If the flooding is a perennial issue, what went wrong? Villagers who say the Godavari is benign have an answer. Earlier, they used to rely on the flood warnings issued at Bhadrachalam (now in Telangana State) and make plans accordingly. Thota Subba Rao, a resident of Thoyyeru village, explains, "If it were 50 to 60 feet at Bhadrachalam, we used to witness about 48 feet of floodwaters here." With the construction of the cofferdam, the water is entering the villages even if the water level at Bhadrachalam was about 24 to30 ft, he says.
Dowlaiswaram Irrigation Circle Superintending Engineer Krishna Rao says that the mathematical models were being redone in view of the construction of the cofferdam. Earlier, we used to give first flood warning when the second warning was announced at Bhadrachalam. Now, we are announcing second warning if the first warning was announced at Bhadrachalam, he says.
