India: 'Black Friday' Still Haunts Orissa
CARE staff report
ATLANTA (Oct. 29, 2000) - It is emotionally remembered as India's Black Friday, one of the nation's darkest days. A year ago today, a hurricane-like storm of rare ferocity roared from the Bay of Bengal, beginning a 36-hour, headlong crash into the coastal state of Orissa.
Widespread devastation was catastrophic. Suffering seemed unbounded, among the 20th century's worst.
CARE has not forgotten this or Orissa's people. CARE is there, focusing on the present and the future, for Orissa has not been rebuilt. "Much" is a weak word to describe the work that still lies ahead.
Estimates of the number that did not survive the storm range well into the tens of thousands. They are estimates because no one knows how many people were in Orissa before the storm and how many remain missing.
Millions upon millions of people did survive, and it is their future CARE is concerned about.
Relief and development organizations in India continue to be overwhelmed by the breadth of the disaster and work to be done, said Basant Mohanty, director of CARE programs in Orissa.
CARE was the first organization to reach many of those survivors, assisting with food, shelter and medicine. CARE was positioned to launch a strong emergency response because of its ongoing programs to help people become self-reliant.
Similar programs to build self-reliance are in place today, supplemented by continuing crisis assistance. New programs look to the future. CARE is helping to build raised, concrete storm shelters and organizing new early warning and emergency-response networks.
CARE programs are designed to lessen the impact of natural disasters, particularly ones of the magnitude of Black Friday.
Driven by winds exceeding 160 mph, a surge of debris-packed seawater up to 20-feet high raced inland, leaving little in its wake. It violently swept village after village into oblivion.
The unnamed tropical supercyclone was designated TC05B by meteorologists. 05B turned Orissa into an extension of the Bay of Bengal.
Had it formed in the Atlantic, meteorologists would consider the supercyclone a Category 5 hurricane, the most dangerous kind. Two hurricanes of this strength have hit the United States since record keeping began. In India, it is the type of storm where coconuts fly like arrows.
Twelve days before the supercyclone, a cyclone of less disastrous force struck Orissa. The one-two punch left destruction India has not seen in decades.
"It will take at least 10 years for these communities to fully recover from the disaster," said Mohanty. "Having experienced this level of destruction, we are helping communities regain what was lost and prepare for tomorrow.
"Disasters of this size are not fixed overnight or in a year," Mohanty said. "The people of Orissa had comparatively little to begin with. Millions of them have less now."
Orissa's fragile infrastructure literally was wiped away, Mohanty said, leaving people little, if any, way to make a living.
CARE is not giving up in Orissa.
CARE continues to help people restore their lives, rebuild homes, replace fishing boats and replant crops. With CARE's help, footholds have been and are being secured for individuals, families and communities to care for themselves.
The scope of the disaster
Orissa is home to nearly 32 million people, about as many as live in California. The cyclones caused suffering to most of Orissa's population.
The Indian government estimates the two cyclones killed nearly 10,000 people. Unoffically, 30,000 to 50,000 are presumed to have perished.
One CARE solution to this recurring problem is to help the people of Orissa prepare for disaster.
Heading off disaster
CARE is helping these communities plan for future natural disasters, to lessen the loss of life and the damage to people's livelihoods. A CARE project is establishing a baseline map of areas most at risk from future storms. CARE is partnering with India's National Institute of Amateur Radio to organize a network and train volunteer radio operators. The network will serve as an early warning system and communications reserve during future crises.
CARE is building cyclone shelters to help people weather storms safely. One shelter, depending on its size, will offer protection for up to 4,000 people.
"People who can get to a concrete structure during a storm survive, those who don't, drown," said Paul Giannone, deputy director for CARE's Emergency Group. "There are simply too few shelters for the number of people in the state."
When not being used as shelters, these structures will do double duty as healthcare clinics, schools, childcare centers, community meeting places, disaster preparedness centers and as weekly farmers' market.
CARE's ASHRAYA project, meaning shelter in an Indian language, is working with communities to build individual, cyclone-resistant structures for the most needy families. Families can add on to this core, cyclone-resistant room. The project's larger goal is to assist communities in controlling and managing the construction of safe housing, using local building materials and cost-effective technology.
"Next to food, safe housing is the community's second-most important need," said Prabodh Mohanty, rehabilitation manager for CARE Orissa. "We hope that through this program, the dream of a safe house for all, will come true, step by step."
Recovery is gaining ground
CARE is concentrating its rehabilitation efforts in four of Orissa's hardest hit districts, the inland district of Cuttack and coastal districts of Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapada, and Puri.
CARE is enabling people to work their fields again by distributing tools and seeds for diverse crops, such as okra, peas and pumpkins, as well as rice. Now, more than 100,000 families assisted by CARE have crops planted that they will be able to harvest during the Kharif (coming winter season), both for their own tables and to sell at market. CARE is supplying coconut, mango, guava and lemon saplings to 40,000 families.
A CARE reforestation project is working to restore the vegetation lost to the cyclones. More than 2.6 million saplings have been replanted.
In the coastal districts, 15,000 families are participating in a CARE project providing boat-building materials and fishing nets. CARE staff is assisting people in repairing embankments and building community fishing ponds.
"Helping people build and strengthen their ability to manage their lives and find secure, lasting ways to provide for themselves is a very tough job because people want to see immediate results," said Mohanty. "It's hard to keep getting funds for a long-term project that will improve people's lives for generations. But simply put, that's what needed."
Funding becomes more critical because as time passes the media's attention is drawn away from Orissa to other crises.
"The cameras are gone. Very often the funding stops because the crisis is over and people go on to something else," said Marge Tsitouris, director of CARE's Emergency Group. "But it's far from over for the people affected by drought or flood or conflict. They have been put in a position where they have slipped into poverty or slipped deeper into poverty. The real challenge for CARE is putting things back into place and getting people's lives started again."
Hope is a key
"People have hopes," said Mohanty. "For a long time after the cyclones, they were just living day to day, now people are making long-term plans. They want to improve their lives and the lives of their children."
CARE's participation makes a significant difference in recovery efforts because CARE works with communities to find lasting ways to move past the need for assistance to self-reliance.
"CARE heartily supports the efforts of the people of Orissa to go ahead with their lives," said Bob LaPrade, CARE's deputy regional director for Asia. "CARE's goal is to help people make a better future for themselves."
CONTACT:
CARE is distributing rice seed to the neediest families so they can continue replanting crops. 
Boat building in Orissa continues, returning fishermen to the water and restoring the transportation and commerce networks. 
CARE staff members monitor progress on fishing boats being readied for launch in Orissa.
Before the cyclone, two-thirds of Orissa's population lived below the poverty line. The storms flattened the gains CARE and the people of Orissa had made, wiping out their resources. No one wants this to happen again.
With CARE-provided seed, Orissans replant rice paddies that will be harvested soon. 
Young coconut palms are being distributed by CARE to thousands of families. 
A community-fishing pond built with CARE's assistance offers people a chance to add variety and protein to their basic diet of rice.
In Atlanta: Alina Labrada, 404-979-9383; labrada@care.org
In India: Tom Alcedo, (011) 9111-656-4059
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