The Salvation Army has been working tirelessly in the aftermath of the devastation caused by the Indian Ocean tsunami on Boxing Day 2004. The Christian organisation has also been quick to highlight to the world of the greater plight of the region.
Just months after the east coast of India was hit by the tsunami last December, the west of the country was also hit by a terrible disaster of its own. Abnormally heavy rains engulfed the region and caused huge flooding.
Torrential rain caused overwhelming flooding, and was even described by local newspapers as a ‘tsunami from the sky’.
Although the Salvation Army report that the worst of the flooding has now passed, its local workers are still working with the families who have had homes destroyed, and crops completely wiped out. So many have been reported as having lost all means to earn a living themselves and have been left with no option but to ask for aid and relief from international agencies.
The Salvation Army’s India Western and India South Western Territories have been challenged with a growing task.
Salvation Army relief teams have for the first time been able to venture more freely into villages that have been cut off completely from the rest of the country, and this has led to an increasing number of affected families being discovered.
The Western India territory of the Salvation Army is now putting in place new initiatives to feed up to 5,000 families from nearly 200 affected villages. One extra obstacle that has made the Salvation Army’s work more urgent has been the fast spread of diseases in the wet conditions.
One Salvation Army worker in the region spoke about how he handed out rice to people that had basically lost all hope. He said, “We met a lady who had lost everything. Her house is covered with water. There was no food and not even drinking water for her and her children. Her children were crying with hunger. She had been trying to catch fish from the flood waters. She had lost all her clothing and household things.”
Reports have also been coming in from the Salvation Army that at least 26 emergency shelters will have to urgently be rebuilt or repaired, as well as houses across the devastated region.
It has been made clear to the Salvation Army that the situation in India has been much worse as resources have been almost entirely exhausted in the response to last December’s tsunami.
Thousands of families are looking towards the Salvation Army now with renewed hope in Western India, and in turn the Salvation Army in India is now looking to the worldwide community once again to meet the needs of the most urgent and vulnerable families and individuals hit by the India floods.
For more information please direct funds to The Salvation Army’s South Asia Disaster Fund.
