The ongoing three-day Raja festival has failed to bring cheers for several families at Kanhua village under Rajnagar tehsil in Kendrapada district as they are yet to forget the trauma of becoming homeless due to a fire accident that occurred at the village on April 23. As many as 29 families were rendered homeless and about 50 thatched houses were reduced to ashes when a fire erupted from a straw heap behind the hose of one Basudev Pradhan. Properties worth more than Rs40 lakh were gutted in incident.
Even after one and half months of incident, many homeless people have been taking shelter under make-shift polythene houses. Around a dozen of the fire victims are struggling hard to construct their houses due to fund crunch, despite the fact that the district administration had provided Rs20,800 as fire relief and several persons had lent their support to the fire victims. Amid such situation, the Raja festival would bring no excitement for the fire victim families as they would skip wearing new clothes, preparing sweets for they do not have money for the same, said a fire victim.