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From Cyclone Arnab to the 1996 Konaseema Cyclone: (By Apparasu Srinivasa Rao)
For the last three days, I have been reporting on how Cyclone Arnab wreaked havoc in the Konaseema region of Andhra Pradesh. I must admit that I have not visited any of the affected areas. Yet, I did not miss any of the major developments on the ground, thanks to technology.
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Almost every bit of information was available on my mobile phone – from the movement of the cyclonic storm over the Bay of Bengal and its landfall to the extent of devastation, captured in photographs and videos shared by the government and on social media. There were also official figures on deaths, crop losses and damage to infrastructure, including the number of coconut trees uprooted, electric poles brought down, people shifted to cyclone shelters and relief operations undertaken.
Yet, nothing quite matches the experience of reporting from the ground. For a journalist, being there, witnessing the devastation and speaking to the affected people offers a different kind of satisfaction. But these are the days of quick bytes and instant news, and our newspaper is no exception. The demand was for hourly updates on the cyclone, without necessarily having to venture into the field.
Things were very different three decades ago. There were hardly any television channels, no mobile phones, no hourly official bulletins and certainly no satellite images tracking the movement of cyclones. Yet, I managed to cover the devastation caused by severe cyclone in the same Konaseema region in November 1996.
It was my first experience of covering a cyclone as a journalist. I was then working for the English daily Andhra Pradesh Times. A severe cyclone struck Konaseema and other parts of the erstwhile East and West Godavari districts on the night of November 6, 1996.
With Doordarshan and ETV being the only major television channels, it was only on the morning of November 8 that we began to understand the magnitude of the devastation.
When I reached the office for the afternoon meeting, my bureau chief, P. S. Jairam, asked me to leave immediately for the affected areas and report on the disaster. I rushed home and got ready for the journey. Our senior photographer, B. K. Ramesh, was already waiting for me at Malakpet in a hired Ambassador car.
We travelled through the night, catching whatever sleep we could in the car. When we woke up the next morning, November 9, we found ourselves stuck in a massive traffic jam on the National Highway somewhere near Tadepalligudem.
We got out of the car and immediately noticed signs of the cyclone’s fury in the adjoining fields. The highway was blocked at several places by fallen trees, while authorities were scrambling to clear the debris and restore traffic movement. I spoke to a few men and women standing by the roadside to understand what had happened on that dreadful night of November 6. It was my first opportunity to gather firsthand accounts of the disaster.
Fortunately, then minister Kodela Sivaprasada Rao happened to be travelling along the same route towards Rajahmundry, apparently to meet Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. The Chief Minister had arrived in Rajahmundry and turned the local government guest house into a sort of mini-secretariat from where he was overseeing relief operations.
Taking advantage of the minister’s police escort, we followed his vehicle and managed to reach Rajahmundry by around 11 am.
The town itself was still recovering from the impact of the heavy rains. Thanks to a reference from my senior colleague V. J. M. Divakar, we managed to reach the house of one of his relatives in Rajahmundry, where we quickly freshened up. Finding accommodation in a hotel was difficult in those circumstances.
I had absolutely no idea about the geography of East Godavari district, particularly the Konaseema region, which had borne the brunt of the cyclone. Those were the days before mobile phones, let alone Google Maps or any other navigation tools.
Divakar’s relative arranged for a young man, whom I think was his nephew, to accompany us and guide us through Konaseema.
As we approached Ravulapalem, the gateway to Konaseema, about 25-30 km from Rajahmundry, we came across a shocking sight. A massive communication tower, resembling the famous television tower near Malakpet, had been twisted out of shape by the ferocious winds. I was later told that wind gusts had reached speeds of up to 180 kmph on the night of November 6.
The devastation became more evident as we travelled further. Roads had been breached, coconut trees and electric poles lay uprooted, and agricultural fields were inundated. In Ambajipeta and Kothapeta, thousands of people were standing in queues for food packets and drinking water sachets. Schools and both government and private buildings had been converted into cyclone relief shelters.
At Ambajipeta, we stopped at the residence of a local politician who had turned his backyard into a makeshift kitchen to cook and distribute food to the affected people. He gave us a detailed account of what had happened before, during and after the cyclone. Meanwhile, Ramesh climbed onto the terrace of a house to capture photographs of the devastation across Konaseema.
From there, we proceeded to Amalapuram, then the largest town in the Konaseema region. By around 4 pm, I wanted to send a quick report to our Hyderabad office based on the notes I had scribbled during the journey. I searched for an STD booth, but the communication network had completely collapsed. There was simply no way to send the report.
I continued towards Mummidivaram, another town that had suffered extensive damage. Collapsed houses and disrupted power lines were visible everywhere. At the local mandal office, I spoke to several affected families, while officials were busy recording details of the losses.
There was no way we could proceed further, as road connectivity beyond that point was disrupted and we could not cross the stream to reach the other side. It was only about a decade later, during the Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy regime, that the bridge connecting Edurlanka and Yanam was completed.
We returned to Rajahmundry that night and checked into a hotel. Fortunately, we found an operational STD booth in the town. I dictated a short report over the telephone to our Hyderabad office. That was all I could manage. Ramesh, meanwhile, had no means of transmitting his photographs that night.
The next morning, Ramesh and I set out towards Kakinada. We had heard that villages along the Kakinada coast had been devastated by tidal waves, with massive casualties. Our journalist friend G. Radhakrishna, who represented the English daily The Telegraph and was staying at the same hotel, joined us.
On the way to Kakinada, we saw several fishing boats that had been swept inland and dumped in agricultural fields. They were stark evidence of the sheer force of the tidal waves. Road connectivity between Kakinada and Uppada was badly disrupted, and we could travel only a short distance in that direction before having to turn back.
We then headed towards Yanam. Along the way, we passed through several villages where people were struggling to pick up the pieces after the cyclone. Collapsed houses, animal carcasses and garbage were strewn everywhere. It was a heartbreaking sight.
At Tallarevu, we took a left turn towards Bhairavapalem, a village located right on the seacoast. We were told that the entire village had been engulfed by seawater and that residents who had been moved to cyclone shelters were only then beginning to return.
When we reached the village, we found it surrounded by water on all sides. We had to take a ferry to get there. The entire area was filled with a nauseating stench, with lakhs of fish washed ashore and scattered across the village. In one particularly distressing sight, I noticed hungry children trying to eat raw fish.
We were told that some elderly residents, who could not move to the shelters in time, had lost their lives. Others had been swept away by the sea, and there was no trace of them.
One villager told me that they had gone without food for three days because the authorities could not reach them. They had somehow survived by drinking locally brewed liquor. Remember, those were the days of prohibition in Andhra Pradesh, when arrack was completely banned.
“Banned arrack turns elixir for them” was the headline I gave my story. It subsequently appeared as an anchor story in the newspaper after I returned to Hyderabad.
On our way back, Radhakrishna insisted that we visit Yanam as well. Initially, I could not understand why he was so keen on going there, but Ramesh knew exactly what was on his mind. Yanam is part of the Union Territory of Puducherry, where prohibition was not in force. They wanted to have a drink!
There was no electricity in Yanam, of course. But that did not stop Radhakrishna and Ramesh from having a couple of “hot beers” before we returned to Rajahmundry. What I did not know was that Radhakrishna had also bought a bottle of Old Monk rum and tucked it away in the car’s dashboard. Had the excise officials at the checkpost decided to inspect our vehicle, we could have landed in trouble. Fortunately, that did not happen!
The next day was Diwali, but the people of Rajahmundry were in no mood to celebrate. A few shops had stocked crackers, but there were hardly any buyers. The devastation had clearly taken away the festive spirit.
The following morning, we learnt that Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda, accompanied by Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, would conduct an aerial survey of the cyclone-hit areas and address the media at Rajahmundry airport.
We rushed to Madhurapudi to attend the press conference. Unlike the tightly controlled media interactions we often see these days, this was a direct, face-to-face interaction between the Prime Minister and journalists. Deve Gowda immediately declared the Konaseema cyclone a “national disaster”.
(Of course, one official was heard remarking that Deve Gowda had been dozing off throughout the aerial survey, as was his wont!)
Official records put the death toll in the November 1996 cyclone at around 1,000, though unofficial estimates placed it at more than 2,000. Nearly 4.5 lakh houses were partially or completely damaged, leaving tens of thousands of families homeless. More than 1.9 lakh people were accommodated in 790 relief camps.
Thirty years later, the nature and scale of the devastation caused by cyclones can still be enormous. But there is one major difference. Thanks to advances in technology, governments today can track cyclones well in advance, issue timely warnings, evacuate vulnerable populations and mobilise relief operations before disaster strikes. These measures have helped minimise casualties and losses.
For journalists, too, technology has transformed the way disasters are covered. Information that once took days to gather and transmit is now available at the touch of a button.
But one thing has not changed: no amount of technology can replace the experience of being on the ground, seeing the devastation with one’s own eyes and listening to the stories of those who have lived through it.
That, perhaps, is the real difference between reporting a disaster from a mobile phone and experiencing it as a journalist in the field.
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