Calamities
In addition to its usual programmes and routine activities, Volontariat and its staff have always been involved in relief activities, as soon as a natural disaster or a family tragedy happens: cyclonic storm, flood, fire accident or arson, accidents or suicides. The main recent natural disaster obviously was the Tsunami which hit many countries, the coast of South India and the archipelago of Andaman & Nicobar on 26.12.2004.
Cyclonic storms and floods
They occurred quite frequently during the sixties
and seventies, causing heavy human and material damage. Strong winds, heavy rains flooding the villages, sometimes tidal waves.
Pondicherry and Uppalam in particular, suffered from several cyclones during these years. Most of the thatched huts collapsed, coconut trees fell on the huts, leaving the people without a roof and soaked to the skin. That’s why, when Volontariat built the Community Centre, in the middle of Uppalam in 1968, the full first floor was dedicated to the rescue of the people of Uppalam, in a cyclonic disaster. The last cyclone which hit the Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry coast occurred in November 2008 [see this website, News, hurricane Nisha].
The damages in Oupalam would be surely less severe if today a cyclone arise as most of the huts have been replaced by bricks and cement constructions, see below.
Huts fire
Until recently, only the city, inside its boulevards, had permanent houses with bricks, tiles and cement.
The families which cannot afford to have or rent a house, live in the outskirts or slums, like Uppalam of the sixties to nineties, in thatched huts (structure with bamboos or casurina wood, roof made of coconut tree leaves, walls made of dried mud). When the roof is drying under the sun, especially during the summer, April to July, only a spark can set fire to one hut and to all the huts around, in a very short time. Many such accidental fires or even arson have happened at and near Uppalam in the past. [See on this website, NEWS, huts fires in July 2006 and 2007 at Vandrapet].
For all these disasters, either by rain, wind or fire, specially when it happens at or near Uppalam, when the families of sponsored children are involved, our intervention is very quick: the Doctor and nurses treat the wounds, the social workers counsel the adults and children, food and water are distributed to all (several hundreds) as long as necessary. A coordinated action is made with other helpers, governmental or private, in order not to duplicate the services or neglect basic needs.
Today, the fires are luckily less frequent and less severe as Pondicherry government and Volontariat [for the sponsored children families] gave a very important help to the families to allow them to build permanent houses. The employees of Volontariat may get from the organization a loan, at 0% interest, to buy a plot and build a permanent house for their family. They pay back, during several years, directly from their salary.
Accidents, murders and suicides They unfortunately occur too frequently. Volontariat has to do counseling, look after the children that we often place for few days at Amaidi Illam, aged people acting as grand parents, till a solution is found. Along with the family and the remaining parent (if any), the social workers try to find a solution for the children, it is always our priority; that solution is often to place the children among the children of Nila Illam at the farm.
Post Tsunami programmes The disaster, on that day of 26.12.2004, was not the worst one that hit India, on account of the number of victims, but surely the most terrifying for the people, as many who suffered from the waves are still alive and will remember it for all their life. Also the damages were spread in hundreds of kilometers along the coastal areas of South India and all the Islands of the Andaman Archipelago. Today, all the post- Tsunami rehabilitation programmes, at Pondicherry, Karaikal, Nagapattinam, Andaman & Nicobar islands and other minor places, have been achieved and archived!
For all these calamities, individual or collective, the period of relief has to be quite short, so the relief done very quickly and with efficiency.
Volontariat tries to do so, at its level of responsibility and means.
