Church people led by hundreds of Religious are making efforts to help people affected by unprecedented floods that left some 200 dead and 1.5 million homeless in Andhra Pradesh.

Torrential rains and releasing of dams early October resulted in flash floods in five districts of the state, rendering thousands of families homeless, hungry and helpless.

“When the flood hit, the water rose from my feet to my waist in five minutes,” said Kasturi, a 20-year-old pregnant woman. “My husband put our two daughters on his shoulders, one on each side. We walked about a mile in the water.”

Kasturi and family were lucky to save their lives but nothing else. Most people from Kasturi’s village went to a railway platform that stood above the flood waters in a neighboring district, sleeping there until the waters receded.

When they went back after three days, there was little to salvage. “Our house is mud now,” says 20-year-old Adam, another villager. Some managed to dig up a few pots, pans, or the jute sifters they need to sift rice.

One man in the village of Rampurum got his family to safety, but returned to his house for sacks of grain. Days later, searchers found his body under his hut’s wall that collapsed while he was inside. He was among more than 200 people who died. Many could not be buried because the ground was still swamped.

Kasturi, Adam, and hundreds of others created a tent camp on the side of a road, ripping up old saris to tie sticks together for frames, which they covered with whatever material available—old feed sacks, cloths, or plastic sheets.

Sitting on the dirt floor of her makeshift hut, Kasturi says she’s not sure what she would do when she goes into labor—there’s no medical care nearby, and no money to pay for it if there was. The floods had washed away ration and health cards the government issues to impoverished people, and many clinics and stores are waterlogged anyway.

The only job most villagers know is farm work, but there won’t be any for months, at least. Thousands of acres of rice-—this year’s crop was unusually good before the flood hit–are gone, the fields sodden and filled with sand that would take years to clear.

The lucky few who owned animals saw those swept away as well.

Carcasses of thousands of cows, goats, and sheep littered the land when the flood receded, breeding disease. Father Jijo Murthanatt, parish priest in Kosigi town, went out with villagers to find the animals, load them into trucks, and bury them.

“It was terrible,” the priest said. Even in villages where some houses can be saved, the stench of decomposition is so strong that villagers have not yet returned.

Father Murthanatt and his fellow Carmelites, along with some local nuns, worked quickly to feed the flood survivors.

“We walked through the water carrying hot rice,” said Sister Lilly Lobo of St. Joseph of Tarbes congregation. “The people just stood there staring at us, not making a sound. They couldn’t imagine this would happen to them—the entire place flooded in half an hour.”

The Catholic Relief Service is working with the priests and nuns to help 7,400 families in this region alone, and thousands more in the neighboring state of Karnataka. Families will receive tarps and rope, cloth, cookware, water jars and water purification tablets, among other necessities.

The aid will help for the short term, but the long term looks grim unless more is done. It is painful “to see people suffering like that—what to do?” Sister Lilly said.

Roopali Darsha, a coordinator for CRS India., is worried too. “The flood survivors don’t have a future,” she says. “No jobs, no crops, no food.”

Source:  India floods: ‘No jobs, no crops, no food’

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