Protectors become victims of Phailin

Policemen are duty bound to protect people. But, they were among the first to fend for their lives as cyclone Phailin stuck Odisha's only marine police station at Arjapalli in Chattarpur, about 170 kms south of Bhuvaneshwar.

Updated on: Oct 15, 2013, 08:47:01 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Chattarpur (Odisha)

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Policemen are duty bound to protect people. But, they were among the first to fend for their lives as cyclone Phailin stuck Odisha's only marine police station at Arjapalli in Chattarpur, about 170 kms south of Bhuvaneshwar. The police station was set up about five years ago exclusively for those living within 500 meters of the sea coast.

"The waves were as high as first floor of the police station," said B Rama Rao, a constable at the police station. Considering that the police station was about 10 meters above the beach level, the waves climbed up to 15 meters or a four storey building.

The first onslaught came at about four o clock in the afternoon when the water touched ground floor of the police station. And then the water level started rising steadily in the police station which is next to Gopalpur port. The panic button was pressed by 17 policemen present there who just ran off towards a higher plateau at Arjapalli about 50 meters away.

By 10 ten o'clock the water was gushing into the first floor of the police station. "We thought that the building would get submerged," said Huno Patra, another constable at the police station, while trying to reorganise things in the station building shattered by Phailin. The doors and the window panes were being re-installed. Files damaged were being recreated. And a small puja was also being done to thank God for securing them.

Earlier that day they had forcefully taken people out from their homes in coastal areas to cyclone shelter. By late in the night they were back at the shelter. The difference was they were there like any other ordinary cyclone victim.

Even a cyclone center at another village had to be closed down hours before Phailin made the landfall. Ghanjam's district collector declared that the shelter was not safe and hurriedly people were shifted into a college building. "There was lot of panic and chaos," said Pradip Behera, one of the persons shifted out.

These two government structures were exception in a long list of schools, colleges and shelters used to provide safe house to people. "We used whatever infrastructure we had to provide safety. Over three lakh people in Ganjam district were evacuated," the official said. Even a building constructed by a Netherlands based aid agency after 1999 super cyclone also came handy on October 12 night.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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