It is the local people from down the Sampaje Ghat areas who first came to our rescue, said Dharanesh Kumar from Jodupala, Madikeri, who has been taking shelter in a relief camp at a government school in Kallugundi.
The trouble began around 8.15 a.m. on Friday when it started raining heavily with landslips and trees getting washed away in streams.
Though some people from around Jodupala contacted the Kodagu Deputy Commissioner’s office to find out what is happening, they were told that help would come. But no person came.
Fearing trouble, the people fled their homes and gathered in a school at Jodupala.
Around noon, after learning about the trouble, the local residents down the ghat areas came to Jodupala, he said, adding that by that time about 150 people had gathered in the school.
Later, some people, who were taken to their relatives’ homes, later returned to relief camps at Sampaje, Kallugundi and Tekkila.
“We don’t know who is looking after us here. But we are getting all facilities, including food, clothes and medicine. We thank all people for the courteously shown to us,” he said. Sesappa Naik, a daily wager, from Jodupala at the relief camp in Kodagu Sampaje said that his house was near a stream.
“We don’t know what has happened to our house now,” he said holding his two children with his wife and father. “They (the camp authorities) have told us that we will be sent to Kallungundi camp in the afternoon as the camp in Kodagu Sampaje is overcrowded,” he said.
The nodal officer of the Kodagu Sampaje relief camp Manjunath said that donors were flooding the relief materials to all three camps. Hence there was no dearth of materials. The same camp had 162 persons with 98 women and 64 men.
The camp at Kallugundi had 217 persons with 109 men and 108 women. The one at Tekkila had 211 flood victims with 107 men and 104 women.
