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Positives of Cyclone Vardah - Unity, Humanity, Self-help

Chennai, Cyclone Vardah (Dec 12, 2016) - In person, have never witnessed anything as close to this in my life. The winds were so powerful it has uprooted close to 15 trees in our colony, the howling sound of the winds blowing was so scary which gives me goosebumps even thinking of it now. It was a complete carnage by "Vardah" on that day.

Our colony had ~50 trees and out of which we lost 15 odd trees now. Minimum of 2 trees has fallen in each street. Colony compound wall has collapsed as one tree had fallen straight over it. Everywhere we were able to see only leaves, fallen branches, fallen trees, cut cables and not an inch of the actual road was clearly visible.

Bad things do happen in the world, like war, natural disasters, disease. But out of those situations always arise stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things - Daryn Kagan

The positive side of it was from each street at least 2 members automatically volunteered and in no time we were a solid team of 25 to 30 members. It had all walks of people from varied age group and a mix of both male & female. Few started cutting down the fallen trees to make the road accessible for others, few started sweeping the roads, Tea & snacks served by some for the volunteers etc.,

After ~3 days of effort, almost 95% of fallen trees were cut into small pieces by our volunteers and most of the garbage were swept from the road by us. A big share of credit goes to the younger generation (kids of the age group of ~10 to college goers) who were very active and contributed enormously in this effort. Pretty happy that our colony is having a good amount of socially active kids - Healthy sign & feels safe.

The icing on the cake was at the end of the day a colony doctor with the help of few of the volunteers have arranged for TT injection for all those who were in need of it. I myself had cut my left-hand finger and my left foot with a glass piece, got bruises on my leg etc., and was planning to visit a doctor to get a TT as it's been more than 5 yrs since I had that vaccination. It certainly was a nice timely gesture from the doctor.

Overall during this tough times found that,
no specific gender was superior
no specific caste was superior
no specific religion was superior
no specific profession was superior
It's the unity & humanity which won at the end of the day.

Wish it remains the same and am really proud of the way our colony people pulled together to recover from this disaster. Once again I would say there is no better place to live in Chennai than "Park Dugar,  Ramavaram" :)

First time ever I haven't taken any pictures maybe will update this post later after collecting the snaps from others who might have taken it.

Related:

These videos from cyclone Vardah might explain the intensity of the winds

1. Car Topples - https://youtu.be/JsSOuwx-gW8
2. Bus Flipping over - https://youtu.be/q7LjSYpiDTU
3. People trying to get to safety from that flipped bus - https://youtu.be/Dw5iY4hXwXw

Comments

Anuradha D said…
Very well written Vadivel. This bought the incident before our eyes... Nature gave a chance to us to prove Humanity is within us. All is well :)

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