November 3, 2005
While Americans are beginning to recover from the devastation of hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, floodwaters are still causing troubles in another storm-prone area of the world. The southern coasts of India, off both the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea, have suffered from a string of unprecedented tropical storms in the past three months, causing ruin for humans and animals alike.
The torrential rains—which dumped more than three feet of water in Mumbai in one day alone—has left more than a 1,000 dead, has stranded hundreds of thousands, and has hampered recovery efforts in many regions still impassable by vehicles. Sherry Grant, HSI’s disaster relief coordinator and director of HSI Asia, is currently in India, assisting in the recovery efforts, and helping coordinate local disaster relief teams. Within days of her arrival, India was experiencing yet another storm, which was hampering relief workers.
Grant spoke to Sarah Mesa, HSI’s web content manager, by phone about the disaster area and the work she is doing.
SM: Where are you now?
SG: Right now I am in Visakha in the area of Visakhapatnam, which is located on the eastern coast of India on the Bay of Bengal. I am working with Pradeep Nath, founder and president of the Visakha SPCA (VSPCA), which has been devastated by several [storms] and the resulting floods in the last month.
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How You Can Help |
| Make a donation to our Worldwide Disaster Fund, which provides grants to organizations, such as VSPCA, have been devastated by disaster. |
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Some goals for assisting the flooding victims in India include:
• $800: To help drain floodwater left behind the cow sheds.
• $1,000: To refurbish and pump three broken wells.
• $3,500: To move the puppy shelter to higher ground, preventing future flooding problems. |
SM: What are the conditions in Visakha?
SG: We are right now in the middle of a [storm] getting ready to hit us. It’s awful; it’s such a mess. It’s been raining for two days and a nearby village is under six feet of water. What is amazing is how fast the rain comes down. The torrential downpours can leave eight inches of water in places in half an hour. There is no chance for things to dry out.
SM: Can you tell me about the VSPCA?
SG: The Visakha SPCA is the baby of Pradeep Nath—his heart and soul are in it. He runs it in addition to his regular job as a banker, which he hasn’t been able to do since the flooding began. He has a shelter here, and he helps cattle, stray dogs, and runs an animal birth control program. His program has been able to spay or neuter 70% of the strays in the area. The VSPCA also goes to other villages with their outreach programs. But the VSPCA is more than a shelter. This is an amazing place, with his holistic approach to meet the needs of nature, animals, and man.
Not only are the VSPCA staff members dealing with the loss of their facilities and their own homes, they have to go out and help nearby villages and their animals.
SM: What happened to the VSPCA’s facilities?
SG: The [storms] created flooding that broke through a 420-foot boundary wall, destroying the cattle sheds and leaving nine feet of water covering the area. When the water receded, what was left was a 9,500-square-foot area of muck and manure, and the sheds were reduced to debris. It started becoming a health hazard because it was basically open sewage. The manure holds all the water in, creating a nearly 10,000-square-foot open septic tank that is floating on the base of soil and gravel.
SM: What are you doing to help the VSPCA?
SG: First, we have to remedy the health hazards by clearing the muck and getting back to hard dirt so that when it rains, the water will run off, and we can rebuild the cattle enclosures right so this doesn’t happen again. A donation from HSI allowed us to hire heavy equipment to [help with this].
One of my responsibilities was to bring in help. All of the airports and trains are shut down, so that has been very hard. Rahul Sehgal’s Animal Help in Emergency and Disaster (A.H.E.A.D.) team and the Animal Aid Society, both Indian groups, are here helping.
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Support beams and a pool of muck are all that's left of a VSPCA cow shed.
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Also, Sri Lankans are here, and what is gorgeous about the Sri Lankans is they [survived and learned from] the disaster of the tsunami, and were able to come over and help. Out of the ashes came the phoenix, and that would be the
Tsunami Animal Welfare Trust, which brought donations, supplies and vets.
The added value of their relief is that they are taking the opportunity to assist VSPCA with training to create mobile spay/neuter field clinics to add to the village outreach programs that are currently being implemented. Pradeep is passionate about the same-day release methods for dog population management. Together with the Tsunami Animal Welfare Trust and Yudisthira Bali Street Dog Foundation, this dream will become a reality. That is the first good thing that has come out of this disaster.
Having said that, everyone is doing anything that needs to be done.
SM: What challenges are you facing?
SG: The cattle are getting hoof and leg problems from standing in the water. It’s so hard to get them to higher ground because they slip on the wet slopes. Attendants take the herds out walking every day, leaving only the sick and seriously lame behind.
Pradeep is having a hard time keeping workers at the shelter site. It’s a dirty job, tantamount to being in a small stock yard in some regards. They come in and it starts raining, and they dwindle and don’t come back the next day, even though Pradeep is paying five times the regular wage. His regular staff either doesn’t want to be in the toxic environment or their own homes are flooded, and they are dealing with their own personal disasters.
Today the wells started to collapse. The heavy equipment broke down, the rain brought work to a standstill, and the river is rising by the hour. By nightfall, we were disheartened and feeling very low—but not defeated.
SM: What successes have you had?
SG: The VSPCA staff was able to save all 700 of their animals.
The dog catching teams and village outreach teams are getting out, helping and feeding strays where they can. Everybody here is doing everything. The vets, when they’re done doing all the spaying and neutering, come out and scoop mud and clear debris.
We met with and got a handshake and commitment from the...Department of Revenue Services to give funds to help rebuild the sheds that were lost after HSI has completed the fundamental infrastructure work to make this possible.
The vision of a VSPCA same-day release program is going to become a reality. After a long meeting and a couple hours of video and talking, the skeptical VSPCA staff headed downstairs to the previously flooded surgery clinic to start with field surgery protocols. Perhaps this is the beginning of a new way of looking at stray control in these areas.
