CHENNAI: Seetha D (35) was clutching her four-month-old baby son close to her chest as cyclone Vardah tried to rip off her asbestos roof in Ashok Nagar on Monday afternoon. She tried to stay calm as she waited for her mother to return from work, but when she heard the huge tree outside the house crash down on the roof, she thought it was the end for her and her baby son.
A polio victim separated from her husband, Seetha had no chance of getting out herself because she could not walk. She remained stuck in the hut for nearly two hours before her mother could come to her rescue.
“If there had been anyone else with me, I wouldn’t have been so scared. But there was no one except me and the baby,” she said.
Seetha said water began gushing in through the gaps in the asbestos roof. “It started to flow through the kitchen and I began to panic,” she recalled.
However, fortunately her elderly mother returned not long after and with the help of neighbours, Seetha and her baby were carried out of their make-shift home and taken to a school nearby.
“Initially, the school watchman locked the gates and did not allow us refuge. But we fought and were finally allowed inside. We can’t go there all the time, so we have to sleep out in the open,” her mother said.
Seetha’s neighbours were not sparred either, a grieving Munusamy said as he pointed to his recently-bought TV set.
“This TV and cupboard we bought only recently after the floods last year washed away all our belongings. We lost everything then and were only beginning to get a few items slowly and now again we don’t have anything left,” Munusamy lamented.
Munusamy and his wife had been out to work when the storm hit. While he pointed at the hole in the asbestos roof, he said, “If anyone of us had been at home, we would have probably died. My wife just started working two days ago and now her employers asked her not to go back because she is struggling to put our home back together."