Cyclone Gaja made four lakh homeless in Tamil Nadu

CHENNAI: With Cyclone Gaja rendering nearly four lakh people homeless, chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami left for New Delhi to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday morning and seek Central assistance of nearly ₹15,000 crore. Restoring power infrastructure alone would require ₹7,000 crore as per the latest estimates, sources said.

“The restoration work is being taken up in a frenzy,” said revenue and disaster management minister R B Udayakumar. While 3.78 lakh men, women and children are now housed in government relief centres in the central and coastal districts, a lakh of uprooted trees on public roads have been removed so far. Another one lakh trees are strewn across roads, waiting to be cleared, indicating the enormity of the restoration task ahead. With additional workforce being drawn from the neighbouring states, the energy department managed to restore 56 lakh power connections snapped due to strong winds. Several lakh power connections are yet to be restored.


Nagapattinam district administration has utilized the services of 8,000 staff members from neighbouring districts. Health secretary J Radhakrishnan, who is monitoring the district relief operations, said the administration set up self-contained teams, comprising officials from revenue, local bodies, fisheries, police, agriculture, TWAD and PWD, to meet the demands of each location. “The teams are given complete freedom to decide depending on local needs,” he told TOI.

The demand for food has been overwhelming. So, the district administration set up three community kitchens in Nagapattinam, Thalaignayiru and Peria Kuthagai in Vedaranyam taluk on Wednesday. This is in addition to 523 noon meal centres working overtime to supply food. Radhakrishnan said about 30,000 food packets were distributed in far flung habitations. “People have lost their livelihood. All sectors, including fisheries, agriculture, horticulture, trading and labour force are affected,” he said. Besides medical camps and mobile camps, teams have fanned out to disinfect the flood affected areas. Water is being distributed through tankers and generators used to pump water.

With extensive damage to agriculture and horticulture crops, ministers and officials have been coordinating to bring paddy farmers under insurance cover. The last date for crop insurance is November 30, and just nine days are left to get compensation. Agriculture secretary Gagandeep Singh Bedi said a request was made on Wednesday to the Union agriculture ministry to extend the deadline based on requests from farmers. “But we don’t want to give them false hopes and appeal to farmers to insure by November 30,” he said.