It has been a month now after the horrible Titli cyclone hit Gajapati district. It had wrecked havoc and taken a toll of 45 people in the district while five minors had lost their parents and became fully orphans. Thousands of people lost their houses and standing crops besides domestic animals and assets.
The disaster damaged roads and destroyed electricity and telephone lines. Gajapati district for a time was cut off from the outside world.
The older persons from the Gajapati district said they never experienced the kind of the cyclone in their lifetime before.
Even though a month has passed off, many cyclone-affected families are sleeping under the open sky without any shelter. To help them, Gajapati district Collector Anupam Saha is walking out to different tribal villages and inaccessible hamlets every day and taking steps on a war footing to restore normalcy. The painful incident of landslide at Baraghara village under Gangabada Panchayat where the sixteen families of the same village died on the same night of the cyclone still haunts the mind of the locals. The State Government provided Rs 10 lakh ex-gratia each for the kin of the deceased families in the cyclone.
However, district Collector Saha deserves kudos for working very hard to reach out to every village on foot or motor cyclone to provide succor to the Titli-affected families.