Calamities
Beside its usual programmes and routine activities, Volontariat and its staff has always been involved in relief activities as soon as a natural disaster or a family tragedy happens: cyclonic storm, flood, fire accident or arson, accidents or suicides. The main recent natural disaster obviously was the Tsunami which hit many countries, the coast of South India and the archipelago of Andaman & Nicobar on 26.12.2004.
These relief activities are a part of our “duty” of social workers as our slogan is to “leave the door open to any distress situation”.
Cyclonic storms and floods
They occurred quite frequently during the sixties and seventies, causing heavy human and material damages. Strong winds (coconut trees falling down on the huts of Uppalam), heavy rains flooding the village, sometimes tidal waves (we still remember the one which hit the coast of Andhra Pradesh in 1977, 55000 people died).
Pondicherry and Uppalam suffered of several cyclones during these years: most of the thatched huts collapsed, leaving the people without a shed and soaked to the skin. That’s why, when Volontariat built the Community Centre, on the middle of Uppalam in 1968, the full first floor was dedicated to the rescue of the people of Uppalam, on a cyclonic disaster.
Huts fire
Until recently, only the city, inside its boulevards, had permanent houses with bricks, tiles and cement.
The families which cannot afford to have or rent a house, live in the suburbs or slums, like Uppalam of the sixties, in thatched huts (structure with bamboos or casurina wood, roof made on coconut tree leaves, walls made in dried mud) When the roof is drying under the sun, specially during summer season, April to July, only a spark can set fire to the hut and all the huts around, in a very short time. Many such fires or arsons happened at and near Uppalam in the past years. See on this website (NEWS) the report on the fire which burnt 100 huts at Vanarapet, in July 2006.
The disaster may be by the water, the wind or the fire, specially when it happens at or near Uppalam or/and when the families of some sponsored children are involved, our intervention is made very quickly: the doctor and nurses treat the wounds, the social workers are counseling the people and children, food and water are distributed to all (may be several hundred) as long as they need. A coordinated action is made with the others interveners, governmental or private, in order not to duplicate or forget basic needs.
Accidents and suicides
They occur too frequently and Volontariat has to do counseling, look for the children that we often place at Amaidhi Illam, aged people acting as grand parents, and with the family, we try to find the less bad solution for them and the lonely parent. The priority is always the care of the orphan children.
The Tsunami, 26.12.2004
This disaster was not the worst one that hits India on the number of victims, but surely the most terrific for the people, as many who suffer from the Tsunami are still in live and will remember all their life. Also the damages were spread on hundred of km along the coastal areas of South India and all the Islands of the Andaman Archipelago. See on this website the articles dedicated on the post-Tsunami programmes.
For all these disasters, individual or collective, the period of relief is quite short, so the relief has to be done very quickly, sometimes within the hour after, and with efficiency. It is what Volontariat tries to do at its level of responsibility and means.
