Click to play videoKolkata: A fallen tree has brought Professor RK Das's life crashing down in Kolkata. Wind and rain caused by Cyclone Aila uprooted the tree and brought it down on Das' house on Monday evening. Now there is no electricity, water and the telephone line doesn’t work in the Das household.
“I cannot move out of my house. It is badly damaged after a large tree fell on it. My telephone line is not working and I can't communicate with the rest of the world,” Das complained.
Das can't even move things out of his destroyed home because the Kolkata Municipal Corporation hasn't turned up to remove the fallen tree.
This is the aftermath of the cyclone Aila which by-passed the city on Monday. Many of the roads are still inaccessible and the city has turned into a civic mess, thanks to the lack of coordination between the different administrative departments.
Fallen trees, broken lamp posts and torn electric supply lines pepper the streets of the city. Initial estimates suggest at least 1,200 trees fell in just three hours on Monday. However, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation has been able to remove only 400 trees so far.
Another battle is to deal with water-logging in several areas and the civic authority admits it doesn't have enough resources.
“This is a natural calamity. You cannot go on planning keeping natural calamities in mind,” Mayor of Kolkata Municipal Corporation Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya said.
Meanwhile, as Kolkata flounders, there is a bigger task for the state government.
Over two lakh people were shifted to safer locations in South 24 Parganas, East Midnapore, Howrah, Hooghly, Bardhaman and Birbhum districts. While they have found temporary shelter in camps, rehabilitating them would be a Herculean task.
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