Even after 10 years, the October 1999 Super Cyclone still haunts lakhs of people in the 14 coastal districts of Orissa and more so in Erasama, the Ground Zero of the disaster in the coastal district of Jagatsinghpur where over 8,000 people died. DEBABRATA MOHANTY retraces the calamity through the eyes of those who witnessed the horror and its aftermath

RENUBALA PATRO

When the cyclone struck her village Hanagotha in Erasama block in 1999, widow Renubala Patro, now 55, lost her three sons and two daughters to the surging waters. The compensation of Rs 3.75 lakh she subsequently received did not qualify as “relief” and she tried to commit suicide twice. “The water, it just came up so fast. Waist-deep one moment and neck-deep the next. My son pleaded with me to save him. I can never forget his face. I was washed away by the waves and found four days later hundreds of metres away,” she recalls. “At night, all that I can think is of my dead children. Why did I survive?”

JYOTSNARANI DAS

Das was living a life of contentment with her tailor husband, two kids and mother-in-law in their modest home at Kalikuda village under Japa panchayat of Erasama block when the cyclone struck. Her mother-in-law chided her when she suggested that they move away from their thatched house to the Red Cross cyclone shelter before the cyclone. The entire family was killed except Jyotsnarani, who was found near the cyclone shelter about a week later, disoriented and hungry. A few days later, she found the bodies of her children. “I am yet to get the compensation money of my two children. Local villagers have taken thousands of rupees from me promising that I will get compensation. Everyone makes me run around. How long can I go without the compensation money?”

... contd.