A midnight SOS that was answered by fishermen in Kerala

By Rishi Kakanadan

In the afternoon on August 15, Kollam district collector S Karthikeyan received a call from his counterpart in Pathanamthitta, P B Nooh. He requested five dinghies to be sent from rescue operations in flooded areas in his district.

It had been raining incessantly for several days all over Kerala. Most of the reservoirs in the state had to be opened in the previous couple of days, leading to floods along most rivers, lakes and low-lying areas. And things were getting much worse than feared.

Now, the few dinghies in Kollam were already engaged in rescue mission within the district. So, Karthikeyan told Nooh he could possibly arrange some fishermen’s crafts. They were not sure how much it would help, but given the lack of options they decided to give it a try.

The Kollam collector immediately called up some fishermen’s societies and asked if they could spare some small boats for rescue operations. Most fishermen no longer use the traditional small boat to go fishing in the sea. So they suggested sending the slightly larger single-engine boats that they use these days. So, at around 4 in the evening, two boats with some fishermen were sent to Pathanamthitta on a trial basis.

Heavy rains and large-scale rescue and relief operations continued across the state.

At around 10 in the night when Karthikeyan was having his dinner, he got another call from Nooh. It was an SOS to send more fishing boats. Only these boats were now able to do the rescue operation. Dinghies and rectangular boats of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were largely ineffective, because the water level had increased significantly in several areas along the Pampa river and its tributaries, and there were strong currents.
“We were prepared for floods, but nobody expected rivers to flow on towns,” Karthikeyan told ET.

He called an emergency meeting with office-bearers of various fishermen’s societies in the town. He assured them that even a scratch on their boats would be taken care of by the government. They readily agreed, too.

The problem was, everybody was sleeping. It was past 12 in the night… fishermen who actually work in boats were sleeping in their homes, and there were no trucks to ferry their boats to Pathanamthitta.

“So we started making mike announcements in colonies, seeking volunteers,” Karthikeyan said. He also contacted some truck owners. Within 2-3 hours, about 200 fishermen had gathered near Kollam port, and several trucks reached there with tanks full.

By five in the morning, nine boats – seven from Vaddy, near Kollam port, and two from Neendakara, the other big port in the city some 10 km away – left for Pathanamthitta. Another 35 boats were sent by 10 in the morning. By the night on August 16, some 120 boats from Kollam were engaged in rescue operations in Pathanamthitta.

By that time other places, like Thi r uvanant hapu ram and Ernakulam, too, had started sending fishing crafts to Pathanamthitta. Television channels had already picked up the story, and the Pathanamthitta collector had sent an SOS to the chief minister’s office.
The jury is still out on the reasons for the devastating floods in Kerala, billed as the worst in more than a century. A proper flood warning system and better management of water levels in reservoirs might have lessened its impact significantly. There might have been several slips, and there may still be issues in relief camps and in rehabilitating people. But what is undeniable is that Kerala pulled off a near-impossible rescue operation across the state, with everybody from top bureaucrats and armed forces to local communities and mobile-wielding youngsters chipping in.

But one group that everybody now hails as the heroes of Kerala is the fishermen who rushed in and threw themselves into the swirling waters to save people who they had never met.

As many as 952 fishing boats and more than 4,500 fishermen from coastal areas of Kerala rescued at least 65,000 people, mainly in Pathanamthitta, Alappuzha, Thrissur and Ernakulam districts, between August 15 and August 19.

According to a rough estimate by Pathanamthitta collector Nooh, out of all the people rescued in the district, 70% were saved by fishermen, 15% by NDRF and forces, and 15% by the locals.

“Once they landed there, fishermen took the responsibility and started saving people stuck at homes on their own. They did not wait for any instruction from anybody,” Kollam collector Karthikeyan said.

That was crucial — taking things in their hands. Who else can take decisions as fast as those who have fought with the sea their entire life?

When Treesa reached a temporary camp behind Aranmula Engineering College in Pathanamthitta in the evening of August 16, a crowd of more than 900 people there wanted to know only one thing — is there food on the boat?

Treesa had just six food packs left on board. The situation was desperate. There was not enough time for Treesa to go back to Thekkemala – the nearest place where vehicles with wheels could still run on roads – and fetch food back to the camp.
Joy Marian Fernandez, who was steering the boat, asked if there was any grocery shop nearby that may not have submerged. Anitha, a village officer coordinating from the camp, said there was a two-storey government-owned ‘Maveli’ grocery store some 3 km away. Her husband joined the four-member rescue team aboard Treesa — Joy, his cousin Jose, and local policemen Sajith and Udayachandran. They broke the locks of second floor shutters with a big bolt cutter they had kept to cut power lines and cables blocking their way. All the stock had already been shifted to the second floor. But water had reached up to their ankles even on the second floor by now. They ferried several sacks of rice, cooking oil and other groceries to the camp.

When they returned to the Thekkemala base —a service station turned into relief camp—the camp incharge, Joji, thanked them for solving a grave problem in that hour of crisis. She had made arrangements for taking all the stock left in the store to other relief camps in the vicinity, because food and other relief materials had not yet started arriving in a big way.

Pampa river had by now eaten up the vast stretch of land between Thekkemala and Chengannur, some 12 km away. Small hillocks looked like tiny islands. Buildings on those higher grounds – mostly churches and temples – had been converted into shelters. Boats mostly took people rescued from houses and terraces to these shelters to save on time and rescue more people. They also brought food, relief materials and medicines to these camps. It was not just about the boats though.

“If not for those local policemen, we fishermen could not have saved even 40% of the people,” said Joy, sitting on a plastic chair in the small veranda of his modest house along one of the many narrow bylanes at Vaddy, a fishermen’s village near Kollam port.

“They knew the roads and bylanes, otherwise we couldn’t have reached even half the houses.”

If they had to follow roads and streets to reach people stuck at homes in residential areas, there were also stretches where roads ran up to higher areas. So they had cross paddy fields and sometimes even the gushing river to reach areas such as Malakkara, Kozhippalam and Arattupuzha.

And there were all kinds of obstructions, Joy said. There were cables and electricity lines that boatmen had to cut to make way, submerged walls and fences that they ran into every now and then, furniture pieces and dead animals floating on the water, and snakes hanging on to tree branches, walls and gates, he said.

Jacob John, another fisherman from Vaddy, who operated from the other side of the now expanded Pampa river, said the truck drivers took as much risk as the fishermen, riding on flooded roads and bridges. For every boat that took part in the mission, there was a truck that carried it. Jacob remembers parts of roads where truck wheels were completely submerged. They had to change routes more than once, before they managed to reach.

Parumala church Parumala church in Thiruvalla – which was turned into a relief camp and a base for bringing relief materials, as wheeled vehicles could reach one side of the church, and boats could ply from the other side.

Jacob and his four friends on the boat saved about 1,000 people in two days mostly in Pandanad area, where water had reached up to half of the second floor of several buildings.

It was a mad rush to save lives. “The engine was crashing into walls and all, but we just sped through all that, we wanted to save as many people as possible,” he said. People all around were as selfless. When Jacob and his team went to pick up a small group sitting on a terrace, they told them there was another family nearby that needed help more urgently. One of the boys got into the boat and led them to a house where there were three small children, two young women and an old couple waiting desperately for help on the terrace.

So how did they make out if there were people inside houses? “We got a kolambi (traditional cone-shaped loudspeaker) and called out, ‘Is there anybody, brothers and sisters? Please come out or call out’,” Jacob said.

He stays in a tiny two-room apartment on the first floor of a residential building right across the road from Kollam harbour. It was built by the government at the same location after Jacob and his neighbours lost their houses in the 2004 tsunami. His daughters Joshna and Jisna, studying in class eighth and sixth, showed me pictures of “papa on TV” on his mobile. His boat is still in the yard, gone for repairing.

Besides repair, the chief minister has also announced rewards for fishermen, but almost all of them have asked the government to spend it on relief work.

Perhaps a blessing in disguise in Kerala’s worst floods is that humanity came to the fore. The entire population faced it together and stepped in to help. “The only way an emergency of this magnitude could have dealt with was complete cooperation from all the stakeholders. And that is exactly what happened,” Kollam collector Karthikeyan said. “The government alone could not have done much.”

He said the administration had sought help from almost all the departments, and several organisation and individuals, and every one of them cooperated without raising a question – truck owners, hospitals, doctors, everybody. All the government departments and employees worked round the clock. The entire Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) and PWD employees are now engaged in repairing work in affected districts.

The challenge ahead is enormous. The state will need thousands of crores of rupees to repair its infrastructure and get back on its feet. But there is hope.

“The biggest insurance we now have is the faith in people,” says Karthikeyan. “There is a confidence that people will help and contribute.”